Day: 18. March 28, 2020

Monday

Time: 0739 hours (7:39 am)

P.O.V. - James Riggins, AKA: Alpha.

I wake to sound of high-pitched screaming and immediately jump to my feet from where I lay on the floor of the house. I turn to the sound and hear that it’s coming from Annabelle’s temporary room. I, understandably, think the worst and rush into the room after grabbing my Colt M1902 pistol from the small coffee table near the south-facing wall of the room I slept in.

When I enter the room of the little girl, I expect to see Annabelle screaming her head off because she’s being eaten by a zombie. Instead, I see her wrapped up in her blankets with little rivers of tears flowing down her face. She’s asleep, so I walk towards her quickly but cautiously, attempting to silence her before she gives our hideout away to the zombies and hostile survivors.

When I reach the little girl, I wipe her tears away and get low enough to bring her into a soft hug, waking her in the process. Her cries quiet down a little, but don’t stop completely. “Shh… It’s alright, Annabelle. You’re safe now...” Her cries quiet down again, but still don’t go away completely. “Annabelle? What’s wrong? You can tell me, I only want to help..” I say in a quiet but caring and concerned tone. I hold the little girl closer and wait for her to say something back, but she says nothing. After another twenty minutes or so, I try to set her back onto the couch but she’s clinging to my chest like she doesn’t want me to leave.

I look to Annabelle with a smile and sit on the couch with her in my arms. Shortly after, her cries die out completely and the house is silent once again. I loosen my hold on her so that she can get out of the hug if she wants to, she doesn’t move other than to hold me tighter and try to snuggle my chest. My heart feels like it’s about to explode from the look of the little girl snuggling into my chest.

She looks up at my for a moment with a smile on her face. “Thank you for letting me stay here… It was really scary out there..” She says in a cute, little high pitched voice, almost making me forget the danger she had been in, and still is.

I smile warmly and give her a soft squeeze, to which she squeaks quietly. “It was no problem, Annabelle. You were in danger and I couldn’t stand to let a adorable little girl such as you be all alone out there with those horrible monsters. But, you’re safe now. At least, when you’re with me. I promise that I won’t let anything happen to you. Ever. Hey, how old are you?” I ask, curious to know if she’s the same age as my sister.

“I’m this many!” She holds up seven fingers and I smile a little.

“You remind me a lot of my little sister. You’re almost exactly like her. Adorable, funny, and easy to talk to and cheer up. You two would’ve been the best of friends…”

I look away from the little girl and wipe a small tear from my eye. I have to be strong. Never weak. Weakness leads to my death, and my death leads to the deaths of my friends because I won’t be there to keep them safe.

After I wipe the tear away, I turn back to Annabelle to find she has a worried look on her face.

“What’s wrong? Did something happen?” She asks in an innocent tone.

I nod and a tear rolls down my left cheek, I don’t even bother to wipe it away. “To her?” Annabelle asked again, quieter this time.

I nod again and look away towards the boarded up windows of the house. “Yeah. She was your age when it happened.. We were running down an alleyway, just playing around at the time, because none of this had started yet. Well, it did, but we didn’t know at the time. Anyway, we were running around, playing with each other in the alleys behind our house. She wanted to go play on the swings in the park, so I happily said yes and we went to the park in the middle of town.” I pause, take a breath, and look to Annabelle with a gentle smile.

“When we got there, people were running towards the outskirts of the city at a brisk pace. I shook my head, thinking they had all gone crazy and nothing was wrong. So I kept walking towards the park with my sister.. Boy was I wrong about that…” I pause again and sigh quietly to myself before continuing.

“When we got to the park, there were people lying on the ground covered in blood. A few even had shredded clothes and missing limbs entirely.. I stopped at the gate to the playground and held my sister by her hand when she started crying. I backed away from the playground and turned around with her beside me, only to come face-to-face with what I thought was a human. The man’s eyes were a sickly yellow and he looked to be half dead. The man was covered in blood, especially around his mouth.” I stopped and shuddered at the memory of the first zombie I’d met in my life. “Anyways, the dude was just plain ugly.” Annabelle giggled a little at that and I smiled a bit too.

“I gripped my sister’s hand tighter and made a run for the newest edition to the park, a sturdy wooden treehouse sitting in an oak tree about twenty feet above the ground. I don’t know why they put that thing there, but I wasn’t thinking about that at the moment. My sister and I ran towards the treehouse, climbing up the rubber covered ladder. I’m guessing they didn’t want kids getting hurt by a wooden or metal ladder, so they coated one in rubber. We made it to the top and I looked below us, to see a group of ten or eleven people, I couldn’t tell because I was pulled back into the treehouse by my sister before I could get a good count. She was trying to say something, but I was too focused on the people at the bottom, wondering why they acted like they couldn’t climb up. I finally turned around and saw a little boy holding his arm, it looked like a bite mark.

My sister gripped the boy’s hand and pulled him towards me, saying “James! H-he needs help. He said some guy attacked him while he was coming here, he said the guy bit him…” I blinked and stayed silent, moving towards the boy to check his arm. He said his name was Caleb, and that he had lost his mother in the crowd of panicking people. Caleb told my sis and I that he decided to come here to wait for his mom to return, before being attacked and bitten by a random man and being saved from him by someone else. Caleb apparently took off running and climbed up the ladder to the tree house a few minutes before we climbed up.”

I looked to my watch and sighed, 6 in the morning… Damn. Better stop talking for now. I looked to Annabelle and smiled a little. She had a face that said that she was trying to make sense of what I’d said, but soon it turned into one that a seven year old should have, a smile without knowing what’s going on. She yawned while stretching outwards on the couch before hugging me and snuggling under the covers. I smiled and tucked the blanket around her, making sure she’d stay warm. I stood up and then kneeled down before giving her a tiny kiss on her forehead, to which she smiled and said ‘goodnight!’ as I left the room.

I got back into my original sleeping spot, putting my handgun under my pillow and wrapping my arms around Lucky. As I slipped into the darkness that we all call sleep, I gave one last thought before succumbing to my slumber. “I hate Mondays…”

Author's Note

I gave up the Journal style of the writing, it just didn’t seem to work after the prologue.

How’d you guys like the chapter? What are your thoughts on the story so far?

Anything that you think I could or should improve? Tell me what you think, what I should do, or what you would like to see in the comments!

I love feedback, so don’t be shy!

I’m also very sorry for the time it took to get this chapter out, I haven’t been doing too well lately. Breaking up with my girlfriend, my parent’s divorce, them fighting for custody, it all adds up to a big pile of shit that I have to deal with too.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the story and want to read more, because this thing is far from over. ‘Til next time, My Friends.