Zander: Eight fifty-one. Bedford, New Hampshire.

Ally’s eyes look almost red in the sunlight, she’s beautiful and overall amazing but Milo likes her, there’s no chance in hell she doesn’t like him back.

“Hello?” She waves her hand in front of my face.

“Yeah?” I look around the classroom and everyone except us is out the door.

“Mr. Evans!” Mrs. Dalton croaked.

“Sorry Mam’.” I pick up my orange backpack I’ve had for two years and line up with the rest of the class.

Mrs. Dalton goes over the rules all the teachers have to every year the 8th graders go on this field trip, “This will be our longest field trip of the year, it’ll take six hours to get there. We’ll stop at public, park restrooms, three of them. You are allowed to take out blankets and your phones as long as you use them respectfully. Please stay in your seat until we stop at a park or our destination and only stand up when called. The fee is five dollars and you must have the signed permission slip or you’ll have to stay with Ms. Claton until dismissed. We go back at exactly nine am, tomorrow morning.”

Going down the hall to the front doors I remember that this is my last year at this school, I’ve been here since 4th grade and I’m finally leaving. My sister had to go to a different Junior high than her friends but they reunited during high school, I just hope the same thing doesn’t happen to me. I have lots of good friends here but I don’t mind making new ones, I just don’t want to leave the ones I’ve grown so close to.

“Mrs. Dalton’s homeroom!” The angry bus driver yells. Bus sixty-four the bus I’ve had since kindergarten, but that isn’t bus sixty-four’s bus driver, no, that’s a substitute, I forgot her name but she’s a real bitch.

On the bus, I was hoping I’d get seated next to Ally. I sit down in the thirteenth seat next to the window, the seat is torn and drawn on, dicks, curse words, average graffiti scribbles. A girl sits next to me, one that I know very well, Julianna Marie Fisher. All of the pre-k and kindergarten kids called her ‘Fisherman’ . She hated it. Her hair is brown but she’s been dying it black since the fourth grade, she has pale, blue eyes and a really soft voice that doesn’t match the way she speaks. She has anger issues and likes scary shit. We sit next to each other and talk every day, she’s funny and we seem to have a lot in common. I don’t mind being on a six-hour bus ride with her.

“Hey, Zander.” She waves.

“You end up finishing that book?” I ask.

“The long one? Nah I had to do a ton of missing work… but” She reaches into her bag, “I brought it.”

“Aren’t you on the last chapter? Why not just wait until you get home?”

“I was kinda hoping I could read it to you, beginning to end.” She smiles.

“God.”

***

“Your nose is bleeding.”

“Really?” I ask, feeling my wet nose.

“Here.” She pulls a blue sweatshirt from her backpack and gives it to me.

“No, I’ll just wait it out.”

“Wait it out for four hours?”

“Fine.” I take the sweatshirt and use the sleeve to block my nose.

“Hey, when you aren’t holding a hoodie to your nose you wanna take a picture?”

“Sure, why?”

“I like taking pictures I guess.”

***

“Zander.”

“Hm?”

“Yesterday Maya told me I had small hands compared to hers.”

“Really?” I know exactly where this is going and somehow… I’m fine with it.

I lay my palm on hers and say, “I know what this is.”

“Andd?”

“Well, what do you want me to say?”

“How about, ‘I like you too, Julia.’?”

“I like you too, Julia.”

Zander: Seven thirteen in the evening. Bedford, New Hampshire.

“Zander!” Anthony runs to hug me.

“Hey, buddy. I got some food for you guys… and I found those little white chocolate cookies you like.

“How did you find them?!”

“I don’t think cookies are the first thing on everyone’s list when cannibals start running around.”

“Zander, don’t scare him!” Valerie says.

“So what are you gonna do, stay here until it just stops?” I ask.

Valerie, my fifteen-year-old sister and my little brother Anthony, who recently turned eight have been staying at home while I’ve been with my friends at my school down the street ever since people started eating each other. Our mother left us, we have no idea where she is and Anthony’s been crying about her non-stop.

“We…” she rubs her eyes, “Look, I don’t know. It’s safe here and we love you so much just please, come home.”

“Are you crying?” Anthony asks.

“Yeah.” She nods at me. “I am.”

Zander: 5am. Bedford, New Hampshire.

Ria squats down in the road to catch her breath, “I told you we shouldn’t have taken this shortcut, Eli’s always separating us, he’s so stupid like that.”

“Maybe he’s protecting us, grouping up isn’t always good.”

“Really, in what situation?”

“One where a group of adults are after us because of something my ex-girlfriend did!”

“So it’s better that like two or three people get kidnapped opposed to all of us?”

“Ria, I don’t even know, I’m not the leader.”

“I’d be a better leader than Eli.” Ria says.

“Yeah, I bet you would be.”

“The fuck is that, sarcasm?”

“No, I’m serious. You’re hella smart and you do what’s best for others.”

“I’m guessing there’s a ‘but’?”

“. . . You can’t just take over.”

“Damn right.”

I spot a small, metal building behind a cluster of trees, “Hey I think it’s that place.”

“Good eye, I know that place, Creepy Henry co-owned it.”

Behind me I hear footsteps, then a voice, “Zander.” Valerie holds her stomach, blood drips through her fingers.

“Val, what’s wrong? Where’s Anthony?”

She grunts and removes her hand, there’s a gash in her stomach, her intestines are visible, they start to fall out as her body slams to the ground. I run to her and squat down.

“Zander, we have to kill her.”

“She still has a pulse!”

“Zander, Please!”