I pulled my girlfriend’s hand up to my chest tighter, gripping her close. The panic shook through my chair my body as my boots slapped against the muddy ground.
“C’mon, guys… I love new friends…” The being behind us called. He’d been chasing us since Jamie and I, along with the rest of the group left the prison.
I screamed, grabbing for my best friend, Allen, and his boyfriend, AJ. My blue eyes darted over to him, trying to see if he was a scared as I was. Allen’s face was covered in tears. Pale skin that had once been lightly coated in dirt and grime now had trails of wetness cut through it. Allen’s cheek was bleeding, dark liquid dripping down and mixing with his tears. His steely gray eyes darted over to mine as time slowed down.
‘We’re going to die…’ his eyes said to me. Tears that I didn’t realize I was crying ran down my cheeks.
“Chris!” I heard Jamie scream as her little hand slipped from mine. My heart stopped as my attention shifted to the creature that had been chasing us.
It held Jamie against its decaying chest. The blood and dying flesh was getting all over her back and covered the white hoodie that she was wearing. The shocking color of red against perfectly stark white was too much for me to handle. It had a blade against her skin, poised to glade against the slit her throat.
“AJ?” I heard Allen whisper. “AJ, baby, where did you go?”

AJ and Jamie were twins, one blonde and the other ginger. They were the two sweetest people you could ever possibly meet. They didn’t deserve this... They didn’t deserve to be dragged into this mess that I had gotten them into… This is all my fault. I should have never told them to hide in this prison.

“AJ?!” Allen cried, tears streaming down his face harder and faster. “AJ, baby, where are you?”
My eyes darted back to Jamie, seeing something moving behind her. A knife plunged into the neck of the creature that was holding Jamie. It cried out, dropping Jamie as AJ kept stabbing. I rushed over to Jamie, pulling her into my arms and letting out hard sobs. Her curvy body shook as she cried against me, wincing every time she heard the knife slice into the body.

“We need to go.” Allen breathed, patting me on the side and causing me to look up and behind me. There were more… More zombies were running towards us, hungry and angry.
“AJ, let’s go!” I yelled, grabbing for Jamie’s hand again as we dashed towards the gate that was opening up to our left.

     ****************

There was blood caked in AJ’s pale blonde hair, I noticed while we were being flown away from the prison in the military helicopter. Soldiers wrapped thin green blankets around our shoulders, acting like they would make the recent events go away.

“What happened to y’all?” A dark haired soldier across from me asked with the undertone of a Southern accent.

“We went in looking for shelter for the night...” I breathed, trying to get my lungs to work. “We almost didn’t make it out…”

He nodded at AJ, who was clinging to Allen for dear life. “He looks like he could put up one hell of a fight.” He chuckled softly, leaning his head back on the seat.

“He killed one… They tried to eat his sister so he stabbed it to death.” I said softly, looking over at Jamie. A medic was putting medicine on her throat so the little cut wouldn’t get infected.
As I looked around at my group, I realized that we had survived, that we aren’t dead. Allen and AJ were still crying, their bodies that were so close together that they almost one person. Jamie was still in shock, bright green eyes glazed over. And then there was me, the stupid one who said that we should hide in the prison.. I should have never dragged my friends into this.