Oblivion {n.h.}

Chapter 59.

*DANIELLE'S POINT OF VIEW*

The sounds of Niall crunching on some chips echoes throughout my ear, his hand digging into a green and yellow bag as I drive.

"Want some?" He asks, sighing, looking into his bag that he holds open with two hands.

"I'm good." I reply truthfully, in all honestly having no appetite at the moment for the same reason most apocalypse survivors do, I just killed one of my best friends. "Do you have any idea where I'm supposed to be going?"

"Hmm." Niall stifles out, reaching behind me with his good arm, pulling out a map we'd recovered in an old building from the city.

"I guess just keep taking the highway, following South signs until we see any direction for Lewes." His eyes don't come off of the map, scanning it from the seems. "We need to stop for anything?" He asks, turning his head to the side, along with the map, his eyes still focused on the green terrain.

"I could use a wee, and I guess every food item accounts for something." I sigh, looking out at an open road before me.

"There should be a cute little neighborhood we're coming on up soon, we can scout there for a bit, and who knows– someone could be waiting there for us."

I nod my head at Niall's reply, not taking my eyes off the road, yet removing my left hand from the steering wheel and stroking his injured shoulder tenderly, but not enough to hurt him.

A silence falls upon us, not an awkward one, but more like one that was much needed. Just the sound of the tires on the road and wind escaping through the tops of Perrie's jeep. We're quiet for a few miles and all I feel like doing is sighing, the sky looking like it may be wanting to rain soon, a heap of grey above our heads.

"That it?" I question Niall about the neighborhood he'd said was coming up, colorful houses pleasing my eye in the grey and brown world.

"Should be yeah." Niall replies, and I pull in over next to a mint green house, a cute little town with markets and houses surrounding us now.

I hop out of the driver's side and make my way around to Niall's side of the jeep, opening the door for him kindly.

Stepping up onto the rubber rim, I lean over him to undo his seatbelt, his blue eyes on me the whole time.

Thunder rumbles in the distance and I sigh as I look up at the rain that comes for us from London.

"Aren't I supposed to be the one doing this?" Niall chuckles, moving his arms so I can reach the button of his seatbelt, unclipping it.

I look up to his face, both of ours only but centimeters apart, and he smiles widely at me.

"What treating you like a baby?" I smirk at him, pressing a small kiss to his lips, and hopping out of the jeep backwardly, grabbing his hand on his uninjured arm and helping him out of the large vehicle.

"Yes, because you're my baby." He smiles goofily, just as he had back at the gas station in London.

"Sure, Niall." I turn away from him, releasing his hand and opening the dark green trunk, handing him his shotgun and grabbing my machete along with an extra pistol for my back pocket.

"We're low on ammo." I tell Niall, inspecting my pistol, pulling out four small bullets left in it, Niall doing the same with his shotgun, only having four mags to spare.

"Hopefully we'll have some luck here." He pats me on the arse when he walks past, heading toward the end of the street where some shopes and stationaries lie.

We walk slowly down the gravel road, spending time to look at the names and brands of shops on the corner, and maybe see what could be useful that lay inside of them.

"Looks promising." Niall speaks, looking up at a black shop, the only moderate color in the whole town. An ammo shop, featuring stationary weapons lies before us like fate, and I stifle a laugh at the place.

"Most likely picked to its every last bit, but it's worth a try." I tell him, looking at him with a smile.

"Why so negative Dani?" He cocks an eyebrow at me wildly.

"Why so obsessed with me Niall?" I cock my eyebrow back at him and start my way toward the shop, opening the door and ready to kill anything that comes in my way.

"You're kidding–" Niall messes around with me, yet being interrupted mid sentence; something that happens a lot to the poor Irishman.

A gunshot, loud and echoing throughout the town we stand in, closer than I ever would have thought.

"What the fuck was that!" I whisper at Niall harshly, standing under the awning of the ammunition shop and my mind beginning to swirl with fear.

"We're not alone. I think it came from over there." He points in the North direction on the opposite side of the street, and he crouches his way across the road to the outskirts of the small village, I, not far behind him.

"Let's sneak through the back and see if we can get any surprise on 'em." He states, crouching through an open gate to a house and making his way up the steps to the back door.

The back door stands wide open for us, and two figures are able to be seen, one unreadable, almost at rest or dead to the seems of it.

The other sits on their knees, the sound of crying out for someone or something. Pure loss and depression bouncing off of the walls of the small home, and I could eventually tell whom sit there in agony, but only as they raise the gun to their own head, Jackson.

"NO!" I scream at the top of my lungs, my voice  creaking with pain as I see my brother's hand on the trigger of the small gun, unable to stop him before he adds enough pressure to the trigger.

I run past Niall, his free arm no use at trying to hold me back from the door frame.

The gun clicks once, the shot to be heard around the world, never reaching the world in the first place, his gun out of bullets.

"Jackson–" I cry out, falling on my knees behind him, my leggings tearing at the seams as I hit the ground forcefully, wrapping my arms around my brother, tears escaping my eyes unawarely.

My cheek presses to his back and the tears escape for a second only to give me a clear view of Carly, her mess of brains on the wall next to Jackson, and her arm bitten and rotten beside her; she'd committed suicide.

Jackson kept trying to pull the trigger to his gun again and again, only releasing more clicks after clicks, and I pull my arms off of his stomach, taking the gun and throwing it at the wall.

Sobs and cries still escape his mouth, making me whimper from behind him, Niall sliding down the door frame and small cries to be heard escape him, sadly.

The three of us just sit there, the room filled with only agony, and oblivion.