The Day I Die - A Kpop Zombie Survival Story || KSJ

29. Explain (3)

POV: Soobin, TXT
Time: 15:45

"I'm trying to find this phone for her. For Bahiyyih."

He looks at me, teardrops gushing down the side of his face. He brings up his hand to wipe them away, but he just makes his face more dirty, since his hands were just searching through a pile of horrible smelling stuff.

I stare at him, my eyes starting to well with tears. Ever since this zombie apocalypse started, we've all tried not to speak about our relations outside our groups, like our families and friends, because it would've just made us a whole lot more worried, but, in all truth, keeping in thought just made us more concerned for our family.

I slowly pace towards him, my shoulders slumped in sorrow.

"Kai... So that's what's been bothering you? I mean- what made you think of it so suddenly?" I ask.

"I said it was because of what Yoongi said in the car. It- It- I don't know, hyung, it just reminded me in that moment of Bahiyyih. But it made me worried, really worried hyung. I haven't been in contact with her, and none of us had our cell phones when the signal was still up. But now, we don't have our cell phones and neither signal." He says, sniffing after every sentence.

I understand how he must be feeling. I have my family too, and for sure I'm dead worried about them, but I've always been so focused on our situation as a group that I've never had the time to contemplate. But again, nobody has eaten or drank anything for a while, and that makes us all more irritable, and some of us have also been more anxious. I mean, I don't blame them. Definitely not. Not while we're fending for our lives at least.

"I'm worried for her, too. For her and all of her members as well. But she's got willpower, hasn't she, Bahiyyih? If we're alive, then she probably is too."

He looks at me, his head still bowed down low in defeat.
"I guess so... But can you help me find a phone so we can at least try?"

I nod my head. I feel a sense of pity for him. It's not easy to contain yourself when you don't know how your sibling is, especially at a time like this.

I go up next to him and search through the discarded contents on the floor. Sifting with my hands through the many wrappers, plastic scraps, bits of plaster, and the occasional spider crawling out. This mound is absolutely huge, it's nearly as tall as my thigh and it covers a quarter of the store.

"How much stuff was in this store? It's meant to be a corner shop, how does this pile of items get so big?" I ask, throwing a huge empty cardboard box to the side.

"I have no idea. But, since it's so big, we could maybe find a phone in here. See, look, there cashier's telephone is missing from the desk. It could be in here. Just keep searching." Kai replies, pointing to the cashier's desk.

I look over. Indeed, there is no telephone. Or cash box. It's as if everything in this store was put into this huge pile. But, now, thinking of it, it feels a little bit off.

"Why would everything be on this specific pile on the floor? Kai, do you think that it's a coincidence?"

He stops searching for a second to contemplate.

"May- maybe some other survivors searched this store too? I mean, even if they took some stuff, there's still a huge pile of things we could bring back to base, so it's probably nothing."

"True."

We resume our searching, throwing scraps from the top of the pile to the side, brushing pieces of plaster from the ceiling off of objects, brushing our hands off when they touch a stinky black liquid, looking for the phone. The deeper we search into the pile, the more putrid the smell becomes.