Dystopian Madness

Dystopian Madness

A Dystopian Diary Entry

By Mary Founteno

“Val?” a voice called out to her. “Val, where are you?” Val didn’t know where she was, but Val knew her mother’s voice when she heard it. Val went to call back, something like I’m here, mom. I’m right here. But the words wouldn’t come. Val saw her mom then; she had aged tremendously, and Val felt suddenly very afraid. Then, the bone cracking noise and the fear gripped her heart like it hadn’t before. Val watched as her mother turned before her eyes, the heart-shaped necklace on her throat being the only thing that remind pure and untouched by the disease rotting her mother’s flesh. “Valerie!”

Val jerked awake, the sweat overwhelming her fifteen-year-old body and mind, and she shook off the bad feelings that came with a nightmare you couldn’t remember. All she knew was that the next person to say her name would get the finger and a glare.

“How do you feel, Val?” The glare hadn’t come until after she had taken a shower, cold water waking her up and chilling her bones, and gotten some food in her system. She didn’t dare give her group leader the finger, though. Brittany Sea was a rare person, but she wouldn’t tolerate a bad finger aimed at her.

“Fine, just a bit tense.” She admitted. The past few weeks had been hard for Val and the whole world. Before anyone was prepared for it, a virus, uncontainable by man, had wiped out nations and the people within. Val, a girl who trained for several years prior to the virus, was not as prepared as she thought she would be. What shocked her and made her thoughts unbearable to listen to, though, was when she was separated from her mother in the first day of the panic. With no idea what to do without the one person she needed most, the first several days after the fight response was done kicking were hell. Val was not a crier in the least, nor one for panic or loss of hope, but she felt hopeless in ever finding her mother again.

“I see. We’ll address your inability to find sleep soon, Val. Though, I had hoped to keep you longer, you fought beyond me and decided you wanted to hunt.” Val had. If she couldn’t have hope of finding her mom, she’ll at least be able to kill what kept her from the one person who needed her most. “You’ll be with sector seven on the hunt to find survivors starting today.”

“Survivors?”

“Yes, you’ll oversee backup and restraint, if needed. Your team is waiting on you outside.” The room they had been was small, unlike the entire building that kept unwanted creatures out. This building had been originally built with the idea of a new army base, but, after the breakout, they decided to keep it as a main base for survivors.

Val got up to move, but her group leader, well previous now, held up a finger. Val paused by the door.

“I know you don’t, Val, but have hope, you’ll find your mother again.” Val’s group leader had been the one to help Val keep herself together during the last several weeks of pain Val endured. She had found her group leader to be trustworthy and one of the few people in the world that understood her.

Val was the opposite to Brittany, though. Where Brittany was blonde and pale, Val was brunette and tan. Where Brittany had aged, Val was young. Where Val was stubborn, Brittany was kind and calm. Where Val was fighting, Brittany was bringing about peace. That’s what separated the two women, they both had different potentials, and they were both ready to die to meet them.

Val nodded at her group leader and headed out.

A week later, Val found herself on the back of fast vehicle, riding through the wastelands. Val saw where beauty once was and where death resided. Val’s sixteenth birthday was the next morning, and she had, as Brittany had wanted, hoped that she might find her mom on one of her escapades.

Val’s team was a good one, full of hard workers. Jim, the firearms leader, had a passion for killing the zombies they fought. Tom, in charge of providing food for the team, had a passion for people. Gretchen, in charge of tracking, had a passion for sleeping and Val, in charge of restraint, had a passion for hunting down whatever stood in her path and making it pay.

The group set up camp, a small fire and some grub and went to bed at exactly an hour before nightfall. Val constantly wondered how Gretchen got the timing right, but she never failed to do so.

Before giving in to sleep, Val thought of her mom and wondered, just briefly, how she might be doing and if they would ever see each other again. Val thought deeply of her mom and how it felt to take care of her so long ago, she even thought of her mother’s downhill spiral right after her father had passed away due to an illness Val was too young to understand. Her mother’s mental health suffered greatly, required on and off hospitalizations and a lot of medications. It wasn’t until Val was fourteen and asked what haloperidol was to a family friend who watched over her while her mom was away that Val discovered her mother was schizophrenic and had been hiding it for years. Val was shocked to learn all of the things her mother endured, and she endured it for Val and her husband who had passed away the years before.

Sighing, Val turned over and went to sleep, unable to process everything she had discovered that day. Things of mental illness and what happens in a mental hospital when you go for longer than a day or two. Val’s pain was overwhelming at times.

Val didn’t know she had fallen asleep until her eyes opened the next morning. Val quickly shut her eyes and made one birthday wish.

“I want to see my mom today.”

The group readied up and traveled on until they came to a bridge. They decided to travel under the bridge to look for survivors, since that was a likely hiding spot. Val let out a shaky breath as she continued on, realizing that sixteen’s age was going to bring hardships she wasn’t ready for. Val already wished she could turn back the clock and be fifteen for another minute, but she trudged forward and searched for the survivors that weren’t there.

It was a moment, just a pause in the air, a breath she let out a certain way or something that gave it away, but Val sensed something was about to happen. Her heart was racing like a panic attack and her ears burned. Val longed for her mother’s soothing words, or even her raged ones. Just words of any kind would have worked for Val as she felt tears in her eyes, and she heard the bones crunch behind her and knew a zombie was there. The team tensed and Val turned to meet her fate.

The zombie was further than Val thought, the crunching sounding closer than she remembered, but that wasn’t important to her. No, it was the sound of a gun being pulled out and a bullet piercing the air, that was important. It was looking on as the bullet passed Val and headed for the zombie, that was important.

Then, as the zombie fell down, temporarily stunned by the bullet hitting wherever it landed, a single item flew into the air. The team couldn’t see it, but Val could. The moment she laid her eyes on it, she knew her birthday wish had come true.

Around the neck of the zombie laid a necklace, and in the air, slowly, in Val’s mind’s eye, was the heart shaped locket her mother never parted with following the laws of gravity, headed for the temporarily stunned zombie who was falling, almost in slow motion.

Val screamed.