I must go on
I can’t even remember the last time that I had a brownie.
The softness of this magical and delicious dessert is now a very distant memory resembling what I thought was normal once. And believe me, I’m not the kind of girl who forgets what food tastes like.
Walking silently through the inhabited town, with it’s rotten smell uncovering my own special odor - which I have to admit is disgustingly awful - I allowed myself to have a resemblance of what was life before the disease.
What is now a bunch of exploded and torn buildings was probably a big, countrysided town, with real people passing by everyday, shopping at local stores, grabbing coffee for the go, having full conversations while watching the traffic go by or stuck in traffic cursing all those viewers that had nothing else to do all day long.
All kinds of images passed along my most deep and precious thoughts and for a moment I forgot everything that’s mischievious and cruel.
I saw my mom smiling at me, while we were on our first all alone vacation, with her hazel and compassionate eyes and honey blonde hair making me feel I wasn’t even related to that gorgeous woman.
My large sized torso was trying to fit a small Brazilian-styled blue bikini, and my short brown hair was swirling frizzy around my face and neck as I tried to pose for a picture - I needed to get at least one, Sarah said, so I’d update my social media profile pictures. Mom was beautiful in her colored two piece and black hat. She looked like one of those rich ladies that spent more time traveling than actually working.
While she took pictures of my 19 year-old self trying to look decent for whoever was going to look onto my social media records, I finally thought that we were going to be happy.
- Smile, baby! - She yelled against her hat, which just had almost gone with the sea breeze - You look stunning today!
- Are we done yet? I want to watch the waves. - I responded, immediately frowning at her. Patience was a virtue that I still needed to acquire (and I still need it now as well). She bursted into laughter as I tried my hardest to remain impassive - and failed it miserably.
That day we went to Arraial do Cabo, back in Brazil, where we stayed at the most awful house accompanied by some even more despicable people. I was sunburnt and ashamed of wearing a bikini in front of the other girls, but it also was one of my last moments of true happiness.
Right now I'm desperately needing a haircut - as my ponytail hits the size of my breasts - and all my clothes became gigantic on me.
Hunger does it to you in big doses.
I know I look like I'm sick -which I probably am, since the last time I've eaten propperly I was still a college student - but there are major and crucial concerns that make me despise all those illness related subjects.
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An almost inaudible noise brought me back to reality and I returned to my utmost and almost perpetual alert state.
I stopped in the middle of a slash - I suppose I was in a very contry-like part of the São Paulo state - and waited for the worst to come.
As my heart raced and my breath started to fail, I knew that I had to think fast and - despite of the usual dying that used to happen at this part - try to kill whatever was coming at me. That’s why I carried a knife on the sheath after all and, believe me, I was wielding it and ready for the attack when the thing came.
At first I thought it was a joke - ’cause I never saw one of those in real life, not that ugly and pultrified - but then, it started coming closer, and closer and I could feel the spoiled and rotten smell burning my nostrils as pure acid.
A real corpse was coming, faster and faster.
I cursed Romero for giving me an illusion that corpses would be slow and dumb. This one seemed quite the opposite to me.
Do not panic! - I whispered so only I could hear it - you’re smarter, you’re stronger and... YOU’RE ALIVE.
With a quick movement I deflected away from the corpse and stabbed it in the head. Now, it might seem powerful, eliminating zombies and all this pretty badass stuff but the truth is - we’re living in the middle of and apocalypse. Corpses are not the only dangers that distressed the minor community of survivors that still lasted around the globe and, to be honest, it neither was difficult or tiring.
The remaining part of the human race had divided itself so hard that we were becoming our own major enemies and, for that reason, I decided to travel by myself.
Trying to keep myself alive was easier when not trying to save someone else. That was what mom said when she left me in a camp with strangers, with the excuse that she was just delaying my thrival in being the ruler of a new world order.
AS IF!!!!
In a kind of iniciation process to their group, the campers chased me with a wild and hungry dog while I was only equipped with a switchblade.
- Cutie - an old man with a strong accent insisted on calling me that - that's how we know you can keep up with our style.
- Imagine how much you will learn from that. You'll have a chance to know how the hell looks like - Said the only woman in the group. She smelled like one bag full of sardines and her eyes looked like two fishy and slippery black peas.
The one thing they didn’t know is that I had trained for this for a long time. I knew and studied every single apocalypse related material I could find until the government finally cut out the internet and subsequently, the power supply.
They chased me for hours, while I was running into the wilderness of the Atlantic flora and working on my field reconnaissance. I saw a river nearby and noticed that the campers were avoiding it because of the riptide.
That was my chance! I was an amazing swimmer, and pretty fast on land too, given to my previous training so I had everything for a masterplan that would bring me exactly what I needed.
I tricked one of the guy campers into the river band to find me - where I knew we would be so strong in the legs - twisted around so he wouldn’t get me and stole his weapon.
He grabbed my leg and started yelling as I hit him in the head with his own weapon:
- Better give up cutie! Soon enough the dogs will have their lunch and we won't see you again. - He now was holding my waist trying to recover the gun.
The others were coming only a few meters behind us and I needed to think fast.
With one pretty straight hit on his left cheek, I dazzled him until we was gasping and nearly drowning.
That was the opportunity i took to shoot him right in the forehead with a shot that echoed throughout all the forest. The others were smart enough to run away as soon as they could - as I was armed and potentialy too close to them.
I never saw those campers again and since then, I decided that I was better on my own.
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I did good on taking care of myself and I intended to keep it that way. What I didn't expect was to find, alongside a corpse, an old friend of mine.
As I saw a white hand glowing beetween the leafs and all the dirt, I decided to lean closer because it didn't look rotten or resembled death. On the opposite - it belonged to a breathing and alive human being who was apparently dying. And when I finally turned it around, I saw her face and yelled in dispair
- AAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!
My friend Sarah was the almost dead girl in front of me.
