Born Dead

My name is Ellie Wyse.

Today is April 6, 2071.

And it is my sixteenth birthday.

Of course, to be born into this world is nothing worth celebrating, in my own personal opinion. It’s a pretty dull and unfulfilling existence. Nothing really seems like it’s worth doing on a day to day basis… other than surviving, which often feels like a pointless task in itself.

It’s difficult to find food that our stomachs won’t reject or even drinkable water and decent shelter. The earth is a dead planet, nothing like it was in days long ago… Not that I would know personally, but I’ve heard plenty of stories. After all, the plague and then the apocalypse both came long before I was born…

They say that in the days before, the skies were still blue by day, lit by a glorious golden orb called the sun. I’ve actually never seen a “sun” myself, because our skies have been darkened by a veil of red gases for as long as I can remember. Mom used to tell me that one day, once the government got the world back in order, the skies would be cleared and I would be able to see a “sun” for the first time. She said that the “sun” would cure the world, and more plants would grow and things would be beautiful again. She said that people like us could live a normal life again… but for me, the life that I know is normal.

And miserable.

Right now, it doesn’t seem like an established government will ever be created, and with no government, the monsters will never go away. I hate the monsters. They look like us, but they have black armored skin, large, shiny red plates over their eyes and they carry weapons. They hunt people like us down and burn or chop up our bodies. Because of them, Mom and I have had to leave our original home and keep moving around. Mom said that Dad was killed a long time ago by the monsters.

Mom was always an optimist. And she always cheered me up when we talked about the future. But Mom hasn’t been able to talk for a long time now. And because of the condition I was born with I may not be able to talk in a few years either.

Mom used to tell me that my birth was a miracle, considering that there have not been very many births of humans or beasts on Earth since the plague spread. She would say that my generation would carry the future of the world on our shoulders and we would be the ones to change it for the better. I’ve never even seen another child in the last 16 years, except one boy… but he was killed a long time ago too when he got sick and the monsters found him.

I’ve seen some pictures of what children my own age used to look like. They all looked so different from each other, except they always appeared to be so happy. Even with all of the diversity in their appearance, not one of the children in the pictures I’ve found looked anything like me. None of them had my gray, mottled skin, or my yellow eyes, and even young boys had such nice hair, just like Mom used to have.

I’ve never had hair that I could comb or brush for minutes at a time but I used to always pretend I did, sometimes even to the point I would make my scalp bleed. Mom would let me play with her hair too, but that was before she started to change and hers began to fall out as well. Mom has changed a lot since we’ve moved into this old, secluded house.

She used to be so pretty just like the women in the pictures that she used to show me, but now her appearance is much like my own. She would always tell me that I was beautiful as well, but I never felt that way.

I hear mom screaming and some booming noises downstairs. Those monsters with the armored skins must have found us again.

I ran down the stairs two at a time, and hit the bottom step just in time to see two of the monsters entering from the front living room of the house into Mom’s bedroom, just to the right of the stairs. They hadn’t noticed me yet. The front door directly in front of me had been knocked completely off of its hinges, and now laid in the center of the living room floor. I could have just as easily run for it, but I had to save Mom.

I could hear Mom’s screams over the sounds of the monsters’ weapons discharging and the savage cries of the monsters themselves. I covered the distance from the stairs to the bedroom in a few short strides and I leapt through the door onto the back of one of the armored monsters who stood in the doorway. I immediately grabbed for his head and locked my legs around his waist to keep my hold on him.

From over his shoulder I could see the second monster standing at the center of the room with a smaller weapon in his right hand pointed down. At his feet, I could see Mom slumped against the wall, unconscious. There was blood running all over her blouse and her right knee was bleeding badly as well. She had been shot multiple times already and they were preparing to finish her off.

I could feel my rage flowing. I could feel…hunger.

The monster I attacked flailed about and fired his weapon wildly. He was screaming something along the lines of “Get her off before she infects me!”

I grabbed at his face and tried to dig my nails in, but rather than break through the armor on his head, the armor simply lifted off. The elongated black face, the rounded crown, and red plating over his eyes fell off easily into my hands as I tried to rip into the creature. Then I could see the flesh of the monster beneath for the first time in my life. I would have been fascinated by the thing before me, but at the moment I was too enraged. Rather than marvel at it, I struck.

I tossed aside the armor and dug the nails of both of my hands into the exposed soft flesh of the face. Clawing at him simply wasn’t enough though. These things had hurt my mother, and I wanted vengeance. I wanted satisfaction. I wanted to eat. I leaned in and bit viciously into the monster’s cheek.

The second monster, who had already ceased in his attack on my mother since I first entered the room, was aiming his weapon toward me now. He was obviously having difficulty with this though, as his comrade staggered clumsily around the room to free himself from my grip.

The armored faces of the monsters remain expressionless, like the robots that I read about in some old books I found, but I could tell that the ally of the one I attacked was resolved in what he wanted to do. I could tell from the stance he took that he wasn’t going to hesitate any longer. A resounding bang rang out through the room just as I released the first monster and leapt clear. The projectile from the weapon went straight through the first monster’s temple just as my feet touched down on the floor. Some blood splattered on me only a few seconds before the first monster collapsed to the floor, dead.

I screamed and ran at the remaining monster now. He was fast though and he fired his weapon twice. Both of his shots struck me in my chest. Neither shot could stop me or even slow me down. I’ve never really been able to feel pain. Mom used to say that that was one of my “superpowers”.

The monster repositioned his weapon and prepared to fire. This one was aimed for my head. I assumed it wouldn’t hurt me any more than the other shots. Luckily, I wouldn’t have to find out.

The monster’s shot missed me completely. The monster had staggered slightly before his attack and then he fell completely to the floor. The weapon fell from the monster’s grip and landed only a few feet away near a wall. I immediately saw why and I felt some relief.

Mom screamed as she grabbed at the armored creature’s legs. The monster was struggling to get back up, but she was already upon him. I closed the distance and ripped the armor from the monster’s head, as I had done to the other. The monster’s long, dark hair, which was concealed beneath the armor over his crown, fell to the floor. Not a he, but a she.

Somehow, I felt a tinge of both jealousy and contempt when this creature looked up into my yellowed eyes with her soft blue ones. I stared into her beautiful face and she screamed. I don’t know if I felt such emotions because of the beauty I saw in the beasts that I had loathed for so long or simply because I would be the one to pass judgment on this thing that I had only truly seen for the first time.

The female was attempting to kick at Mom to free herself while Mom pulled herself up further along her body. I stood there for only a brief moment, only able to watch. The creatures with the armored skins that Mom had told me were just murderous monsters were in fact the beautiful, “normal” people who I had observed in photos and who I desired to be. My hunger was slightly alleviated, but my head was pounding fiercely now from the conflicting thoughts racing at once in my mind.

“I won’t let myself be eliminated by you freaks!” the woman screamed, as she attempted to shove Mom’s face away with one hand while she reached for her weapon with the other. “You zombies! Monsters!”
The last word is what cleared my head and moved me action. The weapon that the woman had dropped was only a few inches from her reach, but I kicked it away from her into a far corner. I then turned and glared down at her, smirking slightly as I replied, “We’re not the monsters. You are.”

And then we ate.

I had all of our things packed and Mom and I left the house in a matter of hours. Mom was staggering from her wounds, but as long as she hadn’t been wounded in the head, she would function just fine. We hadn’t been outside much except when we were moving around but today was my birthday. It just seemed so right to be outside again. There was no “sun”. There were no beautiful plants or cute animals like in the pictures I’d seen. Outside of our home there was only a dried wasteland and the red skies. It was not my first time seeing it all, but for once, I looked up to the dark red sky and thought to myself, How beautiful.

The things that I had once longed for were irrelevant now. The world as I saw it didn’t seem as flawed anymore. It is, after all, the world I was born into. And I have survived another day in it, which means that I have a future.
Mom was always the optimist and she would often say that “Without hope for a future and faith in greater things to come in life, we are essentially dead inside.” I would say that I was born dead, but today I live.