The Road Home
1. Thoughts
I remember everything, every detail that existed. What I thought, what I felt, what I did.
For me, it all began in school, after lunch. Teachers tried collecting the frighten students in classrooms while some got taken and lost forever. I was on the school yard with a group of friends. We were playing hockey when it all happened to us.
The first was a girl I had known for ages, from kindergarten to be exact. I remember her scream, so high pitch. I remember how I swung on impulse my hockey stick right through the man's head who'd bit her in the neck. I watched how she laid there, dead on the hard ground with blood flowing from her neck, covering her body. Then I vomit.
I don´t know what happened to the rest of my friends, probably got scared and ran away… Or died. But I know that my mother came and saved me from the horrible things that could happen. I remember how she screamed at me to run to the car. Then she rode off home. I didn´t say anything about what I have done, I didn´t want to, I don´t want to remember.
When we got home, she ran inside with me right behind her. She locked the door and started to pack food in a bag. I could see how stressed she was while I couldn´t move. I remember what she told me, or more screamed at me to do the same. 'Take only the most necessary' she yelled. With weak legs, I did my best to go up to my room to do as she told me.
I walked to my side desk beside my bed to pick up an old CD-player with a mixtape of my favorites songs. I put on the earplugs and pressed play. "Skyfall" played. The world got smaller around me. When I was done (a bag contained with clothes, batteries, a drawing book with matching pens, an Yondu Pop Up figure and bandages) I went to my closet and took my own ice hockey stick, walked down to the living room where I heard my mom talking with my dad on phone. I didn´t know how long I had been gone but I guess a while for my mom was crying. She didn´t want to but had to hang up. She told me that we needed to drive to him, to the east coast of Florida, my dad's secret place. I had never been there, only heard about it from my mom.
But the plan to drive there didn´t work very well. Many others had the same plan. I would usually say that my mother is very different from the rest of the American population, except her begin Norwegian, but not today. We started to walk along the road like many others, some was running, and others walked. While some cried, some screamed of anger. Panic filled the air.
My mom walked on the side holding my hand. If my friends would see me holding hands with my mom, they would laugh and call me 'wuss-number-17' because of our age and the number on my hockey shirt. But I couldn´t care less about that now.
After hours of walking, people started to scream and panic even more than before. People ran over other people with zero fucks given. We couldn´t see but we knew. It was a herd of those undead things that attacked. My mom told me to run to the best tree and climb up and so I did. She threw the bags up to me and climbed up. She told me to keep quiet and hold on to the tree. We sat there the whole night.
I wondered how my dad was doing.
…
The trees stood still. Birds was quiet. The heat was laying like a quilt over the forest.
I woke up by a sound beneath the branch I slept on. Slowly and carefully, I looked down to see what had made that noise. Luckily for me it was no undead but a rabbit who got trapped in my very advance but not so good trap. I was better with a gun than traps. I scouted the area from my high spot after danger before I jumped down to collect my trophy. I bound the rabbit on the top of my hockey stick and continue making my way through the forest. The sun shined like damn it felt like darts against my body, so I tried to keep myself in the shadows. I drank some water now and then but not too often, there was not much left. I had to stop to rest sometimes as well, a dead rabbit is heavier than you think.
Suddenly I came to a dead camp with chairs run over and a table up-side-down. I grabbed my gun and listening after sound, dead or living.
Silence.
I relaxed and began to look for supplies. Food, water, batteries, pens or anything. But nothing. I reached out for a chair and place it in the middle of the camp. From my bag I took up an apple I had been given from my previous group. I ate it, really enjoying every bite I took. Like I have never eaten a fruit before. My thoughts wandered off to if the dead could feel taste, like I did now. But I guess not. All they do is walk around and kill for some reason. I ate the whole thing and felt how my legs didn´t want to continue the walk. I hit my legs like if I told them to pull themselves together and went on, leaving the dead camp behind me.
The sun had started to leave the sky and it turn dark quickly. With the help of the ropes, I drag my bag to the nearest branch on a sleep-able tree. I climb up, put the ropes around me and the tree, so I wouldn´t fall under the night. I turn on my CD-player and let myself to sleep to my favorite song.
"Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong
West Virginia, Mountain Mama
Take me home, country roads"
The same thing happened this morning too, I woke up by noise under my branch. But no thanks to no bunny, but to a man who was running for his life. I almost disappeared inside the tree but I could still see quite well from my spot. So I saw when the man tripped on a root, hitting his nose. I almost hit myself because of his stupidity. But now I could get a clearer view how he looked. Dark hair with a bandana, a white tank top with far too big pants and no shoes. He also had a big bag with looked like it contained some good stuff. Some gurgling sounds approach and suddenly an undead was on top of him. He screamed and fought for his life. I got three options I could choose between.
the stranger die and loot him later.
the undead with a 50% chance to hit the stranger
a badass rescue