Desolate

“Jordan! We have to go!” Charlie screamed, banging on the bathroom door. Jordan yanked open the door and pushed past Charlie without asking why. It wasn’t like she didn’t know. Everyone ran to the front doors, with their things in arms and their guns ready.

“Wait, where’s Alex?!” Charlie snapped. Everyone looked around and ran to Alex’s room.

“Alex!! We have to go!” Charlie screamed, pounding on her door. She could hear the groaning and the moaning and their loud footsteps.

“Alex!!!” Charlie said again, screaming even louder and pounding harder on the door. Alex threw open the door and ran to the others without saying anything to Charlie.

“About time!” she exclaimed as she ran with her. They burst out to the parking lot where two zombies were waiting for them. They threw themselves into the back of the van and spent a minute or two untangling themselves. Charlie reached for the open back doors and slammed them just as one of the zombies outstretched his arm to grab her. She rushed towards the driver’s seat and slammed herself into it. She patted her pockets and twitched her head towards the others.

“Who has the keys?!” she demanded. Zakk pulled the keys out of his pocket and tossed them to Charlie. Her fingers fumbled and she couldn’t quite get the key into the ignition. The zombies were hitting the van, causing the van to shake. She finally jammed the key into the ignition and twisted it until she was sure the key would break. She slammed her foot on the pedal. She sped away and felt the thump of the van hitting a zombie.

She couldn’t believe how scared she was. She thought she’d conquered this fear and got over it. Although, this was a new kind of zombie, which meant a different kind of fear. A fear that was new to everyone.

She drove for another five minutes before she slowly came to a stop and turned around to meet eyes with the others who had the same petrified faces she did.

“Is everyone ok?” she asked, trying to catch her breath. Everyone exchanged glances and looked back at her, nodding.

“Wait, where’s Jason?” she said. Everyone looked at each other again and pushed to look out the little windows of the back doors.

“I see him!” Jordan said, poking the window. Her, Zakk and Alex moved to the side so Charlie could look out. Jason was limping towards their van, holding onto his arm that was covered from his elbow to his fingertips in his dark blood. His hair clung to his sweaty, bloody forehead.

When he finally reached the van, he slammed his hands onto it, making the others jump.

“Let me in!” he yelled, slamming his hands onto the van repeatedly. Jordan looked wide eyed at Charlie, asking her what to do. For the first time in a long time, Charlie didn’t really know what to do. She pulled at the hem of her blood stained shirt and refused to look at her.

“Well…? Should we let him in?” she asked softly.

“I…I don’t know!” she snapped, looking up at Jason, who looked back at her with desperate eyes.

“We need to leave him,” Alex said, folding her arms and looking at Jason out of the corner of her eye, “he’s going to eventually change and kill us!”

“How do you even know he was bitten?” Jordan countered. Alex folded her arms across her chest and raised an eyebrow at her.

“And how would you explain the big blood trail he left coming over here?” Alex said.

“Maybe he cut himself somehow,” Jordan said, poking her bottom lip with her finger.

“Yeah, because that looks like a cut!” Alex argued, pointing to Jason’s arm, where there was a huge chunk of flesh missing.

“Would you two shut up so I can think!?!” Charlie screamed. Everyone jumped at the shock of the volume in Charlie’s voice. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

“We’ll let him in with us for the time being,” she said softly, opening her eyes. Alex stepped back, as if Charlie had just slapped her in the face.

“Are you insane?!” she shouted, “He could kill one of us!”

“Alex, we’re not stupid. He knows he has to be killed eventually, and he’ll accept it. Now, let him in,” Charlie ordered firmly. Alex sighed loudly and threw open the back doors. Jason jumped in and almost fell on top of Charlie. Alex slammed the doors and sat down with her arms folded tightly.

It was silent for a few minutes. No one knew what to say or what to do, until Jordan piped in, “I’ll drive for a bit. You guys just discuss whatever you need to discuss.”

She rushed to the driver’s seat, to which Zakk followed, but only because the current situation was so awkward that no one wanted to be near Jason or Charlie.

“How long do you think it’ll take for Jason to change?” Jordan asked Zakk in a hushed voice.

“Hours, a day at the most probably,” Zakk said softly, shrugging. Jordan looked up at the rearview mirror, meeting Charlie’s eyes.

“We’re going to have to stop eventually you know,” she said.

“I know,” Charlie grumbled, “But it’s too dangerous to stop now. At least a few more hours.”

“Holler if you find a place to crash,” Jordan said. Charlie nodded once and stared out the window of the van doors. Dark gray storm clouds were beginning to roll in, smothering the sunlight.

Jordan stared at all the empty buildings and the empty streets. A few months ago you had to push and shove to get through. Now you would be lucky to find one person who wasn’t covered in blood and didn’t have flesh falling off of them.

Sighing, Jordan suddenly noticed the van was low on gas. She slowly stopped and turned her head to look at Charlie.

“We should stop for gas,” she said softly. Charlie turned back from dressing Jason’s bite wound and nodded in acknowledgement. Jordan drove along the road, trying to find a gas station before they ran out of gas. When she finally found one, they were maybe a minute away from running out of gas. She made a sharp turn and slammed on her breaks next to the gas pumps.

“Ok, Alex and Darren, you get gas and keep an eye on Jason,” Jordan said as she unbuckled her seat and stood up. She looked at Jason, who was getting weaker and weaker and he was leaning against his seat, breathing heavily.

“Charlie, Oliver, Zakk, and I will go to the convenience store to make sure we can get a full tank so we don’t have to settle with a half tank,” she added. They all hopped out of the van and were welcomed by a strong breeze.

“We need to hurry though, it’s going to rain soon,” Charlie observed, staring up at the dark gray sky. Darren nodded and grabbed the gas pump as Alex pointed her gun at Jason.

Jordan, Charlie, Oliver, and Zakk hurried into the store and looked around. The store looked almost untouched. They expected to see shelves knocked down with barely any snacks in them. But everything was standing and the entire store was spotless.

“You and Oliver go into the back, and Zakk and I will look in the bathrooms,” Jordan said. Oliver and Charlie nodded and walked quickly into the back room. Jordan tiptoed into the girls’ bathroom and poked her head into the bathroom.

“Come on out little zombies, some free human flesh for you,” she said in a sing-song voice. She slowly made her way into the bathroom and smirked as she whistled. She looked into the empty stalls. She sighed and walked back out of the bathroom where Zakk was waiting. They shook their heads and walked into the back room where Charlie and Oliver were. They were looking down with horrified eyes at the girl on the ground. Her stomach was split open with her guts protruding out. Jordan turned away and almost felt bile rise.

“What happened?” she asked, feeling Zakk’s hand grab hers.

“One of those things chased her in here and she managed to shoot it and it ran off, but not before it tore her apart,” Charlie said softly. The girl’s bright blue eyes blink rapidly and her arms moved to point to the gun that she dropped. Jordan jumped back, not realizing that she was alive.

“Kill me…” she said. Charlie stepped back and lightly shoved Jordan, “I still have some humanity left, I can’t shoot her.”

“I can’t either…” Jordan said, shoving Charlie’s hand off of her. Her and Charlie looked at Zakk and Oliver, who stepped back.

“I can’t do it either,” Zakk and Oliver said in unison. Charlie swallowed slowly and raised her gun. She pointed her gun at the girl and clamped her eyes shut as she pulled the trigger. They cringed at the sound of the bullet hitting her between the eyes and the splattering of her blood on the floor and the walls.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Jason slowly turned his head and smirked at Alex, who kept her gun steadily aimed at him.

“What are you smiling about?” she asked irritably.

“You know, if Jordan or Charlie or Darren or whoever was in my position right now, you wouldn’t have a gun pointed at them…” he said softly, taking a breath after every word.

“Well, Jordan, Charlie and all them aren’t terrible people,” she sneered, tightening her grip on her gun. Jason smirked again and turned his head away from her. Alex loosened her tight grip and studied Jason’s face. He was getting paler and paler by the minute. His eyes looked as though they were sinking into his head and they looked like they were changing into a dark blue color that was almost black. He turned to look at her again, which made her snap out of her trance and tighten her grip again. He smiled faintly and closed his eyes. Alex looked at Darren, then back at Jason. She outstretched her arm and poked Jason’s shoulder with her gun.

“Jason?” she squeaked. Jordan, Charlie, Zakk, and Oliver came out of the store with plastic bags filled with snacks.

“He’s…gone,” Alex said softly. Charlie and Jordan exchanged glances and then looked back at Jason. Darren finished filling up the van as he stared along with the others.

They stared cautiously for another few minutes before Jason began to stir. They raised their guns and pointed them at him. He looked at them with his beady black eyes and let out a terrible cry as he lunged for them.

“Shoot him!” Charlie yelled as she kept her gun aimed at him. Despite his faults as a human, she still couldn’t bring herself to kill him. Jordan hadn’t even known Jason for a long time, and even she couldn’t shoot him.

He stood there, staring at them, as if mocking their fear. No one was able to do anything, only stand there with guns they weren’t going to use. Alex tackled him to the ground and jammed her gun into his mouth. She pulled the trigger and shot him countless times before he stopped struggling and his body went limp.

“Let’s get out of here,” Alex sighed as she got off of Jason and hopped into the car. Everyone exchanged glances and raised eyebrows at her. Rain drops began to fall and instantly became a rain storm, soaking them within seconds.

They threw themselves into the van and Jordan placed herself back into the driver’s seat and sped off down the road, leaving Jason’s body to be forgotten forever.