Take me instead

‘Lola? Lola, wake up.’

Smaller hands shake her awake, nails in blue and lilac, alternating each other.

‘Lola!’

She finally awakes with a jolt. A mini copy of her stands by the bend, dim rays casting her hair in a bronze hue.

‘Lucie?’ Her hair tied in pigtails, cherry red strokes running through alternating strands.

Light peaks through the wooden boards as she rubs her eyes, chasing away the remnants of sleep.

‘We need to go.’ She tells her. Her backpack hanging off her shoulder, sage green with fading daisies. It reaches the back of her knees, the straps’ stitches are coming undone.

A noise from downstairs, a creak, then two, they reinforce Lucie’s urgency.

‘Lu, what’s going on?’

‘They made it in.’ She pulls the girl up, tossing her a pair of shoes. ‘I did everything you taught me, Lola; I locked them in, but they’re strong, I think they might be getting stronger, we need to go or-’

She doesn’t let her sister finish her sentence.

‘How close did you get to them?’

‘I didn’t; I triggered the trap.’

‘Just the one?’

‘The second one failed.’

‘You got your gun?’

‘Yeah, ten bullets left.’

‘We’ll be climbing down the wall then.’

Lucie begins her descent while she looks under her bed. A hunting rifle, it had been her father’s, only used on two other occasions. She grabbed it, kicking off the sunglasses hooked around the trigger. She hoped she remembered how to use it.

To the window, her house is barricaded in a Frankenstein barrier of materials, wood, metal, polished rock, grass braided at the edges. How could this have happened?

One foot out the window, another noise downstairs, suspiciously close to their carpeted steps. She climbs down, the wind untucking her hair from behind her ears. Lucie hops off the pipe, running down the wall. She makes her landing with both feet.

‘Start the car!’ She tells her. Another noise, a crash of a door breaking down, and Lucie hops in the driver’s seat, retrieving the key from around her neck.

Heaving, silent paces on creaking floors, she slides down the pipe as she counts at least thirty pairs of steps.

‘It won’t start!’

‘Try again!’

She gets down, finally, Lucie twisting and retwisting the key. The car struggles, she hears more noises from inside the house, a swarm moving.

‘We’re being too loud!’ she says to her sister.

‘We don’t have a choice.’

‘I’ll push you.’ She says, ‘Keep trying, maybe it just needs a head start.’ And she begins, her weapon within reach.

Crashes from inside the house, Lucie grips the steering wheel with one hand while still twisting her car key. She pushes the car; miraculously, it starts moving, albeit slowly.

It gains speed, Lucie turns back to her sister.

‘Remember what I taught you.’ She shouts.

‘Aren’t you coming with me?’

‘I’m trying!’

It works, the car works, just as their front door breaks in half, a swarm of creatures clawing their way out, birthed from the girls’ childhood home onto the now dead world.

They have putrefied skin and soft teeth. Lucie drives away from the cul-de-sac, and she runs after her, throwing herself onto the Chevrolet’s leather backseats, the colour of clementines.

She climbs next to Lucie, as the snarling behind them gets louder, ready to swap with her sister and drive off, somewhere unknown, where they can outrun them and be safe, where Lucie can be safe.

As she reaches for the steering wheel and Lucie climbs over her, the car swerves, the jagged edges of the pavement scraping against their car. She quickly grasps the steering wheel, metal warming up beneath her palms.

Straightens the car path, pulls it away from the pavement. The car screeches, or maybe it’s the ever-so-loud snarls behind her. She turns to her side for a second, to Lucie, her foot already placed on the pedal, ready to speed off, but she isn’t there. Lucie isn’t there.

‘Lucie!’ she yells, half a question, half a horrified scream. She must have fallen into the backseat, surely.

Looking into the rear view mirror, she sees that isn’t the case.

She fell. Into the sea of creatures. She can see tufts of blonde hair in one’s mouth.

Lucie fell, and she didn’t see it happen. Didn’t hear it. All her life, way before the world as they had known it had ended, she had had one purpose: to protect Lucie.

Only for her to miss the moment her sister died.

And maybe that’s the worst part: she doesn’t know how it happened. She keeps driving for a few minutes.

Lucie fell when they were swapping seats. She lost her balance and fell into the swarm.

Lucie was grabbed by one of the creatures. It snapped her arm in three different places as it pulled her out of the car.

Lucie-

She stops the car; those waves of jaws and claws get closer. Let them come and get her.