how it really ended

They were covered in blood.

It was edged under their fingertips and dried on the bottom of their trainers.

It was everywhere.

There was blood in places that Leila didn’t even know it was possible to get blood.

She lolled her head to the right and looked at her sister, Olivia, who was slumped next to her in the cold drinks aisle of an abandoned service station off the motorway. She was staring at a long abandoned sweet wrapper, just out of reach.

Leila opened her mouth to say something, but shut it again when she noticed the blood crusted behind Olivia’s ear.

How did that even happen? Unless it was a cut on Olivia’s own head that had caused it? Leila could swear Olivia hadn’t mentioned anything, she must have been in a very awkward position for it to hav—

“Lei Lei?” Her youngest sister, Elise, was walking towards them from the far end of the aisle, head down and clutching something in her hands. Her hair was braided away from her face, making her look so much older than she really was. Elise had been four when the virus hit and the world shut down. She was five when life was possible outdoors again. Six was fast approaching and Elise’s older sisters had began wondering how earth you celebrated a birthday when you were trying to survive a flesh eating, skin mutating, airborne virus.

“Lei Lei?” Elise asked again, “Can I have this?” She had reached them now. Their final sister Rose trailing behind, arms full of supplies.

Leila pulled herself back to the present and leant forward to look at Elise, who looked about ready to start shaking her into their conversation.

Saving her braided hair from being pulled out, Leila twisted towards Elise, tugging the object from her hands.“What do you want, baby?”

“It’s a book.”

Rose coughed pointedly from where she had squatted next to Olivia, both sorting through what she had found, and gave Elise a small shake of the head.

Leila watched as Elise’s face brightened and her eyebrow furrowed. “Wait, no. It’s not that Lei Lei. Roro called it a—a maga—maga-thine?” The three girls grinned as Elise fumbled with the sound on her tongue, “Maga-bine? Maga—”

“Zine, Elise, it’s called a magazine.”

“Yes, that was it.” Her tiny hands curled into a fist as she gave an excited jump, punching the sky. “It’s a magazine. Can I keep it Lei Lei?” Elise looked at her sister with a begging face, “It has all these cool things stuck to the front too, look.”

The youngest sister sat on the floor in between the girls and began pointing at everything on the front cover of the magazine, continuously referencing back to little plastic bag stuck to the front, filled with costume jewellery. Both Olivia and Rose had stopped what they were doing to listen to Elise’s monologue, laughing as she came up with new reasons to bring the magazine with them.

“—And they look just like mumma’s.”

The three older girls froze at that, staring at each other like deer caught in the headlights. They barely spoke about their mum anymore.

Not since they’d watched their parents die.

Not since they’d had to kill them.

Elise kept talking, with Leila silently impressed by her memory. “You remember mumma’s ones? Her circles? She wore them everyday, so I want to wear them every day. To be like mumma.” She paused and looked up from the paper in her lap to the sisters around her, as though the realisation had hit the five year old anew. “I miss mumma. A lot.”

Her bottom lip wobbled and Leila jumped into action and out of her stupor at the sight of Elise’s eyes filling with tears. Tears were the last thing they could handle right now.

“You can keep them, baby. They’re called rings.” Leila reassured her, ripping open the plastic, scattering pieces everywhere.

Elise was the baby of the family, nearly 11 years younger than Olivia and Rose. 13 years younger than Leila. She was the best thing that had happened to the sisters, had pulled them onto common ground when they were on the verge of hating each other. As a consequence, Elise had become the one thing they would all unquestionably lay down their lives for in this new hellscape of a world.

Turning her attention from her sisters, Leila stood up and walked to the boarded up window, peering through the cracks in the wood.

The sky was darkening, they would have to stay here tonight. It was better this than to risk trekking into the woodland on the side of the motorway to find a safe shelter.

It was warmer here too, and she was so sick of being so cold all the time, especially the further North they got. Spring couldn’t come soon enough.

Fingers gripping the wooden slats, she tugged one down just enough to see the expanse of the road in front of the shop. There were bodies littered everywhere. Some of them with lurid green tinged skin, pustules covering their bodies and gaping holes giving way to bone where those acid-like boils had erupted and eaten away at their flesh. Others remained untouched, skin smooth and whole. This meant they were dead either due to an inability to hold the virus and its mutations in their systems, or they were killed in the crossfire, trying to fight their way out of a nearly impossible situation.

The sky was a deep indigo now, with only a guttering streetlamp at the edge of the car park to light the way.

Leila’s fingers pushed the barrier back into place and moved to the silver chain under her jumper. Muscle memory had her opening and closing the attached locket, revealing and concealing the engraving on the inside. The heart shaped locket they all wore around their necks had been a gift from their father. When the older girls had all turned 14, he’d presented each of them with the silver heart and their own engravings on the inside. Her mother had been wearing hers since as long as Leila could remember, sometimes replaced for a special occasion, but never gone from around her neck for too long. They’d found an abandoned jewellery store a while back, and Rose and Olivia had hunted for something similar to give to Elise on her birthday, to no avail.

The newly found magazine jewellery would have to suffice for now.

Leila twisted away from the window and watched her sisters.

Olivia and Rose were wrought with both debilitating grief and constant fear, a dangerous combination. She could see it in the way they moved their bodies and held her eyes. Despite her age, Elise wasn’t faring much better anymore, becoming skittish and clingy at even the slightest of disturbances when they were walking North.

Leila wanted nothing more than for them to be safe, secure in their surroundings when they slept at night, but she couldn’t give them that yet. Nor could she let them stay anywhere long enough to get too comfortable, too complacent. It had happened before, and they all bore the memories it had caused, none of them pretty.

Olivia had begun rifling through her backpack when Leila sat back down in their little circle in the fridge aisle.

“Here.” She chucked a plastic package towards each of them. “We’ve gotta wipe down. Better do it now before the temperature drops even more.”

They each held a rectangular shaped pack of disinfectant wipes in their hands, used every night to wipe off what had collected on their skin over the course of the day. The virus was airborne, and although there was a chance what they were doing prevented nothing at all, wiping down their skin at night had become, if nothing else, a psychological assurance that they were still safe from the mutation. They tried to breathe fresh air as much as they could, and wore masks in areas that had once been densely populated, but nothing was truly a preventative.

Olivia had become so exhausted of covering her hair when they were in areas the virus seemed more prominent that she had dragged them into an abandoned shopping centre one night, with the sole purpose of shaving her head. Elise had refused to go anywhere near the scissors, but Rose and Leila had taken it one step further and, after hacking their hair to shoulder length, had dyed it lurid shades of pink and blue. In hindsight, it probably hadn’t been the best idea for their survival, they’d had to wear hats for weeks to help slip into the surroundings of the countryside, but it had been more than worth it for the first moment in weeks since they’d laughed that freely.

Smiling faintly at the remnants of purple dye on the tips of Rose’s hair, Leila was helping Elise tug her boots back on when she noticed the little girl’s stillness. Elise was looking towards the back of the room intently, as though she’d seen a ghost.

“Elise?” Leila didn’t get an answer. “Elise, what is it?”

The other two sisters quietened, looking from Elise to where they could now see that her eyes were fixed on the backdoor of the shop.

“Elise.” It was Rose talking now, her hand gripping Elise’s forearm and gently shaking it, pulling her attention back to the group.

Huge caramel eyes swung to Rose.

“Did you see that?” Elise asked, voice quaking slightly.

“See what?” All three of the girls turned their heads from Elise, to the door and back to their youngest sister.

Elise spoke again, climbing to her feet. “There’s someone here.” She turned to Leila. “There’s someone here, Lei Lei.” Her hand was still clutching the costume jewellery as it shook, pointing to the door. To the handle. “Look”

Leila, Rose and Olivia all followed her gaze to the door handle, collectively holding their breath.

It moved ever-so-slightly, the barest of pressure pulling it downwards.

Someone checking its weight. Its accessibility.

There was nowhere to go. The backdoor was the only way in or out without smashing a window and alerting whoever, or whatever, it was that they were here. The front entrance of the shop had been long-ago barricaded and they didn’t have the time to pull it apart now.

“Everyone up.” Leila was sweeping everything back into her bag, Rose and Olivia doing the same with their newfound supplies.

Leila pulled the knife out of her boot and palmed it. Crouching next to Elise, Leila gripped her wrist with her other free hand and lowered her voice. “We move around the edge of the shop and wait—”

The door swung open in a wide arc, spilling foreign light down the aisles. Pressed into the shadowed shelter of their aisle, Leila flexed her fingers around the knife and signalled her sisters to crawl in the opposite direction to the door, whilst she moved towards it.

Crouched at the end of the aisle, Leila tipped her head forward to peer around the corner. There were three figures crowded in the doorway and— was that—a dog? Oh it was definitely a dog that turned its head towards Leila, sensing her, barking at her intrusion. Three heads whipped towards her, and the boy holding the dog’s lead took a step in her direction.

“See, guys! I told you I saw someone standing by the window.”

Oh hell, they definitely weren’t alone anymore.