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

by Osborne, Terrence Jr.

  “I was waiting on Tina’s condition to get better. I’m not bringing her with us if she’s hurt!”

  Beth looks at him with distrust and stands next to Tina to help her while she walked. Alex leads them to the door and he looks outside, but the streets are filled with many infected, some walking and others running. Alex exhales with irritation, looks around for a safe point, and spots a house that had very few zombies surrounding it.

  “There,” he points to the house, “We go there. There’s hardly any zombies there. We go from house to house so we won’t be on the streets long,” he suggests.

  “That’s smart, but what if I’m not fast enough?” Tina asked.

  “Then we’ll help you,” he responds.

  “Okay, so we better get moving before-”

  A truck with men came swing around the corner and flipped over with zombies crawling all over it. Tina and Beth shockingly watch the sight of the truck while Alex prepares himself and walks to the back. At the truck, three men crawl out of the truck and start shooting the zombies, but one of them did not look behind him and the zombie starts biting the back of his shoulder. He turns his attention away from the other zombies, which gives the rest of the zombies to start eating the man alive. The soldier falls to the ground and the zombies surrounded him, passing his body parts around; and that’s all the other two men had seen from their point of view.

  Tina looks around to find Alex, but he’s gone and this immediately worries her,

  “Where’s Alex?” Tina asked.

  Alex runs from behind Tina’s house, pulls his gun out, and runs into the crowd of the zombies, shooting them one by one very rapidly.

  “Hey! Over here!” he yells at the zombies.

  Tina looks at Alex and starts to cuss him out in her mind. Beth, however, could care less what happened to him.

  “What the fuck is he doing?” Tina asked.

  She stares at him as he continues to shoot the zombies, but he stops to save his bullets. He runs away from the infected, jumps on top of a car, and looks into the house at Tina and Beth, “Go!” he yells while he is kicking the zombies off the car.

  “Oh, okay. Go, go!” Tina grabs Beth’s hand, runs to the back of her house, and goes around. Beth runs ahead, checks for any zombies, and signals Tina to run. Tina looked at Alex and ran. Alex sees them run into the house and gives himself the cue to get off the car. The other two men see Alex on the car and decide to help him. They shot off the zombies around the car and walked up to Alex. Alex is not happy to see them because if they hear that Alex has survivors, they would take them away; and that’s something he didn’t want.

  Alex jumps off the car and puts his gun away, “What can I do for you?” Alex says.

  One of the soldiers questioned him, “What’s in the houses?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Well you just told nothing to go,” the other man noticed.

  Alex pauses and says nothing and this signals the soldiers that he was definitely lying.

  “Then I guess you won’t mind if we check the house then?”

  “Go ahead,” Alex suggests.

  The men began walking into the house and Alex watches them while sneaking into the house that Tina and Beth were hiding. The soldier looks behind him to give him confirmation, but he was gone.

  “That son of a bitch is gone!” he yells.

  Zombies roar through the sky and the two men hurries to find Alex. Alex runs into the house and closes the door quietly, but quickly covers his nose because of the smell. There appeared to be two dead bodies; one on the couch with a hole in his head and blood splattered behind him and a woman on the floor laying in a puddle of blood. Beth and Tina walk from around the corner and covers their noses again. Alex looks out the window and spots the men running into the house checking for him. Alex looks at the body, but there was something wrong.

  “There’s no gun!” He mentions.

  “What?” Tina asked.

  “Look at the bodies. They’re both dead, but there is no gun around.”

  “So, you mean-”

  “They shot him.”

  They all stared at the bodies, but Alex led them out of the room to the back. He goes into a room and opens a window to get them away from the men, but as soon as he sticks his head out of the window to check for zombies, one of the soldiers shot at him and nearly shoots him in the head. Alex jerks into the house and slams the window down.

  “Go! Go!” Alex yells.

  Beth runs out of the room, but the other soldier kicks the door open and starts shooting blindly. Luckily, Tina was able to push Beth out of the way and hide behind the wall in the hall. Alex comes out of the room and shoots the soldier multiple times in the chest. Once the soldier died, Alex closes the room door and gets to Tina and Beth.

  “I don’t know where the other one is. Stay behind me,” he whispers.

  The women nod their head and keep close to Alex as he peeks around the corner. The other soldier runs into the front of the house and gasps as he stared at his dead partner. Alex moves his head away from the soldier’s sight and tells the women to be quiet.

  “Dammit!” the soldier yells. He points his gun up, “Where are you?”

  They all heard the zombies closing in fast and the Alex wants to hurry up and kill him, but he worried where he was. Alex grips his gun hard and jumps around the corner and they both hold the gun to each other.

  “Put your gun down, man!” Alex yells.

  “You killed my partner!”

  “He tried to kill us!”

  “Now I’m going to kill you!”

  “No, I’m not dying. You are!” Alex moves back behind the wall and starts shooting.

  The soldier looks behind him and walks outside to many zombies both running and walking towards the house. The soldier starts shooting the zombies, but there were too many of them. They flooded the house and ate the soldier alive, which scares all of them. Alex runs into the room, but they all barely got into the room in time before the zombies started pounding on the door. Alex and Beth hold the door closed while Tina runs for the window again. The zombies nearly burst the door open, but they managed to keep the door closed.

  “Tina! Slide that drawer over here!” Alex yells.

  Tina hurries and rushes to the drawer and slides it in front of the door. Alex and Beth move out of the way but keeps their hands on the door. Alex moves away from the door and runs to the window,

  “We have to hurry! That’s not going to hold,” he says.

  Alex jumps out of the window and waits for them while keeping watch for other zombies. Tina crawls out of the window next, but she quickly noticed that Beth was not behind her. She looks inside and glares at Beth holding the drawer against the door.

  “Beth! What are you doing?” she yells.

  “I’m holding the drawer to give me more time!”

  “We need to go!”

  Beth begins to run, but the zombies burst the door open and knocked the drawer on top of Beth while she struggles to get free. The door traps the zombies, but they were slowly squeezing themselves in, reaching for Beth. Tina jumps into the house, but at midway, Alex grabs her arm to bring her out of the house.

  “No Tina!” he yells.

  Tina stretches out her hand to grab Beth, but she struggled to break free from Alex. She reached out a little more and grabbed her hand, but the zombies got to her at the same time. They started biting Beth all over her upper body, but she still held on to Tina. Beth screams in pain, but Tina continued to hold her hand. She did not want to give up on Beth, but she decides to let go because it was too late. Alex drags her out of the house, but her eyes filled with tears and she was unable to move on. Alex grabs her and looks into her eyes,

  “I know this hurt, but we have to go,” he says.

  Tina nods her head and they run away from the house, but the image of Beth scared Tina for the rest of her life. Everyone she knew was dying around her, and she feared she would be next.

&nbs
p; Sam and the group are walking to the spot, but they are all exhausted.

  “There’s no food or water around. I’m starving,” David groans.

  “Join the crew,” Sam responds.

  They all looked around for some sign of life other than zombies and humans, but they all heard something in the distance. Sam stops the group, but he didn’t have to tell them to listen. They all looked around for the source of the sound and Faith smiles,

  “Waterfall,” she smiles.

  Sam runs to the sound and the group follows as they all ran to the sound as it got louder and louder. Sam peeks over the cliff and gasps at the big and beautiful waterfall with its blue, clear water.

  “Yes,” he says with excitement.

  They all ran to the bottom of the waterfall and drank the water, but Jess walks to the other end and jumps in.

  “What are you doing?” Sam asked.

  Jess smiles, “If I’m dying on this island, I’m swimming one last time.”

  Sam shrugs his shoulders and jumps into the water. The others follow behind him as they jumped in the water. This was the one time since being on the island that all of them felt free. They knew they had no worries and no zombies to fight; it was just them and the ones around them. Sam swims over to Jess and they laughed as they splashed water on each other. David swam underwater while Dylan and Faith cleaned themselves. Sam stared at Jess and she stared back, but none of them moved. They both knew they had a connection, but they did not want to do anything.

  “Thank you,” Jess tells Sam.

  “For what?”

  “Helping me. I know we both lost someone, but we had someone to lean on afterward. Each other.”

  Sam smiles and continues to look at her, so he decided to kiss her. It caught her by surprise, but she did not care. It’s what she wanted.

  “Ok, that is such a cliché! It’s time to go,” David said.

  Sam and Jess swam out of the water along with everyone else and they shook some of the water off and continued moving.

  At night, they made themselves another safe spot near another big tree with stick spike surrounding them. Sam, however, sits outside of the area on the ground looking into the sky. Jess walks up to him and sits down,

  “You alright?”

  “Yeah, I just wish I met you under different circumstances.”

  Jess smiles, “Me too.”

  Jess kisses Sam and stands up, “Come on. We have to rest for tomorrow.”

  Sam gets up and walks with Jess to the safe spot. Sam thought to himself, “I guess with all that’s been going on, something good could still come out of it.” He looks at Jess and smiles, but behind them, Dylan was staring at them being happy with one another.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  GOING HOME

  The next day, the group are walking and laughing. It’s been eight hours with no zombies or survivors, but they didn’t seem to care. It was less stress on them.

  “So that must be all the zombies,” David said.

  “That’s an odd thing to call them, don’t you think?” Dylan asked.

  “It kind of fits them,” Sam laughs.

  “What about the terrorists?” Jess asked.

  “What about them?” Sam replied.

  “What do we call them?”

  “Terrorists. That’s what they are.”

  While walking they all noticed the lava that had gotten hard and it reminded all of them where they are. This was not some peaceful island that they could enjoy. This island belongs to the zombies. Sam and the group decide to rest for a little bit, so they all sat around and took their breaths. Meanwhile, David pulls Sam to the side to warn him about the zombies,

  “Hey, when I was with Dylan, I saw something.”

  “Ok. What was that?”

  “They were laying down on the ground, but they weren’t dead.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what I said. I think these things can sleep.”

  “Ok. We’ll be more careful now. I’m glad you told me,” Sam pats him on the shoulder and they walked back to the group.

  Sam sits by Jess and they hold hands, but Dylan stared at them deeply with no happiness towards Sam. All he thought about was Sarah. He wondered how they would be if she had been alive. He started to picture him and Sarah sitting next to each other laughing and talking and thanking God that they were alive and together, but that only made things worse for him. Dylan’s eyes welled up with tears and began to cry. Sam looks at him and feels bad, so Jess told him to talk to Dylan. Sam gets up and walks towards Dylan, but Dylan gives Sam the look that Sam had never seen. That was not Sam’s best friend he saw just then. That was someone completely different. Someone darker. Dylan’s eyes were red as he stared into Sam’s eyes, but Sam turned around and walked away. This does not sit too well with Sam. He knows why Dylan is crying, but he does not know why he got the look Dylan gave him. This struck something between the two. Something that could cost their friendship or worse: their life.

  Later that day, the group walks along ashore and let the sun beam upon their skin with its heat and it felt good. The warmness of the sun made them feel relaxed for a second. Sam shrugs and walks back, but Faith stops him,

  “Where are you going?”

  “We have to turn around. We have to keep moving.”

  “Can’t we just sit here for a while?”

  “No, we can’t. I want to get off this island.”

  “We all do too. You are not our leader! You’re just a survivor just like the rest of us.”

  “I never said I was a leader! You people talk about getting off this island, but you want to stop at every damn spot you see! I’m ready to go! Aren’t you?” Sam turns around, walks back to go find the men, and everyone else started to go along with him. David turns around and looked at Faith,

  “I know you don’t consider him a leader, but he’s been the one making the tough decisions when we didn’t. That puts him above all of us.”

  Faith watches all of them walk away and grunts as she walked behind David.

  Later, Sam and the group comes up to some dead zombies with bullet holes in them. He had known they have been there for a while because the smell was unbearable. The group covered up their noses as Sam walks over them with caution.

  “Look,” he pointed at the zombies, “They’ve been shot. We’re close.”

  They continued walking and more zombie bodies appeared. Sam stops and looks around for traps, but there was none. This triggered something in him. Something that warned him to be careful. It seemed to catch everyone else’s attention also. Someone was near. Sam advanced forward, but he stepped in a pile of leaves and fell into a deep hole. The group surrounds the hole and reaches out to Sam, but he struggles to get up while holding his wound.

  “I’m ok!” he tells them.

  “How in the hell did-” Dylan is interrupted by a gun cocking behind them. When they turned around, there were three people standing behind them, but they quickly let their weapons down when they saw them. It was two men and a woman that all seemed to be covered in dirt as if they have been hiding for a long time. One man was tall and muscular, in which he appeared to be their leader.

  “Sorry,” the leader said as he lowered his gun.

  Sam yells from out of the hole, “What’s happening?”

  Jess looks down and smiles, “We found survivors!”

  The leader heard Sam and apologized, “Sorry for that. We were defending ourselves from the men and the runners.”

  “Runners?” Faith asked.

  “Yes, that’s what we call them.”

  “Well, they’re really called zombies. The men told us when they held us captive,” Dylan replied, “But runners are good too.”

  “Wait,” Jess interrupted, “How did you get those guns?”

  “We killed some of the men and took those weapons. We took their camp also.”

  “Camp?” Jess asked.

  “Yes. I think I may have found a way off the islan
d.” He smiles.

  Jess gets excited as David and Dylan help Sam out of the hole. Sam checks to see if the gun is still in his back pocket and shows it to the leader, “We killed one too.”

  “Well, I’m Michael. This is Zoe and Trace,” he points to them and they smiled and waved.

  “Now you said you had a camp?” Sam asked.

  “Yes. It was the men’s, but we killed them and took their camp. They have a communication device that somehow works on this island. They have supplies and everything. Even a boat!”