After Life: Clinging to death

~Prologue~

I ran as fast as I could, my breathing being the rapidest it had been in what seems like forever. Oh who am I kidding? I haven't breathed since I was alive; well, the last time I was alive anyway. My anxiety and panic got the better of me and so I left Bradley by himself back at his house. I didn't want to be alive, it was too difficult; especially  having only Brad for company. My decomposing floral Doc Martens, a pair of stained black leggings, and and an ugly green tank top were all I managed to find in amongst the wreckage of what used to be my bedroom. California looked much different to the bright tropical city I remember it being, I hadn't been here in ages.

The Doc Martens caught stones in between the gaps on the soles as I continued running, even though I had no idea where I was going. " June, wait!" I heard a guy call out from behind me, I could tell it was Bradley. "How'd you get here so fast?" I asked him, puffed out of my mind.

"I love running, remember?"

"Oh, yeah."

Back before the outbreak, Brad was always running around the track at school. Whenever I walked past the sports area, he was always there; headphones in ears, pacing himself to the music. Once he'd even been asked to represent the state in a national competition; but back then, he didn't know me.

"Shit, what do we do?" He suddenly asked me.

 "I don't know okay? If I did, I'd be doing it right now don't you think?"

"Okay, okay geez." He smiled at me sheepishly.

"Well, there's no one else her so..."

 He proceeded to lean in closer to me, resting his cold, familiar palm against my cheek.

"Hahahaha, no." I jokingly pushed him away. He then laughed, tripping over a stone on the broken pathway. We walked around California for a while, absorbing what had once been a beautiful place, turned to shit. The gorgeous lit-up buildings that once stood were now just rubble, palm trees had over grown the pathway, and our school was basically, a pile of bricks.

 "Wait." Brad grabbed my hand, spinning me around to face him directly.

 "We could return you know?" He asked me.

 "What do you mean?"

 "Well, we could um; die again."

"That's a brilliant idea!" I screamed out of joy, wrapping my arms around him. Millions of ideas popped into my head.

"We could jump from a building, or take pills, or shoot each other, o-"

" I like the jumping idea." He smiled.

Around ten minutes after the conversation, Bradley had lead me to the tallest building in sight, a 15 metre high concrete slab, slanting slightly from the amount of erosion over the years. I soaked in the atmosphere, feeling the warming sun, and a slight breeze tickling my face.

"I'm gonna miss this though, I must admit."

 "What do you mean?" Brad asked me, an unsure tone in his voice.

"You know, being able to breathe, feel, eat. Stuff like that."

"True." He sighed, holding my hand in his, squeezing it tightly.

"But we'll regret it more if we don't do this."  I nodded in agreement. 

We looked at each other, sadly smiling. Our feet dropping one by one, and I pulled him down with me; off the edge of the building on to the hard, barely visible path below.