Desinence. (The Beginning Of The End)

.3.

I blinked back the blinding light of the shimmering sun, too afraid to close my eyes. I feared if I closed my eyes, everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours would just be gone, a half-forgotten haze of a dream in the back of my head. Stored like the rest of the quiet dreams that would forever haunt me. I would wake up in my silent apartment, and I would be alone again. Possibly forever. I shuddered at this thought, and contined to stare out the window of the truck, shoving the thoughts away. The grassy oceans of feilds glowed to life, reflecting the warm sunset above them. The landscape seemed to go on forever. An empty road of nature, but never really seeming empty. I brushed the hair from my eyes to get a better look.

Anything and almost everything was beautiful to me now. Life was. The miracle of getting found, of seeing other living human beings had me looking at the world from a different perspective. I was forever changed, in a good way.

It felt weird to be in a car again. Not a bad weird, just different.

Micah and the others had parked the car so close to my home that I was surprised that I hadn't noticed the bright white Chevrolet in the lot before. Before we entered the car, Alyssa had insisted that I'd be tied up again, if I were to be sitting so close to them. Micah didn't disagree, so I was loosing feeling in my hands again for the second time today. Micah got in the driver's seat without question from the other members. But I was surprised to see that Foster, the youngest out of them all, was allowed in the passenger seat while Alyssa and Bryant were stuck in the backseat with me, the stranger.  I sullenly realized that he was either related to Micah, or he was just simply Leader's Pet. He looked smug enough to be either.

As we drove away from the town, this place that had been my home for so long, I didn't feel one surge of greif. I didn't even look back as we dissapeared through the town's exit. I hated that place, with a passion. It had, in a way, become my sanctuary. But it was also a prison. A dark, lonely, quiet prison.

Throughout most of the car ride, it was silent, besides the low chatter bewteen Micah and Foster. Even though Alyssa sat on the opposite side of the car with me, she didn't even glance at me once. She just stared out of her window, gripping a gun in her hand cautiously. Whenever I wasn't gazing out of my own window, Bryant would sometimes make small talk with me, asking things about what food I had lived on, and if I had ever come across strangers before. The rest of the group listened to my answers so intently that I stumbled over my words a lot, nervous to make a mistake that would sound like lying, though I had no reason to lie to these people. I didn't even remember how to lie, or if I even could.

There wasn't much landscape to see. Just miles and miles of fields and hills. A few trees dotted here and there. I absentmindedly wondered what city we were in. What state, for that matter. I mentally  stuffed that question in the back of my mind for later.

The drive had taken longer than I would have thought. It must have been several hours, somewhere in the double digits. We had to stop a few times so Alyssa, Bryant, Micah, and Foster could get out and raid empty, abandonned cars on the side of the roads. I watched them through the window, thankful for some kind of distraction from my thoughts. They found a lot of items. Maps, cellhpones, bags of chips with brand names I easily recognized. Money, clothes, pens.

At one point, as I watched them curiously as they searched through an old, scraped up Ford, Alyssa excitedly pulled out something in her hand that I couldn't see at first. She was smiling for the first time, though, as she showed it to the others.   She finally opened Foster's door and opened up what I now realized was a case. She popped the CD into the slot, and smiled at nothing in particular as the unfamiliar music filled my ears.

She listened to it for a few seconds, and then turned to me. Her smile faded, but she didn't look to upset anymore. "It's The Killers," She explained. She bobbed her head ryhtmatically, and then said, "I've found a whole bunch of their CD's on other raids before. They're really good." She reached over to turn the music up. I listened to the lyrics.