The Days Are Tired (Book #1 of the Dark Skies series) - A Zombie story

Chapter 32: Scars

Morale was low.

We had lost two people from our group. An innocent child and woman. And for what? Was it because I led the legion of Reds to our doorstep? Or was it Frank's fault for opening the door and alerting them again to our presence?

My mind was a leaky faucet. All the questions I had were endless. No matter how much I tried to stop it, more doubts would flood my senses.

Paul was still driving the sports car. He followed Cain's pickup truck closely. Almost everyone sat in the seats we were in from the day of our escape, except for Will and Sofia. They switched vehicles.

Sofia sat in the back of the pickup, and Will was sitting beside me. Leo didn't want his sister anywhere near Frank or Paul, so there had to be a compromise until we were able to get another vehicle.

We thought finding another car would be easy, but most cars we stumbled upon were wrecked or had no keys. And no one in our rag-tag group knew how to hot-wire a vehicle. I didn't even know if hot-wiring was an option.

Wasn't that just something they put in the movies to make the main character look cool?

Our destination was still the Compound, which was four hours away from our initial starting point. We had left the building nearly three days ago and during that time we covered only a little bit of ground.

On day one, we had a close run-in with a horde of Reds. They moved as one cohesive body, trying their best to overtake us. That's the day we decided to avoid places with large populations.

When we had finally shaken them off, we settled in for the evening (since the Reds acted like they were on steroids during the night). We took refuge in an old Victorian-style house where we found an old lady and her cat. Both were dead.

We stayed there a lot longer than intended.

Since then, Cain had a map that he used to plot our route. We avoided cities and were traveling in a lot of rural areas and taking a lot of detours. It made the journey longer, but safer. Also avoiding the infected, crashed cars, finding gas, and the occasional shelter was eating up a sizeable chunk of our time.

We were all sore and tired from the travel. Some more than others.

Since the events of Parkson's death, Beth was different. She hadn't spoken a word, only staring forward with a vacant expression. Her lifeless eyes were a reminder of all we had lost. As I looked through the windshield, I could see her in the truck bed.

Azula put her doggy head in Beth's lap. Beth didn't pet her, but she made no effort to get the dog off either. They had been attached to the hip since the incident. More by Azula's actions than anything Beth had done.

Beth was numb to it all.

The wind tossed her hair back and forth, yet she never seemed to blink. Only stare. Straight ahead... at me? Us? It was like a one-sided staring game that I would never win.

No longer able to keep her gaze, I looked away.

The sun was direct and unforgiving with its heat. Even with the car's air on, I still felt as if I were boiling. I wiped the sweat off my brow.

We were driving down a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. Both vehicles' tires kicked dirt and rubble into the air. It reminded me of puffs of smoke from a fire.

On both sides of us were endless fields of grass and crumbling wooden fences meant to keep people on the roadway. Further back was a large cluster of trees and a small pond. I thought we were in farm country, but I wasn't sure since I hadn't actually seen a farm yet.