UNITY

Chapter 13

My heart aches.

I feel suffocated by the pain of losing her and don't know how to express it without crying like my brother, so I settled to comfort him instead. Patting his shoulder gently multiple times, telling him to let it out, almost as if he's crying in my stead.

Unity was such a rarity. She's a breath of fresh air in this hellhole compared to anyone we've ever met. Scratch that, she simply cannot be compared with.

She's sarcastic, selfish, unfeeling, and doubtful of everything. But to be honest, those are the qualities that made us take a liking to her and probably made her survive this long, too.

She's not to be trifled with, she takes no bullshit from people, and doesn't give fucks to them as well. She was built for this world, and now she's leaving it.

I always thought that every day was a chore. Back in Freeport after we established the sanctuary, we were always looting and looking out for supplies and food, risking our necks while we were at it. But we weren't heartless, like those scavengers who kill everyone they steal their food from. As much as possible, I didn't steal nor tried to kill people unless I was provoked first.

With the same thing happening over and over again, of course, with the courtesy of having day offs and such where we just burned down our ammo at the firing range to practice our aim. I couldn't help but feel bored with my life, thinking I had no reason to live.

It was mid-afternoon in a dilapidated and ruined gasoline station where we first saw her, trying to pump gas into her faded yellow beetle. Strangely enough, I found that it suited her really well. We already hid our truck behind the convenience store as we stayed the night there. For what, you ask? Well, if you go home and see the same ungrateful people who take their supplies for granted and go through said supplies as if it's water through a hand, then you'd understand. It's normal for us to take a few days off from that place.

It was only then, that I realized, she was bracing for something to come out of the convenience store. Her dog must've smelled the infected from inside, but it made me wonder how the dog didn't smell us before they arrived. She was getting ready for the infected to come out of the store.

And it did.

As the infected rushed its way towards her, she ducked and swung with passion, her bat colliding with the underside of its chin making the infected's last meal of intestines scatter, making for a grizzly sight. Her round face got coated with the infected's blood, but she didn't care. She continued bashing its head in, even when it was not moving anymore.

While she was preoccupied with her task, we moved towards the back of her beetle. My brother, Quartz, decided that the infected has had enough and made our presence known, scaring her enough to bring her gun out.

We automatically raised our hands, even though we have our weapons with us. She mustn't view us as a threat if we wanted her to come with us.

"Don't shoot! We're friendly!" My ever-loving, always talkative brother, always trying to be the peacemaker.

She doesn't speak, is she, perhaps, mute?

My gaze deepened.

"I'm Quartz, he's Onyx. We're from Freeport, and we're in charge of looting nearby establishments for our camp."

I knew for a fact that this beautiful girl was confused, especially since we were far away from Freeport to be looting near it.

I took my time thinking of what to answer.

"All the buildings near us were already depleted of resources, so we had to travel a bit far from our camp... I can show you my ID if you don't believe we're from Freeport."

I wanted to reassure her that we were no harm by tossing my I.D. towards her, and she swiftly caught it in her hand.

Damn, those reflexes, though.

She looked at my I.D. with furrowed brows and a curious gaze, still having the gun pointed at us.

In hindsight, I could probably overpower her while she's distracted, but I don't want that to happen. Me and my brother, Quartz, we have our guns tucked behind our pants. If we made any move to take them, no doubt this girl would be pulling the trigger on the both of us faster than I can say 'bullseye'.

She lowered her weapon and tossed back my I.D., but a part of me wanted for her to keep it, and we took this as a sign to lower our arms. A good thing, too, seeing as my arms were already getting sore from the lack of blood flow.

"Holy shit, I almost died." I heard Quartz whisper beside me.

The girl was mute as ever. "Can't you speak?"

My brother nudged me on the rib painfully. "She's wary around strangers, of course, she wouldn't speak to us. Her energy would be depleted, isn't that right, miss?"

Quartz took the liberty to speak to her, seeing as I won't be talking any time soon. I'm busy discerning her facial expressions, I want to see it all. She has the most expressive face I've ever seen, even if she tries her hardest to be expressionless, and I can't wait to see her smile so purely instead of this frown on her face.

Back then, we managed to convince her to follow and stay with us in our sanctuary, and I thought that would be it, that we'd be getting to know each other and living together.

That's when shit hit the fan. We were framed, unintentionally or not, but Sylvia knew us best. We aren't killers, but the scavengers wanted us to be, given that they blamed us for the deaths of their people.

Sylvia forced us to surrender to them, even though she knew that we weren't at that place the day they were massacred. In the end, it was for the people of the sanctuary, as the scavengers threatened to overrun Freeport and make it their own. The same people who took their blessings, the supplies we gathered for them, the supplies we fought and got tired of gathering, for granted.

Call me selfish, but my brother and I don't want to die for them.

Fuck this place.

Unity became the reason I wanted to stay in that so-called "sanctuary", but I never expected her to be the reason that we left.

I also never expected her to be so cold-blooded, killing everyone she thought was a threat to her and her people. It made us want to follow her, even when she gave us an ultimatum.

And we did.

I swore to myself that I'd be there for her, whenever she needed me, or us. And we tried our best, really. We listened to her as she told us what happened, and kept quiet when she wanted us to, we didn't even dare to be mad because what she did was justified, madness and bloodthirsty aside. We accepted her.

As my weeping brother and I descended the stairs, I knew I was the one who had to end her, even if it pained me too.

"Is she okay?" The teenage boy asked. His name is Oliver. I saw it stamped on his worn-out jersey jacket, so I made a guess.

I nodded.

"Yeah," I held my brother on the shoulder and made him sit on the stairs, "She will be."

My brother's wails and cries were all we heard alongside Tootsie's whines as she climbed up the stairs, scratching her owner's door, begging for her to let her in.

But she didn't.