Life After Death

Chapter 5

Things seemed different after my revelation that I did indeed have a friend after two years alone. Not in a bad way, but in a good way.

I'm pretty sure the fright we both experienced gave him a revelation too, I didn't know what he felt about me before then, but I knew it had definitely made whatever it was stronger.

The banter remained between us, but it seemed more light-hearted than before. Like it wasn't so aimed or forced just to make conversation. In fact, there didn't need to be a conversation anymore, the silence wasn't awkward.

I figured that the way we believed the other could be dead that day by the lake, showed not only ourselves, but the other, that we did actually care- even if I hadn't realised it myself at that point. Maybe he had cared from the beginning. I didn't know.

After that day, we made our way to the nearest town all the street signs were pointing too.

Since he had been left alone without a weapon, giving me a near on panic attack, I decided it was time I faced it and agreed to try and find a better range of protection somewhere. There wasn't any telling what could happen and where anymore. Hiding around in fields, houses and less populated areas in general, had proven it wasn't safe anyway.

"You know, we don't have to do this."

"Yes, we do."

All it was, was paranoia. There was nothing to say that they would even be more dangerous, it just seemed to make more sense.

Maybe it was like Nathaniel's thing about the clocks. A town or city was just a bigger version. Frozen in time since the day the world ended. Everything left to rot away in the same position everyone left it. Houses furnished all the same, businesses left just as they had been the last day, they closed to stop the spread.

The weather today wasn't great, and by that, I mean it was chucking it down. For a while we walked with our jackets over our heads, but that proved to be useless, so we ended up giving up before long. Our hair and face now exposed to the elements- at least our arms had some kind of warmth now though.

"That treehouse we fled is looking real desirable right now," he laughed.

As we waded our way closer, it came into view. Old buildings and towers now close enough to get a good look at. All coloured in different shades of dark grey, like some kind of filter had been placed over it. It seemed bigger than a town, not big enough for a city. Somewhere in between. The closer we got, the more cars and trucks were scattered around the place. Left there to rust since they were abandoned. Some even on the fields as I assume they tried to cut the queues.

Clearly, we weren't the first to come here though, the road was not full of cars at all, some scattered here and there, but it would never of surprised me if people had come and taken them. You probably could still hot wire them if you knew what you were doing, though the rain that's rusted them may beg to differ.

"You know, there's still time to turn back," he said once more as we finally grew to the outskirts. I didn't know if it was because he could feel my tension, or he had his own.

"You ask me again and I may just take you up on that."

The place was fairly accurate to how I had imagined it would be. Buildings were littered with cracks and crevices within the bricks and concrete that kept them from collapsing completely. On other buildings, mother nature had taken over, ivy and moss growing from windowsills and roofs, the occasional vine even draping itself from the top. Some windows were still open, presumably they had either never been touched or others had visited and occupied those rooms as their own.

Beneath our feet as we walked, the concrete was riddled with bumps and fractures that tried to trip us up as we looked up at the towers that loomed over us. It looked for all the world like they were so tall they had entered the heavens, truthfully, it was almost strange to me how they had looked so small from afar, but most of it was just the low mist and fog that had been brought in with the rain that continued to rain down on us.