Z Island Series (Book 1): Escape From Z Island

by Osborne, Terrence Jr.

  “Why are you doing this?” Faith yelled at him.

  “We wanted to cause a worldwide epidemic. I mean, look at what has been happening over the past decade! This world was already going to shit! We just helped out.”

  “So, you kill everybody and risk yourself along with it?” Sam asked.

  “This was never part of the plan. Nevertheless, we have help. It’s you that doesn’t.” he smiles.

  Sam suddenly changes his objective for getting off this island. Sam looks at his weapon and starts to reach for it slowly without the man seeing him. However, the men that are getting off the island is the same way he and the group are going to get off. Jess looks at the man with anger,

  “You’re psychotic!” she yells.

  The man walks up to Jess and grabs the back of her neck and pulls her close,

  “You don’t know me!” he yelled in her face.

  “Neither do you.”

  Jess kicks the man in the crouch and Sam grabs the weapon and stabs the chubby man in the stomach. Blood pours out of his mouth and on Sam’s shirt, but Sam ignored it. He stared into the dying man’s eyes and smiled. He kept his promise he made to himself. Faith grabs Jess’s stick and throws it at the other twin, piercing him through the chest. While Jess wrestles with the man to get the gun, the man hits Jess with the bottom of the gun and knocks her to the ground unconscious and points the gun at her, but Sarah runs by and pushes the gun up, making him fire in the air once more. This signals the infected.

  Dylan and David are walking to the spot David saw the group last, but David suddenly stops. Dylan isn’t paying attention and runs into David,

  “What?”

  David puts his finger over his mouth, tells Dylan to hush, sneaks behind a tree, and peeks around,

  “What the hell?” David questioned.

  Dylan looked around and stared in silence as they observed many infected laying on the ground. They chose to remain silent.

  “Are they dead?” Dylan whispers.

  “I don’t know!” David responds.

  David begins to walk, but the gunshot from the group alerted the infected and they leaped off the ground and ran to the sound. David and Dylan run away from them and hides behind another tree, but David questions the sound.

  “Where did that gunshot come from?” David asked.

  “Over there,” Dylan points where the shot came from, but that is not what David meant.

  “I know that, but who would have a gun?”

  “The men on the ship. That could be them!” Dylan suggests.

  “But that’s also where…oh no.”

  David starts running to the location, but Dylan can’t catch up.

  “Wait up!” Dylan yells.

  Sarah and the man continue to wrestle with the gun, but Faith throws a rock at the man and Sarah trips the man down and grabs his gun, but the man quickly pulls the trigger. Sam runs to Sarah and grabs her as she falls back on him. Sam shockingly freaked out and looked at Sarah bleeding from the center of her chest and starts crying. Faith picks up Sam’s stick and stabs the man in the stomach, but pulls it out and continues stabbing the man while he spits out a lot of blood from both his mouth and his stomach. While Faith continuously stabs the man, Sam sits over Sarah’s bleeding body and cries harder. He covers up her wound to stop the bleeding, but the blood overflows through his fingers and he knows this is the end of his second best friend.

  “I’m so sorry Sarah. I need you to stay alive for me. Please?” He cries.

  Blood pours out of Sarah’s mouth, but she manages to pull her head up and look into Sam’s eyes one more time,

  “Thank you,” she says.

  Sarah begins crying and makes Sam cry even harder, wishing that things would be different. Infected announced themselves around the group, but Sam ignored them. He knew he had to go, but there was something inside of him, a feeling. A feeling that wanted him to sit there along with Sarah and die too. He figured both of his friends are gone and he’s stuck on the island, so why not die with them. He knew he would have some peace then, but Sarah does not let him,

  “Survive. Please? Don’t take any risks with anyone else.” she cries.

  Her breathing starts to become short and heavy, so Sam gives her an answer,

  “I promise,” Sam replies.

  Infected start to come, so Faith yells Sam’s name to get him to help her, but Sam sits there, lost in his emotions. Faith stabs one infected in the head, but more came. Faith gasped and fought back, but Sam came along and helped her out. One by one, they killed the infected, puncturing their sticks in their heads and stacking them up in front of them. David and Dylan finally see them, but Dylan’s excited face demolished when he sees Sarah’s body on the ground. David notices the body too, but he focused on killing the infected first before he got too emotional. Dylan however, did not hold back.

  “SARAH!” he screamed.

  He ran over to Sarah, but it was too late. She died with her eyes still open, glancing up at the clear blue sky. The last beautiful thing she could see before going to a better place. Her last sight was the beauty of nature. Dylan looks at her body and notices she died. His excitement of hearing the guns was the exact same thing that killed his girlfriend, and it killed a part of him, too. Sam looks at the infected and tells everyone to back away because there was much more coming.

  “We have to go,” Sam demands.

  David goes to pick up Jess’s body, but Dylan did not get up. He just laid there crying. Sam looks at Dylan in surprise because he thought this whole time, he had lost both of his best friends, but the infected cut his happiness short.

  “Dylan!” Sam yells, “We have to go.”

  Sam grabs Dylan’s arm, but Dylan refused to come along.

  “We can’t just leave her!” he yells.

  “There’s no time! We have to go!” Sam yells back.

  Faith alerts them that the infected are coming, so Sam has no choice. He hits Dylan over the head with his stick and knocks Dylan out shortly. Sam runs to the dead man and searches his pockets. He then picks up Dylan’s body and runs away while Faith follows behind them to ensure that no infected would attack them. Sam glances back at Sarah’s dead body and mourns for that second when he sees infected running up to her body and rips the flesh off her and digs into her body, pulling everything that was inside of her body out. He didn’t want Sarah to get eaten as she did, but he had no choice and his promise he made to her became a part of him now.

  Soon, they found a safe spot where they were on a large hill, but it appeared someone previously had been there. This gave hope to the others that although the men earlier claimed to have killed everyone else, the spot was fresh, so there could still be survivors out there, but Sam no longer cared. Even though those men were filled with such evil and hatred, Sam no longer cared. He just wants to get off the island now. No more. No less. Jess had woken up, but she had gotten a bruise on her head. However, Dylan remained unconscious. Jess heard the news about Sarah and feels terrible. In her mind, she blames herself. What if she wasn’t unconscious? What if she stopped him? These questions ran rapidly through her mind and it haunted her. She hears an infected and looks for it. When she spots it, she gets angry and goes after it unattended. Jess walks up to the infected and begins to stab it, but the infected didn’t run after her. It walked. Jess looks at it with confusion and stabs it in the head, but her stick was stuck in its head. Another infected run after her, but she does not get her stick out in time. The infected had attacked her, but she held it off by holding on to its shirt. The infected was stronger than before and it starts to get closer to her. Luckily, Sam had gotten down there in time to pull the infected away from her and kills it. Jess sighs with relief, but Sam was not happy.

  “What the hell was that?” he asked.

  “I had it.”

  “You would have gotten killed if I hadn’t seen that you were gone! You need to be careful and not wander off on your own next time.”

  �
�Look, I don’t need your help!”

  “Seems to me like you did.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “I never said you couldn’t but what I’m saying is…you’re not alone anymore. You don’t have to fight alone anymore. You go out alone now; it is a risk. You try to get some time alone; it is a risk. Everything we do, every move we make…it is a risk! I can’t lose anyone else and that includes you!” he explains.

  Jess knows deep down he’s right, so she nods her head in agreement and walks with him back uphill. When they arrive, Dylan was up and rubbing his head, trying to figure out what happened. Dylan looks at Sam and gets up to hug him. Sam puts down his stick and hugs Dylan and they remain that way for a second or two longer.

  “I thought you died,” Sam said.

  “Me too.”

  Dylan steps away from Sam and looks at his bruise,

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, it healed now. Hurts every now and then,” he responds.

  “Sarah…she…”

  “I’m so sorry. These men attacked us and…it was hard to accept. She had lost hope for you, but I knew you had to be alive and I was able to convince her to keep her faith.”

  “Huh?” Faith asked.

  “No, not you. I was talking about the other kind of faith.” Sam said.

  “But,” Faith looks at the rest of the group, “We have to find out what that man meant by ‘help’. I mean, could someone come here?”

  Sam pulls out a radio out of his pocket, “We can find out with this.”

  Everyone stands around Sam and looks at the device.

  “Is it working?” David asked.

  Sam turns on the radio and picks up an incoming message:

  Hey Billy. It’s Tony. We made a camp south of your location and we need you to come here and fix this communication device to give the others our location. It crashed again.

  The group looks at each other with confirmation that this is their way out of here. Sam turns up the volume and they all leaned in to hear his message,

  In addition, the others in the city have confirmed the results in the city. Project ‘Zombie’ is now in full effect. Now it’s just a matter of time before we get onto this island, so get your ass down here now. We need you to get the supplies.

  The radio cuts off and the group begins to worry,

  “They attacked home?” David asked.

  “It seems that way. They’re spreading the virus everywhere; and didn’t you hear it?”

  “Yeah, but does that mean the ‘Z’ on the container means ‘Zombie’? Is that what those infected are supposed to be called? Zombies?” Sam questioned.

  “I don’t know.” Faith replies.

  “Zombies. Huh, that’s what we’ll call them now I guess.”

  “But this doesn’t make any sense,” Sam said, “How did they manage to get the radio to work?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Dylan says with a low tone, “I just want to get off this damn island.”

  “Okay. So, we can go that way,” Sam points south to where the men are located, “And hopefully fix the communication device they have to call for help.” Sam suggests.

  The others agree with his plan and they all sit down on top of the hill and rest for a minute before heading out. Sam lays down and glances at everyone, but he feels calm and safe because he realized that even though they all have lost so much, they are here. They’re surviving for both themselves and their lost ones and that was something Sam could do. Survive.

  The next day, the man walks into the house from the outside covered with little blood, but enough to tell the zombies put up a fight. He had on one of the uniforms the terrorists had on, which was smart so he could blend in as one of them. He walks up to the room and checks on Tina, but he keeps glancing at Beth. Her looking over Tina’s body made him realize that the world was still worth saving. Beth looks at him and muttered,

  “What is happening to this world?”

  The man pretends he didn’t hear her and walks to Tina’s body, “Is she okay?”

  “Yeah. She is good. What’s happening?” she asks again.

  The man knows that she spoke loud enough to hear her, yet he still refuses to answer her. Beth knows he is ignoring her, so she stands up and walks up to him. She looks at his nametag on his shirt,

  “Are you-?”

  “No! I stole this outfit to keep them from killing us.”

  “So, I saw you killing those zombies. Do you know what’s going on?”

  “I just don’t want to answer.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I said so. You know as much as I know right now.”

  “Well, I would figure since you’re a pro and all-”

  “Look ma’am-”

  “Beth!”

  “Beth, even though I have been surviving, that doesn’t mean anything. I know as much as you know. I know you have seen the news broadcast. It’s a fucking virus going around and it’s killing everyone! What else do you need to know?” he argues.

  Tina wakes up and groans softly while she slowly opened her eyes to see Beth and the man arguing, but they were too busy to notice.

  “Beth,” she groans.

  Beth turns her attention to Tina and rushes to her aid, “Hey. How are you feeling?”

  “I’m fine,” she holds her wound, “It hurts like hell though.”

  Beth lifts her up and asks the man to help her. He grabs an extra pillow and puts it behind Tina and she lays back on the pillow, sighing with relief. She looks at him and looks at his tag. He sees her looking and reminds her of his name,

  “The name is Alex,” he says, “This isn’t mine.”

  “What?”

  “It’s okay.” Beth said, “He saved us. That’s all that matters.

  “Well, Alex. Thanks for shooting me,” she jokes.

  Alex laughs, “My bad. I wasn’t trying to.”

  “I know, but thank you also. You know, for saving our lives.”

  “That’s what I’m here for now it seems. Literally. To save lives.”

  “And take them too,” Beth interrupts.

  “That’s not up to us.”

  “The hell it isn’t.”

  “You have a problem with me?”

  “In fact, I do!”

  “Hey!” Tina yells, “I don’t want to have any of this! Beth, calm down!”

  Beth exhales loudly and walks out of the room. Alex walks up to Tina and gives her his hand,

  “Try to walk,” he says, “You have to.”

  Tina lifts herself up and grabs his hand. He helps her out of the bed and she begins to walk slowly. She glances out of the window and noticed how bad the city had gotten. She gasped and walked towards the window,

  “What happened?”

  “The city was attacked. They bombed the city to prevent the virus from spreading. They just don’t know.”

  “Know what?”

  “That the virus is everywhere. There is nowhere to go anymore.”

  “Damn. We can get out of here. I’ll try to get better.”

  “We?”

  “You’re not coming with us?”

  “I only helped you because I was responsible for your injury. I’m going my own way now.”

  “That’s crazy. Where are you going to go?”

  “I don’t know, but I’ll figure it out.”

  “Come on. Just come with us and then you can go your own way. I just think we’ll be safer together.”

  “Fine.”

  Soon, she was able to walk perfectly without any pain.

  Later, they are sitting in the living room eating and Alex stops eating, “We have to leave now,” he says.

  Tina sits her plate down on the center table, “What do you mean? Now?”

  “I haven’t told you everything.”

  “I knew it!” Beth yells.

  “Quiet down. I’m not the enemy right now. Everyone else is.”

  “What do you mean ‘everyone els
e’?” Tina asked.

  “When I was out there, they put the city under quarantine,” he explains, “Once they did that, they announced that no one else could go in or out of the city.”

  “What?” Beth asked.

  “We need to leave now.”

  “And you’re telling us now?” Beth questioned Alex.