God Bless America
VI: Exodus

"Terrorism is the best political weapon, for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden

death."

Adolf Hitler

Benji's dead.

They found him only moments ago, hanging from the ceiling of an old walk-in closet like the old hang-man drawings littered on the walls, his body gently swaying in the Southern Breeze. It took Beca almost ten minutes to coax a distraught Bumper and a devastated Jesse away from the scene.

"Jesse," she'd whispered in the sobbing man's ear, "we have to go."

He'd fallen to his knees, almost crushing Benji's discarded black frames from where they'd slipped of his nose and lay cracked and broken on the cold wooden floor. Beca practically dragged him out by the collar of his shirt. "We'll send out our prayers later, but right now we have to go. I'm sorry, Jesse."

"H-he didn't deserve to go out like this." Jesse had said, looking up at her with those giant chocolate brown eyes of his that were swimming with tears.

"I know," Beca sympathized, but her own steel grey orbs flashed with urgency. "Nobody deserves this."

She'd struck him after that, a quick yet admirable jab to the chin had put him to sleep almost instantly. Stacie had taught her that. Said it came in handy when someone got a little too close for comfort. Bumper picked him up and carried his unconscious friend to the bus.

Beca looked up at their fallen friend with a sad smile. She reached out and stroked his ankle. "Rest easy, bro." she then picked up his broken glasses and shoved them in her hoodie pocket. He wouldn't need them any longer.

She exited the closet and closed the door behind her. There wasn't any need to destroy his brain. The monsters on the outside weren't zombies. They couldn't rise from the dead. They were just poor infected souls driven mad by radiation exposure.

But she barricaded the door anyway. She didn't want the infected to have access to his body. They'd tear it to pieces. Hopefully, they would ignore the closet completely and Beca and the others would be to return and give him a proper burial.

She closed the bedroom door too and sprinted across the hallway to the room on the other side. Not bothering to knock, she barged in. Aubrey, startled, pointed a pistol at her, but quickly dropped it when she saw it was just Beca.

The new world made her paranoid.

"What the hell, Beca?" Aubrey snarled, gently lifting Stacie's head out of her lap and setting it on the pillows beside her. She heaved herself out of bed and stalked towards the shorter woman. "What's going on? Everyone's running around like they've lost their minds!"

Beca shoved past her and began snooping around the room in search of supplies they absolutely couldn't be without. "We need to leave."

"Leave?" Aubrey echoed, flabbergasted. Her eyes darted to her sleeping girlfriend's form. "We can't leave. She's still too weak to travel."

"We don't really have much of a choice." Beca replied as calmly as possible, though on the inside she was a raging volcano of emotions. "Jesse emptied the birthing pool to close to the safehouse. There's a horde of infected headed straight for us."

"That moron!" Aubrey seethed. Her lovely face had gone white.

"It's not his fault."

"Like hell it isn't!" Aubrey had never warmed up to Jesse. He was a bit too ingenuine for her liking and she absolutely hated fools. He tended to not take things seriously, a sheer contrast to her serious, stoic nature. He'd messed up big time.

How could he be so stupid?!

Tears of frustration welled in Aubrey's eyes. She'd only just gotten Stacie to sleep and now she would be forced to wake her so soon? After the pain had only just eased enough to actually let her sleep?

"Look, we don't have time to play the blame game, Bree." Beca retorted. "If we don't move within the next twenty minutes there won't be anyone around to blame because we'll all be dead. Now shut up and help me get her down the stairs."

Aubrey swallowed back a scathing reply and nodded. She tucked her pistol into the hand-made holster attached to her thigh and met Beca at the bed. She leaned over her girlfriend's sleeping form and tucked a dark brown strand of hair behind her ear.

"Baby," her voice held none of the rage it had earlier. Beca was almost offended. "Baby, wake up. We have to go."

Stacie's red-rimmed dark hazel eyes fluttered open, shiny and unfocused with delirium from her fever. Aubrey stroked her cheek lovingly. "Bree…?" she breathed, having a hard time distinguishing reality from mere hallucination.

"Hey, gorgeous." Aubrey said. "You have to get up, okay? We have to go."

Her eyes narrowed in question. Explaining would require a bit of time. Time they didn't have. Every second - every moment - counted with or against them.

"I'll explain once we're safe." Aubrey promised. She looked at Beca, who nodded a single time before slipping Stacie's battered arm over her petite shoulder. Stacie gasped at the burning sensation in her muscles the movement caused her.

Together, the two women managed to get the brunette out of bed. Now was the hard part; getting her downstairs on a broken leg and little to no energy. They were basically carrying dead weight, even with their newfound muscles from all the manual labor they did.

"Ngh!" Stacie yelped as they hobbled down the first stair. Her leg had hit the staircase. Aubrey sent a dark glare in Beca's direction, who mumbled a swift apology. "Beca…"

The former DJ looked up at the injured brunette, who gulped and hung her head. "Leave me."

"What?" Beca inquired, louder than intended. They were almost there. Just a bit further and they'd be homefree.

Aubrey, who hadn't heard the exchange because she was so focused on the task at hand spared her a curious glance. When Stacie didn't repeat her request, Beca knew it was for her ears and her ears alone. "Leave me." she said again after making sure her girlfriend's attention was elsewhere.

"You're insane."

Stacie sighed. "No. I'm serious. I'll only hold you guys back."

Beca shook her head.

Stacie's face twisted in pain, but for once it was not physical. "I don't understand."

"If this is to end in fire, then we shall all burn together. Watch the flames climb high into the night." Beca whispered. "And if we die tonight, then we should all die together. Raise a glass of wine for the last time."

Stacie was speechless. She knew that song like the back of her hand. I See Fire by Ed Sheeran from the Lord of the Rings, the movie she'd dragged her friends to see because she was a closeted larper and owned every single book. She didn't think Beca had actually paid attention to it.

Aubrey had been on her phone. Chloe had fallen asleep. Fat Amy left for the concession stand and never returned. When she'd asked how Beca liked the movie, the tiny woman had just shrugged, smirked, and slurped her icy.

She bit her lip and gave Beca a watery smile. The three women continued their slow journey down the stairs. When they reached the final stair, a red-eyed Bumper approached them. "I'll take her." he offered, already holding out his arms.

Beca nodded gratefully and deposited the injured brunette in the boy's arms before bolting back up the staircase to retrieve her things. Chloe and the baby had already been loaded on the bus parked out front. She could see her girlfriend's fiery red hair from the second story window.

She grabbed her favorite 44. Magnum pistol from under her pillow, a worn and battered but still extremely powerful Bullpup Shotgun from underneath the bed, and a pink UZI that might've belonged to a female gang-banger once upon a time.

After making sure she had everything, she closed all of the doors and made her way outside to the bus. The paint was chipped and bloodstained. Dents littered the front of it from when Fat Amy had bulldozed her way through hordes of infected. The windshield was cracked and it moaned like an injured whale at times, but it still served well.

Everyone was already on it and set to go. Beca hurriedly tossed her bags in the side compartment and climbed on. "Let's get the hell out of here." she said to Fat Amy.

"Right."

Beca's head snapped to the left when she heard a distinctive roar coming from the direction of the house. She climbed over Jessica's lap and peered out of the window. An anxious growl erupted from her lips when she spotted the white, willowy locks of a Banshee lumbering up from the street outside the house.

How the hell could they have possibly got here so fucking fast?!

Then it occurred to Beca that the Banshee was wearing the remains of a Walmart uniform. There was a Walmart not too far from their location, about ten minutes away by foot, five by car.

She's can't be from the other horde. Shit, she must've been roaming around here the entire time. Right under our fucking noses.

"Uhm, Amy, we need to leave." Beca hissed. "Like now."

The bus coughed and spluttered under Fat Amy's control. "Shit, I'm tryin' Becs!"

Another roar sliced through the air as the figure of what used to be a beautiful husky darted seemingly from nowhere. His ears were missing; all of his beautiful white fur was gone, and a foul green substance spewed from his blackened maw. He surged forward; completely unmindful of the sun in his starved state.

His skin began bubbling and blistering immediately, but his pace didn't suffer. Riley gave what could've been a sad bark at seeing one of her kind reduced to this violent monster. "Can you try harder?!"

The dog rammed his head into the side of the bus like a rhino. Chloe screamed and curled herself over the baby's tiny body. Beca shattered the window with the butt of her gun and emptied an entire clip into the Hell-Hound's face. The creature gave a series of pained howls before collapsing onto his side, then he howled no longer.

Beca could just make out a tattered collar around his neck. He used to be someone's beloved companion. She sighed sadly; Hell-Hounds were the worst. Killing a dog, infected or not, was just as hard as killing a person.

Finally, the bus came to life and Fat Amy floored it instantly. Beca's shoulder hit the side of the bus harshly at the sudden movement, but she felt no pain other than the shock of losing Benji.

"Oh my god!" Jessica shrieked, pointing a horribly worn down nail towards the house.

A Titan. How did we miss that? Either they've gotten smarter or we've gotten careless.

The Titan was male. He might've been handsome when he was human. His shiny dark skin glistened brightly under the red sun's eerie glow. He had a huge black afro that was stained with blood and the gutted remains of his last meal were still tangled in his beard. He lumbered forward on huge, powerful dark legs.

CR suddenly gasped. Beca turned to look at the woman with the red faux-hawk. "I-I know him." she whispered, her fists clenching. She knew those hazel eyes anywhere. Even though they were sitting in pools of red lava, she still recognized him. "He's apart of the African-American Ethnics Group I used to go to. He's… he went to Morehouse."

Beca squeezed her shoulder sympathetically. All three of the HBCU's were in the vicinity. Clark, Spelman, and Morehouse were only forty minutes away from Barden. "I'm sorry."

"So am I." CR muttered, turning away just as the man opened his gaping maw to exhale a burst of steam. Then he roared. He roared like a lion and pounded on his ripped chest like an ape. Beca flinched when his lips spread into one of those bloodcurdling smiles Titans were famous for.

I hate it when they smile.

She sighed tiredly and threw the pistol in CR's lap before making her way to the back of the bus where her girlfriend and new daughter were. Chloe gave her a tight smile and made room for her.

Beca looked down at her kid and sighed again.

It's not fair. Just a few months ago we were planning to take you all over the world because I was going to be the best goddamn DJ in the world and Chloe was going to sign with Def Jam. Now we're fighting for our lives everyday. You don't have shit to do with this, and yet you're stuck in the mess humanity made just because one country wanted to dictate the world.

The pressure was starting to get to her a bit. Scarlett had no way of defending herself. Not for years to come. She'd be completely reliant on her mothers and their friends to protect her.

Benji's dead. He cracked under the pressure. Now the question is: Who's next? Basically, the only point in living it to die another day. It'd be easy to just end it all, you know? But I'm not that selfish. It's not just my life at stake. It's like holding the remaining pieces of humanity in the palm of my hand.

Beca rubbed her temples and strokes her kid's cheek soothingly as Chloe rested her cheek on her shoulder.

Rest in Peace, Ben. I'd tell you to rest in Paradise, but who's stupid enough to believe in that after what's happened?

A billowing in the distance caught her eye. She almost spat in disgust when she saw what it was. Instead, she closed her eyes and clutched her girlfriend's hand, idly listening to the groans of the bus as it rolled through miles and miles of devastation. The mighty flag hoisted on the side of an abandoned business remained unfairly untouched. Sometimes Beca wanted to tear it down and let it be lost in the wind. But it was one of the last memoirs of the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave.

More like Land of the Stolen and Home of Cowards. Sometimes I wonder what argument could've been so intense that it led to the end of the world? Must've been one hell of a dispute.

Before drifting off into a troubled sleep, Beca uttered a prayer she's grown accustomed to saying every moment when she woke up and every moment before she went to bed.

God Bless America

6

Live to die another day.