Bonnie and Clyde Part 2

Yesterday- The Beatles

Authors note: this chapter will include drugs and alcohol references as well as mental and physical health issues.

Pre-note

Sleep deprivation played a major role in the struggles we faced as a group, and after weeks of barely any sleep we found ourselves in a haze of tiredness. A fog of delirium hung around our shoulders, glazing our senses and numbing us of all emotions.
By the end of the first month with no government  intervention we knew we were on our own... Nothing had remained of our lives from before, those of us that had lived in Atlanta and had managed to get in before it had become overrun with the dead ones had found only raised apartments and empty stores and by the time we had gathered enough weapons to fight our way through the thick mass of corpses to get to the city centre where we had hoped that at least some supplies remained- maybe enough to last us for a few weeks but no, nothing.

Our group had started small, only five of us that had met on the road during the initial evacuations- Finn and Marli (Marlowe but we were told by Finn that she hated being called that and he only used it to tease her) who were a couple from Idaho that had been visiting some college friends when the outbreak had began. Then there was Clyde and Dolly, a brother and sister from the city- Dolly got on with everyone with a bubbly personality and kind disposition but Clyde, he got on my nerves... I had made it my personal mission to get on his... in my own fun way; but nevertheless our constant teasing and arguing brought a comfort to the group- or that's what Dolly told me. We migrated further north, scavenging for scraps and ransacking any houses that had been missed, all five of us crammed in a beat up tin can truck that looked so old it should have rusted away with the first commercial line of fords in the 1920s. Finn was our saving grace, as a mechanic he spent most of his time with his head inside the smoking engine, trying to find which oil leak was burning that time and every time his head popped back up it would be covered in a coat of black remnants that stuck to his beard and moustache- dyeing it an unnatural black that made us laugh so hard, watching him try rub it off and only smeer it further around his face.
Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, John Denver and the Beatles all played on repeat as we journeyed into the unknown and mourned our lost lives, the gentle thrumming of their voices had us banging our heads on the walls of that wreak of a car by the end of the first mixtape- whoever owned this truck before really needed some more variety in their lives. I personally enjoyed those artists as a distant memory from my disassociated childhood but when trapped in a car with four other people who very clearly do not like them as much as I did, I also in that moment 'did not', aside from that we were all relatively similar, similar childhoods, schooling, likes, dislikes- it was lucky I had found such similar people to me. Though none of us really talked about our lives from before ,we all knew we each other had issues:

Finn- A recovering alcoholic, I could see in the way his hands twisted around each other and this small coin. He'd also immediately refused the role of driver and something told me that that was probably for the best.

Marli- Severe anger issues, she hadn't shown it or been aggressive towards any of us but her short temper blew over the smallest of things and being stuck in a car with her wasn't always the easiest.

Dolly- Anorexic, bless little Dolly, she was so sweet and bubbly that she was impossible not to love. The issue was convincing her to eat the little food we could get and telling her that there was enough for the rest of us when in reality, we needed one less mouth or more food.

Me (Bonnie)- Histrionic personality disorder. My mom had had me tested as a teenager when I started showing concerning symptoms and lacking most of my impulse control and general insincerity when it came to others.

Clyde- Psychopath. I knew it, he knew it, the group knew it and as we lived our lives to the highest level of ignorance and indulgence capable it showed more and more. He was so calculated, so calm, his intelligence beyond any of our comprehension but with that knowledge came sickening ideas and impulses that only time could struggle to contain. And it did indeed struggle.

After weeks on the road we had found an abandoned sleeper train that seemed in semi decent condition considering half of it was hanging off the track, suspended by a couple thick cables that refused to break no matter how much pressure they were put under. At a first glance at the faded and dirty colour that blended and looked to entwine with the brambles that clawed at its edges, it would seem like a definite no go but after our time living out of cars it was an improvement. Hidden and safe in plain sight among a desert of open fields.

Clearing the carts of undead was almost enjoyable for us, the jabbing and smashing of skulls with our melee weapons that we'd fashioned out of any object that appealed to us became a rhythmic thrumming drilled with adrenaline amidst the screaming and moaning of the undead. It was beginning to become laughable- our search for a 'good time' had left us with experience on how to put down a Biter but not much else.

Dolly had prioritised decorating the train which had officially been called 'The Yellow Submarine' after the Beatles song, for such a small person the girl had the mind and voice of a hurricane. So for the next several weeks we were forced to lug back whatever Dolly had placed on our list that day on top of the essentials- food, attractive clothes, good cds; we became little worker ants supplying their queen with the means to survive and in Dolly's case this was new curtains because the old ones were apparently "way too zombie-esc". But no matter much we complained about the work 'The Yellow Submarine' became our home, each of us having our own room, well carriage, to ourselves- the only places that weren't splattered with Dolly's quickly sense of style.

And that was how ur little way of life had played out for the first few months of the End of the Fucking World; we scavenged, we hunted, and we killed- it fitted us all so perfectly. Our carefree lifestyles had finally arrived, sure it had taken the end of humanity to do it but they had arrived and we held on as tightly as we could to that bundle daddy issues and blossoming drug dependency. I mean with most of society wiped out and no one at home to buy out dealer's stashes, who else was going to buy us right? It was just sitting there begging to be taken. Finn and I had been on a run one time and had stumbled across the mother-load (in an incredibly dangerous part of town but we'd both agreed that Dolly didn't need to know that detail) but in the process of stuffing all of it into our packs we had unknowingly rattled the awfully hungry residents; I was buzzed on just about everything (authors note: don't judge ok I've never been high before) and used the 35 growling corpses as target practice for my handgun and the throwing knives when I'd ran out of bullets, my pumping adrenaline and scrambling mind unable to think of anything else other than where the next Biter was and how I was going to kill it. Finn had watched in awe from the safety of a fire escape down the length of his rifle, as I'd staggered through the dead towards our things, coated head too toe in blood and gore and headed back towards 'The Yellow Submarine'. Since that day we'd always kept something like that on us at all times- it was like a weird trigger for a superpower, pair it in with our Walkman and self made mixtape that came everywhere with us and we were indestructible.

Until the herd came through...it fucked us over quite royally if I'm honest.
They tore through the tracks and once they were gone it was a downward spiral from there really. Our base although stable, wasn't strong enough to support both the Submarine and the strength of several hundred Biters pushing against it; it had collapsed with us inside and we'd barely escaped before the remaining fuel in the train's tank had caught alight and the whole thing had burst into a ball of fleshy flame. The five of us had watched from a distance as our home burnt away swamped in the melting bodies of the undead and even after days on the road going north again we could still see that black cloud of smoke, slowly turning paler but always following us- like a bad omen.

Soo here is Bonnie and Clyde Part 2 I'm actually so excited for this, I know this first chapter was a bit drony but they should get longer and better as the story progresses, also with the conditions of the characters I don't know much about them I have researched a lot about histrionic personality disorder and psychopathy but I'm not sure how much of a role they will play here.
Please let me know what you think in the comments :)
-em <3