Lonely Day
by System Of A Down
I pack my backpack with only the essentials. I took one last look at my room. The posters of movies and big time actors, the action figures and books, the video games next to the pictures of what my family was before the infection or as the government called it the “outbreak”.
I still remember the day the News and Internet blew up with photos and stories, the fear on my parent’s faces as they watched people maul each other to death.
As I headed to the kitchen I heard a scream. I ran to the front door in time to see my dad getting attacked by our neighbor and his wife, people who my parents had been friends with for a long time. Then I saw my mom, she almost the same as my dad but with the neighbor’s kids, twins that I had sometimes babysat, they were tearing at her stomach and she cried out again. When she saw me she yelled, “ Close the door Mauve! Close it now!” And with pain and fear lacing through me a closed and locked the door, I sat there and listened to their screams until they were silent.
I walked up the stairs I found myself in their room searching for the gun that my dad kept in the room. I pulled the lockbox from under the bed, searched for the key and unlocked it. As I pulled the 12-gauge pump-action shotgun out of the lock box, my hands trembled at first, but I forced myself to steady them. My father’s old hunting gun, black steel cold and reassuring against my palms, felt impossibly heavy. I checked the chamber, counting each round I loaded with a steady rhythm.
The smell of gun oil and the metallic click of the action were all I could hear—until my gaze shifted to the living room downstairs, where the decorative axe still hung on the mantel.
It was more than just a piece of decoration, its a relic from my grandfather’s days as a woodsman before he met my grandmother. The blade, once polished and gleaming, was etched with curling vines and leaves—purely decorative, but I knew the edge was still sharp enough to split more than firewood. My father had always said it was too beautiful to ever actually use. But I had to disagree it was too beautiful not to.
As I walked to the front door I slid the ax handle into the belt loop of my jeans and held the gun ready to shoot at anything that came running at me.
