Salvation

Chapter 2

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Aiden jumped backwards, praying that the boy hadn't touched him when he'd collapsed. He'd avoided infection for two years, and that was before stumbling upon this camp full of people who had been so willing to help him. He sucked in a breath again, that sick feeling settling once again in the pit of his stomach. Inhale for five, hold for five, exhale for five. Repeat.

It was a technique that one of his other camp mates—Daniela—had taught him. Daniela was the closest thing Aiden had to a friend in here, despite having been inside the camp for almost a year. Aiden didn't connect very easily to other people. As a child he'd been shy, preferring to stick to books and drawings than interactions with people. When he went to school he got good grades, and was very into science and mathematics.

Out in the world though, he was invisible. It wa part of the reason that Oliver sent him on the supply runs, and why he often went alone. He could slip in and out of places practically unseen, like a ghost. When she caught wind of it, Daniela's nickname for him had become The Ghost. Sweet Daniela, who'd seen him sitting alone on her first day in the camp and made it her immediate goal to become his friend. She'd sat opposite him on a small wooden table outside near the vegetable patch. His nose, like usual, was in one of the books he'd collected on his supply runs, a thick leather bound classic volume.

"That looks like an awful lot of words" She'd chuckled, peering over his page. It was a lot of words, War and Peace to be exact. Aiden found the book incredibly boring; he'd been into fast paced adventure stories as his preferred genre, but it was a classic and classics were the books he'd found most often on his supply runs. Before he infection, he'd never found the time to read a classic. He believed life was too short to read boring books just for the sake of it.

But since the infection, he'd found that life could be very long indeed, if only you were one of the lucky ones.

"I suppose it is" Was all he'd responded. Daniela had hummed under her breath, scooting over to steal a glance of the cover of the book. She had the remnants of a southern accent, like her time in the wilds after the infection had attempted to chase it out of her. She was pretty; all soft cheeks and deep brown eyes. She was a catch, even he could see it, and he'd never been heavily female oriented.

He wasn't so sure the same could be said about himself. He'd had a couple of boyfriends throughout high school, mostly closeted jock types, but there were one or two who were out and proud. But there weren't any boys professing their undying love for him, and he didn't have a lot of social media followers and there was no way he could have ever worked as a model.

His features were fairly average. He had a head of dark curls, more the tightly coiled type than the sexy, floppy type. He had blue eyes, but they weren't icy or smouldering, more just dark with hints of grey. He had thick, dark eyebrows and an average, straight nose. His lips were also pretty average, the bottom one slightly plumper than the top.

All in all, he wasn't the type of guy someone would immediately pick out of the crowd. He supposed that would help him in the long run, especially out in the world after the infection. Out there, you didn't want to be noticed. The infection made people crazy. Violent. The people out there were scared, just trying to survive in a world where death was as easy as merely touching an infected surface. He supposed he understood, really.

Aiden was snapped back to the present as the boy on the ground groaned, attempting to drag his head up out of the dirt. His body trembled as he crawled a step forwards, and Aiden took another one back. He couldn't let the boy touch him. From a cord around his neck, he produced a small silver whistle, which he blew into. Everyone in the compound had a whistle just like it, which was how they alerted each other when things like this happened.