Choices 2 - Chasing hope [ENG]

10.

There isn't any particular awkwardness between me and Owen, as I had imagined, but although he continues to look at me furtively, and doesn't lack physical attention, he seems rather calm about it.

I hope that his calm is not only due to the amount of alcohol now circulating in his body. I grab the map again to trace, even if only mentally, the route to follow if we want to reach the new hospital of Lights as soon as possible. I realize that it's not as far away as I remembered, and I wonder how, considering the long hours of walking I used to walk every day, I haven't gotten close yet. I realized immediately after that I had been locked up in a fucking prison for almost a month. Perhaps this should be considered a real slowdown.

"How about we go from the north instead of going back south? We can follow the river as long as possible, and then proceed further east, in an attempt to find some kind of shortcut. What do you say?" I say pointing the route on the map to Owen respectively.

The boy lifts his back from the felled trunk against which he is leaning and glances at the map.

"Sure, we can go" he says, but it seems like he's not particularly interested. "But what is this?" and indicates on the map the loosely closed circle that Flynn had marked with a marker.

Damn, I forgot about that place! "It's a shelter that Flynn, the head of the city you passed through, recommended to me."

"Don't remind me" he passes a hand over his face. I giggle, amused.

"He told me it belongs to a friend of his, Boris, I think. If we say Flynn sent us, he could offer us some hospitality" I explain.

"It wouldn't be bad" Owen shrugs, and he turns to me. I meet his gaze, and blush without thinking.

"Why do you want to find the Lights so desperately?" he asks, interrupting that game of glances. From his tone, it almost seems like he's been wanting to ask me for some time now. I'm aware of the fact that I haven't opened up much to them, and certainly, I know more about them than they do about me, but it's not really in my nature to trust people quickly. Even if they didn't give me any reason to believe them to be unreliable.

I look away, disturbed, because suddenly, at the thought of confessing to him the real reason why I'm looking for the Lights, it all seems so stupid. I don't know if he would understand. I don't know if he would understand that I'm trying with all my might to find an end to all this crap. I don't know if he would understand that in a certain sense, I'm doing this for my mother, and for my now decimated family.

"I..." I start, and quickly look for a simple excuse that can satisfy the interest of the boy in front of me, but at that moment, we hear a shot, and a scream behind us.

"Emily" I think.

Owen and I immediately get up, grab our pistols and rifle, and run in the direction our companion was headed.

We cross the woods as fast as we can, hoping not to suddenly find ourselves surrounded by the infected. We don't see lights, we don't hear shots, but only screams, Emily's cries for help.

"Emily!!" Owen calls her, trying to better understand where she might be.

"HELP!" our companion screams desperately, and little by little her voice becomes clearer and clearer.

We are now running out of breath. My lungs are burning, a pang of heat in my chest, and beads of sweat running down my neck.We see an opening in the trees that overlooks a road, and we quickly approach it.

We find ourselves in front of a petrol station, and even if I didn't have a burning stick on the tip to give me light, I could detect it from the piercing smell of that highly flammable substance, which drips from the petrol station itself. The puddle extends to a diameter of at least three meters, within which other cars are also included. Not far away, in one of these, Emily is locked, trapped by more than a dozen runners and a couple of clickers. We will never have enough ammunition.