AncilThe map was exactly what I wanted. There were checkpoints for many places that I found useful: groceries for food, police stations for weapons and schools and hospitals for shelter. Even though some of the checkpoints on the map could have provided us with some major leverage to get to Mas Camp it was still only Sara, her three siblings and I. There was absolutely no way that we could reach Tobago safely. We needed numbers and we needed numbers fast. There was also absolutely no way that Sara and her siblings could survive in their state. I found myself thinking just like Sara. Thinking that it was either me or them and that risking my life for a…..friend, wasn’t worth it. I wasn’t sick but I was hungry and the food supply was getting low, really low. Making food runs wasn’t easy because firstly, I had to find a working car and travel to a city that could be blocked off by abandon cars. The fact that there were killer jumbies walking around made it much harder and it seemed that more of them were starting to appear in the cities during the day. I couldn’t explain why but I also noticed a lot of them giving me very suspicious looks even though I had my shades and hoodie on. It scared the hell out of me every time I passed by. Food runs were getting more and more risky so I needed to conserve as much food as possible but with Sara and her siblings in my house, that task seemed impossible. I had to do something. My teacher said in the recording that it was survival of the fittest and when the food went low his friends had tried to kill him. I didn’t know Sara as well as I should’ve so I wasn’t sure how she and her siblings would react if the food went low. They may become aggressive just like Mr. Davidson’s pals.
“You okay Jed?” Sara asked when she realized that I was standing there in deep thought staring into space.
“Yeah, yeah I’m good,” I answered putting on a fake smile. In an attempt to change my thoughts I stuffed the map into the bag and went to one of the desks that I had sat at while I was in the school, imagining myself wearing the light brown shirt and dark brown pants of my uniform. “I did geography in this class. I used to sit right here and stare straight at the board like if the things on it had actually meant something to me,” I stated while staring at the white board which had some remains of algebraic equations scratched onto it. Some of the classes had advanced touch boards but not all. The school couldn’t afford touch boards for all the classrooms. “I never used to pay attention. My mind always used to be on my dreams. I wanted to be an underwater welder. As a matter of fact, everybody in the school had big dreams. Some wanted to be lawyers, doctors, dancers, writers. It’s a shame that all of them had to die before their dreams could come true.”
“You don’t know if they’re dead.”
“There’s no way that they could survive this,” I said.
“You survived.”
“No I didn’t. Jed died a long time ago.”
“Bullshit!!” Sara shouted.
“I’m serious. I’m just not the same person I was before and I fooled myself into thinking I was when I rescued you and your siblings. The thing is, you were right. I’m not a hero” I said.
“Where are you going with this?”
“I was doing some thinking and…” I hesitated for a while then continued. “You know that food is getting scarce and supplying for you, your siblings and me getting harder and harder every day. The way how things looking now I — I don’t think you could live with me anymore. Food supplies running low and is only a matter of time before we both die of….”
“So after everything that you do, you’re just going to bail?”
“I’ll pack some supplies for you to last for a while then you could leave first thing in the morning.”
“I’m not leaving in the morning.”
“What?”
“I’m leaving now!!” She exclaimed as she turned out the classroom and stormed down the corridor.
I quickly ran after her, yelling her name but while she was running down the corridor she scraped her leg against a small piece of metal protrusion that was poking out from the metal railings lining the corridor. She fell to the floor with a stream of blood along her leg. Before I was able to reach her a loud deafening bird like roar bellowed throughout causing the whole place to shake. The first roar was then followed by multiple other roars and then the sound of loud and heavy flapping. REALLY LOUD AND HEAVY FLAPPING!!
