Never Die Alone

Chapter 4: Family

It was afternoon and the sun was high in the sky. The mid fall sunshine would have been pleasant if one had had the courage to ignore the fact that the zombie apocalypse was springing up around them. Sanne's steps were getting slower the more they walked.

"My arm really hurts." She said between clenched teeth.

"Just hang tight. Please." Megan said, "We'll make it through this. Pretty soon, we'll all be fine."

"Are you sure?" Sanne asked.

Megan hated to lie but she did, "Absolutely positive. We're all gonna make it through this. No one is going to be left behind."

"Uh, too late for that." Cam intervened.

"What?" Jacob asked.

"Michael. We've already left Michael behind." Cameron said.

"Oh," Jacob said nonchalantly, "I already forgot about him."

"Well..." Megan bit her lip, "He was left behind by his own choice- in fact, he ran away... so it's different."

Sanne was starting to sweat. "Can we please take a break?" She pleaded.

"Okay." Megan conceded, "Guys, we've gotta take a break."

Emma sat beside Sanne on a fallen log where it lay in the woods. "Guys," She said, "While we're stopped anyway, it makes sense to talk about what we know about these... these zombie things."

"What do you mean?" Megan asked.

"Well..." Emma started, "As Sir Francis Bacon said, 'knowledge is power', so I guess the more we know about them, the more of a sort of power we gain over them."

"Emma's right." Taija said.

"So..." Quinn thought, "They don't seem to be smart."

"Not smart?" Sanne said, wincing, "I'd go more with mindless. They don't seem to have any use over their brain."

"Actually," Jacob said, "On the news, it said the Caro Mortua is a fungal infection that created these 'zombies', as we've been calling them. It invades the brain and shuts down the parts of your brain that you control like talking, and everything you do voluntarily. It leaves these people with only their pure instinct like hunger, and slight reaction to the environment around them."

"A reaction to the environment around them?" Cam asked.

"Yeah," He said, "Like they seem to be attracted to noise. Or so I've observed."

"You're smart." Said Quinn.

"No I'm not." Jacob insisted, "I'm just not stupid. And, I watch the news."

Megan smiled, "Stop denying in Jacob. You're brilliant."

"Wait," Taija said, "If they still have part of their brain left, aren't they still people? Can't they be treated?"

"Not exactly." Jacob said, "The virus rots that part of the brain. Once someone has turned into a zombie, there is no turning back."

Sanne's mouth twitched and the corner and her eyebrows furrowed slightly. She took a shaky breath to try and calm herself down but the words, no turning back seemed to be echoing in her mind like a dark condemnation.

Jacob looked away. "We should probably start walking again."

Sanne's breathing had increased and her usually beautiful caramel skin tone was now pasty and pale. She looked like she had gone through hell. "Guys, I'm really sorry. I don't know if I can. But I'll try."

Megan gripped Sanne's shoulder. "We'll give you a couple more minutes."

Sanne lurched and leaned forward. A sound of pure agony slithered from her lips and her eyes filled with tears. She started shaking violently.

"Sanne?" Megan said in a hushed, panicked tone, "Sanne? What's going on?"

Everyone stood and rushed to Sanne's side. Sanne's eyes rolled back in her head and she started to look as though a demon had possessed her. Tears filled Megan's eyes and she began crying. "Sanne!" She yelled.

Sanne was rocking and trembling violently and her face was contorting into an angry, twitching spasm. She was in incredible pain. After a final violent twitch, she fell limp into Megan's arms.

"I think she's gonna turn." Jacob said in a panic. "We need to go."

"Turn?" Megan asked frantically. "What the hell does turn mean?" It was a rhetorical question. Megan knew very well what he meant. Sanne was going to turn into a zombie. Jacob didn't answer her.

"How long," Megan tried to manage to say though her sobbing, "How long, do you think, will it take before she turns?"

"I don't know. But do you really want to see her like that?" Jacob's voice was gentle, "We really need to go."

Megan hugged Sanne in a tight good-bye hug. Sanne didn't even respond. She was already losing her mind.

As Jacob pulled Megan off of Sanne and led her through the woods towards her house, all Megan could do was tremble and cry.

"We can't... Leave her!" Was all she could say.

Megan didn't even notice how the other girls were reacting but they were crying too. None of them had been as close with Sanne as Megan had. Sanne was like a sister to Megan, and now, Megan knew, she would never see Sanne again.

When they were what Jacob called a "safe distance away", he gripped Megan's shoulders.

"Get yourself together." He didn't sound mean, or rude. His voice was calm and reliable with hidden undertones of a confidence he didn't have. "Sanne doesn't want you to fall apart." He swallowed back a lump in his throat, "She wants you to live and you can't live if you're falling apart. And that goes for all of you." He looked around at all the teary faced girls, "In this kind of situation, crappy things happen. But you have to be strong. Don't be strong for no reason. Be strong because Sanne would want you to be strong."

Megan couldn't speak through the lump in her throat, but she nodded. She wiped away some tears and then righted herself. Her head felt like it had been stuffed with cotton and her eyes were puffy. She was too ashamed to make eye contact with her friends to see their reactions to the recent situation.

"Megan," Jacob asked a couple minutes later, his mood changing from comforting, to leadership, "How much longer will we be walking until we get to your house?"

Megan thought for a second, glad to have something new to think about other than Sanne's pained face still fresh in her mind.

"About fifteen minutes." She whispered.

Jacob nodded and started walking again. The rest of the group followed.

They had started with eight people at the beginning of this zombie apocalypse, and now, not even a day later, they had lost two friends.

One had run away, and one had turned. Megan tried to push those thoughts out of her mind. She tried to convince herself that this was all just a terrible, terrible dream that she would soon awaken from; however, she couldn't fully convince herself of a complete lie.

Soon afterwards, the group emerged from the woods on the edge of a dirt road five minutes away from Megan's driveway.

The familiar arch over the road that declared Megan's last name and address, "The Charlton Family, 8950 Canary Drive, now seemed to be laughing at her.

The word "family" seemed unfamiliar in a time like this. Megan didn't even know if her family would be home. They probably would have ditched town.

In a situation like this, family referred only to the people near you, the people you could trust in that very instant, the people that your life depended on.

As they entered the driveway and Megan saw that all the vehicles were gone, her heart sank a little deeper and she lost even more hope. Was there any use in carrying on? Megan didn't know. At that moment in time, had she been alone, she would have given up. But she needed to carry on. She needed to live for her friends, for her family.