I slipped my sharpened knife into my belt.
"I'm ready, Father," I shouted into the other room. Father peered at me through the crack in the wall. He nodded and grabbed his gun off the dresser. The old, broken dresser.
"You got your knife, Soph?" Father questioned as I twisted the doorknob.
"Yeah," I mumbled, "and I am hoping I won't have to use it."
"Don't get your hopes to high."
We walked out of the building together after saying goodbye to Jodie. Jodie was Father's old friend. Her husband got infected by the walkers a few days ago. She was still grieving. Father said that in times like these there is no time to grieve, but every time I pass by Jodie I tell her it'll be okay. She always just sighs.
-
We lived in a campus. A college campus. It was a tiny campus in the woods with fences surronding it. There were many buildings inside, and survivors lived in all those buildings. There was no community feeling between the dorms even though we all lived so close.
Why wouldn't the dorms ever come together and form a community? The answer is simple. Death. Everyone was afraid of it. It was embedded in the air. It crawled around the gates of the campus. It grabbed survivors everyday. It separated familes. It changed lives. Why would anyone waste their time communicating with someone who could die the next day?
There were four dormitories on campus. Each one ran their own camp, supplying each other with nessesites and keeping each other alive. We lived in dorm three. Newcomers always wanted to live with us. We were thriving, people were surviving. Ever since we started living together, only five survivors were turned. Thats it. In our dorm, there were twenty four survivors. We ran our own school and cafeteria. Every once and a while, a man named Randy, a pre-apocolypse school teacher, was supposed to be teaching us about reading, math, and all that crap that no one gives a s**t about. Instead, he secretly taught us weaponry, defense, and obviously, how to kill them walkers. It's our little secret that my fellow young survivors and I kept from our parents. If we had any.
Other than the school, the only thing that we were known for was our cafeteria. Father and I do runs every Sunday, Don does a run every Monday, Katie and her Mother do a run every Tuesday, and so on. A run is when you go get supplies. Runs are dangerous. Walkers are always out there. But everyone has to do a run. How else would be thrive? The food collected from the runs goes to the cafeteria. Mmm. Delicious.
-
My footsteps seemed to shake the ground. It was quiet outside, and by quiet, I meant quiet. A girl standing by dorm four was washing her clothes in a bucket. Her hair was beach blonde and her skin was a salty pale. Her eyes seemed deep brown. She was crying. Tears crept down her face. Eventually, she broke out into tears and dug her face into her hands.
"Stop staring. We ain't gonna talk to her. She'll grieve," Father whispered.
"Why can't we talk to her Father? She is just like us. What if she needs help? I bet we gonna get some cans on the run. It looks like she's hungry," I mumbled. She did look hungry. Her eyes were sagging. She was skinny as hell. Her hair was scrawny. A can of food would help her a lot.
"No. We don't give her no food. She's not from our dorm. She be dead. I don't want you to have a connection with that girl. She'll be infected soon. She'll be a walker."
She leaned against the wood fence while holding her stomach. Tears continued to roll down her face. She dropped her head and slowly crumbled to the floor. I winced and ran to the gate where Father was standing.
