We Are All Strangers, Page 3

  “Yeah, about that...” I laugh, trying to compose myself. “I’ve been alone for a while, unable to even so much speak to another person. Then you came along, and everything I’ve been craving, you’ve made a reality.”

  “Don’t get all lovey-dovey on me, Harper.” He winks at me, pulling himself into a sitting position, entwining his fingers in with mine. “After all, I hardly know you.”

  “Love? Yeah, no...more like lust.”

  “Well now, I can deal with that.”

  “Glad to hear that.” I lean over and rest my head on his shoulder. His skin is beginning to darken; he looks as though he is covered in ash now. As long as my brains remain intact, I don’t mind. He has managed to give me everything that I’ve desired since my parents both died. He has given me my sense of humanity back.

  “What do you think they’ll do when they find us up here?” I ask.

  “Chances are they’ll shoot me, and you...well, they’ll probably feed you to the other zombies.” He nudges me in my side and smiles. “I’m glad I met you, Harper.”

  “Me too.” I lower my face; avoiding meeting his gaze. “You’ve kind of turned everything upside down for me today. I appreciate it more than I think I can put into words.”

  “Harper, do you mind if I ask you a more personal question?”

  “Feel free.” I run my fingers through his hair, feeling at peace with the world around me. Sure, everything may be going to shit around me...but here, right here in this moment, I’m okay.

  “I noticed you were by yourself. What happened to your family?”

  I wince at the word ‘family’. I miss them. I miss them terribly, but I don’t want to think back to that moment. I don’t want to imagine my mother being eaten or my father’s body being trampled over. But I have to. I have to tell him the truth. “They died.”

  “Zombies?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Mine too, about three weeks ago. I’ve been locked away in my house until this morning when the guards came and fetched me. Apparently they want everyone locked away in this shit hole.”

  Keegan pulls me onto his lap and places his hands on my cheeks, forcing me to meet his gaze. “I don’t know how much longer I have, it may be minutes, or it could be an hour; all I know is that I want to spend whatever time I have left with you, Harper.”

  “Who’s getting lovey-dovey now?”

  Keegan laughs and pulls his fingers through my long, brown hair. “I may hardly know you, Harper, but you are the last bit of humanity left in my life. I don’t think you understand just how much that means right now.”

  I lean into him, our lips meeting once more. There is a sense of urgency in his words. Keegan leans in, pressing his lips harder against mine. I listen as the beat of his heart weakens. The urgency is the hunger. He doesn’t have much longer now. I pull away, resting my head against his shoulder. “It’s almost finished,” I whisper.

  “I know.”

  We sit in silence for another hour, treasuring the last bit of time we have together.

  The beautiful boy I met that showed me what it was to live again is now a zombie. His pale skin is now ash gray. His icy green eyes are now yellow. “Keegan,” I gasp, jumping from his lap and struggling to back away.

  He lunges for me, his arms reaching for my neck.

  The door to the roof flies open, and the guards yell at me to move away. I back away slowly, my eyes never leaving Keegan. I can feel my body shaking, unsure of what to do. I collapse to the floor as I reach the guards.

  I watch as the guards prepare their weapons, aiming directly at Keegan’s head. I hear two shots fire, and I let out a loud shriek. “Keegan!” I yell, but it’s useless. As his body falls to the floor, all I want is to pick him up; to try and bring him back. But they won’t let me. Their hands are gripping my arms, pulling me away from his lifeless body.

  He is my last connection to the outside world, and now he is gone.

  Just like everything else.

  THE FACILITY

  It had been two months since we’d been tossed on the streets by the Facility.

  I suppose that should have bothered me, but I preferred walking the streets with the dead to being locked away, praying for some sort of miracle that would never come.

  It was crazy how brainwashed the others had become. They were no better than the monsters that had overtaken our world. The Facility was not there to help them. It was built solely as an illusion, to act as though the government gave a shit.

  “You had to rebel, didn’t you?” My sister, Avery, dragged her machete along the dirt road, careful to maintain a slow pace.

  “You didn’t have to follow me,” I reminded her. “But you had to involve yourself.”

  “You’re my brother, Jackson. I wasn’t just going to allow them to toss you on the street by yourself. You’re the last bit of family I have left.”

  I tried to forget what our lives had been like before the dead came back to life. I had found that it was easier to survive in a place like this if you let go of your past, especially when there was no way in hell that we would ever get to go back to our pasts.

  This was our world now, whether we liked it or not.

  If you wanted to survive, you found a way – you salvaged weapons and food as you passed through ghost towns, you learned not to trust those you met along the way, but most importantly, you learned to accept that help would never come.

  The Facility was constructed to be a sort of safe haven for us, a place to seek refuge from the zombies. But it was far from that. They treated us like criminals. We weren’t able to talk to one another. Our beds – bunk beds – were in the open so that the guards could watch over us constantly. Our clothes, gray uniforms issued by the Facility, were all that we were allowed to wear. It was almost like they had forgotten that we were human.

  That was why I had gotten kicked out. I couldn’t stand it any longer, so I decided to do something about it.

  I’d made a big scene, and I accused the Facility of turning us into them – into zombies. And well, they clearly hadn’t taken too well to my rebelling. They tossed me out on the street shortly after with no weapons, no food – nothing. It wasn’t long after that Avery followed after me.

  Since then, I had done my best to take care of the two of us, but it hadn’t been easy. When you spent years unable to speak - to get to know people - you learned to close yourself off, and as a result, I hadn’t had much time to get to know Avery as we grew. It wasn’t that I hadn’t cared about my sister. I had. She was the reason I fought every day and that I pushed forward in search of something better. I just didn’t know how to tell her that.

  I was an eighteen year old guy. Emotions weren’t exactly my kind of thing.

  A hand wrapped around my arm, nails dug deep into my skin. I spun around to find Avery lifting her machete, the blade lining up with the neck of a zombie. “Where the hell did he come from?”

  One quick slash was all it took for his head to tumble to the ground.

  She shook her head. “I was trying to warn you, but you were la-la-land.” She reached inside of her coat pocket for a raggedy towel. “He hadn’t even noticed us until you nearly walked into him.”

  I shrugged it off. “It happens.”

  I figured she would be pissed at me, hell, I even grabbed my arm fully expecting her to punch me. But she didn’t. Instead, she broke into a fit of laughter. “You know, Aves, sometimes you really surprise the heck out of me.”

  “You have to learn to find humor in the little things, or else what’s the point of even trying?” She smiled as she moved ahead of me, stuffing the towel back into her pocket. “Even if the word has nearly died out, it doesn’t mean that we have.”

  “Which is exactly why we’re out here,” I said, reminding her why we’d been tossed out. “They are only willing to protect the dead. The living are forced to protect themselves.”

  Avery shot me a smile over her shoulder. “Even though I originally tho
ught you were nuts for mouthing off, I’m kind of glad you did it. It’s nice to feel alive, to be able to talk to someone instead of being trapped in my head constantly.”

  Up ahead, a steel door opened. I grabbed a hold of Avery’s arm, pulling her behind me. “Stay quiet,” I whispered, instantly reaching for my shotgun.

  We watched in silence as two figures made their way outside. One was an older lady dressed in the standard military uniform, and the other was a young girl wearing Facility attire.

  The woman reached inside of her vest pocket and pulled out a small tape recorder. “Please state your name,” she commanded, her finger pushing down on the red button.

  “Harper,” the girl answered.

  “Your age?”

  The girl rocked on her feet, scared. “Nineteen, I think.”

  I thought back to our time at the Facility, how days and years had merged together, making it impossible to know how long we’d spent in silence, trapped behind those four walls. I knew what she was feeling in that moment.

  I’d felt it too when I was left out here on my own.

  “You understand why you’re being released, correct?” The woman’s voice held no interest in the conversation. She was clearly going through procedure, not even bothering to take a second to think about the fact that she was tossing a fellow human out on the streets with nothing but her own devices to keep her alive.

  The girl didn’t respond.

  “You need to answer the question.”

  Still, she remained quiet.

  When I saw the woman reaching for her weapon, I took off. “You have one second to answer me, or else I will be forced to use deadly force.”

  I lunged after the woman, knocking the gun out of her hand.

  “What the fuck is your problem?” I screamed.

  She tried to reach for her gun, but I kicked it out of her reach. “She was with one of them,” she said, struggling to get out from underneath me. “We can’t risk the others being infected.”

  I looked over at the girl, checking for any indication that she had been bitten. Her flesh had yet to rot. Her eyes had yet to turn white. There was no odor radiating from the girl's body, and from what I could see, there were no marks on her skin either. “Seriously? You think that she is one of them? How blind are you?”

  I took to my feet, allowing the woman a chance to stand up. “Lady, I hate to break it to you, but this girl is not a zombie, nor is there any indication that she may be infected.”

  “You don’t know that,” she snarled.

  “Yeah, see, unlike you, I’ve been around quite a few zombies. I think I know what to look for at this point.”

  “When she kills you, just remember, it’s your fault,” the woman said as she headed back into the building. I could hear the locks click into place.

  “Don’t worry, I have no intention of trying to get back in,” I winked as she closed the sight panel on the door.

  Avery ran over to the girl, her machete stored away in its shoulder pouch. “Are you alright?”

  The girl looked scared out of her damn mind, not that I could blame her. “All he wanted was a chance to live before the virus overtook him. That was it.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. “Who?”

  “Keegan.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “He was all I had left.”

  “Okay, well, Harper – that is your name right?” Avery lay her arm over the girls shoulder. When Harper nodded, she continued, “You’re not alone anymore. You’ve got us.”

  I shot my sister a glance. I was all for helping her with the guard, but I wasn’t too thrilled at the thought of having another person to look after out here. “Shouldn’t we talk about this, dear sister?”

  She waved me off. “Feel free to ignore him.”

  Harper looked at me; her eyes were sad, lonely. And right then, I knew I was screwed. I remembered that feeling all too well. The urge to know more about her, and the need to see her smile. Yep. I remembered it from before, back when dating was actually possible.

  “I’m Jackson,” I said.

  Then I turned and took off down the road, leaving her with my sister because I was done nurturing the idea of a blossoming relationship in a world run by the dead.

  And then Avery’s words replayed in my mind.

  Even if the word has nearly died out, it doesn’t mean that we have.

  Eh, maybe it wouldn’t be too bad.

  SPARK

  The sun beat down upon the Sector, beads of sweat traveled across my scars, highlighting the painful reminders of the life I’d come to live.

  According to the tablets hanging throughout the Sector, it was going on 7AM. Most of my fellow residents were still in bed, having spent the better part of the previous night scouring for food and shelter. That used to be me until I found a way out and a way into the Family Sector.

  But still, even with the silence enveloping the Sector, I knew better than to keep my hand too far from my weapon. There were still others like me that lingered in the shadows, hidden behind the weather beaten shacks, eager for a chance to attack, a chance that I wasn’t willing to give them.

  Even after losing everything, I wasn’t ready to die.

  I guess one could say that I was a glutton for punishment.

  My fingers reached inside of my pocket, searching for the hunting knife that I had received from my father long ago. It was one of the few things I had left to remind me of him – of the times when I still had a family, a home, a life.

  Out here, in the Homeless Sector, I was on my own and the only way to survive was to fight. So that was what I did. Every. Single. Day.

  I wasn’t the best fighter within the Sector – as evident by the scars that lined my body – but I was damn near close.

  I could see the image of the ocean filling the tablets as I made my way through the empty streets, on my way out to the Widowed Sector.

  After the Outbreak left our world in discord, people feared that the end of the world would follow. They began to fear large bodies of water, believing they would come to wash away what little had survived the Outbreak. It hadn’t helped that Troum, our newly appointed leader, had made it a point to remind the others of the water bordering the state on a daily basis. He’d promised that he’d protect us – though I was sure that promise was aimed more so at the Family Sector than the rest of us, seeing as we were considered the garbage of the state – and they’d believed him.

  Sometimes I wondered if their brains actually worked, or if they recalled anything they’d learned before the Outbreak.

  Mother Nature was unpredictable. Sure, maybe the ocean would rise one day, and maybe it’d wash away everything that we knew, but such an event couldn’t be predicted.

  There was no way of knowing what Mother Nature would do, or when, and yet these people believed in Troum and his promise of safety. But I supposed that, in the world we were living in, they needed someone to believe in.

  A line of red text scrolled across the screens, a siren sounding to alert the residents of an incoming message. Great, I thought, just what I needed to happen when I was trying to sneak out undetected.

  I ducked behind the nearest shack and slid my knife out of my pocket, making sure to stay alert as residents came rushing outside to see what was taking place.

  Attention Residents: A young girl has escaped from the Family Sector. Please be on the lookout for a young-girl dressed in Sector attire. If you spot her, make sure to alert the nearest guard, as it is crucial that she is returned to her proper Sector.

  The first thing I thought was Kill Order; which seemed to be the thought of every other resident within the Homeless Sector as they erupted in cheers once they took in the scrolling text.

  It was all about points.

  Capturing an escapee and seeing to her return would ensure them more points and when you lived in a place like this – a place where fear could get you killed – you took whatever opportunity came your way.

 
; But that was them.

  I preferred to make my own opportunities.

  Off in the distance, gunshots exploded into the air as residents danced around gleefully at the possibility of a reward. Chances were the girl wouldn’t even make it this far out, but these idiots were too stupid to realize that.

  Troum was always watching, studying us like lab rats, and discarding us when we were no longer useful to him or his world. And these people accepted it. They accepted it because they felt as though this was what they deserved; that they weren’t deserving of being treated as more than peasants.

  But I guess it was easy to feel that way when everything that you knew was taken away from you.

  Everything that I knew, everyone that I loved – all of it, all of them... it was all gone.

  At times, I wanted to cave; to drown in my pain, to forget what it was like to care, but what good could come from that? To survive in a world like this, you couldn’t be numb; you couldn’t close yourself off because the second that you stopped caring; that you stopped fighting, you were pretty much painting a red target on your face.

  My mother used to tell me that it only took one person to change the world, and as ridiculous as it seemed, I liked to believe that I could be that person; that I could be the one to stand up to Troum.

  Maybe I was just as delusional as the others, I mean, it was always a possibility, but I needed something to believe in. We as people needed something to believe in, whether it was hope or love, or even a future. We needed something, and I chose to believe in hope while the others believed in Troum.

  I slipped through the cracks, trying to stick to areas where people were beginning to head out as I made my way towards the entrance to the underground tunnel.

  I would have thought that by now the guards would have sealed it off, but I guess since no one actually took notice of its existence, they just didn’t give a damn. And neither did I, especially since it benefited me.

  The Family Sector was where most of the guards were stationed, and yet it was the easiest of the Sectors to slip out of, go figure.