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Close Your Eyes and Think of Russia.	By : PJBender Category: S through Z > World War Z Views: 3077 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own World War Z. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Close Your Eyes and Think of Russia.
- 2-Fair Park City.
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Chapter One; The Panic.

If I’d been given a nickel every time someone commented how two sisters, born from the same womb and raised by the same parents, could be so different, I wouldn’t have worried about how I was going to pay for college. Of course, my parents were only partly responsible for raising Svetlana; Mother Russia had done the rest.
She was born in Leningrad, before the words glasnost and perestrojka claimed a place in the vernacular. I was born in Dallas, Texas a decade and a half later.

When I was a little girl, I found my sister’s oddly placed patriotism for a country that no longer existed - and never would exist again - exciting and exotic. She would tell me about the Soviet schools, the youth club she belonged to and riding the electrutshka. Her stories were much more interesting than any fairytale my mother read to me. One night, when I was about four or five years old, I snuck into her room. The walls were hung with posters of a strange, bearded man and proud-looking people working in fields. Beneath her bed, there was an old trunk, plastered with stickers covered in what looked like a secret alphabet. I remember feeling a rush through my whole body; this was better than finding Christmas presents my parents had hidden! My fingers tingled as I slid the trunk towards me and opened it. Inside, there were candy bars, canned vegetables and lots of bottles of water. At the very bottom, there was a small, leather bag. It felt quite heavy in my hands.

“What are you doing, Hope?”

I was so startled by Svetlana’s voice, that I toppled over and smacked my head against her bedside table. Mortified by getting caught snooping, I looked up at her, expecting a scolding, but her lightly glossed lips curled into a smile instead. She helped me up and together we gathered all the gold coins that had spilled from the leather bag.

“What are these?” I asked.

“Krugerrands. They are my savings.”

“Why don’t you just save money at a bank like mom and dad?”

Here she smiled gently again.

“Because banks may not always be around, my dzjewudshka. Besides, I don’t trust bankers; capitalist pigs.”

“Why do you keep all these things under your bed?”

“Just in case.”

Svetlana moved out a year later and as time went by, I - like everyone else - began to think of her as a crackpot; a paranoid who was holding on to a long forgotten world. I’d grown into a spoiled, Dallas teenager. My room was covered in posters of pop stars, not revolutionaries. I didn’t have gold coins hidden under my bed; I had a five hundred dollar balance on my Neiman Marcus credit card. I lived on junk food and reality t.v.
Not in my wildest dreams did I imagine my crackpot, commie of a sister would be my only hope of survival some day. Even when the Blight started, even when people were dying left and right to a mystery plague, I sat comfortably in the den of our American Foursquare, watching it all on television. I guess I expected the police would fix everything, or the army. I was so ignorant then; I wasn’t even scared. That is, until the Day of Panic; the day someone at the news station finally grew a pair of balls and reported that, yes, the dead were in fact walking and yes, law enforcement and the military were overwhelmed, and any able soul out there was responsible for their own safety, because help - most likely - was not coming.

I panicked, of course. Screamed at my parents after the five o’clock news about having to leave; having to find some place safe to go (even though I had no clue as to where that might be).

“Daddy, these things are everywhere. We have to leave. The guy on t.v. says we should head North; something about the dead freezing in winter.”

I may have finally snapped out of the comfort of denial, but my parents hadn’t. My father sent me to my room. He and my mother had such faith in their new country, such faith in its free government; they couldn’t, or wouldn’t believe that it would ever abandon its citizens, no matter how dire the situation. They didn’t acknowledge the severity of the walking dead plague, until it was standing on our front lawn that night. Fortunately for me, so was my sister Svetlana with a Winchester SX3.

It happened around eight o’clock that night; darkness had already fallen. I was in my room, sulking, when I heard a crashing noise from downstairs, then a frantic scream from my mother. I burst through my bedroom door, dressed in my PJs and socks, ran down the stairs, almost slipping on the polished hardwood. There were glass shards everywhere and a gaping hole where one of the living room windows had been. My mother was still screaming and from the front yard I heard my father calling.

“Get my gun, woman! It’s got me! It’s trying to bite me!”

I don’t know what I was thinking; most likely I wasn’t, but I bolted out the front door, unarmed and barely dressed. My father lay on the grass, a hissing, writhing creature on top of him. From the corner of my eye, I saw two more ghouls approaching. Their eyes looked dead, like doll’s eyes and their mouths were crusted with blood and flesh. One of them had black pus oozing from a hole in its chest. I froze up, nailed to the spot like Jesus to his cross. I don’t know how much time passed; seconds, probably, although it felt much longer. The next thing I remember is hearing her voice.
“Otets!”

Then the blast of a shotgun.

“Hope! What the hell are you doing standing there? Get out of the way!”

I snapped out of my shock and realized there was a walking corpse behind me, not two yards away. I ducked into the flower bed and watched its head explode, courtesy of Mr. Winchester. There were two more shots and two more dull thuds. I got up and turned to my father. He was standing next to the zombie that had attacked him; his robe covered in black gunk. My mother came running from inside the house with my father’s handgun clutched in her shaky hands.

I hadn’t noticed before, but the neighborhood was full of noises. Sirens, car horns honking and in the distance, more gunshots. Svetlana was yelling at my parents now, in Russian. I could only vaguely follow the conversation.

“Get in the car, all of you!” She said, motioning to her bright red H3.

I’m not sure of my father’s exact words; something about having to defend his property.

“Property? The world is ending and you care only about your property? We have to leave right now, father. There were only four of them this time. What are you going to do when there are forty? Four hundred? How much ammunition do you have for that gun?”

They argued, anger flashing clearly in both of their eyes. My mother merely wept and stood by her husband.

“Nobody is coming, you idiots. Get in the car!”

I had started to cry. I was torn. Did I get in the car or stay with my parents? My sister turned to me, despite the fact that father was still yelling at her.

“In the car, Hope, NOW!”

“Don’t scream at me!” I had said through my tears.

“Pretty fucking please with sugar on top, get in the fucking car!”

My sister had not lost the ability to make me laugh, not even at the end of the world. I don’t know what was funnier; the fact that she referenced Pulp Fiction, or how the words sounded in that Russian accent she had never gotten rid of.

I got in the car, hoping in vain my parents would follow. They did not. Svetlana didn’t waste any time or tears, but jumped in the driver’s seat and floored the gas peddle. It was only then that I noticed the entire back of the H3 was filled with... stuff. Boxes of ammunition, all manner of non-perishable food, medical supplies of all kinds; bandages, syringes, IV-drip lines. There was not a spare inch of room left back there.

“Why do you have all this stuff?”

She smiled.

“Just in case, dzjewudshka. Just in case.”

She smiled at me now and I managed a small laugh. I guess she too remembered the time I had snuck into her room. There was a long silence. Quite frankly, I didn’t know what to say. My whole life, my whole world was turning upside-down; it was too much to process. Until we turned East on Munger instead of West.

“Svetlana, you’re going the wrong way. The interstate is that way,” I said pointing to the left.

“We’re not going to the interstate.”

“But... aren’t we going North? Like they said on television?”

“No, dzjewudshka, we’re not going North.”

“But...”

“Listen to me, Hope, the interstate, any interstate, is a death trap right now. Too many people trying to go too many places and too many zombies following them like a buffet.”

“Where are we going then?”

“HUSH!”

I didn’t have to look far to see why Svetlana was silencing me. We were nearing the crosstown express. Several cars appeared to be stalled on the bridge and there were staggering figures, dozens of them, pounding on the car doors, reaching through the windows. I think all the air left my lungs right then and there.

“Are you wearing your seatbelt?” she asked.

I nodded. Before I could ask what we were going to do, the car accelerated so fast, there was no question; we were ploughing through the crosstown express, come hell, high water or zombie apocalypse. As we hit the first living corpse, I screamed.

“Take another road! Why are we taking this road?”

“Because the only other way to the Fairgrounds is Haskell avenue and it’s full of these fuckers! We need to get to gate eleven; they’re waiting for us.”

“What are you talking about?”

She didn’t answer; we were hitting zombies left and right. If we’d been driving anything but a hummer, we may have ended up like those poor SOBs stuck on the bridge. We made it through; the living dead who’s heads we did not crush getting right back up and following us, arms outstretched. At the base of the bridge, I saw an elderly couple running - or what was as close to running as they would get - down the sidewalk.

“Stop the car!”

My sister glared at me, but stopped for them and rolled down the window. They were old, in their late seventies or early eighties. The woman was dragging along a shopping roller; her husband was carrying an M1 Garand.

“That’s a fine weapon you have there, Sir,” She said.

“That it is, young lady. Served me well in World War Two and serves me well still,” he said with a smile.

It was an odd moment, to see my sister and this old man, being from completely different generations, have so much in common. Then again, they were both from a world that had died before I was born; a cold world with a Cold War. I suddenly felt a great deal of respect for my sister.

“Well, step inside the car, Dyedooshka, we’re not going far, but we are going to be safe.”

If he hadn’t recognized her accent, he surely knew now. I saw the old man look in the back of the H3 and smile again. I helped him and his wife climb in; there wasn’t much space, but they managed.

“You know,” he said to my sister, “I was always prepared for this, but I always figured it would be you I’d be fighting.”

“Likewise, Sir. What a strange world we live in; we are all comrades now.”

“Damn straight. Now, let’s get this show on the road!”

Svetlana didn’t need encouraging. Gate eleven wasn’t far away at all, but when we arrived, there were armed people closing it off. I saw a handsome, middle-aged man with wild hair halting the other men as our car approached. They swung the gates open and let us in, then shut them and started securing them with heavy chains. Svetlana stopped the Hummer and got out. I jumped out after her. The man approached us with a fire in his eyes I did not recognize. It wasn’t anger per se, although there was some of that there. He struck my sister across her face, almost sending her to the ground. I boiled with rage.

“Where the fuck have you been, Svetlana? We almost secured the last gate on you! Do you know how close they are? You pushed your luck to the very last minute! We almost locked you out.”

I was about to lunge at this asshole for hitting my sister when he threw his arms around her into a long hug.

“Scotty, I told you I had one last pick-up. Meet my sister, Hope,” she motioned to me, “And two fine folks we pulled off the base of the Crosstown Express.”

“And your parents?”

Svetlana lowered her eyes and shook her head. Then perked up and started yelling at the men securing the gate.

"Get those chains in place and get the cars and concrete in place! This is the last gate, people. Get moving!"

I was cold, tired and hungry and my adrenaline had worn off. Before I knew it, the world, this crazy world, was spinning, and I hit the pavement.
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Close Your Eyes and Think of Russia.