Just Go

Sickness, that's all it was. An incurable, exasperating, grim and frightening disease

I used to think that I had all the time in the world to figure out who I was and what I wanted to do with my life. I was only seventeen for crying out loud, I had plenty of time. There was plenty of room for trial and error. I used to think that I could mooch off my parents forever, didn't everyone think that? I couldn't have been the only one. I would never actually go as far as living with them for the rest of my life but the knowing that they would always be there for me is what I truly meant.

But, my world was ripped away from me. My seemingly perfect timeless world was in a chaotic and frantic state. It was undeniably crazy how fast the world went into a complete trepidation and lost all meaning of what civilized peace meant.

I never believed that we would ever experience a zombie apocalypse, never. I was too rational for my own good to let my mind wander and expand to those regions. I took after my parents in that I had to search for logical explanations in everything. It was one of the things my boy friend, Ryan, disliked about me. Everything just had to be practical in my eyes and it did. Everything needed to make sense in order for me to believe and I know how that might sound ridiculous and make me out to be naive, but it was the only way my mind could really understand concepts. I think it was because of that reason that I was never religious, being in school and learning about all the different kinds of religions made me see that every single one of them made sense.

But that was besides the point, I was now living in a world where the dead walked the Earth. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I would never believe it. I tried so hard to rationalize what I had seen, there was just no way that a human rose from the dead and started to chomp on every living creature that crossed it's path. It didn't make sense and part of me didn't want it to make sense. It was ironic how much I laughed at those Doomsday Prepper shows, because now I was only hoping and praying that I would come across one of them.

No amount of Nicholas Hoult falling in love with a human, or Norman Reedus being a complete and total badass of a zombie killer and Brad Pitt risking his life to save the world could help me with this. No, this was real.

It had only been three months since this zombie sickness fell upon the world. It had first started in Russia, spreading like wildfire to it's neighboring countries and then sailing across the oceans to everywhere else. It had hit the US last, making everyone believe that we were going to be shielded from it but then the breakout started just a few weeks ago. I lived in the city, New York City to be exact and I couldn't fathom how less of a demented state it would be if I was someplace else. I was in the heart of all the chaos and madness.

Everyone was trying to push South to get away from the Eastern Shore but in all honesty, if it hit the shores, it would just push in all corners and meet in the middle. Besides, if this was anything like what I've watched countless amounts of hours of, there was just no hope. No where to go, no where to hide. I didn't see society recovering from this, this was the new world and you had to adapt. You had to solely survive on your instincts and mine were no where to be found, I had been sheltered in an apartment complex my whole entire life. I was never given any real opportunity to rely on them.

But here I was, my back on the cold concrete street of the city. My ankle throbbing and my side burning with a pain I had never felt before. Everyone was screaming and running past us, trying to get away from the horrors our new found world was. I never wanted to believe in a cure, I just refused. I wasn't going to give myself false hope because in the situation I had found myself in would have been ten times harder. My vision was blurring from the tears that surfaced on my brown eyes, I had failed.

Ryan's hand pressed firmly into my wound, blood seeping over his finger and into the blood stained street. "Stay with me, Mika." It broke my heart to hear him sob out, he looked around him, still concerned that there were more of them lurking in the alleyways of NYC.

I shook my head, gasping on air, "You have to go, Ryan. You can't stay here, it's too dangerous." my time was up. I could feel the poison settle into my bones and it scared me. I blinked back my tears, this was not the time to show him I was afraid, not with this kind of atmosphere.

"Mika please," he begged, his blue eyes glimmering with a sense of hope but he and I both knew that whatever miracle we were both thinking was out of the picture. We had seen numerous of times what would happened when one those things bit someone. It either took seconds or minutes to turn them into what had bitten them.

It was my fault, really. If I would have been paying attention on what was in front of me, I never would have twisted my ankle and I never would have fallen at the feet of a monster. The feeling of his teeth crunching into my side was numbing, I felt the skin break and bones crunch but no pain had rose to the surface until Ryan had pulled it off of me. It was agonizing and I know it killed him to hear me cry out in pain. "It's okay, you have to go."

He shook his head, his body crouching closer to me, not caring if one got him too, "I love you, Mika. I'm not leaving you." A tear fell from those precious eyes and as much as I wanted him to lay there with me, he couldn't.

I tried to push him away but by this point, I had felt everything shut down. My strength was diminishing, and as much as I appeared to be brave, I just wanted to cry. Cry for real, bawl my eyes out and wail. I had kept it in when I watched everyone I love around me get picked off by God's will. I held it in when our home got ransacked by gruesome men with heavy artillery. But, now? I still had to hold it in, because Ryan wouldn't leave my side otherwise. "Please, go!"

He pressed his lips against mine, the feeling of his love masked the pain I felt crawling it's way throughout my body. I twitched underneath his grip, my eyes widening, I pulled away from him, "Go! Now!" I half screamed, this time not being able to hold back the flow of tears. I felt the demons winning inside of me and it was only going to be a matter of time before I was lost within.

"Mika," he started, stroking my face, tears rolling down his face, "I'm sorry for everything." His deep voice cracked, signaling to me that he was broken, "I'm sorry for cheating on you all those times, I'm sorry for never being there when you needed me, I'm sorry for never realizing how much you really mean to me until now." His body trembled as my eyes started to flutter and my body started to go limp in his arms, "I'm sorry, baby. I never deserved your love, I hurt you so many times. I gave you nothing when you gave me everything. This should be me dying, not you. You're still so young," he kissed my forehead, "so smart, so amazing, so beautiful. Please stay with me, Mika."

I wanted to stay with him, so badly. I tried, but I couldn't. My body, my brain, my insides, everything was giving up. I was giving up. I lifted my hand, forcing it to his head, my hand rubbing his cheek, my voice barely audible against the screams and sounds of police officers trying to protect those that needed it. "I love you, just go."

He blinked back tears, using the back of his arm to wipe away the tears, he lifted me out from underneath his arm, setting me down gently, tears still falling. He stood up, his chest heaving, his eyes straining. He walked backwards, his eyes still on me like he knew his face was the last thing I wanted to see. My eyes slowly closed shut, my life flashing before my eyes, half smiling at the memories of Ryan and I.

There had been bad ones, the nights where I'd get late night calls from our friends warning me that Ryan was drinking excessively at a party and he snuck into a bedroom with a random girl. Or when I caught him making out with a mutual friend underneath the bleachers. I couldn't begin to explain how much I'd rather be in those moments to relive that pain. But I also wanted to relive the good moments. The one where Ryan had surprised me for my sixteenth birthday with a black and white kitten I had begged my parents to let me get or the time he had expressed his deepest and darkest secret of being abused from his alcoholic father.

I never thought my life would end like this. My final advice to anyone would be to never take things for granted. Cherish those you love, surprise them with random acts of gratitude and never forget to tell the ones you love that you love them. Because there might come a day where your perfect world might come crashing down.