You know that moment when you're about to die and your whole life flashes before your eyes, and it's like you're flipping through pages in a book only this book is about your life? That's not what it was like for me. It's not like there was any memories to even remember. All of them were wiped from my mind.
I was ready to die, I was ready to give up if that meant not having to kill this boy. I know how that sounds, it's like, "Elizabeth, what are you doing? This boy isn't a boy anymore. His humanity is gone. He's a walking corpse now being controlled by a deadly virus." I know that, but I knew what this boy was like before he turned and chances are it was probably against his will considering what Nancy and her crew were capable of.
I wasn't about to give Nancy that satisfaction. I wasn't about to be her pawn in a sick game. But then something happened. It was like a dream, only I was awake this time.
"Lance, get off of me!" I cry out as my brother tries ripping me away from my little sister once more.
She was moving, she was awake. Now I can hold her and tell her I'm sorry, that everything's fine now!
Lance didn't get that.
Serenity's breathing starts rapidly increasing with each passing second. The blood submerging her long dirty blonde hair dripped down her locks and onto the skin of one of her arms and overtop her fingers, to the hand holding her up.
She slowly turns around and her eyes lock with mine, her once light brown eyes covered in a dull, lifeless grey. A growl erupts from her and she pounces on me, her fingernails digging into my shoulders and she bites me.
I let out a shriek of pain but I don't fight back.
Lance tears her off me, forceful but gently because that was still his baby sister. She goes sprawling across the bathroom floor once again back into the pool of her own blood as we all watch in horror, when suddenly as she was about to make another run for me she stops.
She's coughing, but I could barely hear myself thinking as everyone starts panicking. There was screaming in the background, a girl screaming for Lance to do something.
Serenity looks up at me, a glimmer of those brown eyes flashing in her eyes.
I'm paralyzed.
But suddenly, a loud bang rips through my ears and a hole appears in the centre of Serenity's forehead, blood running out of it and she falls onto her back.
She was alive. I saw it with my own two eyes.
I couldn't breathe.
Feelings that had been locked away and hidden in the deepest passages of my mind, come rushing forth and suddenly I'm met with a powerful ache in my chest. It's ripping and gnawing at my heart, making it hard to breathe.
All in that same instant, with Angus rushing at me and the emotions I felt the night my little sister died, engulfing me. I suddenly had this strong urge. I didn't know what exactly, but somehow I knew it was going to work.
I look up, seeing the 12 year old boy with the strawberry blonde hair and freckles. His teeth were barred and ready.
The moment his body makes contact with mine, I grab at his wrists and push my knees out to keep the distance between us as he snarls viciously at me. The new hunger was a powerful thing.
He keeps screaming in my face, that same scream I heard when I was being chased in the streets by an infected woman. The short petite woman with the short black hair.
I thought it was over, but it wasn't. I got to her first before she could kill me, by slamming her head into the pavement a hundred times.
This was it, it was now or never.
I let go of one of Angus' wrists and use that hand to wrap around his neck, letting out a heavy breath of air because it was getting a lot more harder to hold him back than I thought. My body was in a pretty weak state right now and I was aching all over.
He tugs at my hair while I suck in another breath of air and slowly allow Angus to inch closer and closer to my wrist until I just press his face into it. What sucked was it happened to be the same wrist Juliet apparently fed from.
I let out an excruciating scream and yank his head back before his teeth dig in too deep and rip my wrist apart, my fingers locked in his hair.
With my knees still firmly pressed against his stomach and my hands both now on his upper chest, I launch him back as he goes tumbling to the ground. He ripped out some of my hair in the process but I was unfazed.
Now at this point whether it's worked or not I couldn't fight anymore. There was nothing in here to defend myself with and I was far too weak. And to be honest, with the pain that was heavily weighing in my heart, I didn't care.
Suddenly gunshots are being fired outside the room and loud sirens start going off in the hallways. I couldn't be bothered to cover my ears. I grip my wounded arm tightly with my hand instead, my teeth clenching together and my skin going cold. I could feel myself going pale.
Angus suddenly gets to his feet unsteadily and starts slowly staggering towards me but that wasn't what I was looking at now.
There was blood everywhere. It was covering at least three quarters of this room. All over the floor. Bloody handprints smeared the plexi-glass on the door where the dead soldier was banging. And there was Juliet's cannibalized body hunched over in the corner beside me. You'd barely know it was her. All of this blood was pretty much hers, aside from the drops that were mine when I let Angus bite me.
It wasn't till Angus stopped in front of me that my eyes drifted up. I could see the colour returning to his eyes. They were blue, like mine.
His lips part like he's going to say something but it takes him a moment, "please...keep my sister safe.." He's able to get out in strangled breaths.
The door slams open and Malikai appears in the doorway, Ethan behind him. He guns down Angus without hesitation and Angus falls limp into my arms.
My eyes widen in horror, "no! What have you done?!" I cry out.
I caught Angus and cradled him into my lap, the fingers to my free hand touching his face and my eyes squeezing shut, a tear coming through in the process and landing on his face.
I couldn't describe the pain I was going through. When Austin and I got into that fight about his sister in his suite, I was running up those stairs being mad that Austin was so harsh with me.
I thought I knew what it felt like, not the pain itself, but our situations being alike. We both had lost a sister and we both were blaming ourselves, only I couldn't remember mine or the pain I felt but now I understood. Now I didn't want to feel anything. Now I didn't want to remember what it felt like to hurt over her death. I just wanted the memories back. Now I remember her. I remember Serenity and all I can do is hate myself for it because it was my fault she was dead, and now it's my fault Angus is dead. I could've done something to keep them both from dying.
Malikai and Ethan were silent, not understanding my reaction because to them, Angus was just another infected.
"YOU KILLED HIM!! He was alive and you killed him!" I snap at Malikai, him taken aback. "What's wrong with you? You let all of this happen!"
"Elizabeth," he starts carefully, Ethan disappearing from sight. "He was infected, and there was nothing I could do to stop what was happening because if I did they would've figured out I turned against them and we wouldn't be escaping right now. I'll explain everything to you later. Right now we need to go!"
I can hear Ethan reentering the room and coming back to the small room I was confined in, "she's right here."
A new person comes into view that I've never seen before. Ethan and Malikai were a couple years older than me. This guy looked younger, maybe 17. The boy had short light brown hair and eyes like my sister's. He was dressed just like the soldiers and though he was maybe a year or two younger than me, he had this intimidating way about him.
"See," Ethan says, "I told you Kaleb."
"Holy shit," Kaleb smirks as his eyes set on me. "Well it's nice to see you again, sis."
Ethan
13 Hours Earlier
Elizabeth stares at me with a look that was somewhere between stunned disbelief, denial, and something else. She goes into deep thought as if she was considering everything I told her about her family and me but was refusing to believe it- or was just afraid to.
I guess I could kind of understand the sudden thoughts spiralling through her mind right now. I had no idea she was even still alive up until now and the sad thing was, I don't think she remembers any of it. Not even..Serenity. To her, that night was all a dream and she was convinced her name was Aubrey.
Austin's eyes were on me now, "what happened to Serenity?" He asks.
I tell them about how Lance had to put Serenity down but I don't mention the gun. She didn't need to know every detail. That night still haunted all of us, maybe it was a good thing Elizabeth couldn't remember, she was blaming herself for it as if there was something she could've done. I also tell them about how we searched everywhere for Elizabeth after that.
Elizabeth starts to freak out again going on about being at the hospital 6 days ago but that was impossible. We searched every inch of that floor.
My gaze drops to the ground for a moment as I recall that day, me double-checking the folder that had Elizabeth's name in it and all of her information. Nobody checked her out. The panic that arose in our hearts as we rushed into the room she was staying in only to find it empty. Nothing was even out of place to say there was a struggle. Maybe she walked out of there a different way. I think we were all thinking it...but nobody wanted to believe that.
Shelly would always tell me that she had a feeling Elizabeth was still alive somewhere and there was something else on her mind too, but she wouldn't tell me.
"I can't do this!" Elizabeth gets up, shaking her head, and she squeezes by Austin that was sitting on the couch with her, and past the coffee table.
She hurries out of the apartment like she was about to have a mental breakdown. I couldn't convince her to stay, she didn't want to listen to me and there was no way I could convince her to leave this place with me willfully. She was just going to need time to process I guess.
When the room is silent again, Austin speaks up, "so this was the girl you were talking about? She's the one you were looking for?"
I just nod at him and then stand up, "I have to go. I've got to let Lance know she's still alive. Do me a favour. Keep an eye on her until I get back, please?"
Austin looks at me with uncertainty, "I don't know if I can promise that-"
"Please?" I cut him off. "Just stay long enough for me to get back and watch over her myself."
He still looks unsure but then nods.
I make it to the woods, a far distance from Nancy's hidden base. She was bad news. She's associated with Elizabeth's dad. Lance did everything in his power to get himself, Kaleb and Shelly away from David, and now he's a leader among his own group of people.
I get the flare ready below a good opening in the woods so that no branches would get in the way when it rockets into the air. It was just getting dark now so it'd be easy for Lance and the others to spot it if they were out on a run right now.
Before I parted ways with Lance we both thought of this signal we would use to alert each other if either of us ever found Elizabeth or knew she was alive. We'd meet back at Lance's old house and talk there because we couldn't be where the flare was fired from. It'd attract infected and anyone curious.
Once the flare is planted firmly into the ground, I pull out the lighter from my back pocket and look up at the stars before sparking it up.
It shoots up into the sky, burning a bright red. I light a second one just in case and stand back to admire it for a second, remembering how much Elizabeth loved flares and fireworks. And then I take off to the meeting point.
Shelly
I'm sitting cross-legged on a bench outside an old convenience store connected to other shops that Lance and the guys were raiding for supplies. I'm writing in my journal when Dustin wolf whistles, "check it out, I haven't seen a firework in a long time. What a beauty!"
I look up at Dustin who's stopped loading crates of supplies into the truck and is instead now leaning against the truck and looking at the sky.
I close my journal and uncross my legs, "did you just say firework?"
"Yeah, look, there's another one." Dustin nods in the direction he was looking in.
I slowly get up from the bench as some of the guys come out with more supplies. I touch my necklace in awe, staring up at the sky that was almost completely dark but tinged with light blue, orange and white in a bed of sparkling stars, "that's not a firework, that's a flare." I breathe out.
There it was, the sign I had been waiting for.
"Lance!" I yell. "Lance, get out here!"
Lance comes out seconds after, "what is it, Shelly?" He questions, sounding slightly annoyed when I didn't turn to him and tell him what was going on right away.
"Look," I point to the sky.
He follows my gaze to the sky seeing the flare burning bright and red in the distance, not that far from here either. It suddenly burns out seconds after Lance notices it.
Kaleb exits the store soon after, missing the whole thing, "what's going on?" He questions, oblivious to it all.
"Shelly saw a flare, and I did too." Lance's face is unreadable as he tells Kaleb about the flare.
The three of us exchange knowing looks and then Lance gives the order for everyone to pack it up.