Small Eyes (A Zombie Novel)

Left Behind

    I didn't look back because I knew the sick weren't far behind us. Their hungry snarls wouldn't leave my ears. Every few seconds, Shawn would shoot at them. The repeated booming gunshots were superior to the horrific sound of clashing teeth.

    My family and the three others ran up our driveway and to our doorstep. My mom jammed the key into the keyhole and jiggled it around. She swung the door open and we all piled through the door. Mom slammed the door shut and locked it. The sick were at our doorstep, banging their limbs and faces on our front door. But I felt safe.

    Since we first started running, this is my first moment of rest. The bottoms of my feet were throbbing. My chest burned with a cold sensation and my lungs stung as I inhaled but I still managed to speak. "What happened?" I looked up at my mom.

    "The left us!" She leaned against the wall, each word was broken apart with a staggering breath.

    "Who?"

    "The military!" Mom answered. "We were supposed to evacuate. But rioters came over, harassing us, and trying to get on the military trucks. They didn't want to separate the residents from the rioters and the sick from the healthy so they just took their families and left us all!" Mom pushed herself off the wall. "And when they left, the sick started coming. But they're not just sick, they're—"

    "Cannibals," Shawn interrupted. We all looked over to him. He was in the military and he was probably the only military officer left here. He knew so much more than any of us. "If you get bitten you get sick." Shawn looked over to me as if remembering our short interaction earlier. "When the disease first spread, so many people were being bitten but no one understood what the bite did. Now there's tons of them — of the sick I mean. So there's no more government. And no more military."

    "What?" Wyatt'snose scrunched up as the corners of his mouth pointed to the floor. "You're lying." Denial. We had been living in the dark for so long and convincing ourselves that nothing was wrong. Now we were hearing and truth and I don't know if any of us really believed it.

    "The military; we're just a group of surviving soldiers who love our families. We built these walls and built this neighborhood to protect them." Shawn looked to his sister and then to me and my family. "You guys just happened to live in a neighborhood, close to the base, that the majority of our station's families live in."

    Silence descended upon us. However, the silence was only inside our home. There was still screaming outside and a repetitive banging on our front door. Crying. I knew we all heard it, but no one said anything about it. We were all just pretending like we didn't know people could be dying outside.

    "If you get bitten, you get sick?" The girl that came with my mom broke the silence with sobs. Her chest was rising and falling rapidly as she struggled to catch her breath. "So my parents are like that? Sick like them?!"

    Again, there was silence. "The military left for a reason. It's not safe here anymore." Shawn looked around at all of us. "We have to leave."

At his words, I looked over to my mom and my brother. "We should bag the groceries and take them with us."

My mom nodded; "You two do that." She pointed to my brother and I. "I'll pack clothes for Delilah and me. Once I'm done, you two pack some of your things. Keep it light. There won't be much room in the car." Mom looked over to Shawn, Jessica, and the crying girl. "We have one car, a minivan. It'll be tight but we can all fit. And Alycia," Mom turned back to face me "pack enough clothes so you can share with Brielle." She motioned to the crying girl, Brielle.

I nodded my head and retreated into the kitchen with Wyatt to bag the food. We had several paper bags and a good amount of canned food. Originally, it was enough to last my family for a month. That was when Josh was alive and there were five of us. Now there were seven.