Alone

I wake up in a car...

The seats are hard. My rifle is pressed against my chest. I sigh. Eventually I muster the strength to open the door and check the traps. A rabbit is trapped in my cage. Dinner, I think. I hit it on the head with a rock. I then return back to the highway. Cars are pressed into thick traffic exiting Redbury. I grab my rucksack and get moving towards the town. I pass a lot of cars, but one catches my eye. It has a figure inside. It's dead, or worse. I move in for a closer look anyway, rifle in hand.

The man, or what was a man, Is pressed against the window. Gaping at me. He isn't dead, not really. I look through the window. I don't dare to open the window. Infection is too risky. I walk away.

When someone gets infected, they aren't themselves anymore. They no longer cower in front of a gun, or run away from danger. They are overwhelmed with one urge. To infect, to propagate, to spread, whatever you call it, it isn't good. They hunger for flesh of any kind. The virus is in the blood, so whatever water they drink is contaminated. This virus infected almost everybody in the United States of America, and I don't know about the rest of the world.

* * *

As I walk into the house the smell of death whooshes out at me. I counter the urge to vomit. A dead person is laying on the ground, ripped open. A kitchen knife is nearby. Whoever this was, they put up a fight. I make my way to the living room, then the dining room, then the kitchen. The refrigerator is full of rotting food. The cupboards are almost empty except for some creamed corn and sardines.

I go upstairs. The bathroom has some antibiotics, always useful; some clean towels, good for cleaning; and a bar of soap. A bedroom is to the right of the bathroom, it contains a suitcase with essentials: clothes, a lighter, a laptop, a lot of canned food, and a lot of money. The suitcase is haphazardly thrown together, indicating that whoever made it was leaving in a hurry. I make my way to the room to the left of the bathroom. It has a bow-tie over the doorknob, and a card. The card reads:

Jean,

Don't open until Christmas...!

-Bob

I push open the room. I slam the door. I saw a crib and a mobile, and, I don't want to think about what else.

Eventually I muster the courage to walk in. A man, possibly 'Bob', lies with a gun in his hand. He took the only easy way out. He also has a radio...

* * *

After fiddling with the radio for a few minutes I start to cook a can of beans. I then count my resources: 12 Rifle bullets, a rifle, 6 revolver bullets, a diplomat revolver, 12 cans of food, 5 bottles of water, a radio, a lighter, a backpack, a gas mask, and two Molotov Cocktails. I eat my beans, and go to sleep.

The next morning I scavenge a few cars. I also manage to find a tank. It has been looted before, but whoever did it didn't take everything. I find a grenade, a set of military riot gear, and a rifle flash-light. In the security of the tank I flip through frequencies on the radio, and I hear, could it be, a faint voice...?

I can't really understand what the voice says. I walk down the highway and try again. The signal is definitely stronger. I try to make out the words. “This is m......adio, brodcas......ll fr....quencies. If anyb.......ere, anyo......” I can barely understand, but I know what I have to do. I have to find a broadcasting antennae...

* * *

2 DAYS LATER...

Muppetfield is a nice town, aside from all the dead bodies. A roadside flower shop has gone wild. There are flowers EVERYWHERE. But dead bodies litter the streets, and that overrides the smell of lilacs. The Muppetfield church has makeshift watchtowers and wood spike and barbed wire barricades. Someone was holed up here.

Inside the church I see a figure, no, two, no, three. It takes me a moment to realize what is about to happen.

The events that follow are hard to recollect. One of the figures turns towards me. Then the others start to run at me. I shoot. One goes down. Did it die? I don't think so. The first one lunges at me. My rifle goes up. I shoot it a few times before it is dead. I try to reload my rifle but it jams. I run as fast as I can. Once I am outside I manage to throw a Molotov and light one on fire. There is a gas station to my left. Before I entirely think it through, I am opening the gas valves. Then I take cover behind a nearby brick building. The creatures, Infected some called them, get near the gas station. I hear silence, and then a deafening roar. A wave of heat washes over me as the entire gas station explodes. Others will hear, I have to get out of here...

* * *

The creatures are swarming all over the area of the explosion. Many are trying to stay away, but some are walking or falling into the fire. I am watching from the roof of a house on a hill. It is a beautiful view. The sun is setting so I will need candles, but light attracts them. After looking thoroughly through the house I find many heavy rugs, enough to cover all the windows of nearly half the house. I light a few candles. The house has a gas stove, so I manage to light it. I cook a box of macaroni and cheese. I eat ravenously, I haven't eaten since this morning. And with all the running and shooting and blowing things up, I am extremely hungry. After I eat I read a book. Some cheesy feel-good book about a dog lost in the woods, but I need to take my mind off things. I later listen to the radio hoping for the message I heard 2 days ago. It is still there. Stronger signal, but scrambled. The voice says:

“...plosion in downt... ...uppetfiel.... ...could it... ...be the... ….ilitary?”

I definitely made out one word...

… Muppetfield.

 Santa Lucia, the town where I live, is small, calm, and has a school called Jose Cecilio del Valle (he was an important politician during the Central American independence). This is where I spent my sixth grade year, and it was NOT perfect, not even close. However, I did learn something not many American kids learn at this grade: how to move around independently. I had to learn where to take the bus, where to get off, how to pay, how to run frantically when the bus is inching away before I get on, and how to remember bus schedules. A bus left 10 minutes before school let out, and I usually had to wait another hour before the next one.

We studied normal stuff: math, writing, Spanish. We did them in the most didactic way possible, copying absurd amounts of text out of books which the school either didn't care about buying, couldn't afford, or actually thought we would learn something from copying.

One day we had a science fair, note how they used the word 'science' not 'chemistry'. Kids didn't note that. Everybody brought paper volcanoes, with either Coke and Mentos, or vinegar and baking soda. One person brought instant whirlpool water, which were two bottles with some water in them, and when someone whipped them up, the shape of the bottles made a whirlpool. I made a compass from a sewing needle and a fridge magnet. The other kids declared it 'not science', as if throwing Mentos in Coke were.

One thing that really bothered me at school was the constant involvement of religion. Every Monday two people from the church would come and talk about their god (commonly known as God). Even though I understand that this offended no one since everyone was Christian, I still must express frustration with religious intervention in a public non-religious school. I sometimes felt as if much of the religious 'teaching' was directed at me due to my not being Christian, or religious at all.

At one point in September we started doing marching band for September 15, Honduras' independence day. I didn't like it. It was inconveniently early, it was hot, and it was very gender segregated. Boys did drums and shakers (guess what my options were), some girls did xylophones but most girls were 'pomponeras' or 'palillonas' which were like cheerleaders and baton twirlers. I would not do it again.

Every Monday we were supposed to sing the national anthem, salute the flag, and so on. However one thing that REALLY bothered me was near the end of the school year when military/police guys came and for one day turned the school in to a boot camp!

My school, like many schools in Central America, has heavy gender/sex divisions such as 'boys can't have long hair', 'girls must wear skirts' and so on. I was often criticized due to my thinking differently, and my colored and/or 'long' hair. I don't know how someone might like uniformity and sexism, especially in a society where everything tells you to be special and different.

Another thing that bothered me was the fact that there was SO MUCH homophobia, 'Gay' was an insult, Also they said that if men were supposed to be able to like men, then why were women made? My answer to that is: they weren't made.

You know that 'boys can't hit girls' 'rule'? Well some of the girls in the school took advantage of that and went around hitting boys with that social shield.

Another thing about girls is that they had better grades while boys were more focused on hitting each other and getting girlfriends. Girls however focused on copying that insanely long assignment about sea slugs. There were no boys with good grades (not really). All the kids in 'academic excellence' were girls, (except me). It was the same with how their behavior was. Near the end the teachers gave grades on behavior. I assume this was to be able to communicate to the parents how the kids were acting without being too personal. Girls got an average of very good, and boys got 'acceptable' because it was the lowest grade.

I did in fact manage to get a girlfriend during the school year, and no, I wasn't that attached. Actually we only lasted 2 weeks, for several reasons.

1: I only came 3 days a week so she said we weren't 'together enough'.

2: I wasn't Christian (see? It comes up again and again!).

3: I wasn't buying her a lot of stuff. Because apparently that's what girls and boys do for each other.

I was really a lot 'weirder' than all the other kids, by not being religious, not being sexist, not being homophobic, and not being noisy/not enjoying doing chaos. Which brings me to my final thought.

When the teacher walked out of the classroom, the chaos started. All the kids would jump up and start yelling, they would throw paper airplanes and balls at everyone. It was just like you can imagine. No one did their homework. They positioned people by the door to yell: SHE'S COMING!

That way when the teacher was returning everybody would be in their seats pretending to do their homework. Once I actually joined in as a guard, but I yelled nothing when the teacher came, so they would get caught. The teacher didn't actually do anything to the kids other than just shoot them a disappointed look. So luckily no one hated me after that.

School in Honduras is so different from American schools (which is the only thing I can compare it to). The whole education system is messed up. However, I do not believe I wasted my time by doing 6^th grade in Honduras, because I learned how to be independent, because I learned about all the problems in the education system, and because it was probably the only way for me to get a diploma.

I was told to be serious for the photos, also I was really bored.