My friends always told me how only the survivors write history. I’m sure they were trying to encourage me to survive long enough for the rescue teams to get here. That is, if they could find our broken-down house in the abandoned city of Boston, Massachusetts. If this were any other situation, I guess I would be encouraged by their words, but not now. It’s too late.
As of last week, I’m considered a “Darkling”. I guess it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. I mean, I’m not even feeling any pain. My problem is that I’m starting not to feel any pain at all. The disease that leaked through the water we use for everyday things is taking over faster than I expected. I wasn’t supposed to feel any symptoms until a few days later. I haven’t told Jamie or Alexa yet, but I have a feeling my older brother, Henry, already knows.

The disease that’s destroyed half of North America is called the Dark Sun disease, and there’s only one word I can think of to describe it-- madness. It’s supposed to make you go bonkers, trying to bite people like you have rabies or something. When you finally do, you go on and bite the next poor guy, and the chain goes on and on. Dark Sun kinda fits the disease in a way. It’s hopeless and crushing, and when it first happened, it’s all anyone could ever think about.

“Alice, don’t touch that body on the road,” Henry once told me, as if I was going to, “It’s full of the disease. Do you see the wounds on his head? That’s where he bashed it into the wall over there.” I know most of the stuff he tells me is just random junk to make me cry, but for a split second, I believed what he was saying. For the next two days, I wouldn’t even eat any of the food I found without checking it for worms or whatever I thought I was looking for.

Henry can be a real jerk sometimes. He turned fifteen in October, which must have made him a superstar in his mind. Thank the lord I have Jamie and Alexa, though. They’re more like older sisters or really awesome parents to me than best friends. Jamie is sixteen, making her years older than me, but Alexa is only nine, which makes me her official bodyguard apparently, even though I’m ten. We’ve been stuck together in this little garbage dump of a house since our families died from the Dark Sun in September. It’s July now, so I guess I’m done crying. Crying’s never really done me any good, anyway. All it does is make my eyes red and puffy, leading to Henry teasing me, which leads to Jamie socking him right in the guts, then leading to Alexa crying, and the circle goes on like Dark Sun for crybabies.

Today, though, I think I’m pretty close to crying. I don’t know how much longer I can last without telling anyone about being infected. What if, one day, I just wake up and forget everything that makes me human? What if I bit everyone and they all went crazy? I wish I could just tell everyone and then go cry somewhere far away where I can’t bite anyone.

One morning, I didn’t even know where or who I was. Henry tried to wake me up to scavenge before it got too hot out and I completely lashed out at him. I clawed and screamed for a good ten seconds before stopping to take in the situation. Ever since then, he’s avoided me and looked at me like some sort of cornered animal. In a way, I guess I am. I’m pretty sure he’ll confront me soon, and I already know how that would go down. I’ll probably try to bite his arm off or something, and before I know it, I’ll wake up in a cage with a bunch of scientists studying me, staring at me with the same cornered animal look.
I hate that stare so much. It’s the same look I gave my mother when she told me to run away from her. I’m afraid of that stare because it’s the one step it takes to turn you into something people can’t even consider human. It’s the kind of look a dying creature gets with every passing glance, every person that increases their pace to get away from that lonely thing hunched on the ground. That’s the kind of look I gave to my mother, the one I receive from my brother, and the one I’ll receive until I have no choice but to give in to the mad poison coursing through my veins. That’s the kind of stare that makes me something inhuman. I think I’ve made up my mind, now. I’m going to run, run far away, and get to where I won’t be followed.
That’s what I told myself the day before I ran. I’d packed my small remaining belongings from my old home into an old weathered briefcase and snuck out the window in the middle of the night. You know, it just isn’t fair that I had a strong fear of heights. I think I slipped at least three times, gripping the side of the house with white knuckles, life flashing before my eyes, the whole bit. I finally found a brick jutting out from the cracked wall for me to grab just in time for me to save myself from plummeting to the cracked road below me. I sighed with relief as the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach dissolved into a racing heartbeat and a pale face. I continued slowly across the wall, inching farther and farther to the right until I got to the next building over. It was in even worse condition than our little hut. The ceiling and second floor had been reduced to rubble, probably during one of the helicopter rescue missions. I took a leap and landed awkwardly and noisily on the charred surface of the building. In a sort of shuffling motion I stood up and went to my suitcase to check the condition of my valuable belongings-- a hairbrush, a picture of Montréal (my decided destination), a metal water bottle, and a bag of Funyuns. Deciding that they were in a good enough condition, I stood up to continue to the bottom of a crumbling staircase. I figured with the racket I made with my impact on the second floor, I would have already woken up my goofy little team along with any Darklings in a two mile radius, so I stomped carelessly down the stairs to continue on my journey.
Speaking of Darklings, I met face to face with one right at the bottom of the staircase. He had gray skin and gross purple veins that seemed to pop right out of his skin. It was paralyzed in the lower half of its emaciated body, dragging itself up the first two stairs. “What a wonderful surprise! I’m already sick you little...jerk!” I emphasized my last word with a sharp kick at its skull. It’s not like he’d feel anything, anyway. He stared through me with dull gray eyes, then crawled off to the corner to sit and grumble to himself. I gave him one more angry glare before walking off proudly like a champion boxer. I didn’t really have anything to be proud about, actually. It’s pretty easy to avoid being bitten by a Darkling. They’re pretty dumb and boring unless they smelled blood on you. If they did, though, you’d better run like the devil was after you!
I knew I wouldn’t make it very far that night, but I ended up falling right asleep after about an hour of walking through the empty city. I curled up under a wooden crate next to some abandoned grocery store. For a moment, I considered going inside to look for food, but I realized there was no way I was going to find any food that wasn’t rotten. The other people who’d survived would have taken all the good stuff anyway. When I woke up, the sun was shining down on me like it was a normal morning in July. I blinked a couple of times to get used to being in the sunlight. I had nightmares all that night, and I remember them clear as day. I dreamed of the terrible things I would encounter if I were to be caught by the military. I would be a freak show, just there for experiments and tests. The only thing that could have told me I was experiencing a dream was that the men in lab coats had rotting fruit for heads. I stood up from my odd, crumpled position on the ground. Once I brushed myself off and picked up the briefcase, I was on my way once again.
When I first had become infected, it was actually in my attempt not to be bitten. I was helping Alexa clear the rubble off a door to a cellar when I scraped myself on a ragged brick. I rushed up the creaking staircase to find the spot where we kept the medical supplies. There was nothing to clean my arm there, so I made the mistake of using some cold water dripping from an old pipe to clean myself before the Darklings smelled blood. I winced at the memory as I thought of my own stupidity. Why did I think using unclean water would help my situation? My ears started to redden in embarrassment. I looked down at my messily bandaged arm and silently cursed myself. “I’ll take a quick look, make sure I’m fine, and then I’ll move on.” I slowly unwrapped it to reveal what I thought would be a scab or scar. When I saw what it had turned into, I nearly dropped everything I was holding. There, on my arm, were sickly purple veins spreading like a spiderweb from the scratch on the upper part of my arm to my shoulder. The skin around the injury was pale grey, just like a Darkling! I started to panic. Those veins certainly weren’t purple a few days ago! At the sight of my arm, I started to grow weaker. My vision swam, and it looked as if the ground was rushing towards me. I made contact with it with a loud thud, and I saw a figure rushing towards me in camouflage. Then there was darkness.

I woke up with a start in an unfamiliar room, bright lights shining in my face. My eyes felt heavy, and I wasn’t sure which way was up and which was down. I tried to turn to the right to figure out where I was, but I couldn’t move. I then realized I was strapped down to some sort of operating table, and I was surrounded by people. Oh yeah, and I was in pajamas in public. Perfect. When I tried to get up, I heard everyone gasp as if I were a ghost. I felt a hand touch my shoulder to keep me from moving. When I glanced to the side, I realized it was my brother, Henry.

“Hey, long time no see. What were you thinking, running off like that? We were worried.” He smacked my arm, and I felt it tingle like it had been numbed.

“Where am I?” I asked tentatively. He responded with another slap to my arm.

“Montréal, stupid. It’s kinda the only place in North America that had any idea for a cure. By the way, notice anything different?”

I looked down at my arm and saw that the veins were completely gone, and the skin was restored to its normal color. I gasped in surprise, trying to squirm and get a better look at it. “How did that happen? Why are the purple thingies not there?” As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I felt stupid. They must’ve healed me, of course! Why else would I be in an operating room? I smiled and looked around at the crowd of doctors and surgeons around me. As I looked to my far left, though, I swear I caught a glance of the figure in the tattered camouflage. His eyes were tired and he looked absolutely hopeless as he saw me on the operating table. I couldn’t understand why he was so unhappy, but I didn’t give it too much thought. Right now, I was safe and healthy. I was here with my brother, and everything would be okay. I looked at everyone one more time, and a single tear slid down my cheek. From now on, everything would be all right.

Epilogue


He saw the girl stagger backwards as she unwrapped her arm. “Oh, God, please no!” The former soldier had been wandering for a week before coming to this city, and this was the first life he’d seen. He ran forward, trying to catch her before she hit the ground. There was no way he would make it, but he could try. It was too late anyway. She fell with a sickening thud, and he slid to his knees trying to catch her. They scraped against the paved road, and he felt the pain jolt all the way up his leg. There’s still hope she could be alive, the man thought to himself. He rolled her over to check her pulse, and stopped dead in his tracks as he saw the distinctive purple veins around the wound on her arm. His hope evaporated when he saw the grey skin stretching farther across her shoulder and across her face.

“No, no, no!” He slapped her arm trying to wake her up before the disease could finish spreading. He knew it was useless, but he slapped her arm again and again, helplessly trying to revive her. The girl’s eyes moved behind her closed eyelids just a little, but she didn’t open them. Suddenly, her entire body convulsed violently. The man stood up and slowly backed away. She stood up like something out of a horror movie, stumbling multiple times and falling back to the ground before throwing herself back onto her feet. On her face was a strange, lopsided grin. A cold wave of fear washed through the soldier as he slowly backed away from the Darkling. He knew without looking that he had skinned his knees and that he was bleeding, making him a target for the girl before him. The little girl-- no, monster-- was slowly stumbling towards him. The sick grin turned into more of a grimace, and she growled threateningly. He started to walk faster, then run as the girl increased her pace. He screamed as she lunged, and he caught a glance of the last flicker of real life disappearing from her eyes.