We Are All Strangers Read Online Free Page B

“You’ve kind of turned everything upside down for me today. I appreciate it more than I think I can put into words.”
    “Harper, do you mind if I ask you a more personal question?”
    “Feel free.” I run my fingers through his hair, feeling at peace with the world around me. Sure, everything may be going to shit around me...but here, right here in this moment, I’m okay.
    “I noticed you were by yourself. What happened to your family?”
    I wince at the word ‘family’. I miss them. I miss them terribly, but I don’t want to think back to that moment. I don’t want to imagine my mother being eaten or my father’s body being trampled over. But I have to. I have to tell him the truth. “They died.”
    “Zombies?” he asks.
    “Yes.”
    “Mine too, about three weeks ago. I’ve been locked away in my house until this morning when the guards came and fetched me. Apparently they want everyone locked away in this shit hole.”
    Keegan pulls me onto his lap and places his hands on my cheeks, forcing me to meet his gaze. “I don’t know how much longer I have, it may be minutes, or it could be an hour; all I know is that I want to spend whatever time I have left with you, Harper.”
    “Who’s getting lovey-dovey now?”
    Keegan laughs and pulls his fingers through my long, brown hair. “I may hardly know you, Harper, but you are the last bit of humanity left in my life. I don’t think you understand just how much that means right now.”
    I lean into him, our lips meeting once more. There is a sense of urgency in his words. Keegan leans in, pressing his lips harder against mine. I listen as the beat of his heart weakens. The urgency is the hunger. He doesn’t have much longer now. I pull away, resting my head against his shoulder. “It’s almost finished,” I whisper.
    “I know.”
    We sit in silence for another hour, treasuring the last bit of time we have together.
    The beautiful boy I met that showed me what it was to live again is now a zombie. His pale skin is now ash gray. His icy green eyes are now yellow. “Keegan,” I gasp, jumping from his lap and struggling to back away.
    He lunges for me, his arms reaching for my neck.
    The door to the roof flies open, and the guards yell at me to move away. I back away slowly, my eyes never leaving Keegan. I can feel my body shaking, unsure of what to do. I collapse to the floor as I reach the guards.
    I watch as the guards prepare their weapons, aiming directly at Keegan’s head. I hear two shots fire, and I let out a loud shriek. “Keegan!” I yell, but it’s useless. As his body falls to the floor, all I want is to pick him up; to try and bring him back. But they won’t let me. Their hands are gripping my arms, pulling me away from his lifeless body.
    He is my last connection to the outside world, and now he is gone.
    Just like everything else.

THE FACILITY
    I t had been two months since we’d been tossed on the streets by the Facility.
    I suppose that should have bothered me, but I preferred walking the streets with the dead to being locked away, praying for some sort of miracle that would never come.
    It was crazy how brainwashed the others had become. They were no better than the monsters that had overtaken our world. The Facility was not there to help them. It was built solely as an illusion, to act as though the government gave a shit.
    “You had to rebel, didn’t you?” My sister, Avery, dragged her machete along the dirt road, careful to maintain a slow pace.
    “You didn’t have to follow me,” I reminded her. “But you had to involve yourself.”
    “You’re my brother, Jackson. I wasn’t just going to allow them to toss you on the street by yourself. You’re the last bit of family I have left.”
    I tried to forget what our lives had been like before the dead came back to life. I had found that it was easier to survive in a place like this if you let go of your past, especially when there was no way in hell that we would ever