The End of Us

by D, Hannah

  “If you save it” Zoe whispered.

  “I will, now be quit and watch the show I’ve so dearly put on for you” Sylvia smiled at her.

  Zoe didn’t want to look through the window. She had already heard the woman begging for Zoe to help her, to save her. Zoe hated feeling so powerless. She couldn’t move her hands enough to even strangle Sylvia. There was also nothing in the room shape enough for Zoe break the rope over her hands.

  Zoe heard the door to the room she was in open and heard the footsteps coming over to stand beside Sylvia. Zoe braved a glance into the room with the woman in it and saw Jack tying her up to the radiator that was in that room.

  “You’re not even going to give her a fighting chance?” Zoe gasped at Sylvia.

  “Now whats the fun in that” Sylvia said.

  “You two not going to do anything to stop this madness?” Zoe asked Tom and Eve.

  “More of an experiment for us really to see how well she does in survival mode with being trapped” Eve replied.

  “You’re all sick!” Zoe shouted.

  “Hush now, the shows about to start. And if you don’t watch then we throw in someone else” Sylvia warned her.

  “Sick bitch” Zoe replied.

  Jack had just finished tying up the woman in the room. The woman looked directly at Zoe through the glass and started shouting at Zoe for her to do something and help her. Zoe felt her eyes well up with tears and her body shake with anger at being so powerless as to do anything to help her. Jack walked over to the locked door that the skin eaters were behind. He turned and looked through the glass at them. He got a hold of Zoe’s eye and smiled as he unlocked the door and then ran out of it leaving the woman alone, trapped and helpless in the room with the skin eaters.

  Jack wandered back into the room, swaggering and looking proud as hell at what he’d just done. Zoe scrunched her nose up and gave Jack the most ugliest, not impressed look she could give him. Jack just shrugged at her, pointed to the window for Zoe to sit and watch. Zoe wanted to just wipe that grin right off of his face.

  “I hope you’re watching Zoe” Sylvia said.

  Zoe looked at her and saw her smiling her sweet little evil smile. Zoe really didn’t want to turn her attention to what was going on in that room. She could already hear the screaming an the pleas for help coming from the woman.

  The skin eaters were shuffling out of the room one by one, all of their eyes were trained on the woman tied to the radiator, their meal for the day. They were shuffling faster than usual which probably showed how hungry they were.

  Zoe eventually turned to look at the woman and felt her stomach trying to convulse and turn in on itself at the sight. The woman was trying to fight off the skin eaters with her one hand that wasn’t tied to the radiators and was also trying to use her legs as well.

  She seemed to be doing really well to start off with with fighting the skin eaters. Each skin eater that she kicked went flailing backwards, two of them actually fell over. However her luck didn’t last very long and all it took was one skin eater to avoid her kicks and it loomed down on her and took a bite on her arm.

  The woman screamed out in what sounded a mix of pain and terror. Zoe tried to turn her head away but saw Sylvia cast a glance at her to make sure that she was watching. Zoe looked at the poor woman and saw the skin eater taking chunk after chunk out of her arm. More skin eaters eventually joined in and they were taking chunks of flesh out of the woman on her legs. They progressed even further by starting to rip into her stomach and pull the contents out of her body. The first to come out looked like her large intestine.

  The woman had long since stopped screaming and was now most definitely dead. Zoe was horror struck and eventually had to lean over the chair to the side that she was sat in to empty the contents of her stomach. She could not believe that she’d just had to witness that.

  “Okay Jack, I think they’re all well and truly fed. You and Claire can head on in and round them up and lock them back into the room” Sylvia said.

  “You got it” Jack said to her.

  Zoe was still leaning over her chair, refusing to look anywhere except for the ground afraid of what else she might possibly see. She didn’t think she had anything left to bring up in her stomach.

  “Enjoy that little show?” Sylvia asked.

  “I think my stomach contents lying on your floor say how much I didn’t enjoy it” Zoe told her disgustingly.

  “Well, now you know how serious we take this experiment here. Anyone misbehaves or steps out of line in any way becomes a chew toy for our pets” Sylvia told her.

  “Pets? My god how delusional do you need to be. They’re not pets, they’re skin eaters or zombies or walkers or whatever you want to call them! They eat humans. They’re now top of the food chain and we should be standing together against them, not using each other!” Zoe said frustrated.

  “As I have told you a million times, we are very close to finding a cure and if that means using other humans to get there then we will do that” Sylvia told her.

  “There is no cure for this. However you die, you come back as one of the skin eaters. Eve you’re the scientist, you must know this already” Zoe turned to look at Eve.

  “Yes I do know that if you die from natural causes you will come back as one of them but that doesn’t mean we scratch out a possible cure. I believe I am on the verge of finding and creating one” Eve told her.

  “How can you create one in a costco? There are no scientific equipment here for you to do that” Zoe told her.

  “I have enough here to do me. Now please, stop trying to bring our work down, what we are doing could give you a life. Stop being so ungrateful” Eve told Zoe.

  “You’re all delusional and one day you’ll see just hw stupid you really had been over this and just how many innocent lives you all took” Zoe told them.

  Zoe had managed to lift her head and look at all of them. She was careful not to look through the window into the other room to see what was happening but she could see movement out of the corner of her eye. Sylvia, Eve and Tom were looking at her as if she were the stupid one.

  “Oh my dear, if only you could just see the good in this” Sylvia said.

  “I don’t think she ever will and there’s no space for that kind of attitude here” Eve said.

  “So what do we do with her?” Tom asked.

  “Hmm, that I’m not sure of yet. I’ll need tonight to think on it” Sylvia said.

  Zoe felt like a spare part just sitting here looking at them and listening to them talk about what they were going to do with her. Whether they would kill her or keep her alive as a hostage. Zoe hoped that if they were to decide to kill her that they would do it quickly but she highly doubted that and was expecting the same kind of death as that poor woman.

  “Whatever you decide to do with me, there will be revenge for it from my group” Zoe told them.

  “We can handle them, plus who says we’ll even tell them if you die or how you even died” Sylvia smiled.

  “They’ll know and then you’ll all be dead” Zoe smiled back at them.

  Sylvia didn’t even look like she was scared, Zoe thought her head must’ve been that high up in the clouds in her own little world. Eve looked unimpressed with the threat and Tom was the only one who actually looked scared.

  “Take her back into the prisoners room will you Tom?” Sylvia asked him.

  Tom moved beside Zoe and put his hand under her armpit to get Zoe to stand on her feet. Zoe didn’t move with he first few pulls Tom was giving her on her arm, she was too busy glaring directly into Sylvia’s eyes.

  Zoe eventually stood up and decided to look through the window. She saw that the skin eaters were all gone from the room, locked back up in their own cell. Claire was wiping up the blood mess the skin eaters had made during their dinner. She was also lifting up organs that the skin eaters hadn’t bothered finishing eating.

  Jack was dragging the woman along the floor by her ar
ms. Her lower body had just detached itself, too much had been eaten from it to stay attached. The woman had came back as a skin eater, even after how much had been chewed off of her she still came back. Zoe had no idea what they were going to do with her. Ben still occupied the bed and was thrashing around more than ever after all of the action that had just taken place.

  “Go on, get going” Sylvia said.

  Zoe glared at her one more time before walking away with Tom. She didn’t say a word to Tom. Zoe could feel him looking at her on the short walk back to the room but Zoe refused to look at him or to even acknowledge his existence even though he was holding onto her. Tom stopped them just outside the door and turned Zoe around to look at him.

  “You have to be careful with what you say in there or around anyone in here” Tom whispered to her.

  Zoe didn’t answer him. She just looked angrily into his eyes.

  “They can make your life a living hell, if they even let you live that is” Tom told her.

  Zoe still didn’t answer him, she just continued to stare at him.

  “Fine, have it your way then. Don’t say I didn’t rly to help you” Tom said to her as he unlocked the prisoner room door.

  “Help! Ha! Don’t make me laugh!” Zoe laughed at him.

  Tom looked at her disapprovingly before taking her into the room and putting her back on the floor, tying up her legs. He managed to make it not as tight as the rope tied on her wrists.

  “You know what Tom, if you really wanted to try and help me you could lessen this rope a bit tied around my wrists. I would like to feel my hands again and not be scared every morning when I wake up that they might not be there” Zoe told him.

  Tom looked a little conflicted. Zoe could see the doctor in him trying to push out and to help her but the need to obey Sylvia was there as well.

  “Please Tom? It really hurts” Zoe asked him as sweetly as she could.

  “Alright I’ll lessen the ropes a bit but just promise not to try and make a run for it. They’ll kill me too you know, even my own wife would kill me for the sake of this experiment” Tom told her as he knelt to lessen the ropes.

  Zoe let herself feel a little sorry for Tom. He seemed afraid of Sylvia and even his own wife! She had an escape plan but it didn’t involve getting Tom into too much trouble. Well no trouble at least for tonight.

  Tom finished lessening the ropes and Zoe sighed in relief at the feeling of getting her hands back to full function. Tom nodded his head at Zo before standing back up and walking out of the room. Zoe relished the last five seconds of light before she was plunged back into darkness.

  “What happened out there?”

  “Where’s Sheila?”

  “Why are you back and she’s not?”

  “We could hear screaming, a lot of it, what was all that about?”

  These were just some of the questions Zoe got bombarded with as soon as the door closed. Zoe didn’t want to tell everyone in here and what had just happened. She didn’t want them to think less of her than she did herself. However, Zoe knew that they deserved the truth, no matter how painful it was or how bad it made her look.

  Zoe took a deep breath and told them everything. She didn’t get interrupted whilst she was talking and no one had thrown any abuse at her for how she had acted by not trying to save Sheila’s life. All Zoe got during her retelling of the events was gasps of horror. Zoe finished telling them what happened and went quiet. Zoe waited for the first person to speak.

  “They’re monsters.”

  “They’re nuts!”

  “We have to get out of here now!”

  “Oh god we’re all going to die the same way as Sheila!”

  Everyone in the room went into a panic. They were all terrified that they were going to be chosen next to go and die the same way as Sheila. Zoe decided to let them all get it our of their system before she spoke and told them her plan to get out.

  Zoe knew that she couldn’t wait for her group to come and rescue her, it might be too late and Zoe didn’t want anyone else to die. Zoe had no idea what was going on with her group or what Sylvia was telling them about Zoe. Zoe did know however that they wouldn’t leave without her, especially Jeff.

  Zoe let her mind drift off to thoughts of Jeff. She had already let their argument go now, she could barely remember why she let Jeff getting angry at her get to her so much. Couples argued all the time and told each other off all the time. Why had she let herself take it to heart so much? Zoe wished that she’d gotten one last kiss from him before being taken hostage. She looked down at the floor sadly, forgetting the upheaval of fear going on in the room.

  “Hey you’re being awful quiet” The man next to Zoe shoved her.

  “Oh sorry, I was just waiting for everyone to be quiet before I tell everyone my plan. I don’t think I’ll be heard over everyone right now” Zoe told him.

  The man beside Zoe whistled so loud into the room that Zoe thought her eardrum was about to pop. Although it had worked and everyone quietened down. Some complaining about how loud the whistle had been.

  “Look, the girl has a plan to get us out of here” The man announced to the room.

  “Yeah, wait for her group to come and rescue us. It’s not going to work though. We’re like sitting ducks in here” Someone shouted out.

  The room all murmured in agreement at that and Zoe felt herself nodding her head to it as well.

  “I know that that plans not going to work which is why I came up with another one” Zoe announced to the room.

  “Oh yeah? And whats this bright idea?” Someone asked her.

  “Well I got Tom to lessen the ropes tied around my wrists so my hands can move a bit more which means I may be able to untie everyone’s restraints in here” Zoe told them.

  “Aye and say you manage to untie everyone, then what? The doors locked in case you forgot that part.”

  “Well it opens once a day for when we get fed like animals. I think I can manage to get everyone untied tonight for tomorrow when they come in to feed us” Zoe told them.

  The room went quiet with people whispering to one another, trying to decide if her plan would actually work. Zoe held her breath waiting for approval, she needed everyone in this room to be on board with her plan so they could get out of here. Zoe wouldn’t be able to fight off Sylvia’s group on her own and she didn’t want to leave anyone behind.

  “Hmm alright, I think we’re in agreement with your plan” someone spoke out.

  “Brilliant! I’ll give it another while to be sure that no one is going to come in here before I start untying everyone. I’ll let you all know when it’s time” Zoe told them.

  “I hope this plan of yours works” The man beside Zoe whispered to her.

  “It has to. There’s no other choice” Zoe whispered back to him.

  Zoe started to think about where everyone could go to next to pass the time. Every idea that she had just didn’t seem good enough and Zoe wanted to try and avoid running into more people, she didn’t have a good track record so far. Zoe didn’t even know if the people she was trapped with would come along with her and her group. She felt like she could trust them enough but they might end up wanting to go their own way.

  Zoe also thought about how far they’d come in just over a month since the skin eater epidemic started and how much they had had to fight for their lives in that time. It didn’t seem possible that this was actually real and it also didn’t seem possible that they’d had to fight off more humans than skin eaters. How great the world seemed to be now.

  Zoe waited and waited until it had been a good while since she had heard the last footsteps going past the door. Zoe could see no shadows coming in from underneath the door which meant that there was no one on guard outside their door tonight. Zoe prayed that it stayed that way.

  Zoe bent down and started to play at the rope tied at her feet to see if she was actually able to untie it with her own hand still being tied. It took Zoe a few slip ups and tries at i
t and a lot of swearing under her breath but she had managed to do it. Zoe breathed out a sigh in relief. Her plan might actually work out.

  “Psst! Everyone! It’s time” Zoe whispered as loud as she could into the room.

  “Right, everyone make it over to the girl to be untied. It’s time to get out of this shithole” The man beside her said.

  Zoe felt everyone closing in around her and started to feel claustrophobic and like she was unable to move. She had tried to move her feet and wound up kicking someone, the ouch ringing out grave it away to her.

  “Okay, everyone stop coming toward me, I need some room to be able to do this. I’ll try and work my way over to you. Once I untie you, go help untie someone else, it means we’ll get through this a lot quicker” Zoe whispered to the room.

  “Sounds like a plan, lets go” The man beside her whispered.

  Zoe decided to untie that man next her first because he was so close to her and he did seem the most calm and reasonable one out of the lot.

  “Here, let me untie your hands, makes it easier for you to work with” The man told her after he had been untied.

  “Thanks” Zoe told him.

  The man managed to untie her wrists and Zoe let herself rub them to get the feeling completely back before moving on to helping someone else be untied. Some of the knots had been done really tightly and Zoe did struggle with a few of them to get the untied. Zoe could hear others being frustrated untying people.

  “They made a good job of these knots huh?” A woman said to Zoe as she untied her.

  “Well they were very thorough I’ll give them that” Zoe laughed.

  The woman laughed with Zoe at that. In fact, Zoe had felt a change in the room as everyone was being untied. Their moods had all been lifted and everyone seemed to be a lot more positive. Zoe could her small whispered laughs and people speaking happily about how they were going to escape finally from this room.

  “Okay, is everyone now untied?” Zoe whispered into the room.

  “Yeah, think that’s us all free” A man whispered back to her.

  “Good. Now we have to wait until someone comes in to feed us and then we attack” Zoe told them all.