Fragmented Morality

Ch. 8

A constant humming pierced through my subconsciousness. It buzzed like a swarm of bees in my ears, it was like it was surrounding me while I drifted aimlessly in my own mind. At first, the noise was a small sound in the background, but it continued to get louder and louder, bringing with it a deep aching throb in my head.

I groaned.

At this point, I was done with the way every part of my body caused me agony day in and day out. The feeling was getting old fast and I was over it. I wished it would just go away, but that wasn't how things worked. I couldn't just be done with an injury, I had to heal and that was something my body had no time to do before being battered once again, over and over, one after another.

I tried to roll over to avoid the pain, only to realise my body was not cooperating with my thoughts. Whether it was twitching a finger or moving an arm, nothing happened, and I quickly understood that while my consciousness was surfacing, it hadn't done so completely. I was still trapped within my subconscious, unable to move an inch.

Great. Just. Great.

Thinking logically, I was probably lucky I wasn't aware of my body or the exact state it was in. It had shut itself down to cope with the trauma it experienced and if I were to wake up properly, I knew I would be left to feel everything. I was sure that if I were to wake up, the pain would have been excruciating.

There was a saying that time waits for no one, and that was the truth. Whether I was conscious or not, that didn't mean the world had stopped moving forward. No, while I was unaware of everything, the people around me were left in a complete panic over my battered body.

●

When Shane had made it, last minute, into the RV before the CDC building exploded, no one expected to see Christopher, bloodied knees, being dragged in while he was semi-conscious. It seemed as though it had slipped their minds that the young man was borderline incapacitated at least once every day for the past week. And to see him panting, writhing in pain as he was overcome with a fever, was guilt-inducing to everyone who saw.

They were so caught up in their own lives that they were unable to keep up the facade that they actually cared about the Peletier family, or so Christopher would have said. It really wasn't anyone's fault that they weren't focussing on the man, everyone had someone to think about and it was hard to share that attention with someone who they found hard to get close to, in the first place. The only problem was Christopher took the lack of effort to help as an indication they didn't care, and all the looks they sent his way were just to make themselves look good.

The only people he trusted to be different from this were Shane, Amy, his mum, and his sister. Then considering one of those people had been tragically killed, the young man felt he only had three people on his side, two of which he felt responsible for. So, in the end, the only person he had to rely on was Shane.

Even so, when his battered body was placed in front of the majority of his group, barring his family, T-dog and Daryl, everyone was sent into a frenzy of worry. His mother and sister were in a separate car with T-dog, fearful for Christopher's life, only holding hope that Shane had looked after him, but the people standing before him were fearful for a separate reason.

"Was he bit!?" Lori asked, pulling her son closer to her, afraid the feverish teen would groan to life and rip the flesh from their bones.

"I don' know. I think he was like this before," Shane replied in an unsteady voice. Only once he was safe inside the vehicle did it begin to register in his head that he could have died- he almost died. He didn't even care that he had left his Jeep behind in his mad dash to save himself and the Peletier boy.