Memories
I've often been asked if I remember. Yeah, as if I could forget all that has happened in the last eight months.
So yeah, I remember.
I remember how it all started with a report on the news. That apparently there was a new virus going around in Europe. It was as I was having a burrito that President Ross announced that this new virus had already taken around 500,000 people in France, The Netherlands, and other countries. How it apparently developed from a strain of bird flu. Most importantly, how it was allegedly a combination of H1NI, Cancer, and Ebola.
Yeah fucking right.
Because even if that was true, you would think that the government wouldn't have dropped everything and skipped town.
Cowards. That's all they were.
Never mind that though.
For a personal level, it all began for me when my brother dropped dead. All of a sudden he was gone. The virus struck him quickly, and with no gosh darn mercy.
And then Mom got it.
She seemed fine. That was until she locked herself in her room, and died a horrifying death that I dare not describe other than the fact that it still haunts me.
Hell, I remember the day about 3 Months in when Principal Kidswater died of it. He was climbing a solid oak tree in the front of the schoolyard when he dropped out of the sky and his skull dropped open and unleashed a thousand droplets of blood. No one dared touch him, except for a few brave (But incredibly dumb students) who tried to give him CPR, and, well…
Died.
Died because the disease thankfully only spread with mouth to mouth contact.
Soon, there was only a few of us in Wayside left. Me, Maurecia, Jenny, Sheri, Stephen, Dana, and Myron.
Unfortunately, Myron was too aggressive one day towards Dana. And He was gone, quick from the slash of a sword.
That night, we had one of the worst dam choices we could make. Kill, or starve.
Let me put it like this. Soon, all Myron was bones.
By the way, for the record, we decided not to use guns about a month in.
Why? It made us look like cowards when didn't know a fuck about fighting.
Sheri and Stephen soon died too. They were kissing one day when Stephen revealed they had it. Jenny begged them to go into the forest and find the Chief of the forest, the great Indian chief known as Sakkara who would heal them. But they refused.
They wanted to be with their families.
So do I remember? Yeah, I do.
I remember the calmness of the sky as I hunted for deer.
I remember as we would sit around looking at each other, just happy we weren't dead.
That we had survived another day.
Earlier today, Maurecia kissed me (we have been going steady for a stone's throw), and revealed she had that goddam virus. I knew what we had to do, and we entered the virus hand in hand, and left it cured.
So now we sit here. The four of us. Me, the biker chick Jenny, the tomboy cutie Maurecia, and the gossiper and helped Dana.
We have all had to grow up pretty quickly. It is no more about materialism, who has the biggest breasts, or who has the most money.
We're sitting here dead in the night, eating old marshmallows, staring at each other, and into the fire: knowing one thing above anything else:
Today, it is about who you got. It is about Family. It is about friends. It is about Surviving.
But most importantly, it is about:
Remembering.