"Clayton, time to get up for school. You're going to miss the bus again, and you know I can't drive you there!"
Clayton slowly raised his head and looked over at the alarm clock on his dresser.
'6:37 in the morning. I overslept again too. Maybe I can just not go to school today.' He thought as his mind drifted between sleep and waking up. He could hear his mother begin yelling at him again, her tone getting harsher and more upsetting as she went.
'I can just ignore her.' He thought as he put his pillow over his head. He heard her banging on his door, yelling at him to wake up. But Clayton didn't want to get up. He liked the soft feeling of his covers on him, and the nice, cool feel of his pillows on his face.
Suddenly, as quick as lightning, he felt himself being shaken awake, desperate hands moving him quickly back and forth. He slowly opens his eyes to blue skies and trees passing by overhead. Slowly he looks around and sees that he is in a car speeding down a back road, accompanied by two other people in the vehicle. They look scraggly, wearing torn clothes and dirty boots, and look worried. The one driving, a tall, lanky man with dark hair and eyes that stared forward relentlessly, who looks like he was of hispanic heritage about the age of 30, grips the steering wheel with an apparent rage, while the other, an Asian lady of about 25 tends to his head, which he now realizes is bleeding into a gauze wrap. She had jet black hair, and eyes as calculating as an eagle's, but as compassionate as a mother and her child. Suddenly it all came back to him. The scavenging run, the searching for medicine so the flu epidemic could be handled, the infected bursting in from everywhere, and them running through back alley ways to get back to their S.U.V. He remembered running, looking back at the swarm of zombie-like creatures, and hitting his head on a low hanging pipe, knocking him unconscious. How Joseph and May, vaguely remembering their names, had managed to get him to the vehicle he would never know.
"Are you okay?" Clayton could make out her say to him, his head still pounding from the blow. He quickly nods and looks over his body.'Good, no bites or scratches.' Quickly surveying their faces, Clayton had a growing pit in his stomach.
"Joseph... May... did we get the medicine?"
They look at each other, Joseph avoiding eye contact with Clayton, and resuming staring at the road. May reluctantly turned her gaze towards Clayton, and his worst fear was realized.
"We failed, and now the medicine that the camp needs is gone, and they have no way of surviving the illness that have gripped them. Clayton numbly layed back down and closed his eyes, wishing that his dream would return, knowing it wouldn't. A sharp pain stabbed him quickly in the chest. "My sister might die without those meds.."