Early Sunsets Over Monroeville

It’s funny how the last thing I expected when I woke up that Saturday morning was the horror of what actually happened. Even the news tried to tell me, but, foolishly, I disregarded their warning. How was I supposed to know that their headlining story about a zombie virus outbreak wasn’t just a joke. I mean, would you honestly believe them if they told you not to go outside because your neighbor might be waiting to eat your brain? I didn’t.

Then again, that must have been my downfall.

So, it wasn’t exactly anyone’s fault when I stumbled out of my house that morning to find that Ms. Harlet, the elderly neighbor that constantly baked fruit pies for the rest of the street and had a garden the size of Texas in her front yard, was practically crawling down the cement road, crying for ‘braaaaaaaaains’. In retrospect, maybe laughing wasn’t the best thing to do in my situation. I only remember wondering if the whole town was in on this joke.

By the time I’d reached the end of the block, I was surrounded by these people acting like mindless corpses and it wasn’t so funny. In only seconds what had been a joke became reality in my mind and I could hardly contain my fear as I sprinted the rest of the way to my best friend’s house.

I pounded on his door until my fists hurt, my knuckles borderline bloody, and panic filled my chest before I realized that zombies couldn’t smell blood. When Sanchez finally opened the door, sleep in his eyes and still in his pajamas, I rushed past him and straight into his living room. The remote’s button’s were hard to push, but within seconds I had the news up on the small screen and we were both taking in the recorded monstrosity before us with wide eyes.

People that neither of us had ever seen were stumbling in and out of the fixed focus, tattered clothes and inhumanly pale skin. Each one seemed to have a bite mark or tears out of their flesh, but what else could be expected of reanimated corpses? I groped at my side for Sanchez’s arm, slowly realizing that it wasn’t there. I must have missed the sound of him zooming his way around the house, throwing various items into a duffel.

“What are you doing?” I asked as I started to shadow him as he flew around in circles. We were in the kitchen for a first aid kit and the next moment we were in his room, throwing drawers of clothes into disorderly lumps on the floor.

Sanchez hardly threw me a glance, “What does it look like I’m doing?” There was a hint of amusement in his voice. We were thrown back into the kitchen again as he pilled different foods into the bag, mixed right in with everything else. I took a moment to roll my eyes before joining in on the madness.

We made plans, if that’s what you could even call the haphazard list of objectives we’d put together, before we got into the small car that he’d had for forever. We were getting out of town, then we were getting out of the state, then we were going to try to find the Canadian border. All of this effort doesn’t change the fact that we only got as far as a small town at the outskirts of Billings, Montana.

The farther we got, the more the epidemic seemed to spread. Bus stops, restaurants, jails, it didn’t matter. These flesh eating cadavers were everywhere; they still are. Either way, that leads me to where we are now.

We’d taken over a hotel, loudly demolishing the dead that had recently inhabited it, or at least we thought we did up until a few hours ago when they violently reemerged. Sanchez had gotten caught up in the middle of them, forcing me to take out the mob of them on my own. I hardly had the luxury of worrying about my companion, but the thought of him becoming one of them ate at the corners of my mind and haunted my vision.

By the time it was over I could literally see the fatigue tearing at my best friend as we made our way to a room we’d previously set up and I helped him lean against the backboard of a standard lumpy bed. As quickly as I could, I dug into the beat up duffel bag and pulled out the oversized first aid kit, scrambling to grab everything that I needed fast. I got to my feet, tumbling over to the side of the bed, ignoring Sanchez’s complaints. “There’s no way you’re turning into one of them,” I mumbled mostly to myself as I tried to bandage his arm gently, “not after all this.” I shook my head and quiet murmurs of ‘no’s escaped my lips as he fought back with all the might he had left.

“Stop,” he whispered, “you need to stop.” I kept shaking my head, letting salty tears drip onto my hands and into the gauze as I wrapped it over and over again around his arm. A horrible moan exploded from the hallway, though, distracting me.

I searched the room, frantically looking for something to block the flimsy door with, finding only an armchair in all of it’s faded, overused glory. I pushed and shoved until it was firmly in place before the locked hotel room door. “Ella, you need to stop,” Sanchez exploded, tearing at the wrappings around his arm, tears in his eyes.

My eyes were wide and fearful as I tried to shove all of my frenzied medical work back into place. “No, no, no, no,” I said loudly, denying the fact that I was quickly losing my one and only friend. “Just because they got you,” I started and stopped. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t move. “Just because you got,” I couldn’t stop my sobbing as he slowly pulled my eyes to his own.

A nod. That’s all it took to make me a blubbering mess on the stained floor. “Please, you can’t leave. You can’t make me do that. I can’t kill you, I just can’t!” I protested only to watch him nod again weakly. “You can’t ask me to do it! You can’t, you can’t, you can’t.”

Images of him as a zombie tainted my mind as his breathing slowed and his skin paled and I struggled to keep my grip on reality. How had this mess even started? My brain zoomed in circles as the rest of me went numb where I was kneeled next to his bed. “You can’t, you can’t,” my voice was quickly disappearing, but I couldn’t seem to get my point across. There was no way I could kill him.

Sanchez gripped my arm gently, pulling me the slightest bit towards him as he tried to wheeze out what he felt was too important to let pass. “Ella,” he caught my attention, “I love you.” Just like that, he was gone.

I fully collapsed, not letting myself take it in. He wasn’t dead, he couldn’t be dead. “No, no, no, no, no,” the word repeated itself until it was all that I had left.

So now here I’m left, sitting at the very edge of his bed, with a decision to make. A gun in one hand, his cold fingers in the other, and it becomes clear. I know that my mind has been made. There’s no turning back now.