Our Life (Sequel to "Remnants")

Vengance

-Riley-

I was loosing my mind...

As far as I could tell, that description was the only one that could justify or even begin to explain the apparition that I had bared witness to yesterday.

I'm going insane, crazy, mad. I'm supposed to be fighting the walkers, but I'm waging a much more terrifying war in my own mentality.

Carl appeared to be the only thing that took this fear away, and that was the reason why I found myself sat awake at midnight, listening to the forsaken howl of the wind and a cascade of rain lashing against the window, waiting for the arrival of the sun and more importantly, the arrival of my boyfriend at dawn.

Sleep deprivation was a frustrating thing; there were plenty of people who suffered from it, even before the apocalypse, but in my case it was the product of it- it seemed pathetic really, how the little things like that were the ones that truly ruined my chances at being happy.

It certainly wasn't helping my PTSD either, in fact if anything it was working with it to make my life even worse.

Well sitting here, reminiscing on my pipe-dream of a life, sure as hell isn't helping my situation.

I concluded I would take a walk around the safe zone to pass the time, and clambered out of bed to pick up my jacket and a pistol - paranoia meant that I never left the house without it.

As I opened the door, I was greeted with an unexpectedly strong blast of wind and rain.

Well, I suppose at the end of the day, rain's pretty harmless in comparison with everything else.

Stepping outside, I inhaled a deep breath of icy cold air, which was a welcome contrast from the air inside the cottages, which would get very stagnant if the windows were left closed.

I would venture on these night-time walks several nights a week, but I would find myself constantly awed by the sheer darkness of the soot-black sky.

I loved the night sky. It looked like it held infinite possibilities - almost as though it was empty and full at the same time.

I'm delving into philosophical shit now...

Laughing to myself and walking over to the wall, I placed my ear against the corrugated metal. The distant moans of the undead were unmistakable, and although this thick, 60 foot high wall was certainly reassuring, underestimating the dead was a common - not to mention often fatal - mistake.

Every few minutes, a gunshot would echo out from the lookout atop the church, killing the occasional walker that ventured too close to the gates.

One such shot rang out now, and I found myself instinctively reaching for my weapon, feeling stupid - as usual - upon realizing that the sound was completely harmless.

Some could call it a waste of ammo, but it's better than letting them knock the wall down.

I carried on walking alongside the vast metal wall. From a birds-eye view, it would probably look like a spot-the-difference picture, with people and buildings on one side of the wall, and walkers and ruins on the other.

Sometimes, though, knowing the horrific things that I - and a majority of the people that were still alive these days - had done to survive, the differences between the two sides of the wall seemed to become thinner.

Well, all I can do is hope that life gets better - it's all that any of us can do I suppose, but for most people the killing of fellow humans seems an easy task...

Not for me.

—

-Aiden-

Watch duty was a pretty easy thing to do - just aimed your rifle, found the nearest shambling corpse that was wandering around outside, and pull the trigger.

It was pretty satisfying to watch their heads pop open when they got shot, but that entertainment was becoming less frequent thanks to the scarce amount of ammo that we had left.

I peered into my scope, wiping it with a cloth to clear off rain droplets that had settled on the lens, and scoured the perimeter of the safe-zone.

A trio of undead gathered in the treeline a few hundred meters from the camp - I placed my finger on the trigger, focusing between the eyes of one of the walkers, but ultimately opted not to take the shot due to the ammunition shortages.

As I peered along the wall, however, I noticed a much more interesting sight near the wall.

Riley Palmer...

He's definitely worth the bullet.

I watched with a smirk as he walked mindlessly along beside the corrugated wall. Why he was outside was unclear, but I didn't need to know - as far as I was concerned, I had just been given the perfect opportunity to avenge my father's murder.

All I had to do was kill him with a clean shot to the head, and dump his body outside the wall. It was only ten minutes past midnight, so the chances of anyone else noticing me were very slim.

The circumstances couldn't be much more ideal.

I lined up my target, promptly adjusting the rifle's position and estimating the bullet trajectory to compensate for the wind speed, placing my finger gently on the trigger.

This is for my dad, you bastard...

I inhaled deeply and then pulled the trigger.