I jolted awake to arguing. I slowly got up and went downstairs, no one had noticed me yet. I listened to what they were saying.

“We caught another one in our trap! They just keep coming and coming… We’re gonna run out of the cure at this rate,” Myriad said to Ryan. Myriad’s the braincell of the group, she has a myriad of knowledge, she fought in the first wave of the zombie apocalypse. She's also my motherly figure. I’m part of the second wave, I was infected but they found a cure in time.

To clear things up, the first wave of the virus mainly affected adults 18 and over and the second wave mainly affected children 17 and under. Now I’m part human and part zombie. To describe myself, some of my skin is a zombie color but doesn’t have an odor, one of my eyes changed color from green to red, and sometimes I go feral like a zombie. I have medium long, brown hair with a blonde patch from when I was a zombie, and I’m a little tan. All of my side effects from being a zombie are immutable.

Myriad looks at me, “Good morning Taylor, feeling okay?”

I nod, “Just have an abysmal hunger,”

“A hunger for what?” Ryan asks.

“Grilled chicken,” I blurt. Myriad and Ryan laugh at that. I giggled.

“For breakfast?” Myriad asks. I nod.

“Right away, Ms. Walker,” Ryan teases me a bit. He teases everyone, but he picks on me the most. I giggled again and looked at my fatherly figure.

Myriad takes off her dark purple hood and long ginger locks come out. I look at Myriad with puppy eyes.

“Go ahead, Taylor, you can do my hair. But don’t make me look like a buffoon,” Myriad smiles. I do her hair in a braided crown in a benign way as Ryan went to make breakfast for us.

It’s just Ryan, Myriad and I who live in this place, we have allies of survivors around us. We’re the cache because I’m the most important person right now.

I was brought back to the real world when Ryan called for breakfast. I go into the dining room and sit down in a chair.

When he served me my plate, I was confused. "Why does it have sprinkles on top?" I queried Ryan, we had to save sprinkles for special occasions.

"Today is something special, can you tell by the sprinkles?" Ryan smiles.

I shook my head, I've never seen these sprinkles before. "No, sorry, I have no clue, " I frowned.

Myriad walked in and smiles. "Today is a special day, it's April 15th, right?" She asks me.

"Yeah, what's so special about that, well, other than the day the zombie disease was found… Before it… Spread 13 years ago?" I ask, confused.

"Yes but no, that's not what we're celebrating. It's your birthday, kiddo." Ryan smiles.

"So I'm 13 now?" I squeal.
Ryan nods, "Eat up kiddo, we're going scavenging today," Ryan smiles.

That day… Everything changed when I saw that bracelet on the ground… I knew something was wrong.
The matching bracelet I had on.

The matching one that I gave to Ryan when I was 6… he had gotten turned… hadn't he…?