The Last Plague

Chapter Thirty-Four: Navigation

I heard one last shout, It was the man shouting at us. "I'll find you!" he shouted, then the final explosion drowned out his words.

The explosion was deafening. You had gas in the truck, I remembered. The gas would have caught and at least doubled the size of the explosion. I shuddered from remembering the man's final words, I'll find you, replaying in my head. I was horrified that he'd somehow survived the explosion and was coming to find me at the very moment. After a long silence, I was pretty sure he had died, but the thought still lingered.

"That wasn't creepy," Trina spoke sarcastically.

We started walking down the black unending abyss, unable to see in front of us. I knew we would pass the truck at some point, and a glimmer of hope we would find a flashlight came. I wouldn't allow myself to get too much hope, but the glimmer still stayed.

We had been walking for hours in silence before we saw a small flame illuminating the truck. The metal on it was bent and glass from the lights spread across the ground. I could see the man lying half out of the car. I thought I heard a groan from him.

"Please," he groaned out. He looked dead all over. His face was pale, blood in vital areas, half out of the car. "Please, help me."

I was horrified and disgusted at the same time. The man who threatened to kill us, steal our truck, then wrecked the truck, was asking for help. I didn't want to help him in any way. I felt disgusted by the fact he even wanted help. The man was groaning, barely alive though. I felt unwillingly guilty leaving him there.

I walked up to him knowing there was nothing we could do. "There isn't anything we can do for you, you killed yourself," I told him angrily. My words came out cold and I felt slight shame at even saying the words. You killed yourself, I told him, some of the coldest words I had ever spoken.

I couldn't take the man's groaning in agony. His moans continued, almost sounding like the creatures. I eventually grabbed my gun and shot his head, ending the pain. I started to feel guilt climb up to me, but I stopped it from coming. I was refusing to allow any pain of killing someone who was going to die anyway come to me. He was practically dead; I couldn't help him.

I, Trina, and Raymond started looking through the car. It was broken inside, and all the gas cans had melted from the heat, but we looked for the bags. I found them in the back and looked through them. Most of the food had been thrown around on the ground and smashed making it inedible. There were a few packages of food left, but not enough to last more than a week. I found a shattered flashlight inside of them all. Then I realized I had only found four.

"There were five bags, right?" I asked Raymond.

"Yeah, why do you ask?" He droned, bringing me back to annoyance.

"I only found four in here. Where do you think the other one is?" I asked him while looking around.

There was silence as we looked around for the other one. The flames of the car started dying down and grew worried. If we didn't find the package then we would be walking in darkness. The thought alone terrified me.

"It's over here!" Raymond shouted from the other side of the truck. "He must have thrown it out of his window or something. Everything is still intact," he said, keeping his tone.

I was practically leaping with joy as I ran over there. "What's in there?"

"Everything," Raymond said, a smile of relief flooded his face.

I felt relief at an almost overwhelming rate. We looked through it and found the flashlight, with spare batteries in the bag too. Everything seemed to be turning around. Raymond grabbed the flashlight and pushed the bag over his shoulders.

We started walking down the dark endless tunnel. I was happy enough we could see. We continued walking silently and rested the night; if it was night. We were all tired and wanted to sleep. As we lay there, Trina, I, and Raymond talked about the PS. We were all excited about arriving at the PS.

After sleeping we walked for a few hours. We came across a large split in the tunnels. There were only two paths, but Raymond seemed confused. He walked up to them and looked at them, seemingly inspecting them. He muttered something under his breath and looked around worryingly. He walked to the left side and sat down muttering.

"What is it, what's wrong?" I asked, worried myself.

"I don't know where we are," he said. His voice started to change into sadness.

The simple statement shocked me. I sat down on the other side of the tunnel from where Raymond was. Everything seemed to shatter around me, I was devastated. I looked around me for any clue or something to know where to go. I realized I didn't know what these tunnels were. I immediately knew I wouldn't find anything. I sat there staring at the floor in shock.

Trina sat next to me with the same look of worry on her face. "I can't believe we're going to die like this," she said, the morbid statement taking me by surprise.

"We won't—" my voice died. I thought about what she said. I didn't know what to think. "We won't die in here," I told her, sounding completely unconvincing. I started thinking we were going to die too.

"At least we are going to die together," she said looking up at me. A smile was on her face as a tear slid down her face.

"No, we can't die. I'm not going to have you both die because I forgot directions." Raymond's voice shredded through the air. "When you both die, it won't be because of me. I plan on living a long life. We were all lucky to have even made it this far. If we die now, I don't know. I feel like we've come too far to just die from starvation." Raymond's voice started sounding human. They were powerful and full of encouragement.

"So, what do we do?" I asked him, still confused.

"We're going to try one of these passages and hope they take us somewhere." Raymond said, "Which one should we go down, left or right?"

I stood there in shock. Let our lives be placed in a fifty-fifty chance. I didn't like it, but there wasn't another option. I was worried about what would happen if we took the wrong one. I didn't want to think about that though.

"Since we are in the left one, let's go left," Raymond said, starting to sound cheerful.

Trina gave me a worried glance. I just shrugged back at her. It was better to take the fifty-fifty shot of dying than just dying. I started following after Raymond hoping we were heading the right way. I looked back at Trina, who was shaking her head. She seemed worried about everything happening. When she looked up, she realized we were leaving. She jogged after us to catch up.

We had started our long walk to the PS base. Raymond held out the flashlight in front of us and would occasionally swing it backward. There was just an eerie silence that hushed the entire tunnel. We could only walk. I was terrified at every moment of the walk. Anything could appear in the distance. Several horrifying creatures could come at us. We could die at any moment from starvation. We may never even get there.

I refused to let down my hope; I refused to have too much hope too. We continued walking for a few hours without change. Nobody said a word; no one asked any questions. The eerie silence continued to fall over the room, creating anticipation inside me. I was fidgeting with fear all over my body. I hated the very fact we were in there.

I was grateful we didn't have to use our guns for any violence yet. I hated killing the man who was already dying, and I didn't want to use my gun again. I thought I saw a light coming from a different direction of the flashlight. It was faint, but the closer we got the more visible it became. Then I saw it, a faint, dusty, glowing light in the distance. It came from the roof of the endless abyss of a tunnel.