Survive

January 16, 2018

I cling to the steel bars of the fire escape, my knuckles turning white from my tight, sweaty grip. As I stare down the five floors to the now fire-engulfed alley, I wonder, how did I get up here?

The snarls of the feral, animalistic-humanoids below me snap me from my depressing thoughts. A startled gasp leaves my throat as I feel the fire escape begin to shake as they stumbled up the distance, effectively sealing my fate. My bottom lip begins to tremble harder than before as I watch the pale heads and broken figures climb towards me with unaltered efficiency.

Suddenly, my mind is cleared of all fear, terror, self-pity…actually, any feeling at all. It’s almost as if my mind just went numb, openly accepting my fate for what it is. I knew, in my mind, that there was no way out of this. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. I couldn’t outrun them this time, and surprisingly, my mind was calm. My heart halted its once erratic beat, my fingers ceased to twitch, and my hands stopped shaking like a leaf attached to the weakest branch.

Without warning, I am taken by the terrifying feeling of falling. My stomach was doing flips like it would when you’re suspended on a roller coaster, right before you’re free falling to the ground below. Yet, on a roller coaster, you know you’ll be caught before you hit the ground. Now? I wasn’t so sure.

Time seemed to slow to a frozen-pace as I watch the hard pavement approach, bringing with it the walking corpses below me. Their mouth hanging open in slack jawed awe as I steadily streak through the air like a falling star towards their hungry, dead eyes. The putrid smell of their rotting flesh as it hangs off of their bones hit me full force as I am suspended in time.

As I slowly reach my inevitable death, I am again calm. No panic. No fear. Just a sea of calm that washes over me, swallowing me in the heavy riptide. My heartbeat is thumping in my ringing ears, yet a smile graces my lips. At least I’ll see my love again, I think to myself. Amelia, my college sweetheart, was taken from me shortly after we had discovered the reality that had been thrusted onto us.

The events of the past few hours come flooding back to me as I continue to close the gap between the corpses and myself, and I am transported back to right before the news would shatter the fantasy of our once normal lives, and replace it with the destruction of everything we’ve ever known to be true…

 

Three Hours Ago

“Ha-ha! Jamie, st-stop! Can’t–breathe,” Amelia gasps as I dig my fingers into her sides. Her very ticklish sides, I might add. Her feet continue to kick as I wiggle my fingers against her sensitive skin.

“Okay. OKAY! I give!” she gasps, I pull back slightly, waiting for her to finish, my smug smile already in place. “You’re funnier than I am.” Her pout is so adorable.

I nod my head. “Told yah you shouldn’t doubt me. I mean, look how much I made you laugh,” I say with a cheeky smile. Her frustrated expression just makes me that much happier. I kiss the wrinkles away from her soft forehead, and her giggles once again fill the air. As I pull away from her slowly, our eyes catch and the air quickly becomes tense as it wraps around our entangled bodies.

I silently move a stray piece of hair behind her blush-red ear, the blush quickly taking over her lovely, usually pale cheeks. Her intake of breath causes my smile to deepen as I move slowly down towards her light-pink lips that are slightly parted. Her breathing becomes erratic, and I don’t think it’s from the tickling only moments before. Just as I flutter my lips against hers, the phone rings.

I groan under my breath and pull back to find Amelia’s eyes bright blue and full of love as she holds my gaze. My own cream-filled-coffee colored eyes mirroring her look of love and amazement. The second ring of the obnoxiously loud phone breaks the intense atmosphere.

She softly pushes at my chest, effectively pulling my attention back to her. “Go get the phone, I’ll still be here when you get back…I promise,” she bites her bottom lip, really making it hard for me to leave her on our worn out couch.

“Fine. But you better be here when I get back,” I say under my breath, winking over my shoulder as I make my way over to the screaming phone.

I wrap my hand around the phone, pressing “talk,” and put it against my pierced ear. The first thing that catches my attention is the animalistic groans, then the scream that follows quickly behind. “Hello? Who is this–” I am cut off by the deep voice of my father.

“Jamie? Are you there?” he asks desperately. His tone immediately snags my attention away from my girlfriend. “God, please be there.”

“Dad?” I call out to him.

“Oh thank God…are you okay? Have they gotten there yet?” he asks me vaguely.

“What? Who hasn’t gotten here yet? Dad, what are you talking abo–” once again I am cut off.

“No time for idle chit-chat. Listen to me very carefully Jamie. You need to escape. Run. Do something, but you can’t stay where you are. Don’t go any further into the city, don’t try to get to us, just run. Get out of your apartment building, take Amelia, and escape before they get to you–” his voice falters, almost like he pulled away from the phone. I hear a guttural, animalistic yell on his end of the line. Then Mom’s voice cuts through the noise.

“Get away from me, you monster!” There is the sound of furniture being broken and shuffled around, then a woman’s scream. Mom.

“Nancy!” my dad screams out. Then, he directs his attention back to me, “Jamie, do what I told you. Survive. You must survive–” The groan of a man causes his words to falter. “Please…” a thick, wet cough, then his voice again. “Please know that we love you…survive.” The sounds of guttural screams and shouts are all that come through the phone speakers.

“DAD! Dad?” I call out into the broken silence, my tears flow down my cheeks without hesitation.

The phone slips from my shaking hand, and connects with the carpeted floor of our living room. Amelia is by my side in a heartbeat, and I am thankful because my eyes begin to blur and the colors of the picture on the wall in front of me begin to run together.

“Jamie!” I hear Amelia call out as my knees buckle, my body weight barely supported by her smaller form. “Jamie, what happened?”

“They- they’re dead–” I had to swallow around the suffocating lump in my throat. “We have to go.” I stand up on shaking legs, grabbing Amelia’s hand on the way up. I lift her to her feet, and meet her pleading and confused eyes with my own stern ones.

“Jamie…what are you talking about?” she slightly pulls back, yet stops once I gently grip her cheeks in my warm palms.

“Please, you must trust me. My dad warned me of…something, and it’s coming. I don’t know what it is, but we have to leave the apartment. My parents, they were attacked by whatever is coming. We have to leave the city, go somewhere else. Anywhere else. I know you probably won’t believe me, but I love you, and I need to keep you safe. No matter what, I need you to be safe–”

She cuts off my desperate pleading with a tender kiss. I sigh and melt into her embrace, effectively giving into her distraction. “Okay. I believe you, let’s get out of here,” she says with a shy smile. A smile she knows I love.

I again gently grip her cheeks, bringing my lips down to her light pink ones. Yet, our intense moment of love was once again broken, although this time it was broken by a loud SLAM. I could hear the thudding of heavy footsteps coming down the hallway towards us, the screaming of women and men at the beginning of the hall.

I stare at Amelia with wide, terrified eyes; ones mirroring her own. I grip her clammy hand in mine, trying to stave off the shaking in my own. “Jamie…what are we going to do?” her lip trembles as the sounds get closer– we’re losing precious time, yet we couldn’t move from our seated positions.

I grip her hand tighter, trying desperately to seep some calm into her. “Survive,” I make a point by bringing her to stand beside me. I steady her wobbly legs and drag her towards the window of our apartment, which leads to the fire escape of our building. The fire escape leads to the roof and that was our best chance of survival. We could wait it out until someone flies overhead or someone sees us and rescues our shaking bodies. I just know we can’t stay here any longer.

We reach the window and I drag it up, opening the creaky, dusty window that leads towards our freedom. I push her through the window as quickly as I can, so fast that she has to catch herself before she tumbles over the edge. Just as I go to step through, I hear the apartment door burst open like a fresh wound. Suddenly, a pack of humanoid…things with slacked jaws, bloodshot eyes, and flaking, bloody skin come stumbling into our home.

I gasp as I turn back towards the exit, knowing that they see me by their hungry growls. Suddenly, I am pulled through by Amelia and I go scrambling to the stairs as she goes to close the shaking window. I try to take a step towards the roof, except I am pulled back to the window sill by a petrified desperate scream. I snap my now wide eyes back to Amelia in fear.

My worst nightmare unfolds before my eyes as I see her being attacked by one of the carnal animals as it climbs out of the window, its grip tight enough to break her skin. As if in slow motion, I watch as the attacker sinks his bloody teeth into her forearm. As soon as he makes contact with her pale skin, reality snaps back to real time in a single breath-taking moment.

“Amelia!” I screech in pure terror as I scramble towards her. Her tears are flowing from the pain she is experiencing as his teeth pull back, tearing her flesh from the bone as he does. I reach them, digging my Chuck Taylor into his stomach, sending him back into our home. Amelia crumbles where she stands, her body weak from being attacked so viciously.

“Amelia! Oh god, please be okay. Amelia?” I cradle her sweaty head in my lap. She’s sweating through her flower top and is shaking so bad that I have to tighten my hold on her as to not send her crashing into the fire escape we are sitting on.

Her once closed eyes slowly creek open. They find my worried gaze, and I search for any sign that she is okay. Yet, all I find is a far off look in her usually bright emerald eyes. I back up slowly from her as she sits up stiffly, her movements clumsy and awkward. She reaches out, trying to grab onto something invisible that only she can see.

I am strangled by a choked sob as I take in her slacked jaw. It can’t be, I think as I lock onto her now bloodshot eyes. I fall against the buildings wall as I stare at her dead skin, now flaking and peeling off of her bone, especially near her wound on her arm. “A-Amelia?” I stutter out of my gaped mouth, almost mirroring her own drooling, down-turned lips.

The only answer I receive is a guttural growl followed closely by a groan as she tentatively steps closer to me. “Amelia? Are you okay?” I ask, knowing she is already gone. I just didn’t want to admit that the only person I had left in my life has slipped right through my seemingly tight grasp. I grit my teeth as I take in this- this thing. It isn’t Amelia, I tell myself as tears threaten to spill down my ashen cheeks. It’s not Amelia, she’s gone.

With that last thought, I launch myself at the walking corpse, sending it over the edge of the rail. Its screams and cries are abruptly cut off by the concrete four stories below us, its head hitting so hard it sends chills up and down my rigid spine. The thick, almost black blood slowly seeps from her split skull, staining the already blood splattered sidewalk. Her fall didn’t affect the ant-like beings as they stumble and scurry down below me, devouring anything within arm’s length.

Suddenly aware of my surroundings, I snap my head over to the bulging window and begin to climb up the steps, trying to distance myself from the memories as they replay in my clouded mind. Her dead eyes… peeling skin, already dead and hanging…her crazed, animalistic growls. Then the resounding CRACK of her clumsy body crashing into the hard pavement, the oozing blood, and the twisted, awkward bend of her limbs.

I gag as a wave of nausea hits me full force as reality sweeps me away in the heavy riptide. I killed her. God, she was the love of my life, the only one I’ve ever loved…and I killed her. My thoughts scream at me, suffocating my fractured mind. Tears of betrayal flood my eyes as I crawl up the rusted stairs.

I didn’t get farther than another floor before I collapse from my shaking knees. I hit the stairs and gasp, letting out the earth shattering sobs that I had been desperately trying to stoke down in the fire of my breaking heart. I grip my short hair in my shaking hands as my world crumbles in front of my eyes, and there is nothing I can do to stop it or even pause to catch my breath.

I don’t know how long I sat there, overwhelmed by the last hours of my seemingly normal life. I cling to the steel bars of the fire escape, my knuckles turning white from my tight, sweaty grip. As I stare down the five floors to the now fire-engulfed alley, I wonder, how did I end up here?

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