15 for 15 Contest --- Closed

Diamond was a thinker, not a fighter, but those days, it was better to be a fighter. But he was a good big brother.

The Blight Bombs were set off in the cities first, killing off everybody. They called them zombie bombs jokingly, they said that you acted crazy when the blight got you. But if you did, you didn't have long to act crazy. It killed you quick.

The news told us the contamination zones were spreading, but we didn't need the news to know about it. Heavy, thick black fog, like the smoke from burning rubber, only more acrid, would roll along the ground. Sometimes it would only be a few inches. Sometimes it was a tidal wave of black death. It touched you and you were dead.

The only protection were the bunkers that the government... or what was left of the government... set up for the people. They were specifically put in hard to get, out-of-the-way places, ostensibly to protect us, but really to keep the rabble from gathering in too great of numbers. The bunkers couldn't fit everyone.

The black, rolling death was coming for us. It was a small town of iron houses, built to withstand the nuclear strike of fifty years ago, where we lived. We thought nothing could get us, until the Blight.

"There's got to be a way to build our own bunker!" Diamond yelled. He kicked at the wall of our little rusted house. "We've got to be able to protect our own." I had filled a small bag of supplies. I strapped a pistol to my side and a shotgun to my back, and I suggested he do the same, but Diamond didn't hurt people. Diamond didn't use guns.

The Blight was coming. I looked in the distance, and I couldn't see it, but I could smell it. It smelled like death. Nothing could stop it. You could only run.

"We've got to go," I said. And he gave me that look again. I hated that look. I was his baby sister, I'd always be his baby sister, in his mind. And he thought that it was his job to protect me, but these days, I was better at protecting him. "Let's go," I repeated. He followed me.

The Blight doesn't just kill humans, it breaks anything and everything else. One way we knew the Blight was coming was the mere fact that all of our cars stopped starting, all at once.

There was a group of ten of us, and we ran, we ran across the dead countryside, across pounded down dirt, dead grass, we passed the bodies of weaker, smaller animals, like squirrels and raccoons.

The Blight was coming.

"Behind us, behind us!" Henry called himself the leader of our group of ten. He screamed, and we all ran, all of us, for the bunker that we knew we could reach.

Diamond was faster than me, but he ran just slower than me, pushing me, making sure I didn't trip.

And we reached the bunker. Henry ran in first. "In, in, in!" he yelled, "It's coming, it's coming!"

We were almost there. I reached for the door, but all I could see was Henry's terrified face, and the door closed.

Diamond ran in front of me, banged on the door, screamed, but it was no use.

He whirled around, fury in his eyes. "I'm sorry," he said.

I didn't know what was happening. He pulled out a gun from his jacket and he shot me.

From behind a bubble of protection, I watched the Blight take him. I watched him crumple to the ground, I watched my brother die.