Broken World

29. Hard to Believe

After dinner it started raining, we gathered in Leia’s office on the first floor. The forest looked a little spooky in the dark, chilly night. 

“Hey, hey, why don’t you tell us about Erik? He has barely spoken something about him since we met,” Jane insisted Amy. 

“Ha-ah, I don’t think, Erik will like that,” Amy replied with a nervous laugh. 

“Why are you so interested in my past? You never shared your personal information with me,” I said, irritated by her nagging. 

“Because you never asked,” she replied. 

“That’s not a valid reason.” 

“You won’t get anything unless you ask.”     

“Then share it now,” I insisted. 

“You have to go first, since I asked first.”

“Settle down both of you,” Ivan interfered. 

“I can tell you about my past, if you guys want to know,” Kevin said. 

“We have already heard that hundreds of times,” Jane and Ivan replied in unison. 

“I still have that dairy which Erik used to maintain before,” Amy said. 

“Wait, are you serious?” I replied, surprised. 

She opened a cupboard, took out a small diary along with a pencil and handed it to me. 

“There are a lot of grammatical mistakes but it’s understandable,” Amy said. 

“Are you making fun of my English?” 

“Why don’t you read it for us, Erik?” Jane insisted.

“No! That’s my personal information!” I replied. “I will take this to my grave… or… or eat it, but won’t let a single paper fly away from the notebook,” I declared. 

“Ho-ho, you are funnier than I thought,” Finn said, laughingly. 

“Ho-ho? This is no Christmas,” Leia replied.  

 ***

The following morning, we set out to find where these new ghouls came from. 

“What the hell are you doing here? You are supposed to collect food today,” Finn scolded Ty.

“Jane and Amy can handle that.” 

“I’m still sleepy guys,” Kevin mumbled and yawned. 

We spotted a few footsteps near the end of the forest; we followed them and reached a small hut near a cave.

“Do you think someone lives there?” Finn questioned. 

“We won’t know until we check out,” Ivan replied. 

“I will check the hut, cover me,” I ordered. 

I sneaked up to the hut and kicked open the door, an elderly man was harshly beaten up and was bleeding. The whole place was in utter chaos. I waved at them, they followed up with me. 

“Little kids? It’s been a while since I saw some kids,” the old man said and coughed. “Hello, my name is Professor Matt, nice to meet you, kids.” 

“He doesn’t look dangerous to me,” Kevin whispered. 

“Do you have any family or people? Who did this to you?” Finn asked.  

What is he doing all alone in such a crazy place? 

“You know how this world got messed up? Let me tell you; a long time ago, a few scientists tried to find a cure for a certain rare disease. It worked well for a few days but suddenly one day, the person showed some unusual signs of discomfort, the next moment he attacked one of the doctors and bit him in the neck, even though he was stopped, the vaccine was already given to a lot of people in different cities and countries… in other words the end of the world was imminent,” Mr Matt explained.