Fungi- A Tale Of Two Warriors

Chapter twenty three

(Zoe) 
Fuck is she one of them?! "I- Please don't tell anyone you saw me! I don't want to see anymore of this!" I plead. Gesturing to the direction of the hanging bodies. The teen watches me confused but mostly startled. 
"Who?" She asks. Is she not one of them? My old group can't find me. They probably know I ditched them because of what they did. I have never seen anything so brutal and these poor kids didn't deserve this. But who is she and what is she doing here? "Who are you?" I ask, confused to why she is here.
She's hesitant before she answers, “Uh, I’m Alex and I’m just going home, blew some stuff up earlier. Who might you be?” Why would she need to be blowing up stuff? Suspicious. "I'm Zoe. So you're not with the people who did the hanging infected thing?" I ask. 
“Dude, do you know who did that? I would really like to know.” She glares. 
She doesn't necessarily know. I can't let her know. "No, I wasn't with the people who did that. I saw smoke and came to inspect and saw all these things, hanging infected. So I hid and I didn't want the same thing to happen to me." I say, trying to defend myself. 
“Can you please talk about them like sick and not aliens? "She breathed in heavily and said,
"I’m sorry.” 
"You don't know do you…?" I ask.
She clearly doesn't know what happens, how people become infected.
She gives me a blank look, like possible answers were bouncing around in her head. “Know, what?”
"There's this little mushroom-virus thing. No one really knows but there was this doctor I knew a while ago after all this started. Something called a cordyceps unilateralis? It gets into its victims through body fluids like ; spit, blood and sweat . When it gets to you it takes control of a part of your body that was scratched or bitten. When the fungus gets to your brain and fully takes over and all you can do is to submit and watch as you eat others. Thankfully for some, they're already dead when the spores get to you.The only way to stop it is a bullet to the brain." I explain. She stares at me blankly. 
"Anyway.. You said you were heading home, is it safe? If it is, can I tag along? I won't stay long. Just long enough until I get back onto the road."
 She has to think for a long while before finally saying, “Let’s get a move on then.”