They Called It The Apocalpse

Chapter 25

He took a couple of deep breath outside as Tate looked at him, then he rubbed his hands across his eyes to try and keep the tears in. By default he put his hands on the top of his head and turned away from Tate, facing into the corner so he couldn't see him if the tears did somehow manage to free themselves. Luckily for him they didn't and after a good long while Tate spoke to him and his voice cut clear through his distress. "You good bro?" Tate asked, looking up from where he'd been picking at a long string of grass in the ground. Jason sighed and came to sit beside him, clutching his hands between his legs and resting his head on them. "No." He grumbled, trying to process everything he was going through but struggling to come to terms with what he'd just heard. "You don't have to tell me." Tate said as he bent back down to the piece of grass and tugged it free from the dirt. Jason wanted to thank him, wanted to tell him how good of a friend he was for not prying into his personal business but he couldn't manage that sort of emotion towards Tate. He sat back up and looked into the fire, plucking the grass from between Tate's fingers as he peeled a strand away and flinging it into the fire. "You know, when i was younger my dad got sick." He stated, watching the fire glow and wane and remembering the fire he tried to stoke to keep his dad warm, "I was young, i didn't know much about the joyous then but somehow he did. It started out like any other illness." He looked over at Tate, he was listening intently and nodding sorrowfully at Jason's story. "The coughing, the fever, sneezing even. I thought that would be the worst of it, thought that if i could feed him enough chicken soup like he did for me that maybe he would get better, but then he started the vomiting. Anything i fed him would come straight back out until eventually it started to come back as blood. I often found him trapped in a corner where he'd wandered off from his seat by the fire, hands out, blood down his chin and on his shirt. He didn't tell me but i knew he couldn't really see either." He stopped to try and recover himself, instead of sobbing he took a deep breath several times to stabilise his emotions. "His face was constantly pale and he stopped going to work, he had these eyes that were sunk in and sickly and every now and then I'd catch a glimpse of his beady glass eyes going blank, animal." He licked his lips then stared off into the sky at the twinkling stars. "Eventually it took him, the illness and he became like one of them, i came home from school before they shut it and he was stood blankly in the middle of the living room, there was blood everywhere and he'd smashed the place up. When i saw him i froze, I didn't expect my own father to hurt me or to turn into a monster. I thought he was sick not past the point of coming back. Somehow he'd managed to keep the fire stoked and it blazed high with flames behind him and in that moment he seemed more like my dad than he had for a while. He never did say anything to me but his eyes communicated everything he needed to tell me before he threw himself backwards into the fire." Tears built in Jason's eyes and he held them back, he couldn't let Tate see him as emotional. One stray tear escaped but he managed to keep the rest in. "I watched my own father burn alive, watched his skin melt from his bones. But the worst part was the screams he let out as it happened, he didn't stop for minutes after and it rung in my ears for days. The house stank of burnt flesh, death. I had to leave, i couldn't get it out, no matter how much i scrubbed or bleached things, it stayed like that forever until one day i left and never came back." He drew a hand up to his mouth and didn't dare to look back at Tate but a gentle hand patted his shoulder. "Its alright dude." Tate muttered, he hated to see his friend like this, he wished he could take his memories away and toss them onto the fire. "I can't lose anyone else that way Tate." Jason explained, his chest heaved up and down with the effort of keeping calm and emotionally stable. "I can't promise you what fate has in store for us, but i can tell you something. If it is going to happen, then theres not a lot we can do, our best option is to spend as much time with those that we love now before its too late." Jason nodded at Tate's words of advice, they were surprisingly mature for someone as immature as him but they resonated with Jason and he took them to heart. He got to his feet and sighed, wiping his eyes one last time as Tate watched him. "Where are you going?" He asked and Jason looked over at the tent.
"I'm going back to Cassie, for some reason i can't stay mad at her." A smile spread across Tate's face and Jason nodded at him.
"What are you smirking at?"
"Soft touch." He chuckled and Jason shook his head as he ducked back into the tent.

Cassie was sat up in the centre of the tent with her back to the door when he opened it, she was struggling to re-secure the gauze on her shoulder and he could hear her sniffling to herself as she did. He sat down crosslegged and reached for the gauze, "Here. I'll do it." She pulled her hands away and sat patiently as he helped her, gently peeling away the previous gauze and digging around in his backpack and producing a fresh piece of gauze and tape. He peeled the gauze from the sterile packet and applied it carefully to her shoulder, holding it in place as he stuck the tape across the edges then smoothed it down. As he worked she sat silently right up to the last minute. "Are you mad at me?" She asked, sniffing up violently. Jason sighed as he finished up and crammed the rubbish back into his bag, she touched the fresh gauze carefully then turned back to look at him and for a second Jason saw his fathers face, red eyed and ill. Cassie looked nearly the same, her eyes were sunken in with red rings around them and she was pale, he questioned himself on how he hadn't noticed before that she was evolving but then brushed the thought away. "No, I'm not mad." He replied, lying down next to her on his sleeping bag. She watched him for a little while, unsure what to do with herself as she pulled her shirt fully on then smoothed down the ruffled fabric of the shoulder that caught on the rough gauze. Jason extended his arm for her to lie with him and she took the signal, bedding herself down on her own sleeping bag but lying her head on his shoulder. He stroked her hair gently, savouring every last moment he could get with her but he couldn't sleep and he felt her eyes fixed on the ceiling. He didn't want to bring up the bite again, or speak of Thalia, whose fate was still unknown so he chose a different subject which he'd been thinking about for quite some time. "Cassie?" She shifted a little to look up at him with her grey pupils and he noticed that shed started to gain the slight yellow tinge of the eyes of the joyous, another pang of pain shot through his heart. "Yes?" She asked brightly, watching him hopefully. "Why do you have his rabbit in your bag?" She stiffened up, it wasn't the question she'd anticipated and it hurt deep inside of her. It dragged up painful memories that she didn't want to revisit but also answered her own question of who had been snooping in her bag. "You went through my bag?" She asked though it was a rhetorical question, she tried not to let it show on her face how bothered she was by all of it. "You never answered my question." Jason said blankly, he focused on the ceiling, not wanting to look at Cassie while he waited for the answer. "And you never answered mine." She responded aggressively.
"Alright, I was worried about you so while you slept i went through your bag to see if I could find out what was going on with you but you were dying the whole time."
"I'm not-"
"Oh come on Cassie, we both know theres only one ending after being bit and its practically death either way." They fell silent, again finding themselves awkward and clinging onto their pent up rage. Cassie shifted again, reaching for her bag and drawing the rabbit out from inside into her hands, she held it up in front of her and stared at it. "I didn't want to forget him..." she whispered, running her thumb across its eyes. Jason kept his breathing steady and slow as he waited for her to continue, "I...I loved him, Jace, even if you-"
"Stop. Just stop. Because you know I'm hurting just as much as you are over this Cass. Who wouldn't be in pain....but it was a long time ago and we agreed." She felt the tears stinging at her eyes again and the uncomfortable lump in her throat as she attempted not to cry.
"I know, but i just wanted to feel close to him again." She held the rabbit to her chest, hugging it to her heart and feeling a great emptiness inside. "They said it would be easier on us to remove all of his stuff, they're memories, Cassie, of what happened. They're just gonna make it worse."
"Don't talk about him like that!" She cried, suddenly getting aggressive and shuffling out of Jason's grasp, "he was our baby Jason! Not a monster." Jason rubbed his eyes with his fingers.
"I know you tried to block it out Cassie, the whole ordeal was horrific but our baby came up with the gene in the fetal screenings. He was evolved before he was even born. Its not fair, no, government backed mandatory abortions isn't fair, but he was going to do so much more bad than good. He wasn't our baby Cassie. He was one of them."
"You mean me. One of me." She whispered sadly as she cradled the rabbit, "he was our baby and i had to hold him inside of me. I had to go through it all when they chose to terminate what was inside of my body. I had to wake up knowing that the kid that i was gonna love had been taken from me." She was almost hyperventilating with her sadness and her fear of what was coming. She needed Jason to understand, but he never could, because his pain was different, no less painful but different in itself. They almost fell into awkward silence again but Cassie felt the familiar rush of vomit in her throat and threw herself outside, vomiting up a bucket of blood beside the tent. When she came back inside, scrubbing at her mouth to rid herself of blood stains, Jason had had time to think about his next move. "I'm sorry." He whispered and she sighed, snuggling back into the spot beside him. "I know." She mumbled, accepting the fact that both of their emotions were currently running incredibly high.