We Are All Strangers (4 page)

I’d made a big scene, and I accused the Facility of turning us into
them
– into zombies. And well, they clearly hadn’t taken too well to my rebelling. They tossed me out on the street shortly after with no weapons, no food – nothing. It wasn’t long after that Avery followed after me.

Since then, I had done my best to take care of the two of us, but it hadn’t been easy. When you spent years unable to speak - to get to know people - you learned to close yourself off, and as a result, I hadn’t had much time to get to know Avery as we grew. It wasn’t that I hadn’t cared about my sister. I had. She was the reason I fought every day and that I pushed forward in search of something better. I just didn’t know how to tell her that.

I was an eighteen year old guy. Emotions weren’t exactly my kind of thing.

A hand wrapped around my arm, nails dug deep into my skin. I spun around to find Avery lifting her machete, the blade lining up with the neck of a zombie. “Where the hell did he come from?”

One quick slash was all it took for his head to tumble to the ground.

She shook her head. “I was trying to warn you, but you were la-la-land.” She reached inside of her coat pocket for a raggedy towel. “He hadn’t even noticed us until you nearly walked into him.”

I shrugged it off. “It happens.”

I figured she would be pissed at me, hell, I even grabbed my arm fully expecting her to punch me. But she didn’t. Instead, she broke into a fit of laughter. “You know, Aves, sometimes you really surprise the heck out of me.”

“You have to learn to find humor in the little things, or else what’s the point of even trying?” She smiled as she moved ahead of me, stuffing the towel back into her pocket. “Even if the word has nearly died out, it doesn’t mean that we have.”

“Which is exactly why we’re out here,” I said, reminding her why we’d been tossed out. “They are only willing to protect the dead. The living are forced to protect themselves.”

Avery shot me a smile over her shoulder. “Even though I originally thought you were nuts for mouthing off, I’m kind of glad you did it. It’s nice to feel alive, to be able to talk to someone instead of being trapped in my head constantly.”

Up ahead, a steel door opened. I grabbed a hold of Avery’s arm, pulling her behind me. “Stay quiet,” I whispered, instantly reaching for my shotgun.

We watched in silence as two figures made their way outside. One was an older lady dressed in the standard military uniform, and the other was a young girl wearing Facility attire.

The woman reached inside of her vest pocket and pulled out a small tape recorder. “Please state your name,” she commanded, her finger pushing down on the red button.

“Harper,” the girl answered.

“Your age?”

The girl rocked on her feet, scared. “Nineteen, I think.”

I thought back to our time at the Facility, how days and years had merged together, making it impossible to know how long we’d spent in silence, trapped behind those four walls. I knew what she was feeling in that moment.

I’d felt it too when I was left out here on my own.

“You understand why you’re being released, correct?” The woman’s voice held no interest in the conversation. She was clearly going through procedure, not even bothering to take a second to think about the fact that she was tossing a fellow human out on the streets with nothing but her own devices to keep her alive.

The girl didn’t respond.

“You need to answer the question.”

Still, she remained quiet.

When I saw the woman reaching for her weapon, I took off. “You have one second to answer me, or else I will be forced to use deadly force.”

I lunged after the woman, knocking the gun out of her hand.

“What the fuck is your problem?” I screamed.

She tried to reach for her gun, but I kicked it out of her reach. “She was with one of them,” she said, struggling to get out from underneath me. “We can’t risk the others being infected.”

I looked over at the girl, checking for any indication that she had been bitten. Her flesh had yet to rot. Her eyes had yet to turn white. There was no odor radiating from the girl's body, and from what I could see, there were no marks on her skin either. “Seriously? You think that
she
is one of
them
? How blind are you?”

I took to my feet, allowing the woman a chance to stand up. “Lady, I hate to break it to you, but this girl is not a zombie, nor is there any indication that she may be infected.”

“You don’t know that,” she snarled.

“Yeah, see, unlike you, I’ve been around quite a few zombies. I think I know what to look for at this point.”

“When she kills you, just remember, it’s your fault,” the woman said as she headed back into the building. I could hear the locks click into place.

“Don’t worry, I have no intention of trying to get back in,” I winked as she closed the sight panel on the door.

Avery ran over to the girl, her machete stored away in its shoulder pouch. “Are you alright?”

The girl looked scared out of her damn mind, not that I could blame her. “All he wanted was a chance to live before the virus overtook him. That was it.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “Who?”

“Keegan.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “He was all I had left.”

“Okay, well, Harper – that is your name right?” Avery lay her arm over the girls shoulder. When Harper nodded, she continued, “You’re not alone anymore. You’ve got us.”

I shot my sister a glance. I was all for helping her with the guard, but I wasn’t too thrilled at the thought of having another person to look after out here. “Shouldn’t we talk about this, dear sister?”

She waved me off. “Feel free to ignore him.”

Harper looked at me; her eyes were sad, lonely. And right then, I knew I was screwed. I remembered that feeling all too well. The urge to know more about her, and the need to see her smile. Yep. I remembered it from before, back when dating was actually possible.

“I’m Jackson,” I said.

Then I turned and took off down the road, leaving her with my sister because I was done nurturing the idea of a blossoming relationship in a world run by the dead.

And then Avery’s words replayed in my mind.

Even if the word has nearly died out, it doesn’t mean that we have.

Eh, maybe it wouldn’t be too bad.

T
he sun beat down upon the Sector, beads of sweat traveled across my scars, highlighting the painful reminders of the life I’d come to live.

According to the tablets hanging throughout the Sector, it was going on 7AM. Most of my fellow residents were still in bed, having spent the better part of the previous night scouring for food and shelter. That used to be me until I found a way out and a way into the Family Sector.

But still, even with the silence enveloping the Sector, I knew better than to keep my hand too far from my weapon. There were still others like me that lingered in the shadows, hidden behind the weather beaten shacks, eager for a chance to attack, a chance that I wasn’t willing to give them.

Even after losing everything, I wasn’t ready to die.

I guess one could say that I was a glutton for punishment.

My fingers reached inside of my pocket, searching for the hunting knife that I had received from my father long ago. It was one of the few things I had left to remind me of him – of the times when I still had a family, a home, a life.

Out here, in the Homeless Sector, I was on my own and the only way to survive was to fight. So that was what I did. Every. Single. Day.

I wasn’t the best fighter within the Sector – as evident by the scars that lined my body – but I was damn near close.

I could see the image of the ocean filling the tablets as I made my way through the empty streets, on my way out to the Widowed Sector.

After the Outbreak left our world in discord, people feared that the end of the world would follow. They began to fear large bodies of water, believing they would come to wash away what little had survived the Outbreak. It hadn’t helped that Troum, our newly appointed leader, had made it a point to remind the others of the water bordering the state on a daily basis. He’d promised that he’d protect us – though I was sure that promise was aimed more so at the Family Sector than the rest of us, seeing as we were considered the garbage of the state – and they’d believed him.

Sometimes I wondered if their brains actually worked, or if they recalled anything they’d learned before the Outbreak.

Mother Nature was unpredictable. Sure, maybe the ocean would rise one day, and maybe it’d wash away everything that we knew, but such an event couldn’t be predicted.

There was no way of knowing what Mother Nature would do, or when, and yet these people believed in Troum and his promise of safety. But I supposed that, in the world we were living in, they needed someone to believe in.

A line of red text scrolled across the screens, a siren sounding to alert the residents of an incoming message.
Great
, I thought,
just what I needed to happen when I was trying to sneak out undetected.

I ducked behind the nearest shack and slid my knife out of my pocket, making sure to stay alert as residents came rushing outside to see what was taking place.

Attention Residents: A young girl has escaped from the Family Sector. Please be on the lookout for a young-girl dressed in Sector attire. If you spot her, make sure to alert the nearest guard, as it is crucial that she is returned to her proper Sector.

The first thing I thought was
Kill Order
; which seemed to be the thought of every other resident within the Homeless Sector as they erupted in cheers once they took in the scrolling text.

It was all about points.

Capturing an escapee and seeing to her return would ensure them more points and when you lived in a place like this – a place where fear could get you killed – you took whatever opportunity came your way.

But that was them.

I preferred to make my own opportunities.

Off in the distance, gunshots exploded into the air as residents danced around gleefully at the possibility of a reward. Chances were the girl wouldn’t even make it this far out, but these idiots were too stupid to realize that.

Troum was always watching, studying us like lab rats, and discarding us when we were no longer useful to him or his world. And these people accepted it. They accepted it because they felt as though this was what they deserved; that they weren’t deserving of being treated as more than peasants.

But I guess it was easy to feel that way when everything that you knew was taken away from you.

Everything that I knew, everyone that I loved – all of it, all of them... it was all gone.

At times, I wanted to cave; to drown in my pain, to forget what it was like to care, but what good could come from that? To survive in a world like this, you couldn’t be numb; you couldn’t close yourself off because the second that you stopped caring; that you stopped fighting, you were pretty much painting a red target on your face.

My mother used to tell me that it only took one person to change the world, and as ridiculous as it seemed, I liked to believe that
I
could be that person; that
I
could be the one to stand up to Troum.

Maybe I was just as delusional as the others, I mean, it was always a possibility, but I needed something to believe in. We as people needed something to believe in, whether it was hope or love, or even a future. We needed
something
, and I chose to believe in hope while the others believed in Troum.

I slipped through the cracks, trying to stick to areas where people were beginning to head out as I made my way towards the entrance to the underground tunnel.

I would have thought that by now the guards would have sealed it off, but I guess since no one actually took notice of its existence, they just didn’t give a damn. And neither did I, especially since it benefited me.

The Family Sector was where most of the guards were stationed, and yet it was the easiest of the Sectors to slip out of, go figure.

When my points for the month would run out, I’d make my way to the Family Sector and sneak out essential supplies, all while everyone else back home fought to the death for a damn apple.

The penalty, if caught, would be death.

But I’d learned early on how to avoid getting caught.

It wasn’t so much that I was cocky, just confident in my ability to sneak in and out without notice and really, when it came down to it, it was all just a game of patience.

And I was extremely patient.

I watched as the others moved towards the abandoned buildings near the back of the Sector, their eyes glancing between the tablets and the people trying to make it back to their shacks or the dorms without getting hurt.

The worst part was that I knew that a good amount of them would be begging for their lives within the next fifteen-minutes.

That was my cue to leave.

I crept through the shadows, making sure to stay as close as possible to the shacks as I made my way through the Sector. My knife sat ready in my hand, just in case.

I’d made it to the edge of the Sector just as the sirens started to blare. Again.

In the other Sectors, that meant that it was time for inspection. Here? It meant that the guards were being sent out. Not to protect us, not to see that we were following any sort of order, no – they were sent here daily just to remind us that Troum was still in control.

It was all a bunch of routine bullshit that I had no intention of staying behind to witness.

Moving from beside the shack, I ran forward and pulled open the door to the tunnel.

I wasn’t a fan of using this tunnel. It was too tight and too dark for my liking. The one located in the Widowed Sector? Definitely a lot more convenient, but I didn’t have time to run there. I’d get caught before I even reached the Sector gate.

“Hey!” an older man yelled just as I jumped inside.

I peered through the open door, making sure he wasn’t following behind me, only to witness a brick getting smashed atop his head.