ALIA
“Run! Keep running!” Mark yells to the others as he halts, shooting bullets behind us.
I run with them, but I don’t sense Adam with me. I turn back and find him fighting alongside Mark.
So, they’re teaming up now?
I rush back to him, letting the others leave us. Though, wherever they go, I’ll know. I just want to keep Adam within my range.
They manage to take the zombies down, but I still hear their hearts beating. “What are you doing? Let’s go!” I grab Adam’s arm, pulling him away.
“Wait, Alia.”
I grit my teeth and squeeze my eyes shut. Flashes of the past pop up in my mind. Him being a jerk and how our relationship became full of toxicity. What is his deal here? He knows I’m never going to talk to him, ever. Not in front of my current boyfriend, who’s obviously way better than he thought he was.
I turn to face him, yet I can never dare to look him straight in the eyes. “What?”
“I know you and I had a horrible past.” He says in an annoyingly calm tone.
“Yeah, you traumatized me.”
I feel Adam’s grip on my hand tightening. “Hey, man. If you’re going to talk about it now, I swear I’m gonna kick your ass.”
“No, I just want to say I’m sorry.” His dark eyes shimmer, then tears come falling down.
“She’ll never gonna forget what you’ve done, Mark.”
“I’m not talking to you, Adam.”
Adam’s voice increases in volume. “I’m her boyfriend and you’re nobody in her life. So if you talk to her, you talk to me.” His anger levels mine, and I can sense it.
“Sorry isn’t enough, Mark.”
“I know. But please, can we be friends again? Can you grant me closure? I promise I won’t bother you both, I just…”
“Look, we can work together as a team, but no closure’s gonna happen between us. We’ll never be friends again because you ruined it. You ruined it since day one.”
Adam releases my hand, reloading his rifle. “You heard her.”
Mark forces another tear out. “Please, Alia.”
Adam holds his finger pointing toward him. “Don’t you say her name!”
“I beg you, Adam.”
Adam grows more furious every second. His deep sigh produces air through his nostrils, almost looking like smoke. “No.”
I hear a stampede far from here, but it will be closer and closer any second. I say, “I told you to move on, Mark. Many times. And you never listened.” I take a step forward, now gaining the strength to confront him finally, after over two years of suffering a sick feeling every time I see him at school. Now I have the guts to say this to him. “I was never for you. I was meant to be away from you and you meant to hurt me. You fooled me with your cries once, and you can never fool me again this time from now on.”
He scoffs, more tears falling from his eyes.
I finish, grabbing Adam’s hand. “Adam and I are happy. Free from toxic demeanor, free from possessive obsessions, and free from you. I hope the girl you’ll meet in the future won’t experience the same thing I did. Or, in other words, I hope she’ll never meet you.”
We jog away, and then I hear a scream. A feminine one. “You hear that?”
Adam nods. “Yeah.”
We head in another direction, navigating where this scream came from. “Alia!”
I gasp as I hear my name. I know who it is! It’s… “Lenore!”
I dash through alleys, surprised by how fast I can go now. I’ve always wanted to test my limit in running and now I think I know my maximum speed. Jeez, I left Adam behind. But he’ll be fine. He’s got a gun with him. I’m more terrified for Lenore now, wondering what might have happened to her already.
I can’t lose her and become like me. I can’t just take that risk. The zombie virus halved the probability of the outcome of the infection. And no one is sure whether she’d turn like me or into a normal zombie. And no one wants her to become a zombie, so I have to get faster and find her before it’s too late.
As I run, I can’t help but imagine Lenore lying on my arm as I cry while she turns into a monster like me. I cry for real even though that was just an imagination, knowing that I can never live another day without her. Or if she does get infected, I’ll let the others leave me behind and stay with her wherever she wanders off. At least I’ll know Adam will be fine, but he’ll be without me. We’ve only been together for less than a week and it’s not enough. But Lenore is my best friend. She was with me for almost half my life, and I can’t risk losing her. I just can’t. I can’t lose them both.
“Alia! Help!” she calls again. I find her on top of a dumpster, kicking the zombies off as they attempt to climb up.
“Hold on!” I rush toward them, grabbing one zombie on the head and twisting it hard I can hear the bones crack inside.
The zombies don’t mind me thinking I’m one of them, which is an advantage. I grab another one by the arm, pulling it off of its body, and stomping on it on its back. Bones crack again. Then I take a bite on another one’s neck, pulling out a huge chunk of rotten flesh, and that makes the zombie fall to the ground lifeless.
Lenore screams in a high-pitched tone, making me writhe in pain in both my ears. I lost my balance by falling to my knees. Then, for a short time, I regain my consciousness around me, finding Lenore falling off the dumpster. My heart skips a thousand beats as I watch the zombies swarm around her. My fingers dig into the hard cemented floor. My bones crack and my joints twist, my fingers deforming. My nails grow rapidly into razor-sharp claws. My whole body firms up as I stand up, and then a huge roar comes out of my mouth. In a blink, as I can see it myself, I jump into the horde and swing my claws onto them, severely injuring their flesh and cutting their heads off with just a pair of hands.
Lenore drags herself backward as a zombie crawls toward her. I launch onto its back and take a huge bite on its shoulder. I munch its flesh and take a huge gulp of it. I see Lenore’s face full of terror as I do it in front of her, making me realize what I’d just done. I just blew it.
“Look out!” She points over my shoulder, where more zombies are coming for her.
I make sure the zombie I’m on top of will never rise again by pulling its head off, decapitating it from its body. Black blood comes spurting out afterward, making a little fountain into Lenore’s lower body. I stand back up again and face the arriving horde. I look through the brick walls and find more than a hundred of them coming for us.
I take a glance at Lenore as I sense her moving up on her feet. "You okay?"
She nods, terror in her bulging eyes. "Your... veins are... out."
I look down to see my arms and tiny veins make an abstract pattern on my pale skin.  My dark nails retracted back to normal, conscious of how I might look right now. "Did I scare you?" I ask, unable to look her in the eyes.
She shrugs. "A bit, yeah."
I look back at the swarming zombies and I see I can’t get rid of all of them, so I grab Lenore’s hand and drag her back onto the dumpsters, helping her climb up these walls. The bricks weren’t properly placed, which made some of them go out of the lining of the wall. I lift her up on my shoulder and, surprisingly; she is effortlessly light. I toss her up high enough that she reaches the edge of the wall. As she finally manages to get herself up, I then take my turn, helping myself.
As I get up on my knees, I notice a gun pointed at me in my peripheral vision. I look up and I see Jesse holding up the gun in front of me. She pulls Lenore behind her to keep her away from me. I sigh and chuckle.
“I saw what you did down there,” she mutters. I see her hand tremble slightly.
“What are you gonna do? Tell on me?” I tap off the dirt from my clothes and hands, then wipe out the blood below my mouth. “You know, if I had to choose between you and Lenore for my meal, I’d pick you.”
“So, we were right,” she says with a crooked smirk. “You were one of them all along.”
Lenore shakes her head, confused. “What… what are you talking about?”
“Your best friend is a zombie, Lenore. And she never told you.”
I pitch my head low as I glare at Jesse, licking the top of my lip. “She already knows, Jess.”
“But the others didn’t. Riley didn’t. And you know what she’ll do when she finds out.”
“What? What’s she gonna do to Alia? Kill her?”
She stays silent.
I roll my eyes. “Even if you’re gonna tell them, it’s still too late because you’re already dead.”
“Oh yeah?” She pulls out her phone, the gun still pointed at me. She shows me her screen where she plays a video.
I see myself eating and killing the zombies, and it’s already embedded in the chatbox with Riley’s name. I lose my glare and my heart beats faster. She’s really serious about this. My jaw drops. I can’t think of something to do with it. The video has already been sent after loading, and any time now, Riley will be watching it with my other friends. Jesse withdraws her phone, wearing a confident, I’m-victorious smirk. “You have less than three minutes for Riley to see it.”
I sigh, sensing loss on my side. Besides, if she finds out what I am, I will just have to leave them alone and be by myself until I starve to death. Zombie flesh isn’t really that tasty, which means it’s not nutritious at all. “What do you want?”
“Protection.”
I crush my eyebrows in response.
“You protect me and Lenore from the zombies until we get back to the team, and until we get to Wilmont. You do that, and maybe I’ll change my mind and delete the video before it’s too late. Then you leave us all alone because you don’t belong to us anymore.”
“Lenore?”
Lenore’s innocent eyes draw on me. Terror is still apparent in her. She’s seen me in action, so it’s normal for her to react like this. She must think: my best friend is actually a monster? Is this why she always thought she was an alien, like, years ago? She opens her mouth to respond. “You saved me down there.” Her English accent just comes and goes all the time. “And I’m still processing what happened, but I don’t see you as a monster, Alia. I still see you as you. As my best friend and now, hero.”
I shake my head in disbelief. “What are you talking about? I literally hungered for your flesh for days and you still don’t think that I should be ousted from the group?”
She shrugs. “Bit bonkers, innit? But I don’t mind at all.” She walks over to me and throws me a tight hug. Her heart attaches to mine, and I hear both of them in rhythm. “I’ll tell Riley what you did, and I’m sure she’ll think otherwise.”
“No. No, no.” I pull her from the hug. “Please, don’t tell anyone. Not yet.”
“Tick Tock, Alia.” Jesse impatiently rolls her eyes.
“Fine. Can you delete it now?”
“Sure. Lucky you, Riley hasn’t even seen it yet.” She taps on her phone and puts it back in her pocket.
“You’re a witch.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment, monster.” She flips her hair and finally drops the gun.
“Wait, is that Adam?” As Lenore says his name, I bulge my eyes at the realization that he was following me and didn’t make it up here with me. I turn to my back, finding Adam successfully climbing up on a roof a few meters away from us, catching his breath. Lenore asks, “Do you think he’s okay?”
I scan his body to check if there’s an open wound or alien blood surging in his veins, and fortunately, “he’s okay. Don’t worry.”
Lenore waves her hand above her head, and Adam grows a smile on his face and waves back. I hear him sigh in relief. “I’m so glad they’re both okay,” he mumbles as he lies down, tired.
“Adam knew first, by the way.” I turn to Lenore and hold both her hands. “And I’m thankful that you accepted me as the new me. You really are my best and my most real friend.”
“You are not a monster, Alia.” She says and then glances at Jesse, who’s now a meter away enough to not overhear us, minding her own business. “She’s only trying to gain Riley’s trust, and it’s a virus. The zombie infection, I mean. So you’re just sick and need to be cured. And I’m not only your best friend but your sister now, too.”
Her calming words bring peace to my mind, producing a smile on my face, which is instantly reciprocated by her genuine and heartfelt one.
I hope I can get the same words from my other friends, too. Especially Riley. She, too, is my best friend, and I hope she’ll accept me as I am right now and let me live. I know my secret will eventually be revealed and that I should expect the worst of it. If so, I would promise them to not take anybody else’s lives for food and to stay away from them when I get hungry. Yet, she’s too unpredictable with her views and decisions. She’s straightforward and I have a little part of me that thinks she would definitely pull a trigger on me. Or if not her, the others in the team who don’t know me well might do it instead. But whichever decision they choose, I will accept it wholeheartedly.
For the sake of my friends.