Living on Borrowed Time

Chapter Ten

     It's night now, almost midnight. Everybody is asleep except for Jane and I. We're sitting at the round table across from the display case, there's a lit candle in the middle of the table but the flame is low. Just bright enough so we can see each others half shadowed faces. After staring into the flame with nothing but silence for nearly five minutes I finally speak.

"We can't stay here." I softly say, picking at the calluses on my left hand. She sighs.

"I know." She replies. "I just... I didn't want to leave this place. It's hard to leave... I grew up here, and my father... he worked so hard throughout his life to keep this place... I couldn't let that be for nothing."

I look up into her green eyes.

"Everything has to have an end. It's hard to accept but... everything ends eventually." I explain to her with sympathy.

. . . . .

***TWO MONTHS LATER***

. . . . .

I lie there in the night, staring up at the inside of the tent. I look over as the moonlight creeps in, Jane lies beside me, bare breasted and asleep. I pull her blanket up as a chilly breeze finds its way in, covering up her chest, then turn my head back to the roof of our tent. The last two months have been brutal on us. Everyday we struggle to find more food and water, we barely consume enough to replenish our energy. We've been moving from shelter to shelter, trying to find a place where other survivors have settled down, but I'm beginning to think that there aren't any other survivors out there.

When we can't find a place to stay we use these tents that we found to camp out in between destinations, just to get us through the night. I guess all we can do at this point is deal with everything one day at time... just like anybody else.

I sit up and put on my shirt, grab my knife and quietly exit the tent, zipping up the door behind me. The cool fresh air of the night is relaxing as it chills my lungs, as it gently brushes against my skin. I look around our little camping area but don't see any danger, except for one biter, but he's stuck in our barbed wire fencing.

A couple weeks after leaving 'Gunthers', Jane and I had found some strong steel posts and a couple rolls of barbed wire in the back of an abandoned military vehicle. We wrapped the ends of the barbed wire around the posts, made it secure with four lines of wire. One at neck height, chest height, hip height and knee height. We made two twelve foot long fences that will protect us if any biters wander near our camp at night; and when we're done we take the posts out of the ground and roll the fences up.

I slowly walk over to the biter with my knife drawn. The breeze begins to pick up, rustling the leaves on the large tree that's only feet away from our tent. I look down at the ground near the biter as the breeze blows the grass, causing a ripple effect, the wind pushing each blade of grass like a domino. My eyes drift upward. The biter is weak, he's sort of just resting on the fence. He tried to walk through it at one point but the barbs dug in deep and he must've given up, the top wire is dug in completely under his scalp, causing his dead hair to droop to the side. I just stare into his dead hazy eyes, just thinking, 'somewhere out there... my family probably looks like this guy right now'.

"Poor bastard." I drive my blade into the top of its skull. The biter stops moving, his jaw stops snapping and his eyes stay motionless. I raise my right foot and push the corpse off the fence, a little bit of rotten flesh still stuck to the barbs.

"Bruce?" Jane's voice comes from behind. I turn around, she's wearing one of my plaid button ups and her jacket over it, the plaid shirt only buttoned up halfway. "What are you doing out here?" She questions as she slowly steps toward me. I just stand there after sheathing my knife, all of our problems on my mind at once. Only half expecting it I hug her, wrapping my arms around her.