The Getaway | Teen Ink

The Getaway

March 13, 2014
By Annoymous1313 BRONZE, West Branch, Iowa
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Annoymous1313 BRONZE, West Branch, Iowa
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Favorite Quote:
"To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift."








-Steve Prefontaine


The town was perfect, good schools, just the right size, a close community, and a mayor that knew what he was doing...well until the Disaster happened that is. It all happened so quickly nobody knew what was going on. One minute they were all at the celebration and the next everybody was running around screaming.
Two days ago. “I’m so glad it’s the weekend!” exclaimed Chris.
“Yeah, no kidding,” his brother Josh replied.
“Well enjoy it while you have it, your father has to work all weekend.” said their mom. They hopped into the car and kept talking about their father’s job.
“It’s not fair he has to work so much, he has a life if they haven’t noticed.” Chris complained. They got out of the car and walked into the house.
“Can we go to the celebration for the holidays tonight?” Josh asked, trying to brighten the mood.
“That’s a good idea! We could go out to eat before if you guys want,” Jessica (their mom) said.
“But it won’t be the same without dad,” Chris said, not giving up the fact his dad had a hard job.
“Then we’ll just have to take pictures to show him,” Jessica suggested as she started to drive towards town.”What do you guys want to do first? There is the marshmallow contest, the Santa game or we could go see Uncle Michael.” Jessica asked secretly hoping they wouldn’t pick the marshmallow contest. They would be picking marshmallow guts out of their t-shirts for weeks.
“How about going to see Uncle Michael?” Chris said, actually looking excited, he would get to see his friends and eat food and see his uncle.
“Ok, let’s go,” Jessica said turning the car into the direction of the town hall.


“..And that is why I think we should expand this celebration longer, more people can enjoy it and it would be good for the businesses in town.” I explained to the crowd around me. They applauded.
“But we can’t put in into school time Michael, or the kids wouldn’t be able to come and they are the one’s who love it the most.” someone argued.
“True, I haven’t completely thought this idea through yet, and I’ll have to run it by the City Council but it’s just an idea and we could have it be through next weekend. Take a little break in the week during school and work.” I argued back, not even sure why I got into this conversation.
“Good point.” they all murmured. “Well, I guess that would work, and it would help the businesses.” others said. “And the kids would really enjoy it,” the rest of them murmured. And this is why I became mayor, I thought, I could talk anybody into anything. I looked around the room for my wife who was probably off talking to someone about an issue in the city and trying to get it resolved. Sometimes she just works too hard, I thought. I spotted her and walked over to her, “Everything okay?” I questioned, I could feel the tension in the air.
“Well, I was just explaining my complaint to your wife and she doesn’t seem to get it,” the women complained.
“How ‘bout I let my secretary help you with that on Monday when the offices open back up. I’m sure it isn’t that urgent that you need a resolution right now.” I said hoping I didn’t sound mean.
“Well..okay..but first thing Monday morning I’m coming in.” she said trying to not sound like she was defeated.
“So what exactly did she want Ava?” I asked. She explained the situation and it didn’t seem too bad that she had to bother my wife with it, but that’s just my opinion.
“Oh ok, well my sister just texted me saying they were on their way and I’m guessing they are here by now,” I said, excited to see my sister and nephews. We searched the party and finally found them by the snack table.
“Figures you guys would be here, never can stop eating can you? How are you Jessica? Will still working?,” I said bombarding her with questions. “And how are you little guys?” I asked my nephews.
“We’re not little anymore, I’m in 7th grade and he’s in 6th grade,” Josh said, he always hated it when I called them that.
“Of course, of course.” I reasoned. “So have you guys done anything yet?” I asked, changing the subject.
“Nope, we wanted to see you first.” Chris said, looking a little bit shy.
“Ok oh, well there is a Santa game if you want to go play that,” I said feeling flattered. I also wanted them to go and play so Jessica could relax.
“Ok,” they both yelled and ran off.
“So how are you doing?” I asked my sister. “Are they still little troublemakers?” I asked, finally able to talk to my sister, not that I don’t love my nephews but that can get a little rambunctious at times.
“Oh, same old, same old, Will has had to work more and more often.” she said looking exhausted. “ They never get to see him and always complain about it, at least their open with their emotions.” she said trying to look at the bright side.
“Yeah,” I said as we walked off into the party.

The next day. “I can’t believe they caused a blackout yesterday because of all the electricity they used at the party last night!” Amy (the technician) mumbled to herself. “It’s going to take me all day to fix this,” she complained, as she scooched under the table to reach the electric box.
An hour later she still was working on it when she heard a few really loud noises and screams. “What the..” Amy said to herself. She peeked out from under the table where she was hidden from the view of other people. What she saw was incredible, but not in the good way. Below her there were a bunch of people attacking other people. “Wait a minute, are those..no they can’t be..zombies?” she said in disbelief. Maybe I’m just dreaming she thought, pinching herself. It’s not working! Maybe I’m just being paranoid. Wait did the zombie just eat her arm? Yep, definitely zombies. She thought as she went back to her hiding spot under the table. What am I supposed to do now? Is anyone going to survive? Are the coming for me? Oh shoot, are those footsteps, I have to prepare myself, I could shock it. Or hit it with the metal thing. So many options, or I can just run. Good plan, Amy! I thought congratulating myself. I waited until they (the footsteps) got a little closer and ran screaming. All of a sudden a hand comes and wraps itself around my mouth so I stop screaming. I whip around ready to defend myself and to my surprise it’s the mayor and his wife.

“Be quiet!” he commanded me, “You’ll draw attention!.”
“Sorry, but umm..” not sure how to say it, “how are you still alive?” I asked. I thought I would be the only one alive after this.
“Well I was doing work in my office and my wife came in and told me to look outside. I knew this would be a good hiding spot so we went here,” Michael explained.

I finished explaining to her how/why we were there. She seemed so surprised to see anyone else.
“Well what are we going to do now?” Amy (the technician) asked.
“I don’t know, we should probably go warn everybody, we could go over to my sisters house, since her husband is a survivalist.” I suggested, trying to keep my cool. We rushed over to her house to find that the house was completely in lockdown, Will must’ve come home, I thought. I started to bang on the door and yell for someone to let us in.

Once we got inside their house, it looked as if nothing was wrong in the world.
“Oh, I’m so glad everybody is okay!” my sister said looking worried. “I’ve seen you brought a friend”
“Hi, I’m Amy, they found me working on the electricity problem in the town hall. Decided to bring me along I guess,” she said.
“Oh, well welcome to my home, wish I could’ve met you under different circumstances though.” she said laughing a little at the end.
“Yeah,” Amy couldn’t help but smile. Jessica could do that to almost anyone. Will walked into the room at that moment.
“We’re going to have to get out of here, somehow, we can never survive here, I’ve done some research and it turns out the zombies are all over the world, we’ll have to go to space. “I say we try to get a plane and fly to Australia.” Will said fumbling with a backpack the whole time. “Oh, hey guys, didn’t see you there,” Will said finally looking up.
“Hey,” they all said back in unison.
“This is Amy, she’s a technician, she can be pretty useful with making the plane work, I think.” Jessica said, introducing her. He grunted in return. They all started packing everything and anything that is useful and got into the tank. Since Will is a survivalist he has been preparing for this day for 20 years, and it sure has paid off.
They all packed in it and they were off! He went full speed in the tank for almost two hours. They were in the country, with almost no zombies. They stopped to rest for the night, and got up bright and early the next morning. They wanted to make the food they had last as long as possible and decided to go hunting.
Will, Michael, Josh, and Chris do while the three girls make a fire and gather some edible berries and plants. It’s late afternoon before everybody gets back. They have a fire, some meat, some berries and two extra people!
Michael explained the whole thing over dinner and how they ran into each other. They both were hunting and ran into each other. They decided to bring them back here because they didn’t have a chance of survival by themselves. Their names were Lauren and Mason.
“Lauren is a wildlife biologist and has been studying them and how/when they move to different places. Mason is an old army sergeant and knows how to survive in the wild..” Michael said. After the long story they all retreated to bed.
“Well you’re welcome to stay here, we have room for you too,” Jessica said, “You know, we make a pretty good team, I mean we have all the necessary skills to survive. We have a pretty good chance if you ask me.”
“Yeah, we do don’t we,” said Will finally looking relaxed after two whole days of fretting.They made some extra beds for them and Mason started of as the watch person.
They all woke up to Mason screaming at them, they saw a group of zombies coming towards them. But the zombies didn’t see them because the tank was camouflaged. Mason shushed everybody and started to spy on them.
“It looks like they either aren’t interested in us or they don’t see us,” Mason reasoned.”I think we’re safe.” Everybody went back to bed, it was almost two in the morning when they woke up again to the entire tank shaking back and forth.
“What the…” Michael said confused. They all rushed to the windows to find zombies on the other side.
“I thought they left, and who was supposed to be on guard?” Amy said confused and scared at the same time.
“Well I was but then I went to sleep and I told Catherine to and she must’ve fallen asleep.” Mason said, even he was scared at this point.
“This tank will hold, but we can’t stay in here forever, we have to get rid of them,” Will started to pace around. Suddenly Ava whispered something in Lauren’s ear.
“That should work actually,” Lauren said looking hopeful. They whispered some more into each others ears and finally announced their game plan. They all went into action immediately. Catherine opens the door and bolts. Of course the zombies follow her and they take off in the tank, going to the meeting place Catherine had decided. They were going to go pick her up in the woods where the zombies couldn’t find her. As they zoomed along they all started to cheer, it worked! They unlatched the door to find that Catherine was lying on the ground with a deep bite.

“Shut it, shut it!” Will screamed. He started the tank again. Everybody started to scream and Will’s kids started to cry. Even though they were in middle school, they didn’t know how she got bit and they had grown close to Catherine. Now they had to leave her because she had become a zombie.
They zoomed off into the distance, making a cloud of dust after them. Will had been quiet for a long time, so had everyone else. Finally Ava decided to make a conversation.
“I can’t believe that happened!” Ava blubbered, on the verge of tears along with the rest of the team. “That was all my fault, I never should’ve done that plan,” she said.
They all comforted her while Will spoke up. “We all knew that something like that would happen, it was just a matter of time, we probably won’t make it anyway, we just never should do that again. Especially falling asleep on watch.” he commented.
“Yeah, it’s everyone’s fault, and nobody’s fault, she choose to go and get the zombies away from us, but we didn’t stop her,” Michael said thoughtfully.
“That’s true, and Will is right also,” Jessica agreed.
That night nobody slept well, and they have two watches just in case that happened again. They had to keep moving so they decided to drive through the night, everyone was afraid that the zombies were catching up to them. Since they had already seen a pretty big group they wondered if there were more zombies then they thought. Nothing happened that night, which was fine by everyone in the tank.
They woke up the next morning starving. They had forgotten to eat dinner last night since they were so worried. Over a big breakfast they thought of a plan.
“If we want to get out of here alive we have to make a game plan,” Will said.
“Well, the zombies are all over the world. Nobody from the outside world (space)knows what’s going on since we lost contact with them. We need to get to another planet by ourselves. Which means going into space with a spaceship that may not work.” Chris said.
“Wow, you are really like your dad, huh?” Jessica said, laughing.
Chris beamed. That was the best compliment he could get, he thought to himself.
“Once we get there we need to get some troops over here so we can see if there are any other survivors, it’s too dangerous for us to look for them ourselves.” Michael said.
“And we have to get to a landing strip where we can take off with the ship.” Will said.
“Sounds like a plan, that was pretty easy, but where are we and how long is it going to take to get to the closest spot?” Jessica said.
“Yeah, and where is the closest spot? Where are we going to find a spaceship? And the fuel for it, to go all the way to Australia? How long is it going to take? Will we have enough food?” everybody shot questions at Will.
“Umm, let me check the navigator...we are in Kentucky, or what used to be Kentucky he said looking out the window. And the closest spot to a landing strip is in Maine, it should take us, if we go at full speed, three days. Well, we could just go from town to town looking for an airport and we could then just drag it behind us until we reach Maine. To get fuel we could just find a plane that has a full tank of fuel and we should have enough food. At the rate we’ve been eating it we should have a month and half left with food we don’t have to hunt. To be on the safe side though we might want to gather and hunt so we have extra food for the plane, but we don’t want to weigh it down so we have to leave everything we don’t absolutely need behind.” Will answered already having a plan.

“Okay, sounds like a plan!” Amy said. “I could help with the plane, I took a course in highschool about plane techy stuff.” she said again.
“We actually have a chance at surviving now, at least I think, “ Will whispered trying not to scare his kids.
They traveled for a full day before reaching a town that had an airport. They all got out except for Ava and Amy just in case they had to make a quick get-away they had them to go and get them in the tank.
Once they were inside the airport they went and looked for food first, because they could always use some. Plus the food they had wasn’t very good. They found some and Mariah had gone off by herself because she had a hunch that there was a bunch of food in a different room. No one saw her go off and when they got out to the landing strip to put the teams together to look for a good ship they couldn’t find her.
“Where did Mariah go?’’ Chris asked, he had gotten pretty close to her since they were always on the road.
“I don’t know, but I just saw her, she couldn’t have gone too far.” Mason said, not really worried, “Maybe she just went back to the tank.”
Chris didn’t think so though, why would she be so irresponsible? He thought to himself. That’s not like her at all. He stayed quiet the rest of the time, he couldn’t get his mind off of Mariah.
They finally made it out to where all the planes were. They split up into three different groups. The first group was Mason, Michael and Chris. The second group was Jessica and Josh. And the third group was Skylar and Lauren.

The author's comments:
There will be a part two on this book and this chapter is just a summary of that part. It will be called "The Escape".

In the end they don’t ever find Mariah. Skylar dies shortly after Mariah gets lost because she was the first to eat the airport food and it had mold on it that was deadly. They crash land on the planet of Murgog with only 10 survivors. They had another run-in with the zombies but fought them off when they were at another airport. In all they had to go to three airports to find a good spaceship, that wasn’t falling apart and had a full tank of fuel and oxygen. They meant to go to Mars, one of the biggest military bases in the Milky Way Galaxy. The people of Murgog welcome them and give them the help they need to go and fight the zombies off. They find about one million survivors of the seven billion that used to live on Earth. They get rid of all he zombies but the people that still live on Earth are afraid of the aliens because they never had seen any aliens like them.



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