one.
"annie?" i exclaimed, dashing across the streets. i no longer even cared that a zombie might show up or that my screams would attract a group of them. all i cared about was my friend, annie. she had been missing for eight days and still hadn't been found. she couldn't be dead. not annie.
"kass!" i heard someone shout my name right after listening to the sound of the car engine. i didn't have to turn around to know it was pieck, but i still did. she was sitting in the driver's seat of the little black car we used when we left the shelter. we had made it suitable for the situation, protecting it with metal bars we had found so that we could confront the zombies more effectively. "get in!" she exclaimed. she had rolled down the passenger seat's window so that i could hear her, whilst waiting for me to open the door and get in. but we couldn't leave. i wouldn't leave.
i shook my head. "we still haven't found annie"
"get in kassia!" she hastily said. her whole expression had both worry and fear in it. especially fear, which scared me. pieck had countless times gone outside the shelter, even alone on occasions. she had lost her fear towards zombies a long time ago and always kept her composure. what was making her feel in such a way? "we are in danger!"
i looked around me, trying to look for that danger pieck was warning me of. i mentally remembered the weapons i had with me. two knives hidden in my leggings and a metal bar i had picked up from the ground a few meters earlier in my right hand. i gripped it tightly, waiting for any zombies to come out from between the streets, but nothing. everything was horrifyingly silent.
the sound of the horn blared in my ears. i turned around, witnessing pieck trying to get her attention. i was about to yell at her for doing that. the zombies would appear at any moment after such a bang, but she hadn't seemed to mind.
it was at that very moment, as i was turning towards the car, that i realized it all. i heard a sound and everything happened very fast from that instant on. i saw a flare spreading in the air and, then, the windows of the building across the street opened, while two people appeared with rifles in their hands, pointing at us.
"get in now!!!" pieck exclaimed. this time i didn't think twice. i reached out and opened the passenger seat door just as the shooting started, throwing the metal bar in my hand to the ground. the instant i sat down, pieck started the car as fast as she could and began to move, before i could close the door. the shots were crashing against the other side of the car, on the driver's side. pieck bent down to avoid them, even if we were protected by the metal bars, and hit the gas pedal hard, running away from there. i shut the door quickly and turned to look back.
a car had emerged from one of the streets and had started following us, still from a considerate distance, but it wouldn't take long for it to catch up.
"what's going on?!" i looked at pieck, who had her eyes fixed on the road, trying not to collide with the cars that had been abandoned in the middle of it the day it all began. she didn't answer. either she didn't know or she didn't want to.
she reached back, grabbing a gun she had left on the back seats. "take this" she handed it over and i grabbed it. she checked the rearview mirror and gritted her teeth.
i checked if the gun was loaded and turned around again. the car was already pretty close to us.
"where are zeke and the others?" i asked pieck.
"i don't know" she answered.
"why are humans willing to kill us?! did zeke do anything?"
"i don't know" she repeated. "for now, focus on surviving"
i sighed. since when did we turn into that? didn't we have to help other humans to survive the situation we had to live? fighting zombies was already too much of a threat to have to add yet another one.
i looked in the rearview mirror. the co-driver in the car behind me had stuck his head out the window and was pointing his gun at our car. i looked at pieck again and, from the look in her eyes, i knew what she was expecting from me.
i sighed again. if that was what she wanted me to do, then i would have to go ahead. live or kill. that was what zeke used to tell us before leaving the shelter. i guess he wasn't wrong whatsoever. i didn't even know why those boys were chasing us or why they wanted to kill us. pieck didn't seem to know either. but they didn't seem to want to sit us on the side of the road and talk it over a few glasses of wine, so i had to do it.
"cover yourself" i told her. she nodded. "and beware of the zombies" i warned her, pointing at a group of them walking down the highway heading to us. she nodded again. she was the best driver in the shelter even without a driver's license before it all started.
i moved to the back seats being careful not to be exposed to gunfire from the car behind us. the clash of bullets against the metal of our car could be heard every few seconds. pieck was still keeping up the speed of the car, but i guessed it would fail at some point. besides, the horde of zombies in front of us concerned me, but if i didn't take over the enemy's car, we wouldn't be able to survive.
i wondered where zeke, reiner and bertholdt were. they had split off from us to look for supplies but i hadn't seen them again. we, however, had gone in search of annie. the last time we had seen her was when she had left the shelter ten days earlier with reiner, marcel and bertholdt to look for food. only bertholdt and reiner came back. marcel had been eaten by zombies, which had left the whole group, especially porco, devastated, and annie had disappeared from our sight. bertholdt and reiner spent two days looking for her before returning to the shelter, but they didn't succeed.
she was my best friend in the shelter and i refused to leave her out there alone, because i knew she wasn't dead. she couldn't be. the anguish gnawed at me at night, because i knew she was out there somewhere, maybe trapped or maybe hiding, unable to get out, while she waited for our help. i couldn't leave her to her fate.
however, eight days later there was still no sign of her. pieck, reiner, zeke, bertholdt and i had moved quite far away from our town, thinking that maybe she had fled there. nevertheless, we hadn't found her anywhere. instead, we had encountered a group of humans who probably thought we were plundering their territory, stealing their food.
"open the trunk" i ordered pieck. she nodded and pressed the button to do so. i hid in the corner of the back seat and turned around to lean the gun against the back of the seats. i closed one of my eyes to look through the sight of the gun so i could take better aim. i didn't want to kill humans. i didn't want to, and never would, ever.
that was why i aimed at the tyres of their car. i had always been told i had a good aim. in fact, i used to be assigned to sniper duty with colt. while the others were fighting on the ground, we were shooting from above. so it didn't take me long to hit the target. even before they were aware of what was happening. however, even though the bullet hit the tyre, nothing happened. i was stunned but didn't hesitate to shoot again.
the boy who was in the passenger seat, though, had already reacted and fired again, this time aiming inside the car but hopefully missing. "pieck!" i exclaimed. she was too focused on dodging the horde of zombies in front of us. "pieck, close the trunk!" she didn't hear me. "shit" i whispered.
all that was left for me to do was keep shooting.
but first, i glanced at them. two guys in the front seats. in the passenger seat with the rifle, a guy with gray shaved hair who had gone back inside the car to reload the rifle. in the driver's seat, a guy with long light hair and a short beard on his chin. his expression didn't show any feeling, but i could tell he didn't understand the situation either. maybe he was just following orders, doing what had to be done.
i wanted to tell them 'i don't want to do this', 'let's stop now'. i really wanted to tell them. and even though they wouldn't hear me if i shouted it, i tried to convey it with my gaze. fortunately, the eyes of the boy driving met mine for a few seconds and that tense face he had kept softened for a few thousandths of a second. i dropped the gun and rested it on the seat. it was my signal to say that i didn't want to do that, that i wanted them to stop, that i had no idea what was going on and that i didn't want to kill each other. the boy seemed to understand, or at least i hoped he did. but that was when the boy in the passenger seat stuck his head and the gun out the window again and pointed it at me.
at that stage i even thought it was all over. but pieck shouted. "kassia, hold on tight!"
i was about to turn around to figure out why when i saw the driver of the car behind me reach out and grab his partner, preventing him from shooting. he turned his head to look at him, annoyed, but the guy driving was glaring at me.
before i knew it, a sudden movement of our car sent me crashing into one of the windows. pieck had made a sharp turn, completely changing our direction, and i had forgotten to grab on as she had instructed me to. my head hurt horrendously, but i looked forward to see how she had avoided the horde of zombies. the two boys' car, having no time to react, was heading straight to them.
"no!" i shouted, getting up from the seat and returning to the front one, grabbing the gun. everything seemed to spin and my vision was darkening and blurring, but i managed to roll down the window. "hey!!! here!!!!" i yelled, banging on the window bars to get the zombies' attention.
"what are you doing, kassia?!" pieck yelled, grabbing my arm and pulling me back.
"i saw him! i saw him backing down and stopping his friend from shooting me! they were going to let us...!"
"you're being delusional" she said, letting go of my arm and closing the trunk to fix her eyes on the road again, driving us away from there. the boys' car was about to crash into the zombies. "we have to get away from here as soon as possible"
"but..." i didn't want to leave them behind. he had shown humanity, he wasn't going to kill us. and now we were going to let them die. it was impossible for them to survive that.
but the zombies started to fall progressively. gunshots and more gunshots could be heard. pieck stepped on the accelerator, urgently driving away. i turned around in the seat to look at the situation. more people had appeared, a large group, and they were shooting at the zombies that were accumulating around the car of the two guys.
they were saving them.
"we have to find annie" i whispered to pieck, still watching those people kill the zombies with agility, us moving farther and farther away.
"our priority is to run away" pieck replied. she grabbed the gear knob before stepping on the gas like there was no tomorrow. "i thought you already knew that"