Before the Storm

The refugee center was a large, two story building, and both Zack and I had been here for around three hours now. We both sat upstairs on a couple of cots that we had claimed with our stuff for when the night rolled around and we needed to try to get some sleep. However, if the sounds of war going on outside didn't die down sometime soon, I don't see how any of us would be getting even a wink of sleep.

I had been listening to my iPod for a majority of the time that we had been here just to drown out the gun fire and screaming coming from outside. Zack would go downstairs every twenty minutes to go searching for our parents through the thick crowd of people but so far, they still haven't showed up. By this point in time I had gone from merely worried about them to full on petrified that something terrible had happened to them.

"Maybe they're at the house?" I offered, my bottom lip quivering as I stared intently at my brother. "Maybe they were able to get out and we passed them on the high way."

"If they were home, they would have called. If they had gotten out, they would have called us immediately." He replied somberly.

"Maybe something happened to their phones; They could have gotten knocked outta their hands, stepped on, something!" I was beginning to feel myself slowing giving up. So many people have died already ...

"And what about the home phone, huh? There's nothing wrong with that at the house," His gaze was hard as it pierced right through me. "They didn't make it."

Zack was right. If they had made it out they would have immediately went to the house to get us, and when they saw that we weren't there, they would have used the home phone to call me if something had happened to their cell phones. I didn't want to believe it.

My chest began heaving rapidly and my breathing was picking up its pace. I was hyperventilating from all of the stress and anxiety I had been going through all day since the moment they walked out the front door. I knew I should have tried harder to keep them at the house. I knew I shouldn't have given up so easily. If I hadn't, we would all still be together. They would be safe.

Zack moved from his cot over onto mine and sat facing me, grabbing my shoulders and making me look at him to try and calm me down. I could tell just by looking into his eyes that he was terrified; Hell, we all were.

"C'mon, ya gotta calm down, Jay." He said soothingly.

I felt warm tears begin to stream down my face again and I hastily wiped them away with the back of my hand. I tried to compose myself, but that only worked for about two seconds. I slumped forward and just let the tears and sobs overwhelm me when Zack pulled me into him and wrapped his arms around me.

"I can't calm down! Where's Mom and Dad?!" I yelled at him through my cries, though my words were muffled by his shirt. I yelled at him as if he knew all the answers and he'd just tell me exactly where they were.

He just stayed silent, and I knew by the way his body began trembling that he was trying his hardest to not completely break down himself. He was always the stronger one when it came to the two of us. Like when our grandparents had passed away when we were younger, he was the rock that kept me from losing myself. I had adored my grandparents to no end, and it was devastating to suddenly not have them around. Thank God they weren't here for this shit storm.

"I told you it wasn't a good idea to let them come out here!" I yelled, pulling away from him so that I could look at him properly through misty eyes. "I told you! Zack, I fucking told you that I didn't feel comfortable with it, but you just insisted that it would be okay! 'What are the odds of something really bad happening in the first place', right?!" I said, quoting him from earlier today.

I saw his shoulders slump forward and the look on his face was overwhelmed with one of utter regret and pain. I knew I shouldn't have placed blame on him for this; Nobody in the entire world could have guessed that something like this would have happened in a million years! But I was mad. I was full on angry at him.

I had the most venomous death glare on my face as I stared him down. I was so angry at everything going on that I had no idea where I even wanted to direct my anger. He was just sitting there right in front of me, so it just so happened to go towards his general area. After a few seconds, my anger turned to shock and I was startled backwards when I saw Zack's fist suddenly clench up and punch the brick wall right beside us with full force.

I heard a sickeningly loud crunching sound and both him and I knew instantly that he had broken his left hand. His face contorted into nothing but pain as he cradled his hand against his chest with his other arm, rocking back and forth on the bed.

"Are you okay?" I asked, now being really concerned for him and scooting over closer to him. I began rubbing his back up and down soothingly, but he just shrugged me off violently.

"I'm fuckin' fine!" He growled. He stood up sharply and shoved his way through the people that had also made their way into the upper level of the building to try and get some rest.

I had no idea where he was going, but I guessed that he just wanted to have time to himself and cool himself down. As long as he didn't leave the building and leave me here to fend for myself if something worse were to happen, I didn't really care where he went. Although, I highly doubted that he'd just leave me here alone.

I sighed and leaned back against the wall, shoving my ear buds back in and I turned my music back on so that I didn't have to hear all the commotion. It wasn't long before I just felt entirely drained from everything that had gone on today. I slumped over onto my side, laying down on the cot. I rolled over so that I was facing the wall, telling myself that I wasn't going to fall asleep, but rather just rest my eyes for a few minutes. Cause that always works out for everybody.

I didn't even have time to finish listening to my song before I began to feel myself slipping from consciousness.



I felt someone grab me on my arm violently and pulling me up from my spot on the cot. I felt the muscles in my arm pull and my shoulder getting dangerously close to being dislocated. I looked around through dazed eyes and ripped the ear buds out of my ears, and that's when I heard the loud uproar of screams and shouts. However long it had been since I had fallen asleep, it was long enough, because it was completely pitch black outside now.

I looked up at who had a hold on my arm and saw that it was Zack, looking even more terrified and on edge than he did before. "We're leaving. Now."

Before I had a chance to really register what he had said, he was grabbing our bags and slinging them over his shoulders. "What do you mean?" I asked. I stood up a little too quickly, causing me to almost lose my balance and fall right back down again.

"This place isn't safe. The damn virus is spreading like wildfire and the city is getting overrun." He said in a flurry. "I'm getting us the hell outta here."

The city is being overrun? But we had reinforcements called in! Zack grabbed my wrist and pulled me along behind him. I hadn't noticed it before, but he had a Sniper gun strapped across his back as well as our back packs. I furrowed my brow in confusion.

"Where did you get that gun?" I asked nervously.

"Found it on the floor downstairs. Figured it might come in handy." The tone of his voice was just as scary as what was going on around us. He sounded like he was in flat our survival mode; All feeling and emotion had been shoved aside, and he was practically a shell of who I knew him as.

"Zack, where are we goin'?" I asked, barely even able to get my sentence out from being knocked around by so many people.

He didn't answer me. He dragged me down the stairwell, although I wish he hadn't. The downstairs was worse than upstairs. Those things were in here, those sick people. There was blood on the walls, people screaming out in pain. What all had happened just in the few hours that I had been asleep?!

Zack pushed and shoved his way through the people, dragging me along closely behind him. He had such a tight grip around my wrist that I was sure bruises were going to form afterwards. All in all, the sound around me was white noise. It was hard to make anything out aside from static.

We got to the front door of the building and I saw a bright light coming in from outside. It was then that I actually saw what it was; Fire. My jaw dropped clear down to my feet as I looked at a lot of the buildings that had previously been fully in tact, now up in flames. Police cruisers and military vehicles that were here to help us has been overturned.

I stood completely still, despite Zack trying to pull me along. I just couldn't seem to take my eyes off of the scene in front of me. I caught sight of one of the sick chasing a woman down the street not even ten feet in front of me. She had obviously been running for a while now, as she wasn't really going that fast. Her feet were beginning to drag across the ground from fatigue.

"Help me! Somebody help me!" She screamed. But nobody came.

It was then that she tripped and fell with a grunt onto the pavement below her. The woman that had been chasing her fell down to her knees, hovering over the screaming woman momentarily before bending down and sinking her teeth into the woman's shoulder.

I screamed at the sight of someone actually taking a bite out of someone. The woman screamed even more because of the pain, her blood flowing like a waterfall from the fresh wound that she acquired. The sick woman didn't even care, she just kept biting at her, taking out piece by piece and actually eating it! She was like a rabid dog.

Zack let go of my wrist and brought the sniper rifle around to the front of him and he used the butt of the large gun to smack the sick woman in the side of the head, knocking her off of the screaming woman. The sick one, just like the man that attacked us at our house, just got right back up after staggering a few times, now heading towards him. I looked down and saw that the woman that had gotten bit was barely moving now, and barely making any noise. She was dying, that was very clear.

I looked back up just to see Zack hit the sick woman once again in the head, causing blood to splatter out and drops to land on Zack's clothes and arms. He hit her again, and again. Finally, she fell onto the ground and he just kept hitting her until her skull was completely bashed in and she was still.

Zack looked back at me, small spots of blood littering his face and he nodded his head towards where he had parked the SUV earlier today. With my feet no longer feeling like lead, I began running behind him towards our vehicle so that we could leave the city.

Corpses were strewn all along the streets and the sidewalks. The air was so thick with the smell of blood that it almost made me gag. More of the sick ones were crouching down over these dead people and eating them like they didn't have a care in the world.

I kept my gaze on the SUV, which has surprisingly been unharmed. A few new scratches in the paint, but nothing serious enough to prevent us from taking it. I was so focused on reaching the SUV and not losing track of Zack that I didn't even notice the small group of four people running straight towards me from the side.

The first one, a male, ran into me head on and it felt like I had just been hit by a bus. I was thrown a couple feet over to my left, but it thankfully wasn't enough to make me fall. That was until the second person came barreling along behind the first, smacking me full on and slamming me down onto my stomach. The third, a woman, apparently didn't see me, or she just didn't care because I felt her foot connect with my rib cage, causing me to cry out in pain.

The fourth and final person had enough sense in their brain to learn from the others' mistakes and jumped over me, missing me entirely before turning around to pick up her fallen friend that had tripped over me and continue on with the others, not giving me a second thought.

I curled up into the fetal position and clutched at my ribs, finding it extremely difficult to catch a breath. Pained groans escaped my lips and I squeezed my eyes shut, willing myself to just get up and run the rest of the way to the car. I looked around, even though my eyes were hazy to see if I could find my brother.

He was no where to be seen. Had he just up and left me? Maybe he didn't notice that I had gotten knocked down and he still thought I was right behind him. Was I even going to be able to pick myself up and find him again among all of this mess?

I heard a loud snarl come from close behind me. I turned my head so that I could see over my shoulder and saw one of the sick people crawling towards me, hunger in his eyes and mouth wide.