The gun fires when I pull the trigger. Her body jolts a little from the impact, her head tipping back as the bullet goes clean through her forehead. Spatter of blood and pieces of her brain cover the black island wall behind her. Blood begins to emerge around the bullet hole, her eyes blank. Felicity falls onto her back and her head lolls to the side.
Effy stands behind me with her hands covering her mouth as the room falls silent after, while the distant pounding of the dead continues to sound in the background.
I lower the gun gripped in my hand and move towards the kitchen cabinets, going specifically to the one that looked like it would be the medicine cabinet.
A few still moments later you can now hear the dead banging on the wood that concealed and confined the windows in this room.
I grab the first-aid kit and set the materials I needed down in front of me. I grab a bottle of water out from the fridge as well.
I begin slowly pouring the water over the bite over the sink to clean it. I wasn't going to let the banging on the windows deter me from what I now had and needed to do. Unless the infected were breaking in, I didn't care.
There's about a third of water left in the bottle once I'm done using it. I lightly go over it with an antiseptic wipe to make sure it's clean of anything that might infect it. I chew on my lower lip as I dab at it due to the stinging. I grab the needle and string next to stitch the bite up. A light string of blood squeezes through when the skin pulls together.
"Aubrey.." Effy speaks up, perturbed by the surrounding noises and the fact that I wasn't batting an eye to it.
I had gotten used to Elizabeth, it sounded so foreign hearing Effy call me Aubrey but that's what she knew me as.
I continue to stitch up my arm, trying my best to get through it as quick as possible. In a different time fixing my own arm up like this would've made me queasy but not now. I've experienced far worse, stitching was nothing.
"Aubrey, what are we going to do? They're going to get in."
I cut the string at the end of the stitch and dab at the blood with a wet cloth.
A sudden knock on the door makes the both of us turn our heads. Effy looks uncertain of how to react. I hold my finger to my lips to warn her to keep quiet.
"Elizabeth..is that you?" A female voice.
I've never heard that voice before but in a way it sounded familiar. Nobody in this building that I've spoken to sounded like that or knew my real name.
I think back to when I stepped off that elevator when I left Ethan and Kaleb. That girl I saw in the hallway who seemed to look right through me. She looked familiar and it looked like I did to her too. Maybe it was her.
"The gunshots led me here- I think pretty much everyone in this building heard it but then I heard your voice and thought that maybe there was a chance it could be you. It has to be. I swear it was you I was looking at in that hallway. You look so different now.."
Effy looks at me with a puzzled look.
I slowly shake my head at her and creep towards the bedroom. I scan my surroundings trying to look for some kind of dresser. There had to be spare clothes in here. This was where Felicity was staying and where a lot of the supplies were stored. I saw her soldiers constantly hauling things in here that they scavenged.
The girl at the door kept talking.
"Kaleb and Ethan told me what happened. They said you were still in the building somewhere- then again, where could you go? Where could any of us go? We're trapped here until Lance gets here."
I don't know why but that name got me to freeze where I was. I then quietly close the empty drawer to the nightstand next to the bed. That name cycles through my head while I wonder where I heard it from, why it sounded so familiar.
Effy meets me in the doorway, blocking my path.
"Why is she calling you Elizabeth?" Effy whispers but steps to the side so I could get by her.
I just give a light shrug, carrying a backpack out with me. I go to Felicity's body and unbutton her jeans. I unzip them as silently as I can and pull them off her. She was about my size, she was just a little taller than me.
Effy gives me a weird look while I put them on. I steal Felicity's shirt too, grateful to get out of this blood soaked one. It drops to the ground with a quiet heap but loud enough to be heard when you're trying to be silent.
"Look, I know you're listening. I know you're there." I mentally slap myself for letting the shirt drop like that.
I go back to the kitchen counter where the first-aid stuff was and I put everything I took out of it back in. I zip the red bag back up and put that and a bunch of other useful stuff from the medicine cabinet into the backpack. I go to the fridge next and fit as much water bottles and canned food as I can into it.
"Ethan says you don't remember me. That you don't remember any of us. He said you don't remember Serenity or what happened in our home."
I stop what I'm doing, my heart fluttering in my chest. A heavy feeling sinks into the bottom of my stomach.
The conversation I had with Ethan in Austin's room surfaces in my head. Ethan giving me a half-smile and then saying, "but for real. Lance, Kaleb, Shelly, Serenity..do any of those names ring a bell?"
I'm still, hovering in front of the backpack in a crouched position. My hands drift down from where they're holding the bag and my eyes lower to the ground as another memory comes to mind.
Me sitting on the ground, stunned with grief and surprise while my little sister coughs hysterically in front of me and a girl in the background screams, "Lance, do something!" That's when Serenity gets shot.
"I beat myself up about it everyday. You said she was alive and I made Lance pull that trigger. Maybe Serenity would still be alive right now if I hadn't said those words.."
It goes silent on the other end.
A lump forms in my throat and a tear slides down my cheek as my lungs dare to suck in a heavy breath of air.
A sniffle, "I'm so sorry Elizabeth..I should've just stayed quiet. I'm having such a hard time forgiving myself. I know it's not you I should be apologizing to, that I should be apologizing to Serenity but she's not here..so I was hoping you could forgive me. I talk to Serenity everyday- or at least I try. I'm hoping she can hear me. I pray every night."
That heavy breath of air comes into my lungs as more tears fall from my eyes.
The doorknob turns but does not allow entrance.
"Can you please open the door?" The girl pleads. "It's me, Shelly!" You could hear the smile on her lips as she says this, hopefully.
I wipe the tears from my eyes and get to my feet. Effy looks to me for permission to open the door.
"Don't open that door," I tell her, firmly.
Shelly goes quiet on the other end.
I put the gun on safety and tuck it into my butt pocket and I hang the backpack over my shoulder. I wasn't entirely sure how I knew how to do that or the fact I knew to do it at all. It felt natural.
I go fetch the knife off the floor that Felicity cut my face with. I take her boots too, almost forgetting about shoes. I stick my feet in and zip up the boots.
I nod at the window to let Effy know that that's what we were going through. She looks at me incredulously, looking really uncertain about my plan.
Without waiting to see if she was ready, I head to the window. I'm about to pry away some of the wood until a loud explosion sounds out of nowhere from the east-south wing of the building. The infected that were attacking the windows stop trying to break in and follow the noise.
A little girl somewhere in the building suddenly starts screaming.
Shelly starts jiggling the doorknob, apprehensively, "please, Elizabeth let me in!"
I angle the blade of the knife into a crack in the wood and push down on it to try and loosen a piece of it. When that doesn't work, I rush to the closet stationed by the kitchen. There was a padlock on the door. I'm guessing this is where Felicity kept her weapons. I shoot at the lock a couple times until I'm able to take it off.
Effy just stays where she is and observes.
The doorknob jiggles some more as if Shelly was trying to pick the lock to get in.
I go back to the window after handing Effy a couple more guns. "I don't want that!" She complains but I make her accept them. There was nothing else in here I could use to carry anything else and I had no more room in this backpack. She was going to have to carry them.
"You need to tuck them into the waistband of your shorts like this," I demonstrate by tucking the gun I was carrying into the side of the jeans I was wearing. After showing her what to do with them I shove mine into my butt pocket again.
"What about my brother?" She asks me, looking up at me with her innocent baby blue eyes, and it breaks my heart. I didn't want to be the one to have to tell her. How do you tell a little girl that her big brother is dead? How do you break a young girl's heart like that? A young girl that's so full of hope and love, which is a quality I no longer have. I look at her and I see the world in her eyes- something I've lost. Now I'm going to have to take that from her just like mine was taken from me..
Angus asked me to look after his sister and that's what I came to do. She seems to have taken a liking to me from the start. She always wanted to be around me and even told me that she wanted an older sister. Maybe it is best she hears it from me..
I stand there and look down at her wondering what it is I should do. Do I tell her or do I keep it from her? Which is best for her and what will protect her?
No, she has a right to know..
I take a step toward Effy and kneel in front of her, her coming up taller than me now as I lock eyes with her. I brush some stray hairs behind her ear. My expression doesn't change, it remains hard and serious. I wasn't going to force a smile. This wasn't something you smile about and it doesn't make it easier hearing it either way. There was no sense in sugar coating anymore, not in this life.
"Look, your brother-" I'm interrupted by another explosion and more screams of terror. There was bullets going off from the other side of the building. It sounded like the dead made it inside. Effy gives me a worried look when my eyes shift to hers again. "I'll tell you later but for now we need to get going. Your brother isn't here."
I pick up the sledgehammer I set down by the window when I grabbed the extra guns and I start swinging at the wood.
"That doesn't sound like Angus! He would've never left me. He has to be here!" She exclaims.
"Effy, he's not here," I look over my shoulder and tell her, firmly. "Now you have two options: either you come with me and survive, or you stay here with the others and get eaten alive. Either way I'm not staying so you better pick fast."
I keep swinging at the wood, chunks of it flying left and right. I clear a good portion of the wood away from one half of the window, peeling away the scraps and earning myself a few slivers. It was enough space for Effy and I to climb through. I turn my head and swing hard at the glass. The collision makes a loud sound and the glass shatters everywhere. Infected nearby probably heard it but hopefully the current events were enough to distract them for a few minutes while Effy and I escape.
I brush away some of the glass on the ledge of the window frame with the backpack, and then I throw it outside.
"Are you coming?" I rush out.
Effy stares at me for a moment and then nods. She comes racing over towards me as I start climbing out the window. I stick my legs out the window. Once I'm ready to hop out, my leg is suddenly grabbed by one of the infected. I wrestle with it to keep its teeth off my thigh by forcing its head back with my hands.
"Take it!" Effy cries out in terror, pushing a gun towards me. I set a hand free and take it allowing the infected man to dig its teeth into my leg. One of the pros of wearing jeans is that the material will make it tougher for biting and less gory.
The door behind us suddenly slams open and the girl with the blonde hair I encountered in the hallway stands in the open doorway.
My head snaps to the side, locking eyes with Shelly, my sister. In that next moment the infected's mouth has made contact with my thigh. I yank its head back with my other hand, locks of its short black hair ripping away from its rotted scalp and wrapping around my fingers. I put a bullet in its head before it tries to bite me again. It collapses to the ground on the shards of glass scattered on the pavement below me.
I jump out and hold my arms out for Effy. I could still see Shelly staring at me and standing paralyzed in the doorway, her eyes shifting from Felicity's dead body on the kitchen floor, to me.
Effy grabs a chair and carefully makes her way up onto the ledge and I catch her when her legs are through and she's ready to jump.
"Wait!" Shelly yells, and finally decides to run to the window after me.
I throw the backpack over my shoulder and as I'm looking up at her face for the first time, into her blue eyes outlined in bold black eyeliner, I say, "goodbye Shelly. Tell Lance I said hi." I take Effy's hand and we race off into the night in the opposite direction of the rising smoke and sound, leaving Shelly behind staring after us at the window.