Nothing's Ever Simple Anymore

"Safe"

Side by side; Evie, Rori, and Bash walked along the road. "So where have you been holed up at?" Evie asked Bash. He chuckled softly and shook his head. "Nah, staying in one place is too main stream for me." Bash said, clearly joking around. "No, I was hiding in this little grocery store with a few others I met along the way. But you know how things are, you're never safe anymore. You may think you are, but you're not. The one guy, Jared or whatever, he was always promising his girlfriend and her sister that they were safe. And he believed they were. Yeah, safety is just something you can't promise anyone anymore. Anyways, we were getting ready for the night when Jared and his girlfriend- I think her name was Allison- got into an argument. Stupid, right?" Bash paused, looking at Evie then Rori before continuing. "Well the argument got pretty heated, and they were yelling and throwing shit. Me and Linda, Allison's older sister, we tried to get them to stop. Of course they wouldn't listen, too busy with worrying about themselves. So you know, with all the noise and commotion the zombies were drawn. There was a lot of 'em too, more than we could handle. Me and Linda were the first ones to get out, but the zombies had already got to Jared and Allison. Linda, as expected, tried to go back for Allison. I tried to stop her, but she wasn't having any of that. It was practically a suicide. I tried everything though, and that's what matters nowadays, right?" Bash explained, speaking with sorrow but acceptance.

"Wow." Rori mumbled, sighing. "Yeah, you're right. No one's safe anymore. I'm sorry about your friends, though. But we've all lost people, and we're always going to lose someone. It's gonna happen, like it or not. No one wants to die, no one wants anyone around them to die. But unfortunately that's how things are now." Rori shrugged. Evie nodded in agreement. "So you've just been on the road since then?" Evie asked Bash who nodded. "Well we got a place, it's... Well it's stable, for lack of a better word." Evie said, leading the small group down another road. "Are there any others there, or just you two?" Bash asked, looking over at Evie. "Yeah, there's others. Three of 'em, all siblings. There's the twins, Niko and Nova, and their little sister Maisie. They're alright. We've been with them for a little over two months now." Evie said. "So, how do you two know each other anyway?" Rori asked, giving Evie and Bash a confused look when they laughed. "Well, back in our senior year Bash and I dated. The only reason we're still good friends is because we both broke up with the other for the same reason..." Evie laughed, thinking back to the moment. "Which was?" Rori urged. "We both realized that we played for the same team." Bash finished off, laughing. Rori laughed as well, grinning. "That's kinda cool. You guys dated, but then found out that you prefer the same gender as you. Nice." Rori smiled.

They came to a fork in the road. "Okay, so which one was it Evie?" Rori asked, simply. Judging by the silence, Rori sighed and slowly turned around to face Evie. "You do remember, don't you?" She mumbled. "I thought you were supposed to keep that in mind." Evie whispered. "What? No, Evie I told you to remember which side it was. You told me you wrote it on your arm!" Rori groaned, slapping her hands against her thighs. "Oops." Evie laughed nervously. "So um, n-now what? I, I'm not really sure what to do in this situation." Evie said, crossing her arms. "I guess we'll just have to take our best guess. C'mon, I'm pretty sure it was the right one." Rori grumbled. Evie didn't protest, following Rori down the right side. Bash chuckled to himself, shaking his head as he followed behind them.

"Oh thank god!" Rori grinned, looking at the old beat down church up ahead. "So you guys have been hunkering down in an ol' church?" Bash chuckled. "It's not much, but it's better than nothing." Evie shrugged, watching Rori who was hurrying towards the church. "So these people you're with," Bash began. "They know how to handle themselves well? You know, against the undead." He questioned, biting his lower lip. "Yeah, Nova and Niko are pretty good with guns and knives. Maisie, on the other hand, has never used either." Evie started to explain, sighing and shaking her head. "Maisie's fourteen, and her brother and sister treat her like a baby. I get that they want to protect her, keep her safe. The only thing is, is that they do that by not letting her near a zombie. They won't let her kill any, they say it's because she's too pure and innocent. That they don't want her to have to experience that. They basically want her to act like zombies don't exist, and that worries me. I mean, what happens if something happens to the rest of us, and Maisie's face to face with a zombie? She's not gonna have any idea what to do or how to do it. She's defenseless and that's not exactly a desired characteristic in today's so called society." Evie finished just as they reached the doors of the church.