Personal Narrative: My Cross Country Team

It was November 5th, 2013 – it was my cross country league meet. I was running the hardest, the fastest, and with more intensity than I have ran with the first three years of my cross country career combined. It was the hardest course in Michigan, but it seemed easy to me as I practiced on it every other day. The competition was at least thirty seconds behind me as the three-story hill was too big of a challenge for them. The screams and cheering of the crowd fueled my adrenaline and I hit my runner’s high. I had tackled the hill for the final time and the crowd was screaming louder than I have ever heard, which caused me to power up the hill, then I stopped in my tracks. I realized what they were screaming about. There was someone, or something, hunched over my coach’s body. It looked human, but there was something off about the figure. The “thing” turned around and looked at me. It was pale, fit, had red eyes, and was covered in my coach’s blood and intestines. My heart stopped. What the hell? Then, I ran. It chased me. I didn’t have time to think about where I was going or what I had just seen, I just ran as fast as I could and as far as I could get. I heard screaming from the other runners and other onlookers, and when I glanced back to see if the thing was behind me, it wasn’t. I ended up in the parking lot, hotwired an older car (by popping

open the consul under the steering wheel and cutting/twisting the engine wires together), and got the hell out of there. I could only think one thing, that was a zombie.

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The government has been trying to hide it since April 13th, 2013 – they tried to conceal it, but it got out, and started affecting America, starting in Nevada. Apparently, Area 51 was full of different strains of the sickness – they called it Disease-666. It started in China, they aren’t sure what from, but they discovered that it is the common cold mutated beyond medicines and any form of treatment. At first, Dayquil and Nyquil suppressed the disease, masking the symptoms. The coughing quickly escalated to an uncontrollable gasping for air, and the typical runny nose had turned into a bloody snot oozing from the nose, ears, and eyes. The infected became extremely pale and gangly once they started showing symptoms of Disease-666.
It wasn’t simply the resistance and symptoms of the cold that had mutated, but how the disease spread was different. The instant that you got within three feet of an infected human, it was too late – you became infected. The disease typically took four days to start showing symptoms, which led to why it spread so rapidly (people didn’t know that they had the disease), but after five days of showing them, you turned. The bloody snot began pouring out of your openings, the gasping ceased as well as the oxygen going in and carbon dioxide going out of your body, your gangly and pale body gained about fifteen pounds of muscle in a five-minute span due to the body’s protein enzymes going in overdrive, your eyes roll into your head, and then it was done – you started hunting right away.
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On October 29th, 2015, my seventeen-year-old brother, Colin, turned. I went out to gather food and weapons from the only store remotely zombie free in our town, and came home to a massacre. My mother, my fourteen-year-old sister, and my ten-year-old brother were all laying in a row with their eyes missing and their chests ripped open. My brother had been showing symptoms of the disease, and we kept in quarantined in a bolted room, but I refused to believe that he had done that to my family – our family. I heard a heavy breathing and muffled laugh behind me, and slowly turned around. It was Colin, or at least, it was Colin. He walked slowly towards me until I could smell his horrendous breath. I closed my eyes and thought, this is it and I’m going to die. I waited for the pain to hit, but nothing happened. I opened my eyes and he was gone. My loving family was gone as well. I’m alone.
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It is now June 21st, 2015. It has been two years, two months, and nine days since the outbreak – I call it day 800. I am Taylor Anderson; eighteen-years-old and just out of high school. I move city to city and state to state via my motorcycle to find a safe haven. I am currently in California as the radio announced that UCLA was Disease-666 free, but by the time I got there, it wasn’t. Every once in a while, a radio station will announce a new safe haven for survivors to seek refuge at. I’ve been to every location that was announced, but they were in ruins by the time I got to them. I learned that the zombies were much smarter than they were in “The Walking Dead” or “Zombieland” – they were comparable to the zombies in “I am Legend”.
The zombies didn’t walk slowly or crawl, they could sprint faster than the average human being.

They didn’t only come out at night or hide in the shadows, they hunted and came out at all times of day. They didn’t act mindlessly, they were strategic, intelligent, and seemed to have a slight sense of emotion. They didn’t only lust for the blood and the guts of humans, they hunted us as we hunted deer – we are their wild game. I learned that the zombies were ruthless and nearly invincible, and smart beyond belief. The zombies also understood language, as they figured out the safe havens to destroy by listening to the

radios.
The radio announcers seemed to have picked up on the intelligence of the zombies and their ability to understand the radio, as they slowly started making the announcements more and more discrete. For UCLA safe haven, they simply said, “California college”. I’m worried that there wont be a safe haven announced when I tune to the station. I haven’t seen another living human in months, only miles of death and zombies. I tune to the station and start waiting. I’m alone. I’ve been alone since my family was killed. I only survive because I learned the zombies’ weakness – on the back of there neck where the muscle doesn’t enlarge, a simple punch is lethal to them. It is hard to get close enough punch or stab, but I manage to be able to do it nearly every time I come encounter with a zombie.
“Go green,” the radio suddenly announced. Go green, that’s it? I repeated it over and over trying to figure out what the hell that could mean. Then I realized what it meant – Michigan State University was the safe haven.
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