Flurry [Ben Parish]

Prologue

     I had always expected the end of the world.

     Global temperatures were rising, the ocean was swallowing whole cities, and the ozone was crumbling down around us. Those in charge couldn't care less, swimming in their wealth and fortune knowing damn well that they would be long gone when the time came for retribution. I, on the other hand, was only 16 at the time and fully expected to have to pick up the pieces and suffer through the consequences when the time came. We had long since passed the point of no return, and I was confident the apocalypse would happen in my lifetime.

     I had always expected the end of the world, but never in my wildest dreams had I anticipated the Others. The Arrival brought forth a judgement day that swept the rug out from under all of us, flipping the world, the universe, as we knew it on its head.

     They came in waves. Four brutal, destructive, doom's day level waves.

     The worldwide blackout came first, at least I assume it was worldwide. There wasn't exactly a way to check as all communications were shut down. The lights turned out and they never came back on. Cars crashed, planes fell out of the sky, hospitals shut down.

     Then there was the literal waves as earthquakes and tsunamis thundered across the globe. Cities were swept away like a child's sandcastle. Billions more dead.

     Those were just the warm up. The third wave clouded the planet in the smell of pestilence and decay and painted it in blood. A new plague rolled in, leaving nothing but the white tents of quarantine and still-warm bodies in its wake. The infected coughed up blood for days, getting worse and worse until the only thing left to do was die. That's all any of us could do these days.

     We were losing, to put it lightly. Hell, I don't think we even know the name of the game, let alone the rules.

     After all that came yet another massive kick in proverbial the balls. The Silencers. Others disguised as humans, with no way the tell the difference until bullets were flying right for you. They hunt us down, one by one, and as we wait for our turn to die, we can't trust anyone we come across. They turned us against each other with no way to regroup and survive together, fight back together. Because your own survival comes first, and if you can't trust the person in front of you to not shoot you on sight, then you certainly can't trust them with anything.

     So we're on our own. I'm on my own.

     I used to have a family, a good one too. I lived with my grandmother and my two younger sisters, Kiera and Jeanie. Jeanie was barely a year old when it all started, Kiera was nine. My father left not long after Kiera was born and we never heard from him again. God, I hope he's dead. Mom died giving birth to her youngest daughter and sometimes I'm glad she was gone before it got as bad as it did. My grandmother was incredible, the perfect combination of "what kind of cookies do you want" and "get your nasty feet off my table before I beat your ass". She was also the first to die.

     She was driving when the first wave hit.

     She never came home, so the next day I went and found her car. After throwing up the contents of my stomach onto the asphalt, and then dry heaving and sobbing simultaneously for another five minutes, I pried open the trunk and carried home the groceries she had just picked up. I had to focus on my sisters. I wasn't important anymore, they were everything.

     I gave them my rations whenever I could, kept a gun on hand to keep away looters, barely slept to keep watch over them. But it was okay, as long as they were.

     And then the third wave hit. We were all fine for a long time, something I was incredibly grateful for. A month of blood and bodies passed and I tried to remain optimistic, hold onto the fact that we would be okay.

     Kiera got sick. I knew the odds. When they say that the young are most likely to survive, they mean teenagers and twenty year olds. The immune system of a child isn't fully developed and can't fight off a never before seen alien virus. So I held her and sang to her softly, wiping the blood away with a gentle hand. I watched her die a few days later, her voice croaky and rough as she coughed out that it wasn't my fault, that she loves me. It felt like my fault.

     I begged and cried for her to come back, for me to take her place. I screamed that it wasn't fair, that she was too young, too innocent, too kind. And then Jeanie started crying down the hall, so I wiped my tears and left the room. I buried Kiera in the backyard after Jeanie went to sleep. I don't think she understood that her sister was gone like Grandma, and never coming back. How could she? How could I?

     We left the house the next day, taking what I could carry and my grandfather's old tent, because it wasn't safe to stay in the infected and festering air. A couple weeks later, both Jeanie and I were hacking up blood, and I was still doing my best to take care of her despite the fact that I could feel my own body shutting down from the inside out. The disease racked through her like a steel bull in the world's smallest china shop. I held her close to my chest and felt her small body take its last shaky breaths. She told me she "wuvs me". She called me 'mama'. I didn't have the heart or the energy to correct her.

     I laid next to her body practically begging for death, needing it. I couldn't be the last one, I just couldn't. I was supposed to protect them, to keep them safe, and I failed. So I waited for death to take me like the billions of others, ready to be yet another body on the Other's hands, ready to see my family again, Grandma, Kiera, and Jeanie. My mom. I missed my mom. The way she would run her hands through my pale hair and hum until I fell asleep, the way she called me 'darling', the way she danced around the kitchen when she was making breakfast. I was ready to die.

     And then I didn't.

     My fever broke, the coughing receded, the blood stopped, my vision cleared, my energy came back as well as my appetite. I had survived. I lived when everyone I love died.

     So I put Grandpa's old shotgun in my mouth.

     I clutched it tightly, sobs coursing through me, my finger shaking on the trigger. It tasted of metal and dirt and death. I stared at Jeanie's small body, coated in dried blood and long since cold. I must have knelt on the forest floor for at least an hour as the sun rose behind me, my body stilling and tears drying on my cheeks. My hand was finally steady and my face stoic and yet I couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger. I couldn't move the gun away either.

     Then I heard a drone in the distance, and I ran.

     I lived because I was too much of a coward to die. Some say it's the strong that survive, but I'm still here because I'm weak. Completely and utterly weak.

     I keep that in mind as Dr. Pam straps me into a machine she calls Wonderland, which is apparently one of the last steps before I can join the base. Before I can be safe, or as safe as possible given the circumstances. I'm here because I'm weak, because I'm a coward. Because I'm not ready to die.