Things have changed for the worst since that storm blew in from across the ocean about a month ago to this day. Not only did it wipe out almost everybody in this small town; but it managed to bring them back from the dead with a bloodthirsty motive. I don't even know how something like this could even happen, the storm destroyed houses, crushed buildings, and shattered everyone's hope at being rescued. But when the people who were crushed or buried alive began to break away from the rubble, and started attacking the living... That's when shit began to hit the fan.

I finish boarding up the windows around the ground level section in Mr. Jefferson's house, knowing that he's upstairs sealing off of the windows without any ease while rummaging through the cabinets he has up there for food as well. Moments before the people who were once dead began to start roaming around; he was driving down past the diner where Chloe's mom worked at - well, what was left of it anyways. I managed to escape my home when my parents emerged from the collapsed living room and tried to devour me whole, and during my escape he almost ran me over thinking I was one of them. I haven't run into anyone else since then, but I did notice Chloe in her pick-up truck driving out of this town when he picked me up on the side of the broken street. To be honest I don't even know if there's anywhere safe, I haven't even heard of the military even stepping into our small town. That, and I've watched enough zombie movies to know what happens next; so I don't want to get my hopes up if something as good as this infestation staying put in this town when I know fully well that it probably spread to the rest of the world.

I don't even know if there's anyone else alive in Arcadia Bay; let alone a stable building so we can scrounge around for food once we run out. Mark - he wanted me to call him by his first name ever since this place became a host for the undead, went over the scenario of what we would have to do once we've run out of food; either look around the remains of this town, or follow Chloe's movements and book it the fuck out of here in his car. Personally I want to leave, who knows, maybe the other places aren't screwed up as badly as ours. After all, it happened over a month ago and so far we haven't heard anything on the news; but the TV stations all cut out yesterday and haven't returned since so the station a few blocks from here finally failed.

We still have power, mind you it flickers every now and then and not to mention that it cuts out for more than a few minutes with each passing day. The power situation reminds me of a book I read back in the day; The City of Ember I think it was called. It's funny how your mind works when everything around you is reversing into chaos extremely quick. I'm remembering events of pointless things that would have normally just escaped my mind from my childhood, like how my parents would grab the candles and blankets during power outages, or severe storms and we'd just crowd around in the basement and play board games until everything was okay; I wish that were the case so that way Mark and I could go do the same thing right now.

I hear his footsteps quietly descend towards the main floor which I'm on and he quickly dashes into the kitchen without even staring in my direction, turning off the lights along the way, just in case the undead notice the brightness illuminating through the cracks in our poor job of nailing wooden boards to the windows.

I'm not going to lie, ever since I've came back to Arcadia Bay and enrolled into Blackwell Academy I've the biggest crush on this guy since day one. I kid you not; day in and day out it was all just daydreams of what ifs and occasionally the experimental dream scenarios here and there... And I'll be damned; I stillfeel the same way about him. Now, I can't honestly tell how he feels based on how he's been acting lately and to be quite honest if he did feel the same way or something similar he would have acted upon it considering there's nobody alive to stop him from doing so. Unless he's afraid that it would make it awkward since as far as we know; we're the last ones alive in this town. Either way, the more time I'm spending with him the harder it's becoming to repress these strange feelings of attraction towards him.

I carefully place another nail against the wooden board that's half way pinned across the window, shielding us from what awaits us outside these worn down doors. I hammer away quickly as it makes a loud noise in response, threatening to give away our location to those crazed thingsoutside.

I had to completely rewire my brain after this, since there's no access to medical supplies as easily as there was before this happened I decided to cut down on the reverse time thing unless one of us almost gets eaten alive; other than that, I'm on my own for normal situations and there's nothing I can do about it. I've had a few close calls; almost being hospitalized before all of this happened and such, just from overusing my powers so I'm not taking any chances anymore.

Once again I hear his footsteps come out from behind me, he leans his body against the door frame that heads towards the kitchen and just watches me work at making sure his home is secure enough to keep us from becoming food. I'm amazed how his house didn't collapse from under the pressure the storm gave off; but to be fair he's on the furthest side of town, just an hour away from being out of state. He's not really close to the ocean so to speak, let alone Blackwell Academy so driving there took him at least an hour or more for sure I'm assuming.

"Max, there's something you may want to see." His voice is hushed as it has been all month, in case any ears overhear the words in this now silent, empty town. My heart drops inside of my chest, I haven't dreaded those words in forever; I think the last time I did was before I moved back to Oregon. Carefully I turn around, facing him with my shy expression, while I hesitate to hold his eye contact in fear of babbling like an idiot, or worse; confessing my feelings in the expressions and body language I'd show.

"Is it good?" I dread the reply I'll receive, but the question has to be asked. Nobody likes hearing bad news; whether you're stuck in this type of scenario or not, bad news is bad news and everybody will take it possibly the same way when they receive it.

He goes silent for a long time, the candle flame from nearby reflects off of his lenses revealing a sorrowful expression in this semi dark lit house; not to mention his attractive features, and slim body also stand out to me as well. After trying to hold my gaze for several seconds he gives up to no avail, and quietly heads into the kitchen waiting for me to follow along behind him.

I have a feeling what he wants me to see has something to do with our food situation; we've been running low for the past week. I haven't even dared to set foot into that kitchen for the past couple days so I always made sure he did it for me. Childish I know, but I just hate facing the reality of when we dorun out and we're either forced out of this house to look for more food, or to run away from this desecrated town in the hopes of finding a normal one to settle down in.

Eventually I conquer my fears of not only being alone with him in the same room for several minutes, but the fear of what's about to come out of his mouth; is still in the process. Slowly and quietly I begin to move one foot in front of the other towards the doorway where he disappeared into, carefully I peer my head over the side of the wall checking around the kitchen, it looks the same as it did before this mess; a clean counter, no dirty dishes in the sink, no dirt of the floor, just a seemingly neat kitchen. I honestly can't tell if we have food or not based on his expression and the fact that he has his face resting in his palm; standing in the middle of his kitchen floor while the window blinds are pulled down all of the way. I've never saw him act like this before, usually he's always putting on a brave face around here.

"Is... Is everything alright, Mark?" I approach him once more; my heart thumps wildly inside my chest every time I gaze at him, even if it's for a second. I really need to get that under control; and fast at this rate. He doesn't even make an effort to move, let alone gaze up at me like he'd usually do. Instead, he just glances at me from the corner of his eye with a dreadful expression.

A deep, long sigh escapes his lungs while he glances up at me with the same sorrow painted across his perfect face. Without any warning he suddenly begins to walk towards me, spreading his arms apart and wrapping me inside, almost as if he too, is terrified of what will happen next.

My heart explodes into a million pieces as I come in contact with his body; I can feel my face burning up against his body while his hand reaches towards the back of my head while he presses me against him, speaking calmly and as low as he possibly can:

"We need to leave; now."

Confused, I push away from him lightly, even though I don't want to pull away from him, I still manage to. He holds me tight in the same spot, almost as if he doesn't want me looking behind him towards the open window which he hasn't boarded up yet, but instead he just merely closed the blinds.

I don't understand why he's acting so strange about this, he was just fine a couple hours ago; he never left to go outside so he didn't get bitten. I guess all there's left to do is just ask what's going on. A part of me doesn't want to ruin this moment, it's been so far only available to me in my dreams at this point; but no, this is the real thing, he's actually hugging me meaningfully as well, do I want to risk it?

"Can you tell me what's-" He doesn't even let me finish my sentence, instantly he grabs a hold of my face and lightly attaches his lips against mine without any other second thought about his actions; completely proving me wrong about him not feeling the same way, and showing me that he cares enough to push this a little bit farther.

My body completely bails on me, everything is spinning, my heart, my head, everything. I'm honestly unable to comprehend what he's doing, but liking the result none the less. The sweet taste of his lips intensifies while he bites my bottom lip a little bit, smirking while pushing me against the counter while his hands trace slowly down from my neck to my arms, pressing his pulsating body against mine roughly as if he's trying to take my mind off of the question I was trying to ask him.

I can't believe this is actually happening, it's almost as if time itself had stopped and I didn't have to lift a finger; my body is almost paralyzed with emotion while he continues to press his lips against mine; getting rougher and rougher each time.

Quickly for a brief second, I remembered what I was going to ask him, it clearly must have scared him enough to the point of trying to take my mind off of it in the first place, now all there's left to do is to figure out what exactly is the problem. Everything seems to be alright, unless he just wanted an excuse to get me alone since I have been kind of avoiding him lately due to my growing attraction towards him.

"I can't help myself, Max." The words barely escape from his lips as he continues his actions, moving his lips down towards the base of my neck in an attempt to pull me into his lustful trance.

His lips eventually reach mine once more, pushing with more force, as his fingers tremble under the tremendous pressure he's feeling, I can just tell he's just itching to get everything off of his mind in one go; based on how careless he's acting about the situation at hand.

"C-can I know what's wrong first?" I barely manage to make the words escape my lips after each passionate kiss he lays on me, my heart's a fluttering mess and my mind is beyond the point of no return. Eventually he pulls his face away, just inches from mine while moving his lips fairly slowly.

"They have the house surrounded; I don't think we're going to escape alive." His hand slowly grasps the cord to open the blind, carefully he opens it slowly while he also tries to reach my lips once more with his, but despite the fantasy side of me urging him on, I push him completely away and just stare at him with a disappointed expression while sitting on top of the counter with my back completely against the window.

I'm a bit hurt at the fact that he hasn't told me why he's been acting like this all of a sudden. I don't blame him; neither of us had saidoneword about how we feel considering the sexual tension has been building up between us for quite some time now. However, I am impressed with how careless he's been; I guess he's lucky that the feeling is mutual in this case.

"We need to leave then." I'm really regretting the decision of pushing him off of me, considering my body is begging for more from him... But if that's how he really feels about us then we need to make the effort to continue on living, because then there's a chance we can actually continue exploring this side of us; as one, instead of a student and former teacher.

His lips twitch into a small smile, eventually the lust drains from his system and his eyes gaze out of the window towards the sea of reflecting eyes and corpses that are all broken and mangled from the sudden destruction a month ago, standing perfectly still outside; watching us with their eyes without making any movements or sound at all in the mid-morning daylight.

I find it a bit weird; zombie movies over exaggerated quite a bit, with the whole slowness and rotting quickly. I mean, you can tell who was dead for a longer period of time based on how much decay they have compared to the others; which makes them a bit slower and less likely to go after you. Lucky for us most of these people have already broken limbs and bones sticking out where they shouldn't be; so it's not hard outrunning them when they can barely walk as it is, I'm just worried about what's outside of this town to be honest.

Mr. Jefferson grabs the last remaining few cans of food and stuffs them inside a small bag that's sitting on top of the table, he then grabs the car keys from the top of the fridge and begins to head towards the door that leads into the sealed garage with both the keys and the bag in his hand.

"I have a full tank of gas, what's going to happen is once that garage door opens we're going to have to go as fast as we can, everything else we need is in the car; I thought ahead a couple days ago and stocked it with some things for the road." He urges me to come along while he slowly and quietly creaks open the garage door that's attached to his living room, making his way towards the car that he just turned on moments ago.

The mindless snarling emitting from the herd that surrounds the backyard of the house is almost unbearable, there's a huge difference from listening to it on a show, than in person. And let me tell you, I'll take the shows any day after witnessing my hometown transform into a mobile, angry graveyard.

I can hear the humming of the engine from the garage room while my body just stays sitting on the counter, going over the events that could have happened right here. My eyes can't even turn around to gaze at the monstrosity that's behind me, for I already know that they will attempt to break through the window and come after us. Even though they're undead and have minds of their own; they aren't as stupid as you'd think. Not to mention after what could have happened just a few seconds ago between me and him... I really hope there are more moments like that between us in the future.

I feel a small smile spread across my face, just thinking about him gives me enough hope to push through this sudden epidemic. Carefully I reach behind me, feeling along the wall for the cord to pull the blinds down so that way at least I don't have tolook at their hideous faces when I turn around. The second I pull the blinds down I quickly jump off of the counter, still a bit light headed from where Mark was trying to go with that, 'sudden burst of energy' he just had.

They still haven't made a noise outside, which concerns me a bit; I don't even think they moved at all, really. Mr. Jefferson quickly beckons me to come over with a hushed expression, while he disappears inside the garage and opening the car door. If anything, he must really want to try to escape this as well if he's actually going to try, instead of doing what he always wanted to do'apparently' before we got torn apart limb from limb in the middle of his kitchen.

So this is it, I guess we're moving out of this town to see what happened to the rest of the world. I just hope I don't have to rewind anything that happens here. Personally I'm excited that we're moving along the road now, after being cooped up in here for over a month with nothing better to do; letting our minds run about with potentially false hope sewn in between the cracks of our broken sanity. For the hope of our survival, I really do want there to be a place where we can call home after leaving Arcadia Bay behind; for good.

Quickly I hop inside the passenger side, slamming the door shut and tightening my seat belt across my chest; I know exactly what's going to happen once he opens that remote door. Mr. Jefferson holds my shy gaze for a few seconds, causing my heart to flutter around in excitement and my mind to heat up under the pressure of my cheeks growing bright red.

"Are you ready?" He calmly asks with a hint of sarcasm strung around his voice that lingers in the silent air between us. After several days of him not being sarcastic anymore; it's really hard to get used to it, but at least he's trying.

"Ready as I'll ever be, please don't kill us instantly." I return the sarcasm, flashing him my shit-eating grin while he slyly smirks in return, grabbing a hold of the gear shift and putting the car in drive.

"I make no promises, Max." He clicks the button on the remote control door opener, rolling down the window and tossing the useless remote out onto the ground below us. He then rolls his window back up and grips the wheel tightly with both hands knowing damn well it's going to be a messy ride.

Slowly we wait for the main garage door to open; exposing us to however many of them is lurking outside beyond the house walls in a nice slow and steady pace. Besides; if anything goes wrong, all I have to do is reverse time and we'll be alright. Mind you we'd have to come up with another plan, but still; we'd both be alive and well for a few more moments to spend it with each other through this strange twist of events.