The last stand of the human race

CHAPTER 1

                Ruby's point of view

"YO! Collins! Will you move it already? I’d like to get it over with this millennium if you please…”

“Stop screaming!” Tyler urgently whispers in my direction. “What if one of them hears you and decides to come after us? Then not only we’ll be dead, but the whole mission is toast. Everybody’s counting on us to see this through!” he went on, coming towards me and Griff with those huge steps of his…  

“The almighty hero of the human race!” I whispered yelled in his face. “Do tell me… we’ve scouted this area countless of times and found no one… who do you think is going to come after us now? You know they're not fast, and nobody besides the three of us is crazy enough to venture here on a suicide mission!”

"No one is as good as we are you mean..."

“Cut it out you two. We don’t have time for your bickering. Ruby, Tyler is right. This mission is important, we should focus. And you…” Griffin said pointing his finger accusatory towards Tyler. “Stop being so tense and stop screaming at her! We’re a team, but most importantly, we are friends, we are family so don’t start this bullshit!”

None of us said anything after that. We kept going in silence because the boys were right. Even though we never found someone during our previous scouts it didn’t mean that we couldn’t encounter someone from other factions today, or even one of them,  and what we needed to do was too important to let those sons of bitches screw it up. So all three of us paid attention to our surroundings until we reached the abandoned building. Before the outbreak from over 100 years ago that started the chain reaction of atrocities that led to the “end of the world” as the people from back then knew it, the building was used as a shelter for homeless people. Or at least that is what our people could find about it. It must’ve been a goddamned good one since it had a build in bunker filled with provisions in case of an emergency. Funny that they would take so many precautions for homeless people back then but no one did a thing to help them not be homeless anymore… It was a screwed up world back then, not that now the world wasn’t just as screwed up but at least we take care of everyone of our people, hence the mission. 

A few weeks ago some people from a neighbouring faction set fire to all our medical supplies. Everything that we developed from the little we had after emerging back out of our own bunker was gone. Even the notes about the substances that certain medicine contained and how to make them, burned. Without all of those we were in big trouble since winter was right around the corner. So, our leader and a few others searched every document we still had from before the world went up in flames so they could come up with a solution, while the rest of us gathered any plants that might have medicinal properties we could find. Eventually someone found a few records about this place so they sent the three of us in hopes of finding medicine in that bunker, maybe other supplies we could use too but the priority was the medicine. 

“Ok. We all know that this place is awfully close to their territory, so let’s hope that they didn’t raid it already, or that another faction didn't beat us to it. I go in first. Ruby you come right behind me with Griff hot on your tail. We stick close together, guns at the ready. You see someone, you shoot, alright? One in the head, one in the heart.”     

“We know, Ty. It’s going to be ok.” I assured him. For all his faults, Tyler Collins was an overly protective friend and the most trustworthy person I have ever met. He was the guy you wanted beside you in a situation like this because he’d literally take a bullet for the people he cared about, but we were in a far more complicated situation then that right now.

We didn’t make it to the building though. We didn’t even get to take two steps when the building exploded.

“Get back! We’re too exposed! We need to get back into the woods!” Griffin screamed at us while trying to drag me back with him.

I was completely numb. How did they know we were coming here today? How did they found out about this place? Our last hope before winter made it impossible to travel just went out with a boom. Where the hell did they get dynamite anyway? They weren't that smart or capable for that matter...

“Ruby, come on! We got to take cover.” Tyler screamed at me, waking me up from my daze. “We don’t know how many of them are there, we got to go!”

We ran back into the vast forest and hid in the trees, waiting for the crazies to make an appearance so we could take them out. After forever we heard voices coming our way. There were at least ten of them, all in different stages of the disease, all of them frantically searching for the three of us. They looked awful and hungry. I still couldn't believe they orchestrated something like that, i didn't thought there was any logical thought left in their brains, just the need to feed, to kill, to survive. I saw Tyler out of the corner of my eye motioning for me and Griffin to wait so we could get all of them in one hit. We let them all gather bellow us and then we opened fire. It was over in a matter of seconds.

 “So… anybody want to take a guess at how they knew we were coming?” Tyler cheerfully asked, looking more alive then i've ever seen him. He hated this disease with a passion and really took pleasure in eradicating the world of anyone who was infected.

Neither of us had an answer to his question though, we just stayed in silence among the dead bodies of people who in another time we might’ve called friends or even family. That is what the disease did. It took our loved ones away from us, making them crazy and enraged, turning them into monsters beyond recognition. It starts pretty simple; you have a bigger appetite, nothing strange about that since there are times we barely have food, then before you know it your skin starts to lose it’s color despite the fact that we’re always outside in the scorching sun and with that your veins turn black and parts of your flesh just starts to fall off. None of them are kept in communities at this point, most of them are banished right when the first symptoms appear, and after that some of them just kill themselves, those are the selfless ones, but most of them travel here, the forbidden area where all the diseased have taken residence, travelling in packs like the one we just killed so they can stay alive to kill the rest of us, because the only nourishing food they can eat at this point is human flesh. Life’s funny that way.

“Alright… let’s just see if we can still enter the bunker, take whatever we can find and get the hell out of here, because we made a lot of noise and more of them are surely going to come our way” I told the boys and headed towards the demolished building.

Turned out, whatever the real purpose for that bunker was, it was well build and thanks to the explosion those dumb monsters provided we had no problem getting in, but what we found inside was more than what we came for. And we didn't know that at the time but it was the answer to all our problems…