Apart from the rest of the story, the introduction will be written from Joshua's point of view.
Please read in: Dark contrast
Summer - 1 Year Ago
It all started when someone that was infected managed to pass through one of the guards back at the Quarantined Zone. It was located at Elmhurst in Queens, New York. The US Military managed to take over Queens Center Mall and claimed it under ownership of the government. It was only a matter of time before people were able to move in. The mall was large enough to harbor over hundreds of people. The mall wasn't in the best shape like it was twenty years ago according to the pictures, but nobody cared. The guards didn't have to worry about people stealing clothes or food because it was all already long gone before they even got there. We still had our rations though. Everything was going great for years until that one asshole had to ruin it for the rest of us. My mom pointed out someone twitching and sweating. A girl beside the man, presumably his girlfriend, was trying her hardest to conceal him, but it did him no good.
Later that night, I remember hearing screaming. The same guy that the bitch was trying to protect ended up killing his girlfriend. After he was finished with her, he went on a rampage attacking anyone that ran past him. After that, it was complete chaos. The guards couldn't do anything about it. Trying to calm over six-hundred people was impossible and I remember hearing one of the leaders demanding to "occupy" them. I also remembered getting lost in the crowd apart from my mom and uncle. It was just me and Erlina and we hid underneath a table. Soon after, we started hearing gun shots one after another. It just wouldn't stop. I could still hear it to this day. I remember bodies falling on top of one another like dominoes and I had to make Erlina look away. But it didn't matter which way she turned because everywhere she did, there was bloodshed. I remember they were up to their last person. He shouted, pleading for his very life, he even got on his knees. I remember him being young guy just like me. I don't know why it mattered, but I wanted to save him. He was the same age as I was and I feel like we could've been friends. I felt weak, and technically I was. There was nothing I could do. Within the last few moments of those thoughts, a bullet was placed right into his brain. It was summer, and it was really hot. I remember sweating a whole bunch from stress and anxiety. I put my head down and looked at my palms rested on the floor. That's when my eyes began to water... and I sniffled. That's when I saw a light shine on me. I looked up to see a fully armed guard toss the table from over me and my cousin's head and aimed his stupid rifle right at us. I quickly grabbed my cousin and wrapped her in my arms, hoping to protect her. If he wanted to kill us, he could kill me before he got to her. I closed my eyes and I could feel my cousin whimpering heavily as she clutched my flannel shirt the hardest she could. Within a couple of seconds we heard a loud gunshot. We both jumped, but I didn't feel a thing. I was wondering if maybe that's how it felt to die or maybe I was in some sort of shock. That's when I heard a body fall. I turned to see that the guard fell to his knees and flat to the floor. I noticed a pool of blood pour out from his neck and I turned to the escalator to see my mom with a handgun.
My overly religious mom never believed in violence and she never owned a gun from the get-go. She carried her bible everywhere she went, and it pissed me off how she read it almost every day. She looked startled and frightened and had a look of despair in her eyes. Her palms were the sweatiest of all, and she kept trembling. After that we followed her up the stairs to the main level before the others spotted us. It wasn't easy. I just remember having to hide in a every corner, behind every pillar and as soon as we neared the parking lot that were a couple of levels up, we noticed that some infected had made their way inside the mall. Thankfully (and I can't believe I'm saying this), but if they didn't, we probably wouldn't have made it out alive. They took all the guards attention away from us and every single one of those bastards deserved to die after what they did.
We climbed into my mom's old beige toyota corolla. It's rims were missing and it's dented up bumper was as bad as the hood. It still had gas that we stole a couple of days ago and managed to make it out of the parking lot. I had never seen my mom drive so quickly or swiftly. We heard gunshots, but eventually we made it out of the mall's parking lot and managed to make it unto the parkway. Believe it or not, my brother told me that my mom use to hate driving and hated the parkway, but not there's really nothing to fear about the highway. I could bet my life that she would rather be speeding away on a highway in a car rather than with those things outside.
However, that's when the question about my uncle arose. Erlina asked where her daddy was about five times. My mom didn't answer the first three. That's when it was explained to us that he wouldn't be coming with us. He and many others were taken out during that blood bath. It was like the world around me had gone mute. Erlina placed her head on me in the backseat and began sobbing and gagging. She couldn't stop crying. My mom was driving, but she was just sniffling the whole ride. Of course, I just had tears streaming down my face. I felt bad for the kid. She had to go through life without a mom, and now my uncle was torn out the picture.
What the hell? If this was life's plague to balance and pan out the human population, it was crap.