It all started when we got a news report from the Washington National News Reports or what we like to call the WNNR. The WNNR is never really active unless it’s either life-threatening to the country, or it’s about some celebrity that passed away. Frankly, I don’t really pay attention to it, but this time, something caught my eye, it was about a virus that was spreading across the state at an alarming rate.

     Scientists describe the virus as a mind-controlling parasite with a high death percentage. We also got told that common animals like dogs and cats started to attack and take away the skin of their owners. Months have passed and the government has noticed that the virus was not calming down, instead it was spreading even faster. 

    Our president made the stupid decision of sending a nuclear bomb to the original location in order to “stop the virus” he said, I am 100% sure he made it worse. Five days have passed since the bomb dropped and everyone got an Amber alert informing us to visit our nearest emergency fallout shelter which, to be honest, I didn’t even know a fallout shelter was being made.

    I was accepted to enter the shelter thankfully, the main platform took me and a couple of others down to the main floor. There I made some new friends. This consisted of Jake who is an arms dealer and weapon specialist, Alex who is a cook that worked for a 5-star restaurant, Ana, a nurse who retired so she can be with her family more, and Rey, a heavyweight boxer who retired after settling his 15-win streak. Next was Zach, when I first met him, he looked like he was up to trouble. When I walked away he sounded like he was talking, but when I looked back at him no one was nearby. He describes himself as an extreme daredevil who did life-threatening stunts for fun, FOR FUN. Last was sergeant Michael, who left the force 4 years before all this happened. 

 Everyone had a gut trust for one another. This feeling went away from me almost immediately when Zach suggested that we go back to the surface and try to salvage anything that was left out there to keep. I, Alex, and Ana thought it was a horrible idea but Jake, Rey, and sergeant Michael said it would be beneficial because we can find weapons, ammo, or food in unattended buildings.

    But then we remembered that we were told by the woman at the elevating platform… “We will not reopen the fallout gates under any circumstances, even if it’s five minutes outside the bunker doors. If you try to re-enter the shelter, we will consider you as a threat and will be neutralized”. We looked at each other and went with the risk of death. After a decent walk back to the platform, we were given a final chance to turn back and risk dying, we agreed even though we all knew the risk is too high to be comfortable with.

    Before they let us go out into the unknown, they took us to an armory. They gave us a handgun with a handful of bullets, and we also got a combat knife for survival reasons or to be stealthy, not sure about being stealthy but if we found animals, it might be useful. They wished us luck when we left. After we left Zach wanted to hit a relatively small town known for its rich neighborhood. He wanted to see if there was anything inside the houses, either it was riches, guns, ammo, or even food. Anything was good to salvage.

    While we were making our way to the town we encountered a small group of the undead, we lay low to try and not disturb them, but Zach had other plans. Zach took his gun and shot upwards, we were guessing he was trying to scare them off… it backfired completely. Instead of scaring them off, he made them run, AT US. Everyone knows that if you try to scare the undead or anything at all, they will usually attack you. We were chased out of there so fast that some of us contemplated going back to the shelter. 

We did a head count and we were missing one. Then we heard screams of help, it was Jake, our weapons guy. We looked back to try and find him, but the horde got to him before us. Now thanks to Zach’s horrible thinking, we lost the only person that can tell us what guns or ammo are usable and effective. 

   Five months have passed since Jake’s incident in the town. We managed to find a small, deserted building to stay in overnight until we got rescued. Mostly we stayed there hoping that none of the lost minds found us. I was mainly hoping that Zach didn’t do anything stupider than he had done in the past months that can get any more of us killed, if anything he was somewhat of a liability. I still haven’t forgiven him for killing Jake, our only source of weaponry knowledge. He was our main source for surviving through this hell hole.

    4 days have passed and the government has finally decided to send a distress signal through a radio inside the emergency room. They said there was an SHPU or a Survivor Helicopter Pick Up in a remote location that will be given more information about. The remaining of us agreed to do small scavenger hunts to try and stock up on resources until the information was given.

    A while has passed and there was no new information over the radio about the pickup, everyone except Zach was starting to get worried about not getting rescued. So far we have done a good amount of scavenger hunts that can keep us alive for a while. 

    A month has passed and we have started to lose hope in our government and military forces. That was until 15 minutes passed and we got a location and time for the pickup. We were so emotional with joy that we almost called the horde of the undead to us. We knew we had to act fast so we gathered our supplies and weapons and started to go to the location. THANKFULLY it wasn’t far so we ventured out to the location. 

  We got there and the first thing we did was seek medical attention in case any of us got injured on our adventure. Hours passed and we got the good to go and boarded the helicopter The next day. Little did we know Zach tampered with the helicopter's mechanism, but at the time no one knew, so when we took off, the helicopter did its route. 

      Then it happened, the emergency lights in the helicopter went off, and when we looked at each other. Faces pale with fear., but Zach’s was weird, he had a grin on his face basically telling us…” we will go through this s**t again” we crashed and the first thing I did was kill that troubling bastard to the ground. Now we had to seek refuge somewhere else. But this time we contacted the military over the dead pilots' walkie-talkies notifying them of the situation. 

    They told us to stay in an enclosed location if we found one and they would notify us on the radio. So now we just had to wait for the confirmation.