Briania Gonzales

Feeders

“It was the end of the world before I knew it. I was born. I left fifth grade and was excited for middle school. I graduated high school and before I could decide if I was the college type or not, I had to face if I was going to kill my own dog for food or not. Yes, life escalated quickly. And yes, I killed my dog for food. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Each day I wake up in a state of panic until the rhythm of my breath slowly matches my heartbeat and I reel myself back into reality. I have dreams of my old life, what could have been different.. all leading up until that day of 6/29/2021 where it all went to hell. As life comes crumbling down before my eyes, I start hyperventilating and then that’s when I wake up in the here and now.. clutching my heart-shaped locket, wishing I could go back and fix the world. The locket used to have a picture in it, of my brother and I when we were younger. It was a present from him for my 16th birthday that I of course acted like I was too grown and too cool for, just to now have it be my most prized possession. The picture fell out somewhere along all the madness, I just pretend it’s still in there. I hold onto the memory of the photo in my mind as best as I can and over the past few years it’s gotten blurry as I fight for survival, but it is still there. It is the only thing that makes me smile. I always thought it would be aliens, or robots. Or hell, even Jesus returning. Ya know, the end of the world? Nope, it was a weird ass teenager in his basement doing science experiments with mosquitoes and gene mutation. I don’t think he himself even knew what he was trying to create, just wanted to do.. SOMETHING. Well whatever he concocted and accidentally let reproduce and released, developed into something out of a Sci-Fi movie and ultimately led the world into complete caos.. then, nothing. Nothing except for the people like me, who are allergic to mosquitos. We are the only ones to have survived for some strange, unknown reason. Well, not just us.. but the Feeders too. We don’t understand it, same as how we don’t understand once bitten by one of these insects, your blood temperature slowly increases until it is boiling and you die a slow painful death with all of your pores leaking the hot red liquid that once kept you alive. But the absolute most important part of this sad process is that the infected also immediately develops the craving of blood themselves, just like the mosquito. If successful in consuming enough blood consistently, this thing can continue to live- also like the mosquito. So aside from my fellow allergen victims, the other ones that still roam are trying to feed on us. When I say us, I’m saying The Special Ones. That’s what the news outlets started calling us, the ones who can get bit and not “turn”. Those who we eventually discovered are all allergic to mosquitoes. What I have to worry about is not turning into one of them, but being killed by one so it can drink my blood. Or starvation. Or a random attack from the ones who have lost their minds and what seems like, their souls. Their eyes are empty and they are no longer themselves even if having not been bit. I assume these are the ones who had to watch their child get slayed in front of them or something of a similar nature.. something that happened to them that they just cannot come back from or even seek a reason to sanely live anymore. My death, I’m sure, will be one of the three. Since we as humans don’t have the tools in our anatomy to just suck blood from a victim, the infected human must get the blood from an uninfected human in a more…. conventional way. They kill, ruthlessly, so that they can eat and survive. I’ve run out of all my resources where I have been shacked up for the last few months. What is most important right now is that I heard about a secret city. It is under ground and I intend to find it. I hear it has an abundance of food, shelter, laughter and even hope. I would absolutely love to laugh again. I would absolutely love to have hope again. If there is this new society starting underneath my feet, I want to be a part of it. Not up here on the surface, living in fear and shambles. But I have no clue how to reach this place. I was never special before the end of the world and sure as hell am not now. Oh, but except for my non-mutating blood I guess. I wouldn’t even know where to start. I am sure you would have to be some sort of elite power to have known the whereabouts of these underground establishments. And then also would have to have been lucky enough to escape the completely terrifying and unbelievable scenes that unfolded to make it down into the depths. So do I really expect to find it? Maybe not. But there is something about a quest that can keep a person going, no matter the end result. So here I go. I’m finally leaving this little cottage I took over in the middle of nowhere, that I stumbled upon after I ran. I grabbed my little dog and I ran and I didn’t stop, after watching my dad beat my mother to death with a garden hose and use his hands to gather her blood into little pools in the grass so he could slurp it. You know something isn’t right when you’re calling 911 and no one is picking up- then you turn on the news. Once I settled into this cottage after escaping the horrific scene at my house, after passing absolute bedlam along the way everywhere I gazed, I turned on the TV. What I saw was so unsettling, I thought my stomach was going to eat itself. That’s what it felt like. I quickly shut it off and began to sink into my new reality. My little brother is still out there somewhere, maybe. I can kind of feel it in my whole being that he is out there and that he is okay, waiting for me. It’s been some time and I have nothing left for me here, I need to gear up and face whatever is about to come my way. The thought of leaving this cottage is terrifying, but so is the thought of dying in it alone. I must go.” This is the diary entry I found in a notebook inside a cottage today. On my journey to this cottage, I stumbled upon a female who had clearly been attacked and blood drained. She was wearing a heart shaped locket and I took it, honestly for no reason. I’m staring at it in my hand now and it doesn’t feel right. Now, I feel like I know this girl at least even just a little. I’m going to go return the locket and bury it with her. But what if I- “BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP”.. “SMACK”. I wake up to the real nightmare- the sound of my alarm going off. I slap it, that dream felt entirely too real. Time to go to work. In fact- am I not already in some sort of dystopia? Aren’t we all?