The Survivors - Navya Jain

Marie didn’t know how long she had been trapped. She’d been screaming for hours but her cries of help were drowned in the noise of all the others.

It had all started on a beautiful day, the sun shining brightly, birds in the forest. She had been heading to school and then they came. They were not aliens, she knew that. They were humans gone rogue. Within minutes the world disrupted into chaos. In the second period, she and her classmates were ushered out of the schools and into their houses. 

but Marie had been left behind she was in the bathroom, as soon as she heard the bustle, she had tried and tried to get out, but the door was stuck and no one heard her in the commotion and hustle of getting out as fast as they could. 

In the bathroom, she had started to panic, and a strange claustrophobic feeling crept up inside her. She had banged on the doors, with no luck. 

Finally, when she managed to get the door to the cubicle open, she ran out in the halls, only to find out that al the doors had been locked and there was no way to get out.

She had had a panic attack right in the middle of the hall sinking to her knees, in panic and shock. She had tried to calm herself down, she was fighting a battle with herself while the world was ripped apart.

Marie was still trapped in the school building, the people thought that it was abandoned so no one tried to enter it, which was lucky. Marie had no idea what was going on, the news was a mess, with reporters sitting in a building before somebody barged in a and shot them. There was one thing was for sure this was the reckoning. Marie didn’t know how long it had been, but it had been at least three days. The only reason why she was alive was because of the food supplies in the cafeteria, she had tried to eat as less as she could and she slept in the classroom on the sheets and mattresses in the drama club.

Her mind was eroded with worry and sadness. She had no idea if her parents were all right. The last time that they had talked they had told her to stay put, to not go out of the school and that it was the safest place for her to be. 

She hadn’t argued, instead, she had gone along with it. But when she had tried calling them a few minutes ago, they had picked up. Marie knew what was happening outside. She had access to the surveillance cameras in the school. There was a lot of blood. The armed men were falling but so were the common people. It seems as if the scales were balanced as if there were as many bad people dead as the innocent ones. At this rate, there would be no one left.

This raged on for days, Marie lost track of time as she stared into the black and white surveillance footage all day and the news, which was clueless about how this happened and why it happened.

After what felt like months, there was silence absolute stunning silence. Marie woke up to the silence that she had never experienced. She thought it was safe to go outside, that maybe the armed men were defeated, just maybe her parents were alive.

She went out, slowly, hesitating as she left her safe place. She was wearing clothes she had designed herself from the various outfits in the theatre. 

As soon as she stepped out, she felt like sobbing. There was no one alive around her, she saw her friends lying, with weapons in tighter bodies, their eyes blank and lifeless. She saw the armed men, dead as well.

Sobbing she made her way around the block. Each block was covered with dead bodies. She and her way to her house and entered, the living room was completely trashed, vases were knocked over and in the corner, her mom and dad lay on the carpet dead with another man, from whose chest stuck out a knife, one of her mother’s as she recognised.

She sunk down beside her dead mother and father and closed their eyes and tried to cover their wounds the best that she could. She turned on the news, static.

She took her car keys and headed out. She drove till she was far away from her town it seemed as if she was the only one alive. Which sucked.

Little did she know, one person was also alive in the world not very far away.

***

Cole didn’t want to live, everybody and anybody he knew was dead. For the first time in his life, New York was silent. Dead silent. Literally.

He was at the supermarket ditching school when he should’ve heard the announcement but he was listening to songs and he was in the bathroom. When he got out, the supermarket was abandoned. The windows were boarded up and the old man in the toilet was still there. He too hadn’t heard the announcement due to some problem in his hearing aid.

The dude was like 97. He couldn’t live for very long though, even though he took his medicines every day from the pharmacy, he died due to a heart attack in the night.

Cole had wanted to get out but the weird people with guns were on a rampage, destroying everyone in their path getting destroyed as well.

They’d even come in the supermarket, but after seeing the old man dead on the floor they had headed out, while Cole was hiding in a big box in the supply closet of the bathroom.

After they had gone back, he boarded up the door and spent many days in the supermarket, he had almost everything that he could’ve needed. He had food, water and clothes. There was even a small stove where he could make food. 

After what seemed like a century, for the first time in days he heard nothing. Silence. Not the screams of the people getting slaughtered and nor the loud sirens and sounds of gunshots. 

He stepped out and immediately stepped on someone’s hand. With a yelp, he jumped back. The person was dead.

He walked back to his apartment. People lay dead on the sidewalk, in their cars and in the lobbies of their apartments. He entered his own, trying to ignore the blood smears in the elevator.

As expected, his father lay dead in her room. He closed his eyes in a silent prayer for her soul, tears streaking his face. He didn’t want to be in this toxic apartment anymore. He would’ve taken his mother’s car except they didn’t own one. 

He headed down again and got in on elf the many cars in the road. He drove back to the supermarket and took everything that he could. Taking one last look at his city. He drove away. What broke his heart the most was when he saw his sister and his girlfriend dead along the way. His little sister, Abby, gone.

He drove away, it appeared as though the men with the guns had been killed too. They also lay in the streets, knife and bullets in their chests and stomachs, even their heads.

He wanted to get as far away from this city as he could. He couldn’t live here knowing that everybody he knew had died here.

It seemed as if he was the only one left in the world of the late. 

Cole drove until he was somewhere that he didn’t even know. He only stopped when he needed to eat or drink or when he saw a grocery store and he loaded up on supplies or took a bath. In his way, he didn’t see one person alive. He stopped at petrol stations and was surprised to see that the tanks were still loaded. Thank god he didn’t have to pay for anything. His pocket money wouldn’t have lasted a day.

He had no idea where he was, he had probably crossed Canada judging from the prairies that stretched around him. He entered another town and he entered a house. He crashed in one of the beds.

It was dark. He stared up at the stars still glinting brightly as if it didn’t know what had just happened. The only living beings he saw were cats and mice.

he closed his eyes, letting the tears fall, the world had ended and he was the only one alive. The only one left to endure the pain.

***

Marie drove out of town but then, after seeing that no one was alive she took a truck, collected supplies form towns around and headed back to her town. She was gonna die of old age, she knew that but she would at least die in the town where she was born and raised, where everybody she knew had been slaughtered. 

Marie headed back and started by picking up people body’s and burying them in the graveyard. There was less space to bury the dead, so she ended up burying them in their garden’s front lawns, the park, anywhere she could. The armed men, she burned. She watched as their bodies burned in the fire. in her heart hate boiled for these people who had killed her family, her friends and probably everybody in the world.

 She headed back to her house and curled up in a ball and slept for a few hours, waking up every once in a while.

This routine continued for days until she had nothing left to do, all the bodies were buried and now she had started cleaning up the houses of the dead, just to keep their memory alive.

She was just done cleaning up her neighbours' house when she saw a car, a BMW heading towards her town. She tensed. What if these were one of the people who had killed everybody and he or she was coming to finish her off. 

She ran inside and came out with a gun. 

She didn’t know how to shoot it, but she did know how to pull the trigger.

***

Cole drove into a town in which there were no dead bodies lying on the streets. He was so surprised he slowed down, there were no dead bodies but there were gravestones in every lawn and park, not gravestones exactly, just big pieces of rocks. 

When he saw what he did, he almost slammed his head on the steering wheel. 

There was a girl standing in the middle of the road, as surprised to see him as he was to her. She tensed and then she ran inside one of the houses and came out with a gun.

Cole stopped as soon as she did that, in the middle of the road and came out with my hands raised.

“ Hey!” He shouted over to her.

She tensed again. “ I am not here to harm you, look?”

Cole gestured at his hands.

Cole looked at her and realized that she was pretty. She wore shorts and a tank top. Her blonde hair was tied up in a ponytail and she was breathing heavily.

Right now she was the most pretty girl in the world. Ignoring the fact that she was the only girl in the world.

“ Who are you? And what do you want?” Her voice trembled and Cole realized that she was terrified of him. She thought that he was gonna hurt her, maybe the same people who had come in New York had come here and she thought that he was one of them.

“ Where am I?” He asked.

“ You are in Canada.” She said, gun still raised. 

“ I come in peace. Even my, family and friends were killed by the people with the guns. I have not the intention of harming you and killing me won't help since we are most probably the only people left in the whole world.” 

She lowered the gun, still suspicious.“ What’s your name?”

“ Cole Anderson.”

“ Marie black.”

“ So can you put the gun down? you are starting to freak me out.”

She nodded and lowered the gun. Now she looked like she was gonna cry and she did, she slammed into Cole, sobbing into his chest.

“ Thank god! I thought that I was alone.” She sobbed.

Even Cole started feeling a little teary.

“ Okay now.” He muttered.

She pulled away sniffling. 

They spent the rest of the day catching up on what they had been doing and sharing stories.

The days passed as they talked and cleaned people’s houses. Every once in a while they would go out of town with a truck and load up on supplies.

One day as they sat in Marie’s bedroom, Marie looked down sadly.

“ What happened,” Cole asked.

“ It’s just we are the last people on the earth, we can’t just live like this any longer.”

“ Hey. We’re gonna be okay. There are enough resources to last two people for a very long time. We’ll make it.”

She leaned over and kissed Cole.

That was when he knew he was gonna be okay. Too much had been lost, but with her maybe he could find something, some part of him back.