The train station is empty. It’s way past curfew and I keep looking over my shoulders, an old habit. “No one is following you”, I tell myself.
A creaking noise makes me stop. Where did it come from? Not from the ticket booth nor the dusty benches. The sharp noise strikes again and I find its source: the rails.
Running towards the edge, I try to see in the dark. There it is: a small bunny jumps around the grass, looking for food.
Suddenly, an old memory comes to mind: when I was four, I asked my parents for a bunny like this. My best friend had gotten one for her birthday and it was the most adorable thing.
It’s been almost a year since I last saw a bunny. This one was probably someone’s pet. It’s a miracle it has managed to survive this long. But appearances can be deceiving. Who would have expected me to be a survivor? I’m just as fragile as that poor bunny.
When the plague came, I watched as everyone around me perished, no matter the governments’ attempts to stop the virus. Skin color wasn’t an issue, nor was social status or sexual orientation. The disease killed them all, because, at the end, we are all humans.
Well, almost.
“Listen to me, Aria.” My dad squeezed my hand. His grip was so weak, it made me listen harder to what could be his last words. “Don’t let them get you, you have to run”.
During the last months, he had been telling me that non-stop. As the first cases were registered, he, a scientist, made us pack our things and move to my aunt’s farm in another state. One day, when she didn’t come back from town, we moved again.
Until then, I have thought we had been running from the virus, but then I received a strange message from Lucas, a former classmate.
“Aria, don’t tell me where you are, just say if you’re ok”.
That was weird, the virus has no phone connection, why telling him my location was an issue? My father had told me not to use my phone (or any kind of communication), and it had been turned off for weeks. I had simply turned it on out of boredom.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Why is my location a secret?” I texted him back, confused.
“They’re coming after everybody. You’re the only one from class who replied my text”, Lucas said. But I didn’t get a chance to demand an explanation. My dad saw that I was using my phone and took it away.
“I’ll keep running, dad”, I promised him when he got sick, only a few weeks after he tossed my phone.
“Good. They know your blood is the answer and they’ll kill you for that. They know… because we created you”.
I stare at the once white bunny on the rails. Were it a guinea-pig and we would have had more things in common, or maybe a lab-rat.
Created, as in a clone. A non-born human who cannot die from the virus.
Electricity shines in the distance, just a few miles from the station.
“Sorry, dad, but I have to help”, I say to myself as I walk towards the last remains of civilization.
👏👏👏 Excellent!
Really good, Julia!