𝒑𝒆𝒕𝒓𝒊𝒄𝒉𝒐𝒓 ᖭི༏ᖫྀ 𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚎 𝚠𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚊𝚖𝚜

chapter nineteen : You

[XIX]

"ARE YOU sure you've never done this, Abby?"

She looks at me inquisitively, having fired her arrow and hitting the rabbit right in the eye.

"Back East we usually just went on supply runs. Never been hunting."

But she seems to do it with such ease, that I can't help but be a little strangely sad about it. She goes on to tell me that there is no point in feeling remorse for something that is only of practical use to us, and for the first time, even whilst loving her, I feel a little distance between us.

"I sometimes feel a little bad," I respond, "even when I have to."

"No point," she says back. She pulls the arrow from the corpse without feeling, and I have to avert my gaze. "If runners are still inside and we kill them, that's no better than shooting this thing."

I mumble under my breath, "This rabbit..." I pause, looking mournfully at the little thing. "Wasn't going to hurt us. Not like a runner. It's not the same."

"Well, Lia. It's them or us. Always."

Always?

-

Always.

She always had that mindset, be it human, infected or animal, for Abby, as long as I had known her, there was an 'us' and a 'them', and whoever wasn't on her side was a goner for all she cared.

And at that moment, as she locked eyes with me, I knew I wasn't a member of 'us'.

I was, without a doubt, 'them'.

But in that way, that one might react if they saw someone they were certain was dead, I don't think she was very concerned with her philosophies in that second. In fact, I think she may have mentally blanked, just for a moment.

She just stared at me.

And of course, I stared back.

I may have been a ghost to Abby, but she was the object of my innermost hatred, the conduit for my pent up rage, the pinnacle of my deepest and purest anger. So seeing her was almost as much of an outer body experience for me.

But what snuck up on me, like a knife to the back, was the fear I felt.

Her voice that echoed in my mind,

"Nothing is more important than this mission. Nothing."

The way she left me to die, like I was that rabbit, the same as a runner, no longer human. No longer someone she had said she loved. And then alone. Starving, freezing, chaffing. Perhaps on the edge of being torn to shreds by an infected or wolves, and all while facing the prospect of becoming a prisoner in my own body once I fell to the greatest tragedy humanity had ever seen.

Until, of course, I didn't.

But the fear rang in my memory like an alarm, like church bells for a funeral, indicating the threat that was before me. Fear and anger is a precarious combination. I felt as if my entire body was resting on the trigger of a gun, and one push would send me exploding.

"...You."

She huffed her first word in five minutes, barely a breath following it as she ogled me in disbelief. The rest of the gang, of course, was silent.

And through my feelings that tore at my heart like lions, I replied simply with a responsive,

"Me."