Taken, One After Another Till The End!

• Lina Abduljabbar, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2013

He still hadn’t returned by morning. We all knew he’d been taken, just like her.
That was the way it was, ever since the dead started walking again – the Zombie Uprising that had seemed like just a stupid joke until it actually happened. How? Who knew? Why? Nobody knows. We just crouched in the darkness of the Payless Shoes storage room. Dark, so maybe they wouldn’t see us. Quiet, so maybe they wouldn’t hear us.
There were two doors, one leading into the shop itself, and the back staff door. The door into the sales floor was locked tight. It never rattled. The back door wouldn’t lock; they’d broken it when they’d come through looking for victims. Four of us had hidden behind the shelves of boxed shoes, not even breathing as they looked for us. But they seemed half blind, and finally stumbled out.
Since then there were a few more of us, terrified of going outside, tied to the illusory safety of our hiding place despite the endless craving of hunger. But then one went out, and never came back. Just like in an old horror movie, going out alone like that, the idiot. Then another two, never to be seen again.
You just go out for some food, and that’s it: they catch you and tear your head off. They’re insanely fast and absolutely merciless. But, eventually, you do get that hungry. Or maybe just that tired of sitting in the dark, hoping not to be noticed. So one night, you go out, maybe hoping the darkness will conceal you, only to be gone.
It was just two of us now. A strip of sunlight came through the crack in the door and spilled onto the floor, and so there was just a little light to see by. I noticed her looking at me and responded. In that dimness, it probably looked more like the grin of a corpse. She just snorted. Well, I’m sure I looked like hell, but then, she’d looked better, too.
We didn’t talk. It seemed we had nothing to say. Strange, how a disaster like this changes a person. So much for the old idea that the nearness of death stirs up romance, or even, desire. We would have to go soon. Out the same way like the others. If we didn’t eat soon, it wouldn’t matter if they caught us. Either way, we’d end up the same.
So I gestured towards the door, and she gave a slight nod. I stumbled to my feet, grunting, upsetting a box of Nikes.
Some of them used shotguns. Others used chainsaws or axes or crowbars. But we no longer had a choice. We’d just have to take our chances out there. Because to survive, to feed ourselves, would take more than skulking around in the dark, in fear. More than sitting there hoping something nice would plop down in front of us.
It would take brains.