MY BESTFRIEND WANTS TO COMMIT THIS SUNDAY AND I DONT KNOW WHAT ELSE TO DO TO SHOW HER THAT WE CARE AND LOVE HER, REBLOG THIS PLEASE SO SHE CAN SEE IT HERSELF
IT WOULD MEAN THE WORLD TO ME, PLEASE
YOU CAN SAVE A LIFE
there’s 7 billion people in this world we don’t deserve to lose one of them.
(Source: themileyan0n, via curiouser-andcuri-ouser)
This girl was very quickly becoming an issue in my life. She haunted every waking thought of mine, even when we were together. I would have given anything to spend every moment of the day with her.
Unfortunately for poor skinny useless me, she was infatuated with Runner 5. He had saved her, after all, and she was eternally grateful. She was incredibly superstitious and was convinced that he had saved her for a reason- that she had been thrown into our lives for a reason. The only reason I could see why she would be thrown into mine would be to make me miserable. I adored her, and she had already abandoned me.
I have the relationship skills of a newborn puppy. She was fabulous, flawless, sparkling- a bright ray of hope in the wasteland that was left of civilization. Runner 5 was confident, muscular, and smart. I am an idiot. I tried to major in Engineering in Uni, but that ended badly. Sometimes I’m thankful for the end of the world, because it meant I didn’t have to show my end-of-term grades to my parents. I had been failing. I really did try, but I don’t have the mind or imagination for understanding things I can’t see with my own eyes. Clearly, I was fighting a losing battle when it came to Alex’s affections.
That was, at least, until she came to me with tears in her eyes and a hand-shaped bruise rising quickly on her cheek.
1 I stayed by the girl’s bedside for two days. No one went for runs, and so I was temporarily out of a job. This did not bother me- I wanted to be around when she woke up. She was breathing fine on her own, and yet she did not open her eyes. I frequently wondered what color they would be- a grey? blue? brown? The Doc found me asleep in my folding chair and laughed at me. She came by to check the girl’s vitals, make sure she was okay, not dead. If she died, the mystery surrounding her and the answers we all desperately wanted to have would die with her. I didn’t think I could bear it if we never discovered from where she came.
And on the third day, there was light. She opened her eyes and spoke.
Well, spoke is a relative term. She babbled. Stuttered. Mumbled. There were no cohesive words for a solid ten minutes. “Where… What? Where is… I don’t… The box… I dropped… Lucy!”
Finally, her eyes came to rest on me. I could feel her taking me in, my tussled and greasy hair, dirty shirt, torn jeans, stubble. I wished the world hadn’t ended, that I still was clean-shaven, well dressed, handsome. I wanted to measure up to whatever she had left behind in her old township (if she had even come from one).
Her eyes were green.
And so, I became her first friend in Abel. The Doc came by while I was sitting with the girl, whose name happened to be Alex. Alex Colburn. She was the last of where she came from… a plantation house in Virginia run by a woman named Elizabeth. There had been four of them, she told me. Alex, Elizabeth, her husband Derek, and their son, Michael. She met them while running from the zombies-formerly-family-members. She had kept a motorcycle in good condition, and therefore was able to escape from basically anything. But like all machines, it eventually ran out of gas. That was where she had run into trouble. Zombies, living in a convenience store, had overtaken her while she was filling up. She dipped out, leaving the motorcycle behind, and managed to run past Derek while he was searching for supplies. He picked her up and took her home. She stayed with their small family for six months. As a fast runner, she was useful and able to contribute to their stock of food and gear. But of course, all good things must come to an end. Elizabeth got sick. There was a hospital nearby, but it was half a day’s run, and Elizabeth didn’t want them to go. Of course, they went anyway. Alex and Derek left at two A.M., to hopefully get home before sundown. Only Derek went home that night.
She got choked up, talking about that. She never went into specifics about what truly happened there. She hasn’t been able to communicate with Derek and Elizabeth since they went to the hospital. All she said was that from there, she ran north. In my head, I was making comparisons, seeing what she could do here to help, to earn her keep here. I’m not going to lie to you- I wanted her to stay for myself. She was beautiful, fast, clever- the most engaging girl I’d ever met, pre- or post-apocalypse.
As it turns out, I didn’t have to pull any strings to get her to stay- she was the most useful person in the township. She could repair basically everything- the dying generators, the radio (too bad nothing was broadcasting), even the old CD player someone had kept around out of nostalgia. She also had a thumb as green as her eyes.
We stayed there in shocked silence- the Doc with a death grip on the back of my chair and me, halfway out of my seat, nose to the screen where Sean looked up at us with an expression I had never before seen on his face- doubt, confusion, and uncertainty. The Doc broke the spell of the girl’s appearance, with swift commands in a sure tone.
“Runner Five. Bring her in now. Straight to the hospital.”
He looked up at us, where he knew the camera to be, and we could see that he was stuck in himself, alone outside the fence, with questions that we were all asking bouncing in his head.
“RUN.” The Doc’s voice was cold, and harsh. He started running.
“Open the gates.”
-
Sean walked through the gates with the girl in his arms. All those who had come to congratulate him on another mission well done fell away from him and the girl, like snow melting around a fire. He didn’t look at anyone, and no one looked at him. Everyone had their eyes locked on her face- tan and heart-shaped, with thick blonde lashes and framed by long golden hair. He made his way to the hospital and entered through the single door, taking care not to hit the girl’s head or feet on the doorframe. As soon as it shut behind him, whispered conversations erupted. The same question leapt from ear to mouth to ear, repeated a thousand times over.
Who was this girl?
-
Doc and I were waiting for Sean by an empty bed when he got to the ward. As soon as he saw us, he opened his mouth to ask the question of the day, but the Doc cut him off. “Put her down, and go get bandages.” He lay her down gently, as kind as I’d ever seen him, and left immediately. The Doc started patting the girl down, going through her pockets, and dumped everything unceremoniously onto the ground to go through later. Then she moved on to her clothes- first her shoes and socks, revealing feet with calloused soles. Then, showing no sign of modesty or embarrassment, moved to the zipper of her jeans.
“Wait”, I said. “Shouldn’t we… you know… wait till she’s conscious? To invade her privacy like this?”
The Doc looked at me with amusement. “If this is too much for your honor and integrity, you can help Sean with the bandages. But if she has any major injuries, they’re going to be hidden.” I stayed.
Pants, jacket, long-sleeved T-shirt, then another T-shirt. She remained unconscious the whole time. But when the Doc pulled off an undershirt, we both cringed. A long, thick, pale scar ran the width of her stomach, about two inches above her navel, and appeared to wrap about to her back. The Doc ran her finger on it, tracing it.
“At least two years old, this is… It looks like… Wow.” She glanced at me, worry in her eyes. “It looks like she was whipped… or burned.”
But besides the curious scar, she had no major cuts or bruises. Little scrapes and bumps were on her legs are arms, but no broken bones. But still, she did not awake. She clearly hadn’t been living on her own since the fall of civilization- she was fed well, and muscled. Which led to another question- where had she come from? We hadn’t received word from any other pods of survivors. Then again, we were three miles deep into private property, in the middle of rural Indiana- there hadn’t been many people around even BEFORE the zombies came to town.
There was something different about this runner.
Our old Runner Five had been lost on a mission. A simple recon, he was sent out to pick up supplies from the hospital for our dying township. Abel Township. While he was out there, I (Sam, the head of communication) missed a swarm of zoms. They had been in the elevator, which opened onto the main first-floor foyer of Gryphon Tower. The doors had slid apart and he was gone within seconds.
Runner Five, or as he was really called, Sean O’Rourke, was a grade-A jerk. He took more than he was allotted, demanded more shower time, more water, more food, more sleep. His only redeeming quality was his track-star title from high school. He could have outrun a cheetah if given the time to warm up. And as zombies are much slower than your average cheetah, he ran circles (literally) around the undead when out on supply missions.
He was our most valuable asset in the ATRS (Abel Township Run Squad). The fastest, the best eyesight, the most fearless. And he was gone, because I had messed up on my only job- keep the runners as safe as possible while outside the gates.
Abel Township, population 79.
I don’t know if the rest of the township truly despised me for the loss of Sean, but I was convinced that they all wanted me dead. The useless communications major from a no-name college, finally proving his worthlessness by losing our best runner.
The best, that is, until we found Alex.
Sean had found her, actually, on a supply mission that had gone surprisingly smooth. No sightings of zombies, not even a rolled ankle. He was within forty yards of the gates when his breathing got heavy and uneven.
“Hey, bricks-for-brains, I think… I found something…”
“Hi, Sean. What is it? Anything useful?”
He crouched down in the thick grass, beneath where I could see him. The Doc was peering over my shoulder; she had come over to my station when Sean had gotten my attention. The only sound in the room was the faint static and the labored breathing we could hear from Sean. Then, we heard him take in his breath sharply.
“Damn… What the… I don’t…”
He looked over his shoulder at where he had come from, checking that no zombies had stumbled into the vicinity, and then hoisted a large, floppy object over his shoulder. The Doc gasped. I didn’t understand what my eyes were showing me- I couldn’t comprehend the enormity of what he had picked up, and the consequences that would follow.
He had lifted up a human body-
A breathing girl.
2 Thunder roaring, thunder sweet
Mask the pounding of my feet
As I dash out through the night
The moon shall be my only light
Lock the door and step outside
No one held me as I cried
The rains will wash away my tears
Soothing all my deepest fears
And then I walk into the rain
No more worry, no more pain
The lightning rips the sky apart
And starts the mending of my heart
Nobody talks but everyone knows
When worlds are colliding, everything goes
Sometimes we leave what we love most
And stretch all our feelings from coast to coast.
The north and the south think that they know the best
But my heart, it belongs to the east and the west
Everyone fights but no one knows why
The one thing we can do is just say goodbye.
When you’re all alone, to whom do you turn?
When you’re playing with fire, you’re bound to be burned
Say something else, a cry or a scream
Set us all free, let us out of this dream.
Watch me fall, watch me fade, because it’s what you’ve wanted me to do this whole time. I’m tumbling in a downward spiral that faintly matches the pattern of our DNA, the story of what we’ll be and who we’ll forget and all the reasons we die in the end. You said you’d climb Jacob’s Ladder and the six degrees of why we’re separated are the six reasons why I can’t let go. You’ll be pulling my braids and teasing like we were still childhood lovers and simply friends but you’ll pull out my hair in despair and watch me scream words like knives that don’t really mean shit anymore. You lied and I lay in your arms and thought that maybe this time you’d stay and maybe I mattered at one point but in the end time keeps ticking and we all crumble to dust, ashes to ashes. Your secret wish of undying, eternal, let-me-be-the-sun-to-you love will never be realized and never be fulfilled if you can’t let yourself do the same. I’m not the monster you told me I would be when I grew up and now I’m flying out of control and you’re trying desperately to reign me back and to make me stay but sorry, honey, it won’t work and I let go and you slipped out of my reach.
You promised me the moon, but all you really did was pull it closer and fuck with the tides of the whispering ocean that we used to dance in. Your little mind games have turned me into a crawling, screaming, crying maniac on the inside and on the outside no one else can see what you do to my heart. You used to make it beat so fast it was almost a solid blur of noise and promise but then you took it and cut it up. You gave a piece to each other girl you promised to love forever while you whispered that they didn’t mean anything to you in the end. And now time is ticking way too fast and each second that grates by reminds me of all the seconds I wasted on you. I’ll never get them back and I’ll never be the same and someday I’ll stand on a garage building again, yelling obscenities about why you suck and I’ll break all the promises I ever made to you, just to provide the mirror effect for you.
It was always for you, and even though you still live and breathe it’s not the way it was. Your heart’s been chewed to bits and we’re creatures of habit and I want to know where you got yours from. The situation’s changed and the tables have been turned and now it’s my turn to show you what I’m made of.
Watch me fall, because now we’re in empty space and nothing you can do will pull me back.
I know a boy with empty eyes
But when he smiles, it’s a sunrise
He sounds like an angel; his voice, it flies
But he’s still the boy with the empty eyes
I know a boy with lonely hands
Whenever they’re asked, they meet the demands
His fingers play music while scattering sand
But he’s still the boy with the lonely hands
I know a boy with a heart of stone
Once it was warm but now it’s alone
Once, long ago, he had joy to loan
But now he’s the boy with the heart of stone
Oh, but I know a way to liven his limbs!
The fire is there but the light has grown dim
Over the ocean I’d make sure he’d skim
Oh, I know a way to liven his limbs.
Oh, how sweet. Your childhood dreams-
Watch as they fall right apart at the seams!
A painter, a cook, a ballerina with grace,
We’re brave at the top but we shake at the base.
We’re great when we’re young and we’re wise when we’re old;
But our passion, our lust, it slowly grows cold.
Don’t let your dreams go, stay fresh in your mind-
Jump on the wagon, or be left behind.
