"Crimson." I repeat his name to myself. I start to nod, "Crimson." He starts walking toward the others. Mirari! I forgot about her! I rush over and kneel by her side. She's still knocked out.
     "She's okay."
     I look to see who made the comment, and meet the gaze of the girl in this group. She has mouse-brown hair put up in braids and bright green eyes. I notice she is missing an arm and is wearing a metal prosthetic in its place. She's beautifully tall and slender.
     "My name's Cressida. She's only received a blow to the head that should have no imperative side effects."
     "Meet Cress, the Doctor of the group," the other boy jokes, "My name is Deice." Deice looked about 13. He had dark skin, brown hair in a little nubby bun, and was noticeably short.
     "Hi," I say in a continued tone.
     Cressida, or 'Cress', walks over to Mirari and slaps her face really hard. Mirari jumps awake and looks around, really confused.
     Crimson walks over to her, "Hey My name is Crimson, this is Deice, and this is Cressida. We are friendly and won't attack."
     She looks at me. I look back at her. I don't know what to think of them. She looks back at the others, "What are you guys doing here anyways?"
     They look around at each other for a few seconds, then Deice speaks, "We have a base back near the center of the city that wasn't destroyed in the explosion. We were looking for some medical supplies for Cress to have, and schools usually have a pretty stocked nurse's office. This was pretty far to go though, and not safe as we could tell when we got here," he giggles. "It's not safe anywhere outside of the city really, the people out there kill anyone who comes near them because they think everyone in the city is radiated or dead."
     "That's where we were going. I was going to stay with family because they live far enough away from the blast. They wouldn't try to though...right?" Mirari says, shook up.
"Well maybe not, I'm just saying you can't trust anyone these days."
I speak up, "So, you guys just go where ever and kill whoever? Doesn't seem like we should even trust you." It's true, 'you can't trust anyone these days', so why should we trust people who just shot and killed someone they didn't know?
"You don't have to but, we did just save your life," Crimson smirks.
He had a point. And they seemed to know their way around. And they had guns.
     "Okay."

One day into the apocalypse and I've already killed someone, stole from a factory, almost been killed, then was saved by people that I don't even know, and now am teaming up with them. Right now we are camping in the school until morning, having small talk and getting to know these three. Mirari is chatting it up with Cressida and Deice, so I sit next to Crimson. He is so handsome. His eyes are literally mesmerizing. He smiles at me, I forgot I was staring.
     "Hey, Crimson," I give a weebly looking smile.
     "Hi."
     Wow this is already awkward.
     "So where are you from?" I question, trying to continue our conversation.
     He thinks for a second then says, "Well, I graduated from Central Millan High School last year, it's near the East Side, and I was taking a year off before going to college. But by the looks of it, I won't have to worry about college," he laughs a little.
     "I'm from the West Side, I go to, or went to, this school," I gesture around us.
     "Nice school."
     "Yeah.."
     Gotta love boring conversations. I look at my palms. I notice my left hand is cut, probably from scrounging around in the factory.
     "Who were the guys?"
     This gets my attention. I look up from my hands and say, "Guys?"
     "Yeah the ones holding you two hostage slash trying to kill you."
     He must've seen Jax's dead body. Or knew there must have been another by my psychotic rambling. "The one that was.. Dead when you got here was Jax. He went to my school and we didn't really talk. I'm not surprised that he did what he did though, from what I hear he's pretty reckless," I say. I don't want him to know that I actually knew him. "The other one, I think, was his older brother. But I don't know, I've never seen him before," I look at him, and he has a calm look on his face. "Oh, and thank you so much for saving me- us." I smile.
     "No problem."
     I walk over to a bleacher and lie down on it. I soon fall asleep. I dream of me killing Jax over and over again. One time he doesn't die. He instead grabs the scissors from my hands and stabs me in the chest. I jolt awake. Everyone is awake except for me. I decide to join Mirari sitting on the floor.
     "Good morning sunshine," says Mirari.
     I smile at her. The other three are checking their bags and getting ready to leave. Nobody says a word. Mirari and I watch them. I decide to break the silence, but make sure I'm quiet enough to where only Mirari hears me.
     "Hey Mirari," I whisper, "do you trust them?"
     "Yeah. Especially Cress, she's really smart and used to be a doctor. That should be really helpful if it ever came to it. If anything I don't trust Crimson."
     "Oh.. Why not?"
     "He just gives me the wrong feeling you know? Like, he seems really... edgy."
     Soon after, Crimson walks over. "We're getting ready to leave, come one."
     Me and Mirari join the group. Deice hands us each what looks like kitchen knives, and some kind of makeshift sleeve for them.
     "Since you seem to have lost all your stuff, and some defense would be helpful out there," He smiles.
     "And I don't want to give you guys the 'wrong feeling'," he flashes a teasing smile at Mirari, but looks at me with a straight face. He heard us? Oh well. We follow behind them and start to head towards the exit. I hold my knife in my hand, just in case. We open the doors, and I finally see sunlight.

     I don't know where we're going. All I know is it's towards the middle of the city. I'm totally against going there, there could be tons of the radiated, or people who want to kill us, but I really don't get a say in this decision unless I want out. There's strength in numbers, even if the numbers you have aren't exactly the ones you'd want.
I stay towards Mirari. We've been walking for about one hour. How far away is this base? We continue walking until Crimson stops in front of us, causing all of us to stop. He holds his finger up to his lip, signaling to be quiet. But, why? He slowly reaches for his machete, then sneaks towards one of the houses. I look at the house he's walking to, then I see it. One of the radiated. This was the first full-fledged "zombie" and I'm freaking out. It had melting skin, with much of the jaw bone showing, and glowing yellow eyes. This creature looked up at us, then at Crimson crouching by a standing wall. It lets out an ear-splitting screech, loud enough for anything within a mile to hear. Crimson swings back and slices it's head off with one, easy blow. I'm shaking by this point, that thing was terrifying, but Crimson handled it with ease. If I were in his place I would've frozen up and gotten killed.
He walks back to us, "We should get going right now. That screech probably alerted any others in this area, we don't wanna be caught by more of those." He looks around at everyone, but stops when his eyes meet mine. He blinks, then announces, "Oh, and you guys might want to pull your weapons out. Just in case."
"I'm way ahead of you bud," I say. He nods once, then starts to jog off. We follow, keeping the same pace as him.
Just as we round a corner, I hear another screech. Everyone stops. I turn around to see one of the radiated about to pounce on me. I put my knife in between me and the creature, and get pushed to the ground. The zombie lands on my knife, it going through his neck, but it doesn't kill it. It's struggling on top of me, trying to bite me with its evolved, razor sharp teeth. I use all the strength I have and pull my knife sideways, slicing through its neck. I kick the thing off of me and find Cressida coming towards it. She takes a step, and chops it's head off. She grabs my arm and starts running. I look around to see a horde of about 15 radiated surrounding us.
We have nowhere to run. We have to fight. One of them stumbles up to me, then lurches it's body towards me. I dodge it, barely, then turn around and stab it in the head. It seems to work, like every cliché zombie story. More of them start coming towards the commotion. The cluster growing and growing. All I can hear are screeches. Our group is being closed in. I bump into Mirari and look at her. She looks terrified, but I'm sure I do too.
We turn away from each other. I lunge at one of them before they can attack me, and slice it's throat. That, surprisingly, works. Liquid pours out of the wound, but it's not blood colored. It's a burnt orange color, like rust. The radiated falls to the ground, shaking and screeching in pain, then stops. I look around. Where's Crimson? Did he leave us to fight for ourselves? I frantically search for him, then see him by some house that was held together pretty well.
Crimson yells, "Into this room! Hurry!" He holds open what looks like the door to an underground storm shelter. We jump in one by one, then lastly Crimson.

"Alright, is everyone okay?" Cressida asks.
Everyone mumbles a yes.
Deice sits down in a chair, "Great. Now we're trapped down here!" He's cut across his left eye, but he seems unaffected by it. He wipes the blood with the bottom of his shirt.
"Not trapped, we just have to wait until those things spread back out. They won't wait for long, maybe a few hours," States Cressida. "So everyone be quiet. If they don't hear us for a while, they'll think we're gone."
Everyone takes a seat somewhere and shuts up. I lie down on a cot and start to think. I wonder if those things can remember anything before the radiation got to them. I wonder if they feel possessed by the rads and all they can do is watch as their body rips apart other people. That would be a terrible fate. I feel some tears slip down my face, then quickly wipe them away. I have to stay strong. It's all I have.

Author's Note: Okay so, I have an idea but I don't know how good it is. I have an app where I can create animated characters and make little videos with them. I want to try to make "previews" of the next chapter with it and post it on my wall. Also, you can kinda see how I think these characters look in my mind! The only problem is it's not 100% accurate to every detail of this story of course because it's a free app, but I feel like it would be a fun thing to do. Let me know your thoughts on this! <3 Baygaa