The zombie hunting virus. Something that the world wasn't expecting, something that scientists really screwed up on. Like they didn't screw up the first time with the zombie virus. America has a bloody ego on them, they don't like it when another country challenges their abilities. Australia was coming very close to finding a cure to cancer, it was a massive breakthrough for the whole world. America was threatened of course. They didn't purposely create the Zombie virus; No they just wanted to beat Australia at finding the cure for cancer. They tried to do it as quickly as possible, but that was their problem. Scientists were almost sure it would work. They injected a cancer patient with this 'cure' they were almost sure about. One thing is for certain with science... if you are almost sure, don't do it.

I sit there in the leaders' meeting room watching TV as they announce that the Zombie hunting virus was a failure. "We have been told not to say this but I must seeing as we are all dead anyway" says the news woman on the TV. She has probably been protected since the zombie apocalypse started. "Our scientists have once again made a massive mistake... they have created a dreadful thing" she says. And just like that 'dread' became the zombie hunter's new name. "There have been about one thousand people injected with this dreadful virus. These people will kill any living thing they come face to face with, other than their own kind and you can't get rid of them!" she exclaims with wild eyes. She seems like she is on the edge of going mentally insane. "Because once you kill one you become one" Rick turns the TV off and studies our faces. He seems to be forming a plan, then his eyes dart to one of the twelve. The man that invented the Zombie scanning device at the doors.

"Can you stop these things from getting in?" Rick asks. The man shakes his head nervously, he is probably in his late 60's, and he had darker skin and light grey hair. He was fairly small but that was probably because he slouched so much. His name is Felix and I think he is absolutely brilliant. He was a doctor before the apocalypse and he does some medical work here. There isn't many medical supplies, we only had what was in the chemist and the medical center.

"No, I would need to study their DNA" Felix says slowly as if he is scared of being yelled at. Rick lets out a sigh. I'm surprised that Rick wasn't hyperventilating right now, or worse passed out. Recently he has been able to stay calm in situations like these. When he was my boss he would worry about everything there is to worry about. There is no time for that these days, we just need to deal with it and move on.

"I think that we will be fine" One of the other leaders says. I shake my head and let out a chuckle. He can't seriously think that we are entirely safe from all of the zombie hunters can he?

"I think that is ridiculous!" I exclaim. This gets everyone's attention. "No one ever thought that the zombie apocalypse would happen and it did so who's to say that they will never come here? We live in the very country the virus was created in" I say. They all look at me as if I'm an alien. I've never spoken up in a leader meeting, I'm the youngest so I wouldn't speak because I was scared that they wouldn't take my opinion into account.

"She's right" Fidelis says. I smile at her, she is a good friend of mine. She is almost a year older than me but that doesn't stop her from speaking at meetings. "We need to be able to stop them from coming in. We need to protect the people living here" She says. I nod in agreement. Fidelis was never afraid of speaking at meetings, if she had an opinion she would have no trouble getting it across.

"Okay, well we need to find a way to get DNA of one of these Zombie Hunters" Felix says. This was probably the most obvious thing for him to say. For someone so brilliant you'd think that he wouldn't state the obvious but he seems to do this a lot.

"Well to do that, they are going to have to come here" Fidelis mutters. "And that's what we don't want, so I'm volunteering to go and get some of their DNA, let's call them Dreads seeing as that woman thinks they are so dreadful" she finishes. Fidelis practically started the dread thing and now everyone I know of calls them a dread. It just seemed to stick.

"You can't go on your own" Rick says, he runs his hand through his hair and looks around at the people in the room. "Any other volunteers?" he asks. I'm pretty sure that with the skills that Fidelis has obtained she would be able to go out their on her own and come back with a dread head. Not that she would want to kill one of them. 

"I'll go" I say. Rick shakes his head, he cares about me too much for me to risk my life and I hate him for that. He has made promises that he has to keep for my mother.

"No, your mother would never forgive me if I let you go Alexandra" Rick states. I frown, he knows that I hate it when he does that but I don't think he cares. Why the heck did he make me a leader if he doesn't expect me to risk my life? A few other leaders volunteered so it looks like Fidelis wasn't going alone.

After the meeting, I walked with Fidelis through the shopping center as we were on guard. As a leader, one of our duties is to guard the shopping center, Fidelis and I were on the inside today just walking around and see if everyone was doing what they were supposed to be doing. Felix invented this scanner that scans the watches that he also invented so that we could see what their schedule was. They were pretty cool because we could scan them from about a metre away. "Why did you volunteer Fid?" I ask. I'm not really worried for her because she has gone on dangerous missions before but volunteering for this was pretty much suicide. I haven't even seen what these Dreads can do but I already know that it's suicide.

"Because I need to protect these people, the human population declines every day and I don't want these people to end up dead when I could have done something to stop it" she explains. Gosh her personality really does go with her name. "And I need a bit of adventure in my life" She says with a smirk, She has a wild side to her personality like she isn't afraid to do most things. She got a type of excitement from danger. Then her facial expression changes. "While I'm gone Ali, can you look after Brodie?" she asks. Brodie is her nine year old brother, she is really protective of him and would do anything for him. The answer was obvious.

"Of course, I'd do anything for you" I say. She stops and looks at me. I give her a confused look. Did I say something?

"Do you mean it?" she asks. I think about it for a moment, Fidelis has been my best friend since she came in those doors with all of those people she saved. She was there for me after what happened to grandpa and I have nothing to show for it. So yes I do mean it.

"Of course I mean it, why would I say it if I didn't mean it" I say with a smile, we continue walking down the hall until our watches beep at once. There was a few things that could mean but when I looked down at my watch I was relieved "Lunch time!" I say with a laugh.

*

Fidelis has been gone for a few days and Brodie has refused to be looked after, he claimed that he was old enough to look after himself. Total bull crap in my opinion, he didn't even know how to brush his teeth properly. I had to stand there until he had done it properly. My watch continued to beep for leader meetings, of course the meeting room felt empty because a few of them went to get some of the dreads DNA. The meetings weren't about anything in particular, we just had to have them frequently to keep the leaders up to date about what needs to be happening and what supplies we don't have. But this one particular time my watch started beeping like crazy and flashing red, I felt it vibrate on my wrist. This meant that there was an emergency and when there is an emergency here you have to prepare for the worst. I got Brodie out the door and we made our way to the centre of the shopping centre where we had full population meetings.

"THERE HAS BEEN A DETECTION OF ZOMBIE HUNTERS HEADING THIS WAY" Rick yells. "WE ARE ONLY SURE BECAUSE THEY WERE TAKING DOWN EVERY ZOMBIE THAT THEY COME FACE TO FACE WITH!" Rick yells to everyone. He is obviously scared and so was the whole room now, there was a sudden panic and everyone started running in different direction. Again, I am surprised that Rick wasn't hyperventilating. But as I said, there is no time for that these days.

"Alexandra, what is happening?" I hear Brodie's voice ask over the commotion. His voice was shaky and I knew that I was the only one here that had to tell him the bad news. I look down at him. He looks so innocent, unlike his sister. She looks like she could take on three of those Dreads at once. I bend down and look him in the eye. The innocence in his eyes makes me want to tell him that everything will be completely fine but I can't lie to him, the only way to keep him safe is to tell him the truth. Tell him that he needs to run.

"We are in danger and we need to go hide" I explain in a calm voice. His face changes to fear but he tries to hide it, he is very much like his sister in that way. Fidelis can hide her fear, she doesn't like to look weak and that's the same with Brodie. He puffed out his chest and tried to look strong. I shake my head and I take his hand and run with him to the nearest room. When we are in the room Brodie starts pacing, he is no longer able to contain his fear. "It'll be okay" I reassure him.

"Can't they lock the doors?" Brodie asks. I didn't really know the system that well, I knew that it was all electronic and wouldn't let zombie's in. The system is programmed to make sure that no one that comes in has the DNA of a zombie. It's quite brilliant except no one was prepared for a Dread attack where they could get in. Then screams of horror are suddenly heard on the other side of the door. Felix obviously needs to come up with a better security system.

"They can't" I say quickly. The doors weren't designed to lock at a press of a button, they scan the DNA of people and if you have the wrong DNA then they won't let you in. Seeing as Fidelis hasn't come back from her trip there is no way of keeping them out. I take a peep out the door and there they were. They had full silver eyes, their faces were full of anger. Their choices of weapons were chainsaws. They had a look to them, a murderous look. It was like all the evil within them was coming out because of this virus. I wondered then if they would ever get into their human/good state of mind. Brodie pulled me back from the door when he noticed a Dread heading towards us. I slammed the door closed which probably wasn't a good idea. I look around the room and notice the garbage shoot, I know perfectly well that if we need to go down there we will have a soft landing. Being a leader I knew which garbage shoot is for what. The door handle to the room started to twist open and I knew instantly that the only thing to do was to go down the garbage shoot. I grabbed onto Brodie's arm. "Down the shoot" I say. I go down first and then he goes straight after me. Good thing I went first because he fell straight onto of me. He is a skinny kid and that didn't help when he fell on me, there was sharp pains all over my body and I felt as though I broke all my rips. If I fell on him then he most likely would have broke something. 

We were outside now and we were probably in more danger than before. We had to get out of the garbage bin before the dread came down. That's if he was smart enough to even think about going down the shoot.

"Let's go" Brodie says. I barely nodded before I hear the dread coming down the garbage shoot. So I guess that they aren't completely stupid. Brodie and I jump out and onto the floor, Brodie falls over onto his stomach and I pull him up straight away as we have no time for tripping over onto our faces. A group of zombies was the first thing I saw, they started to walk towards us but they wouldn't get too far seeing as there were two other dreads chopping their way through them. Two dreads with the same murderous look on their faces.

I looked around and saw another dumpster a few feet away, I took Brodie's arm and ran towards it. We hid behind it. I looked out to see what was happening. One of the dreads eyes had turned back to their normal colour of green, he yelped and dropped his chainsaw on the ground and ran off. That's when I realised that they had completely no control. None at all. It's like he just woke up and didn't know where he was. If that's how it is then I can't blame them for what they are because they have no control. 

Meanwhile the one that had been following was very close now. I thought that we had lost him. His silver eyes were on Brodie now, he cranked his chainsaw and started to run towards us. Brodie was frozen in his spot and didn't run when I did. That didn't matter though, I grabbed the still running chainsaw from the ground that the green eyed guy had left on the ground. I didn't hesitate before I threw it. The chainsaw planted itself into the Dreads head, He stood there for moment before he fell to the ground dead. It was one second, one second where I didn't think of the consequences. I just did what I thought was right. I was in shock, I knew I would become one of them now. I didn't want that.

I felt an aching pain run through my brain and then through the rest of my body. Oh no what have I done. Brodie runs towards me. "Ali..." He says nervously. I look at him in horror. "Alexandra..." he says. "What have you done?"

I look around and the Zombies or dreads aren't coming near us anymore. Perhaps because I just became a dread. I take Brodie's hand and run inside. There is a lot of blood and the dreads are still fighting everyone but no one seems to be fighting back, nobody wants to do what I just did. "STOP" I yell. Every Dread stops and looks at me. "LEAVE" I yell. I'm very surprised that they listened to me. I wouldn't have done something like that, I would have thought it was stupid before but there was something inside of me telling me that they would listen. They leave the shopping centre in a mindless way. Rick comes up to me looking surprised.

"How did you do that?" Rick asks. He has no idea and now I have to tell him. I try to be brave and say it.

"I became one of them" I say. I'm shocked myself, how could this have happened? How could I have been so careless? Then I remembered. He was going to kill Brodie. I had made a promise to Fidelis that I would keep her brother safe, in the moment throwing that chainsaw was the only thing I could do to save his life.

"What did you just say Alex?" Rick ask, his eyes are wide and he looks at me as though he doesn't know what to do with me. I frown at him before bursting into tears, I couldn't hold back anymore. I killed someone. How can their life be less important than mine or Brodie's?

"I killed one, He was going to kill Brodie. I promised Fidelis that I would look after him Rick. What have I done?" I sob. Tears pour down my face as I try to explain to him. He doesn't look angry, instead he pulls me into his arms, into a warm hug. He wasn't just an employer from before the apocalypse. He was a friend and he didn't judge me.

"You saved lives, but we need to lock you up before you turn into a full blown one. It's not safe until you learn control. I saw them, they couldn't control it"

"I understand"

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