All That's Left (Kind of On Hold...)

I will survive-1

So I finally think I am happy with this chapter... let me know how you like it:D

Chapter 1- I will survive

I guess I should start at the beginning, that’s the logical option obviously- but is there anything logical left these days?

My name is Darren Smith.

I have lost my wife and son and now, all I have left of my family is my sixteen year old daughter, Arie. We survived the zombie apocalypse and now are joining up with the other survivors and also found ourselves becoming part of the clean up crew. Honestly, I'm just your average father, thirty nine years old, average height, average short brown hair, and average dark brown eyes. But after what we’ve been through, what everyone’s been through, I feel as though I'm nine hundred and three and that there is no more average, no more normal, no more safe. How could there be any average left in the world when billions of people are now limping around hungering for everyone else’s flesh?

There were ten thousand, nine hundred, and thirty four people accounted for after the zombies, or, as I like to call them, grubs, started to die out. Us survivors were hidden all over the country, stockpiling food and supplies and huddling together at the end of our world, waiting for the fires to die down and the dust to settle. All of us wanted to return to our lives and our freedom, so we grabbed what we could carry and moved out, leaving our safe-havens and boarded up homes, searching for somewhere new to stay that wasn’t crawling with the dead. Well at least that’s what we planned to do.

It’s been five years now since I lost my wife, and three since my son son was taken. My wife died trying to save Arie, but her clip ran out faster than the zombies did and she was torn to pieces in front of us. When she was freed from her own battle, Arie emptied what was left of her clip into the monster that was attacking my wife and then desperately tried to repair and replace the torn skin. There was nothing left to be done to save the woman I loved and the woman Arie looked up to except to comfort her and to be there until she fell asleep. I could only watch from afar and listen as my only daughter sang in a sweet, chilling voice to my dying wife. Meanwhile I fought off the remaining grubs, with my son clinging to my back and tears blurring my vision.

My wife's name was Lilly Marie and she was beautiful. She was on the shorter side and very thin with tan skin and long, dark brown hair that fell in waves to the middle of her back.  Her eyes were a stunning blue that stood out against the dark frame that her hair created around her soft, heart shaped face. I will never again see that sparkle in her eye or the corner of her mouth raise, ever so slightly, in a half smile. She is buried in the corner of an empty plot at the cemetery behind St. Michael's church. We felt that the head of her killer served as a proper headstone.

Our daughter, Arie, was only eleven at the time and watching her mother die changed her. It made her grow up a lot faster than I would have liked her to, hell, this whole epidemic made us all grow up faster than we wanted to. She tries very hard to keep her pain hidden from me, but one night I heard her muffled crying as we settled down in our sleeping bags (I was on first watch, but it was cold) and that’s when she finally opened up, telling me everything that had been building up inside of her since her mother’s death.

My son, Zach, would be eight now, but he was taken from me one night when we were caught by surprise. We were camped on the Delaware river, in a supposed ‘safe zone’. These are mapped out by families that pass through as either unreachable by grubs because of their location or just repellant to the zombies. This particular place was supposed to be almost impossible to enter except for a small tunnel that lead to the alcove by the river. This, we found to be untrue.

That night we were ambushed by a group of near twenty grubs that had pushed through the chain-link fences that closed in half of the area we hid in. We fought them off as best as we could, but we ended up having to retreat to our specified safety spots that we had picked out early that night. Arie was trapped up in a tree and Zach, only six at the time, was trying to climb up as well while she covered him.The tree they had chosen was just a bit too tall for Zach. My poor Zach. I was providing extra cover fire from a bridge support across the way, my military rifle lighting up the small clearing and Arie’s pistol echoing harshly against the moans and screams of the attackers.  Arie climbed down a little ways from where she had been perched and tried to reach for him, but had stand to fire at the grubs that kept creeping up on Zach. My poor Zach.