Warm Bodies: Awakening

Leaving It All Behind

Any flashback scene from here on in is from R's perspective. I didn't want to give away R's name here, so it's never mentioned ;)

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"I give up!" he yelled, kicking the corner of the bunk bed. It banged satisfyingly against the wall.

Sighing, his father reached out for him, "Son..."

He flinched away and threw open his locker. "What's the point? What's the goddamn point?!" Yanking a grey shirt from the shelf, he quickly pulled it over his head, then finally glared back at his dad.

Shrugging into his own dark blue workman's jacket, his dad stared back, his brown eyes soft.

"The point is," his dad answered heavily, "we survive."

"As what?" he asked, pleading for a real answer, "Warm bodies? A quota? So some government agency can note down 'x civilians rescued today' and feel good about themselves?"

His father finally fixed him by the shoulders. He looked anywhere but at his dad's face.

"Maybe a little of that. But-" his dad said, and as he rolled his eyes and tried to pull away, his father held him firm, "no, listen. Listen to me. You and I, your brother, everyone else they ship out of here today? We're the future. That's what it's all about. We are the future."

He finally looked his dad in the eye and snorted. "Seriously? We are the future? That's what you got?"

Warning bells went off in his head as he saw his father's face harden into a scowl. Whoops. He tried to recoup, "What kind of future dad? Is it a future where we live, or just exist?"

His dad threw his hands up in the air and walked over to his own locker, shaking his head. "It doesn't matter son. You can't bring any of your stuff, they can't afford the space, that's just the way it is. Even your goddamn ipod. Deal with it."

With a scowl to match his dad's, he pulled his favorite hoodie out of his locker, and stared down at the meager possessions he'd managed to save from home. His ipod, always by his side - he was nothing without music around him - lay amidst his favorite books, a bunch of random junk that meant the world to him, and a single vinyl record he'd snatched out of the collection he'd been building at home. Ridiculous now with nothing to play it on, but then it'd been important. He brushed his hand against a baseball he'd caught at his first live game (it almost never happened, his dad had said proudly afterwards, giving him a high five), and flipped the cover off the small photo album he'd taken to his first year of college, with a scrawled message inside. He'd never finished that year of course. Hard to pay attention to a lecture when a student everyone thought had been sleeping gets up and starts to eat his friend's face.

Until then, nobody he knew really took this zombie thing seriously. The reports were scattered, ridiculous, and delivered by newscasters trying to keep straight faces. He remembered his roommate actually laughing at the news. This had to be a joke, he'd said. A modern day 'War of the Worlds'.

But it wasn't. There was no punchline. People died waiting for one. Then they were told to evacuate, gathered up, and bussed to shelters set up and guarded on the outskirts of the city. Schools, government buildings, anything big enough to house multiple families and provide some basic necessities would do. He'd left college before they were moved the first time, and managed to pack a few things before the bus arrived.

He was lucky. If he'd still been in the city, he probably never would have seen his family again.

The thought made him pause, and he turned to look at his dad, his features softening. He sighed. It wasn't really about the ipod. About his stuff. Well, it sucked to leave it behind, and he didn't know what he was going to do without music... but, really, it was about memories. It was about hopes and dreams, about what made him who he was. About his life.

And it was about mom. He looked back down at the album, and traced his finger down the side of her image. It was the first photo his dad had stuffed into the album, a photo of all four of them, taken by an uncle at a little family gathering. They were all smiling, even his little brother who he'd just roped in a headlock. His mom had the best smile. Smiling back was easy.

It hadn't been fair. She always seemed so bright and happy. Then she got sick, then she died. It took a while. Too long. When she finally went, she didn't look too much different than some of the dead he'd seen since.

The thought made him angry at himself, and he punched the next locker.

His dad took it the wrong way, and slammed his own locker shut. "For god's sake, grow up! Your brother can't bring anything either - do you see him having a fit?"

"Dad... I didn't..." he mumbled, then gave up. "He's twelve dad. Throw him in a corner with some paper and a crayon and he's happy."

It was a silly thing to say, and he really meant it more as a joke than anything else, but it fell from him bitterly, and when he turned to find his little brother was in the room, he cringed.

"Sorry," he muttered, "I didn't mean it."

"I'm not five years old dickhead," his brother mouthed off at him, dumping his old clothes on his bunk.

The attitude made him grin, "I know bro."

Their dad was less impressed, "I don't want to hear that language out of you Brandon, okay?"

Brandon shrugged and tossed on new clothes, throwing the soggy towel he'd worn from the shower rooms onto his bunk.

His dad opened his mouth as if to say something about it, but sighed instead and went to wait by the door. "Come on guys, we need to get moving."

This was it then, he thought. Time to leave everything he owned, all of these memories behind. These pieces of himself. He stood by his locker, staring at the remains of his life for one more moment as he shrugged on and zipped up his red hoodie. From the open photo album, his mother smiled up at him, as if to say it would all be okay.

"Come on!" his dad yelled, "I don't want to be on the last bus!"

With a flick of his fingers, he quickly slid the photo out of the album, tucked it into the pocket of his hoodie, and headed for the door.

Time to go be that future.