“David?” Sam whispered.
David walked up to the staircase and looked at Sam. Sam sighed and gave everyone the go to come downstairs. Sam went into the kitchen and watched Alex put together a Molotov.
“I’m almost done.”
“Well, hurry. They are literally right around the corner.”
Jess heard zombies coming from around the corner, but she didn’t alert the others loudly,
“They’re coming!” she whispered.
Sam inhaled deeply and exhaled, “Go, Jess. Lead them inside and hide. Now! Alex, throw the Molotov as soon as I say so. Listen to me.”
Nobody argued with Sam. She got everyone outside where there were no zombies in sight and they all hid on the other side of the house. Sam started yelling inside of the house, gripping his machete hard and hitting anything that made a lot of noise. The zombies screamed and ran inside, but Sam went upstairs and continued making noise, only attracting himself away from the others. Thoughts ran through his mind. What was he doing? Was he doing it for the others or for himself? This is a survival world now and Sam wanted to do just that. Survive. But at what cost?
Sam ran into another room and slammed the door before the zombies found him. He ran up to the window and opened it,
“Alex, throw it in the front!”
Alex ran into the house and held the Molotov as he gave the zombies one last stare, “So long bitches!”
He threw the Molotov by the staircase and the zombies screamed. Flames flew around the area and the sound roared through the house. Alex ran out of the house and looked around for Sam. Jess and the others ran away from the house and looked at the window where Sam was. He crawled out of the window and jumped down onto the ground.
“Go. Go!” he yelled.
They all ran away from the house. They were ignoring the screams of the unknown. The things that weren’t human anymore. The man-eaters. The zombies. Sam looked back and watched the house engulfed in flames. He was a survivor now. He got that, but he wanted the same for all. He knows their weakness now. He knows how to stop them. This moment changed everything he knew about the zombies. This was the start of the end of the zombies.
CHAPTER TEN
A NEW WORLD
During the night, Sam, Jess, and Tina sat around in one of the houses and ate sandwiches with a bag of chips. They had fresh clothes and Sam bit into the sandwich and smiled. He finally had a meal and it felt good to his stomach.
“That shower was amazing!” Sam laughed.
“Yeah. It was.” Jess responded.
Tina stops eating and looks at Sam,
“Where’s Dylan and Sarah?”
Sam stops eating and stares at the ground. This indicated to Tina that they didn’t make it.
“Um…they…”
“I get it. I’m sorry.”
“I tried, but…I didn’t try hard enough.”
“Yes, you did.” Jess replied, “We all tried our best, but not everyone will make it. We’re just the lucky ones.”
“Where were you guys?” Tina asked.
“We were on an island. The ship crashed because of a wave and some of the terrorists released the virus on the ship. Luckily, some of us survived.”
“And the others…”
“Became a zombie,” replied Jess.
Tina looked down and whispered, “I’m sorry you guys. That must have been rough.”
“It was, but that wasn’t it. The island was going to be used by the terrorists for their safe ground.”
“What?”
“Yeah, but we found out and we…well…we…”
“Killed them,” Jess said.
Tina was a little shocked, but she had known what had to be done. She saw what Sam did back at the house and she knew this is what has become of him. She wishes things could have been different for him.
“You did what needed to be done. Plus, I was with Alex and he killed people too. So, this is what we have to do to survive. What happened to Sarah and Dylan? If you don’t mind me asking.”
Sam chocked up by that question, but he pulled himself together, “Sarah died on the island. One of the terrorists that survived shot her. Dylan had been bitten before we were on our way here and he decided to kill himself instead of turning. The worst part about it was…I was there. I saw my two best friends die right in front of me.”
Tears crawled down Tina’s face, “That’s nothing no one should experience, but we have to survive for them. You lose people, but at the same time, you also gain.” She looks right at Jess when she replied.
Sam looks at Jess. They have been through a lot together. They both lost someone they cared for. It wasn’t easy killing those men, but that was Sam. He has a feeling that he may not know Jess that much. She did it as if she already adjusted to it. Although it wasn’t a feeling. It was a fact.
“Alright,” Tina gets up, “I’m going to bed. Good night Sam.”
Sam gets up and hugs Tina and she walks upstairs. Sam sits back down by Jess and she stares at him.
“What?” Sam asked.
“I’m sorry. For saying we killed them like I don’t care.”
“I just couldn’t handle telling her for some reason. Imagine how she’s going to look at me now. I became someone dangerous.”
“You became a survivor. We all have. It just changed us in a way that we didn’t want to. In the end, it’s either them or us.”
Sam leans over and kisses Jess. He then picks her up and takes her upstairs. Jess starts laughing when he walks into the room and calmly lays her on the bed. He hovers over her and starts kissing her.
“I love you,” Sam says.
Jess looks at him and smiles, “I love you too.”
Later at night, Sam is staring at the darkness that hovered above him on the ceiling. It had a triangular look that dug into the ceiling and the dark had lived there. While Sam laid there, he wondered if he could go on like this. Killing people in defense. The very first time he killed someone, he almost puked. Then it became a habit. Inside, he thought he was a monster, but what the others had seen was a leader doing the right thing for survival, but what does that make them?
The next morning, Sam walks around and looks at everyone prepping to leave the neighborhood. Others came in and brought vehicles inside for transportation. Others waited to leave, but they seemed anxious. A little too anxious. One man tried to leave everyone by jumping into one of the vehicles, but they dragged him out of the truck and shoved him to the side. Tina walks up to Sam,
“Hey, Sam.”
“Hey.” He hugs her.
Sam knew he needed that hug. A hug from someone he knew fully. It felt good to be in his mother’s arm once again. He wraps his arms around her and gives her a long, warm hug. One of the people called for everyone to prepare to leave.
“Where are we going?” Sam asked the woman who, at the time, was no more than a survivor along with the rest of them.
“We will head downtown first. There may be a way to get safe passage to wherever is…safe. The military and government barely control anything anymore. Considering what they did. The terrorists killed nearly everyone.”
“And what if downtown is not safe? The virus spread over there. There isn’t anything in downtown anymore.”
“Then we head to Washington.”
“Why there?”
“I don’t know. Don’t you always go there when you’re in trouble?”
Sam looked at her with a blank expression, “No.”
He turns around and pulled his group closer to all of them, “I’m not going to Washington. I’m going somewhere else.”
“Well, I’m coming with you,” Jess said.
Faith and the others agreed with Sam and he smiled, “We’re all riding together.”
“Not everyone,” David says as he pointed to Trace and Michael getting into another vehicle.
“Well, I’ll talk to them later. Wherever we stop, that’s when we go. I’ll try to bring along Trace and Michael
.”
“Alright,” Tina said.
Sam and his group took one of the SUV vehicles while the rest of the civilians prepared to leave. Alex drove the vehicle while Sam sat in the passenger seat along with everyone else in the back.
“Alright, let’s move!” the woman said.
One of the men opened the gate and ran quickly back into the truck.
“Who made her leader?” David asked.
“No one. She stood up herself. She chose to.” Sam replied.
The first vehicle drove straight out of the camp and the other vehicles flowed. They drove slowly enough for everyone to stay close to one another, but not slow enough for any zombies to get a hold of them. While driving, one zombie ran towards the vehicle and Tina feared this zombie. It had mutated like on the island. Its back had gotten a large hump in it and its body looked rotten like the flesh was going to peel off at any second.
“What happened to them?” Tina gagged.
Sam looked at it with no fear in his eyes and said, “That’s what they do after a couple of days. They become…worse.”
The vehicle was quiet. Nobody wanted to talk. They just looked around. All they heard was the sound of the tires rolling on the road, running over unknown things and hearing the engine roar.
“So, is this it?” David asked.
“Maybe. This world has gone to shit quickly. The first day, they attacked. Then they killed people and spread. These terrorists knew what they were doing. I was hearing on the radio that they were in almost every state. They didn’t cut all power and electricity though. That’s the good thing. This isn’t some random virus. They made this and now they want to end the entire world. Some people tried to get out of the city by going downtown. Of course, that didn’t work out as planned.” Alex explained.
“But how could they all have died?” Faith asked.
“I don’t know. Something’s telling me they aren’t even here. They’re just hiding.”
“Well, wherever they are, I am just glad that they are gone,” Sam said.
They all laughed at Sam’s comment, but the laughter stopped when Alex stepped on his break to prevent hitting the car in front of them. The front vehicle was spotted flipping over to the right of them and everyone inside jumped and grabbed the nearest thing to keep them still. Alex exhaled and looked in front of him, but he couldn’t see what was going on.
“What the hell happened?” Alex wondered.
“Get your guns!” Alex yelled.
The people in front of them got out of their car to look at what’s going on, but suddenly, the woman screamed and bullets flew around and pierced the woman in the back multiple times. Alex told everyone to get down and he began to back up, but a group of men ran up to the truck and pointed their guns inside of it.
“Stop right now!” the man yelled.
Alex stopped the vehicle, but he didn’t get out of the truck.
“Hold on to something.” He said.
“Wait. What are you going to do?” Sam asked.
He put the truck in drive and tried to run them over, but they opened fire inside of the truck. The vehicle then drove past them and hit the street pole. Tina and the others looked up and everyone was fine.
“Everyone okay?” Sam whispered.
Sam looked over at Alex, but he was dead. The bullets had hit him in the head and the chest. Tina screamed and they all freaked out. Faith held her weapon close to her and she crawled to the back of the vehicle. David looked around also. Sam gasped and looked for the men.
“Where are they?” Faith asked.
He didn’t see anyone walking around, but suddenly his door opened wide and the man dragged Sam out of the truck.
“Mom!”
Tina screamed and the other two men opened the doors on side of them and forced them to get out. Sam was thrown to the ground and he watched in silence as the other men threw Jess and the others on the ground also.
“Please! Let us go!” Sam begged.
The man leaned up next to his ear and whispered, “You can’t leave. We’re everywhere.”
The other man tied Sam’s hands together behind his back and put him on his knees. Sam looked around in fear. The others were tied and lined up on side of Sam. First, it was David then Jess, Tina, and Faith. Sam looked at all of them,
“It’s going to be okay!”
“No, it’s not.” The man hits Sam in the head and almost knocks him unconscious.
“Leave him alone!” Tina yelled.
The man looked at her and laughed, “Or what? You’re going to kill me?” he puts the gun to her head. “Don’t say things if you’re not going to do something about it!”
“Don’t point the gun if you’re not going to pull the trigger!” she said back.
The man laughed and took the gun away from her head, “Ah! I love a bold, brave woman like yourself. That’s really interesting!”
“What do you want?” Sam asked.
“Huh? Oh, I don’t want anything. What I wanted is what you’re looking at son. Look around. We literally own this world. Well…they do.” He made a sinister chuckle.
Sam look at the others while he chuckled and Jess was beginning to untie herself slowly. Everyone was scared. Sam could see it on their faces. Their eyes, filled with fear. This man was more grounded than the ones Sam dealt with on the island, but there was something about the man that scared him. It may have been the fact that he wasn’t as scared as the rest of them. He stood tall and brave with his gun planted firmly in his hand. He was prepared. More than anyone, but one question remained in Sam’s mind: was he the leader of the whole terrorist group?
“Just…” Faith stutters, “Why?”
“Here we go again! Everyone I’ve killed has asked the same question and I tell them the same thing over and over again. So, now I just explain it to them before I end their lives. Consider yourselves lucky. When we created the virus, we thought how we would do it. Therefore, we spread everywhere. Every state, every country. Every continent. We started here of course because…well…the United States is pretty powerful. So, you guys were first, but as we speak, China and Russia are going down, which is funny because I expected more of a fight from them. But, we had an issue. The virus was made of this smoke material, so the smoke only worked the first couple of minutes when we launched it. Other than that, hell, you people are lucky. It just went into the sky like carbon or some shit. Oh, we also got rid of the military by dressing up as you people. Yeah! It was somewhat easy. I just…snuck some of my men inside and boom! There we were.”
Tina’s eyes got large and she thought about it while everyone else seemed surprised. The man sighed loudly and smacked his lips,
“I’m so sorry. I’m Mark. Not that it matters anymore. Hey, you should thank me! At least y’all don’t have martial law or anything like that. This isn’t like a movie. This isn’t some random unknown virus that no one knows about. What a cliché!”
“Aren’t you supposed to be on the island?” Sam blurted out. Mark stood surprised by what he just heard and walked over to Sam,
“And what do you know about that?”
“The little cruise you tried to fuck up had survivors. We found out what you and your men were up to and we killed them!” Sam laughed.
Mark got angry and jumped up, “So you’re the fucker who killed my men?”
Sam laughs, “You can’t go there now. Your precious zombies live there. It’s their island now!”
“No, that is our island! What have you done?”
Everyone stares at him like he’s delusional, but he grunted,
“Fine! I guess I’ll settle this one on my-”
“Go fuck yourself!” one man yelled across from him.
Mark walked over to the man and shot him in the head. He did it without even blinking. No mercy. The woman started screaming at the top of her lungs, but he put his gun away and grabbed his knife; putting it against her throat and slicing it forward. He did it to her to prevent zombies from
coming, but it didn’t work. The zombies were coming and Mark didn’t want anything to do with them.
“Well damn. I have to kill you guys. The zombies are coming so…I change my mind. I’ll leave you to them.”
The group ahead heard shootings and Mark’s men were shouting at someone. A few of the captive citizens were shot in the crossfire, but Mark looked over at his men.
“What the hell is happening?”
His men looked over at him, but they were shot multiple times in the chest and they fell to their death. Jess finally breaks free and charges at Mark, but he gets his gun and pulls the trigger. Sam screams and everyone stars freaking out. Jess fell right in front of them and Sam couldn’t stop screaming.
Z Island Series (Book 1): Escape From Z Island Page 16