We walked for about 3 hours trying to find a place to make shelter but everything we touched was damp and covered in a gray substance that we couldn't identify. So we decided to keep walking in case we found somewhere safe, but that wasn't really the case for us.
Everywhere we looked, it was almost like a wasteland. The trees that surrounded us were rotting and it smelled like road kill, and at that point, I thought that it was a cause for concern, because I had never seen anything like it. But even though it scared me I still chose for us to keep walking because I was hoping we would find a small cabin or something else to sleep in for the night.
My legs were finally giving up on me so I decided to find somewhere to sit for a moment, and before I could do that, Maxie shouted for me saying that she found something, but I wasn't interested because I was exhausted, and I certainly didn't have a good feeling about where we were.
When I caught up to her I saw what she was talking about, and it wasn't anything like a cabin, it was an abandoned power-plant. The size of it was surely overwhelming and creating a pulsating tension in my forehead.
I stared at it for a minute trying to process the weird feeling I had just being there and then for another second I thought I saw something moving around by the pipes, but I just brushed it off and tried to keep my composure.
I walked behind a tree and propped myself up against it to look away from the power plant just because it was sketchy to me, and Maxie did the same behind another which made me think, so I tried to warn her.
"We shouldn't be here. It's not safe, we might get sick." I crossed my arms and uttered.
She narrowed her eyes at me and then turned her focus toward the power plant. "I just want to see what's in there. I thought I saw something move."
As dangerous as it already was, I didn't want to do anything at all, but Maxie motioned for me to walk up to the barbed fence to get a closer look, and I did so. As I approached it I could feel this wave of electricity flowing through my body and into my veins, and I knew that wasn't a good thing.
"I don't really see anything except pipes in there, but I don't think we should go in. It's an abandoned power plant, so we're technically standing near a biohazard." I suggested that we should stay away from it and whatever we thought was lurking around, because who knows what it could have been, and we weren't safe being there.
But that's when we actually saw someone walking out from behind the pipes, and they came limping toward the fence where we were standing. At first, I thought it was an injured member from our flight, but then I remembered that we never found anyone else that was alive. A few seconds later I noticed that their flesh was in the process of decaying and parts of their intestines were pouring out from their stomach, and instantly I knew what was going on.
I grabbed Maxie by the arm and rushed for us to get back to the crash site before anything got worse, but she got angry and pushed my hand off.
"What are you doing? We need to help them." She complained to me that she didn't want to leave them there, but I still tried to warn her that we needed to get out of there.
"No, we need to leave and get back to the plane where it's safer. It's too dangerous here." I insisted, but she refused to listen and went back to the fence.
I watched her for some time trying to talk to it but it was unresponsive and behaving like a disembodied fish with muscle memory, so I decided to pick up a stick and throw it to see what would happen.
As I did so, it groaned loudly and limped off to where it had landed. I took that chance to grab Maxie and get out of there as fast as possible.
She kept asking me what my problem was and why I was being so bossy, and I answered aggressively, "That thing is a walking corpse and I'm not going to let you act like it's a normal human being, now let's go!" I tugged her arm, trying to pull her along with me.
"That can't be real." She scoffed.
I turned away while taking a deep breath and then looked back at her with a serious face. "Did you not see it covered in blood and somehow still walking? Please tell me that isn't normal, because I sure as hell know that it's not." I demanded with my eyes scrunched.
She froze for a few seconds, biting her tongue, and sneered at me under her breath, "No, it doesn't, but I was just trying to help them. Stop yelling at me."
After we argued like kids for what seemed like forever, we finally calmed ourselves down and took a break from walking near the power plant which obviously wasn't the best place to be, but we were tired and didn't want to go back yet.
Maxie fell asleep against my shoulder while I kept a lookout. I faced the opposite direction of where the power plant was because I didn't want to look at it. The entire place felt eerie, there was just something weird about it that I couldn't figure out until I saw an actual zombie.
What that meant for me was that we were literally walking around a radioactive power plant, and were going to die soon if we didn't hurry and try to find a way out.
So that's what my plan was for the rest of the day, and I told Maxie to stay by my side while we walked back to the crash site. When we got there I started grabbing sticks to build a fire and looked for a good spot for us to sleep in. I found a small area in the back side of the plane that wasn't damaged and decided that it was the perfect place.
After we set up sleeping bags that we grabbed from someone else's luggage, I gazed out into the ocean that surrounded us and tried to see if there was more land nearby but saw nothing. So basically we were stranded on an island- a radioactive island with walking corpses, having no idea of where they were, except only one.
Soon after that we finally got ourselves settled down for the night. We didn't bring any blankets for our vacation, so we had to search through everyone's suitcases again and grab anything we could find to keep us warm.
I hung up someone's sheet around the opening where the plane had snapped in half to prevent some of the wind from coming in, and then laid down beside Maxie while she was already sleeping. It took me a while to fall asleep because I could hear the waves crashing in the distance and it made me miss being home. I also thought about the weird feeling I had in the airport.
When I was there I didn't really think much about it because I assumed that I was just nervous to leave my family, but at that moment I thought differently about the entire situation. I felt like I predicted the plane crash happening, and maybe I shouldn't have let us get on the flight. But I wasn't completely sure, so I didn't want to blame myself for it.
I eventually got tired of thinking about it all and just stared at the window above me until my eyes closed, and I fell asleep to the sound of Maxie snoring.