We Are The Survivors

by Vanessa Marie

The door to freedom. The exit to this horrible place. I walk through the door with a smile on my face. It’s snowing. Snowflakes are falling on my face. I haven’t felt the snow in forever. It’s nice to feel the weather outside.

  I feel a pain in my temple and I fall on my left side in front of Kevin. I see blood in the white snow. I was hit. I roll on my back to see who hit me. My doctor is standing over me with a paperweight. Dried blood lines run from his nose to his mouth.

  “I told you not to leave. Getting ahead of this is crucial. I need a cure. Every patient has to be here.” He kicks Kevin in the knee before he can react to it.

  Kevin falls in the snow face first. “No! Leave him alone!” I yell throwing snow at the doctor.

  The doctor walks up to me and pulls me to my feet by my hood. My head hurts. The doctor takes out a needle and injects me in the neck with it. I fall in the snow and the world fades from me.

  I open my eyes. I’m in total darkness. Did I go blind? I put my hands to my sides. I feel cold narrow walls on each side of me. I bang on them making a metal pounding sound.

  I’m in a box. Am I in a coffin? I bang my feet on the end of the box which sounds like metal too. I hear the doctor tell me to shut up. I bang on the sides of the rectangular box “Let me out! Let me out! Help! Let me out!” I scream.

  I slide out. I am on a metal tray. I’m in the Morgue. The doctor is there with a needle in his hand. I punch him in the nose. I jump off the tray and run to the door. I grab the knob. He grabs me from behind. I kick at his legs while he drags me back to an examination table in the middle of the room. He straps me to it. I try to break free from the straps. They get tighter around my wrist.

  “Stay there.” He goes over to the other table which has needles all over it.

  “I’ll kill you if my husband doesn’t first!” I scream with anger in my voice.

  He turns holding up a needle. “This is how it works. I do what I want and if I find a cure I use all your blood for a vaccine, to save the world.”

  “Let me go!” I cough up phlegm.

  My heart is racing and I’m sweating. I can hear patients screaming for help in the metal boxes. He injects me with the black liquid. “What is that?” I ask.

  “Blood from infected patients if you don’t have the disease you will. I’ll cure you from it and make a vaccine.”

  “Where is Kevin?”

  “In the snow passed out. He comes for you and he winds up as another test subject.”

  He injects me in the neck with another liquid. My vision goes blurry and I pass out.

  I wake up in the box again. I feel so much worse. My arms feel sore. It feels like someone is pinching me down both of my forearms. I feel my arms. There are pricks in my vein inside my elbows, on my wrist too. He must have injected me with a ton of things.

  I must get out of here. There is no telling how long these diseases will take to kill me. The time I have to get to my family, at least to tell them goodbye, is ticking away.

  This doctor might cure me but that doesn’t erase the fact that he kidnapped me. Maybe there is a cure running through my veins right this moment. I can only hope that I am that lucky.

  I try to move my hands but their tied to the tray I am lying on. I kick at the door trying to open it. I kick until my feet are sore and I have no energy. I scream but my voice is small, almost a whisper compared to the screams from the other people in here with me. I realize my mouth is held together by duct tape. I scream as loud as I can but the duct tape muffles it. The other people locked in the morgue must have duct tape on their mouths too. The screams are muffled just like mine. I begin to cry and pray. I have never been so scared before. The Angel of Death could take me at any moment now.

  An hour, I think, passes. Finally, the door opens. Light floods in allowing me to see the doctor standing over someone else who is strapped to the examination table. The woman begs the doctor to let her go. He ignores her, injecting her with a red liquid which I assume is blood. He gives her another injection which makes her unconscious.

  Where the hell is the National Guard? Military? They just abandon people in a crisis like this? No one told them about people being held against their will? People are dying and coming back the military should be trying to evacuation or containing. What are they doing?

  I hear gun shots. I hear people screaming then more gun shots. I hear a thud accompanied by a groan and another thud.

  “No. Please, don’t,” the doctor cowers.

  “Where is May?” Kevin asks.

  I tear up at his question. He’s alive.

  “Over here,” the doctor says.

  I see Kevin aiming his hunting rifle at the doctor’s head. The rifle that we used to keep in our closet for protection against burglars, of course we used it for hunting too. I never thought that we would be using it like this. The doctor is on the floor next to me. He has his hands up in surrender. Blood is running down his forehead from a cut. Kevin hit him with the rifle that’s what made the sounds I heard. He doesn’t care that it’s bleeding, he is more focused on Kevin. Now I can see how truly pathetic he is.

  Kevin grabs a scalpel and cuts away at my restraints. I take the duct tape off my mouth. I stand up. I’m a little dizzy from doing that. Kevin drops the scalpel on the floor and points the rifle at the doctor. He’s trembling. Sweat is beading on his forehead. He’s scared.

  I never could understand how people could hurt others in unspeakable ways then be afraid of what was going to happen to them. I can’t understand how these people don’t scare themselves. This guy is a doctor. He is supposed to help people. He earns a living helping people saving lives. Now he is taking them.

  The doctor goes for the scalpel. He pushes Kevin’s back into the examination table. He drops the rifle. I pick the rifle up and shoot the doctor execution style in the back of the head. His body drops to the floor.

  I killed him. I’ve never killed anything before aside from animals when hunting. Kevin puts his hands on my shoulders.

  “Are you okay?” he asks.

  “Yeah.”

  He kisses me. He walks over to the morgue doors and pulls the trays out. He uses the scalpel to cut the hostages free. They get up, thanking him then running out. The last two people we let out is the man who confronted Dr. Smithson and his wife. The guy is bleeding badly from the stomach. They walk out holding hands, he is leaning on his wife for support. His wound leaves a trail of blood droplets down the hallway. It relieves me that they found each other.

  We finally, for the second time, walk through the hospital doors. I get paranoid that I’m going to get hit when we walk out. I put my hood up as snowflakes fall on my face.

  I see my white pick-up truck in the first spot. I get in with relief. Kevin puts the rifle in the backseat. He clicks his seatbelt.

  “You know you could die with the traveling we are going to do?” he asks.

  “I don’t care. Finding our family is worth dying for don’t you think?”

  He stares into space like he does when he doesn’t know how to answer something. “It is. Just prepare for the possibility that he might not be there,” he says.

  “I get it. Please start driving I can’t take still being here.”

  I am so glad to be leaving my personal prison. On my way to see my sister. How happy she will be to see me. My stomach is butterflies when I remember my sister. It gives me a bad feeling. I want to ignore it. But it’s there. Something isn’t right with her.

  I never trusted her new husband. I can’t remember his name. He is the kind of person that would give you the creeps if you were around him. The guys who gives you a bad feeling. If he did something to my family I don’t know what I’ll do.

  I push that thought aside. I need to focus on how to get there first. We need to stop at the house first. Right now it’s midnight. If we drive straight through we can make it there in three days.

  Hopefully I have that much time left.

  Apocalypse: Day Four

 
We went to my home after the hospital. We picked up a lot of guns and ammunition. I hesitated to leave. That house is seventeen years old. I watched my baby grow up here. That was my home. I gathered up the items that had sentimental value to me. Things like Gavin’s first baby onesie, pictures of my family. I put them in a cardboard box. I put the box in the backseat. Kevin grabbed clothes, filling duffle bags with what was left in the closet.

  After that we went to check some stores. We had to give it a shot. They were abandoned. Some were boarded up and others were just locked. None of them had electricity. No one had electricity. We broke in to a grocery store and took enough food and water for a four-day trip.

  In just a day people grouped together against the zombies. We ran into a few groups foraging for supplies. Some people were set up in stores. They didn’t welcome us into their shelters. They told us to go. We listened trying not to cause trouble when we didn’t need it. We had no choice since they had weapons. It was unsettling to watch people I saw every day in restaurants and stores being so nice to me turn into distant, wary people. I couldn’t blame them for their apprehension since I was held captive by my own doctor.

  Barely anyone, aside from the few people that drove by us, are walking around. Hard to imagine that New Jersey has lost a lot of its population. But it’s happened.

  It’s been four days since we left that hellhole of a hospital. I’m happy to be out of there, I just didn’t get out the way I thought I would. New Jersey isn’t what I thought it would be now that I’m out. The boardwalk was filled with the munchers. I call them that.

  I ask Kevin if he killed the staff in the hospital. He tells me he did so he could get me back.

  We’ve been driving for three days. We would have gotten to Las Vegas sooner but we stopped at several places to see if anyone was alive along the way. Nobody was at the gas stations, grocery stores, anywhere. Was there an evacuation that we didn’t see? It would explain the absence of people. Maybe they are just all dead or undead.

  One of the gas stations we went to wasn’t empty. We had to stop to grab some gas. I ran to the door while Kevin stayed in the car. I thought maybe they would have electricity. It was pitch black inside. I thought going through it would be a good idea. I opened the door not knowing that a family of three had set up in there. The father pointed his shotgun at me. I told him I didn’t want trouble. He yelled at me, he told me to leave. I didn’t know what his paranoia was about. The mother walked to the register to the left of the store with a little girl. They all had brown hair and eyes. They were a cute family. The mother had a bite mark on her arm. The little girl’s eyes were sorrowful. The girl stepped in front of her mother protectively. I explained that I only needed gas. He told me to leave. I asked him if his wife was bitten. He begged me not to do anything to hurt her. I turned around. Kevin unbuckled his seatbelt ready to run over. I put my hand up to signal him to stop. I ran back to the car. I told him to drive as soon as my door closed. The little girl’s eyes are burned into my brain.

  That was three hours ago. It’s nine o’ clock now. My turn driving while Kevin sleeps in the passenger’s seat. I got four hours of sleep. My eyes are so heavy they close every few seconds. I put on some rock music in an effort to keep me awake.

  Remembering my destination keeps me up. She’s the younger one, my sister. My polar opposite. There isn’t a pair of sisters closer than we are.

  If Fred did hurt her, I’ll kill him myself. You don’t mess with my sister and not get hell to pay from me.

  The road only has the headlights to brighten it up. I see a flashing light on the side of the road. I stop to see what it is. There is someone in a car flashing their headlights. I shake Kevin awake. He opens his eyes.

  “What?” he asks.

  “There is a car on the road.”

  He gets out of the car. I get out looking over the roof of the car. A man with a beard gets out holding a child over his shoulder. She is a young girl. Kevin and the man talk then they come closer to the car. He puts the child in the backseat.

  She rests her head against the door. The man gets in and closes his door. Kevin stands by the passenger’s side door.

  “The girl is bit. He wants to be dropped off in Vegas. He said he’ll take care of her.” He gets in the car.

  I don’t say no. I’m too tired to object. I know exactly what he means by taking care of her. I get in the passenger seat. The little girl’s eyes meet mine in the rear-view mirror. I see the same emotions. There is fear, worry and sadness in her brown eyes that breaks my heart. She rests her head once again on the door.

  Kevin takes the wheel within five minutes. I stay awake. The guy in the back is looking at his daughter. He brushes her hair back over her ear. They share the same brown hair and eyes.

  The girl is sleeping. I see the bite mark on her arm. The scary part is that she looks like me. When I glance in the rear-view mirror I see the same pale, sweaty faces, the blood shot eyes. I’m turning into one of them. The question is why am I not one right now? If I did have the disease, why is it taking longer for me to die? The people on the Strip died and came alive so fast. My body must be fighting the disease. I still have the fever. I feel exhausted.

  If I stayed at the hospital would the doctor have killed me?

  I watch the sun come up. Three hours on the road. What’s weird is I feel a little better. I look in the rearview mirror. My eyes aren’t blood shot. The color has come back into my face.

  “Hey, you look better,” Kevin says.

  I do. I have a little more energy. With the lack of sleep I wouldn’t have expected that. Please tell me I’m cured.

  “Pull over.” The little girl says. “My tummy hurts.”

  Kevin pulls over. The girl gets out. She throws up in a ditch off the road. She comes back and sits in the car.

  “What’s your name? I’m Reanna,” the girl says.

  “May, this is Kevin.”

  “Dad’s name is Wilson,” she says.

  Kevin drives again. The girl goes to sleep. She is snoring. Her breathing sounds like she has asthma. I don’t know if she has that for a fact.

  The girl opens her eyes suddenly. They changed from brown to a golden color. She growls and turns toward her father. She lunges at him. He grabs her wrists holding her back from him. Kevin slams on the brakes giving me whiplash. Kevin opens the door and pulls the little girl off him. Wilson gets out. I follow him. They are towering over her. Wilson takes a big knife from his back pocket. He holds the girl down on her chest with one hand so she doesn’t stand up. He positions the knife above her head. His hand shakes. The girl is scratching at his arm, trying to pull his arm to her mouth. His eyes are blank like he is in another world. At the same time, I think he won’t do it he stabs her in the forehead. He puts the knife back in his pocket. The father gets in the car. We both get in the car. He sobs making me tear up. He cries too. We all cry. Kevin gives his condolences. Wilson doesn’t answer. I feel for him. Kevin drives at a hundred miles per hour.

  An hour later we are on the Strip. I am glad to be here. I tell Kevin to stop at my sister’s, Samantha’s, house.

  The Strip is so pretty. I remember when I came here for my brother-in-law’s funeral. The Strip was still lit up in the early morning.

  My heart races when we make it to the house a mile away from the Strip. I jump out of the car.

  “Samantha!” I call.

  I go up to the door. I knock on the door. “Samantha!” I call while knocking. No answer. I shoulder try to shoulder the door open. I give up on the third time and kick it with a lot of force once then twice. The door gives way.

  I drop to my knees at the sight. My sister is on the floor torn open. Fred is on the floor with his head bashed in. I don’t know who killed him. I scream at the top of my lungs. I start crying. Kevin walks in and stops. I put my head on the floor. I curl up in a ball. I sob into the carpet. Kevin wraps his arms around my stomach hugging me. I remember that I am looking for more people. “Rain!”
I call. I push him away. I go into Rain’s bedroom.

  Her room has been ransacked. Clothes have been tossed on the bed, on the floor, everywhere. She could have done that herself. I call my son, “Gavin!” I walk in the master bedroom.

  Draws have been ripped from the dressers. Papers that were in them have been scattered on the floor. One of the papers catches my eye. I pick it up.

  It’s a life insurance policy taken out on Sam. The beneficiary is Fred. He was going to kill her for insurance, that’s it. The dresser draw is open. I look inside. I find a newspaper clipping with his picture folded inside a book. The headline reads: ‘Fred Grace Linked to Young Girl’s Kidnapping’.

  The rest of the article has been cut away. The photo was taken when he was younger. His hair color is different. In the wedding photos, he has blonde hair. In the newspaper picture, he has light brown hair. He also grew a mustache since then.

  It makes me sick. I wipe my tears away. My sister and I were as close as could be. My heart has been ripped out. I feel so empty. I want to scream until I can’t anymore. I sit here numb unable to feel any emotion.

  Kevin is talking to me and I’m not listening. “What?” I ask.

  “We have to go get Rain and Gavin.”

  He helps me up. I sit in the car. Wilson stares at me in the mirror.

  “I’m sorry,” he says.

  “Thanks.”

  “It doesn’t get better. You don’t move on.” He stares at the world outside of this car.

  My sister moved on from her husband’s death. I don’t know how she did it but she did. It doesn’t matter if you move on. I need to find my son and niece. I have an entire city to search. Where are they? What are they doing without me? I’m the only family they have left. Are they even thinking of me?

  CHAPTER SEVEN-FAMILY REUNION

  I’m sitting on the couch opposite of my stepbrother. I’m staring at him. He smiles awkwardly at me. I’m making him nervous. This is weird. I don’t know where to begin asking questions.

  His father was going to kill me. I have to know who this guy was. How do I phrase this? “Was your father ever a good man?” I ask.