A Walker's World

part two

Ezra

day two

I woke up in a haze, not sure where I was or why I wasn't in my room back home. I was body slammed back into reality, when I looked to my left and saw Daniel, my right to see Enzo. We'd laid the seats in the cars down, so we could lay down.
The sleeping arrangement was me, Enzo and Daniel in the SUV, my mom and dad in the van, Mike in the Xterra (his crying over Amy kept Daniel awake, so he came to the SUV with Enzo and me. Not that Daniel didn't mourn his mother's loss, just that he was too exhausted to cry.) Katie and April were in the jeep.
As far as I knew, I was the first one awake, though I couldn't very well tell what everyone else was doing. It was early enough that everyone else probably should be asleep. I, however, ran on very little sleep after training myself to sleep very little so I could stay on tumblr or Netflix all night. What I wouldn't do to have my biggest worry being that I might fall asleep in my Anatomy test because I stayed up too late, woke up too early. More time than I should be using has been spent thinking about the last couple days before yesterday. My pastor's sermon at church on Sunday, the school lunch I'd skipped out on because it looked nasty, the quiz in AP calc I thought would destroy my grade. And for what? What were the grades doing for me right now? Countless hours spent studying, doing extra credit work, sucking up to my teachers. Where did it get me? I'm still here, in the end of the world, with everyone else whose survived this far.
Shaking my head at my intrusive thoughts, I carefully made my way to the front of the SUV, climbing out the driver's door, shutting it so as to not wake anyone up. I sighed, rubbing my fingers through my oily hair as I leaned back against the SUV. I take a look at my surroundings, taking it all in. To put it shortly, we were in the middle of nowhere. We had parked on the road, in a straight line pulled slightly to the side to allow room for anyone to pass if they ended up out here, too. There's a large field on either side of the road, trees encircling the valleys. The edge of the field touching the road is clear, but the rest is surrounded by trees, creating an almost full circle. I imagine that someone tore down the trees that would be where this road is, to make room for concrete. This was probably, at one time, a larger valley circled completely by forestry. The thought was peaceful, beautiful.
There weren't walkers everywhere like there had been back home. In fact, I didn't see any. There was a corpse in the field, probably 40 feet from the road. Someone must have taken him out before we got here.
As far as news websites were telling us, and it wasn't much, was that we should get to the evacuation point and that there was one way to kill these things; headshot. doesn't matter if you shoot them, stab them, cut their head off. The only way to stop them is to penetrate or crush their skull and brain.
Like I said, it wasn't much, and we could probably assume so anyway, since Daniel crushing its skull and splattering its brains stopped it. But it's still good to know that it's the only way they can be stopped.
Daniel pulled me from my thoughts, startling me, when he opened the door of the SUV and stepped out. His brown hair was messy, his eyes still tired. He ran his hand through his hair, giving a goofy, shy half smile as he told me good
morning in a soft voice so we wouldn't disturb anyone.
"Looks like it is. Far as I can tell, everyone's alive, rested, and there's no walkers in sight." I responded, staring out to the field, making sure I didn't jinx myself.
"It's pretty early, what're you doing up already?" he laughed lightly
"I think my mind was ready to get up and get ready for school." rolling my eyes at my foolishness, "Did I wake you when I got up?"
"No, no. Had a dream about my mom, woke me up." He stuck his hands in his front pockets, leaning back onto the SUV beside me.
I wasn't sure how to respond; what do you tell someone who watched their mother be mauled to death? So of course I asked the most idiotic question I could muster up.
"Are you okay?"
"I will be. I can't change her death. I'm glad she didn't have to live through what's about to come our way, but I wish she could have gone some other way. I don't think I'll ever forget that scream, or the visual I got."
"You seem to be taking it pretty well."
"Can't afford to lose myself in emotions. Not right now at least. We're still not entirely safe, we need to focus on keeping alive before we think about mourning."
"It's okay to have emotions, Dan."
"No, yeah, I know. I just can't yet. When we find somewhere we're safe, of course I'll allow myself to think about it and mourn her. But I've got to focus on taking care of my dad, keeping the group safe, doing my part."
I nodded lightly. I respected him for this, but I'm not entirely sure it's healthy. Obviously he's going through more than he's letting on, but we aren't close enough that I can push the topic. He's in a sensitive time right now, anyway, I wouldn't want to.
The sunrise cast an orange glow over the skyline, the tops of the trees reflecting the warm color. It was beautiful. The sunlight reached out and touched everything, spreading warmth and serenity. The spring meadow's grass grew tall, swaying back and forth in the light breeze. At this moment, there were no worries. You'd never believe there was walkers walking around, probably not too far from us but far enough to remain out of sight.
We sat in comfortable silence, taking everything in.
Enzo was the next to emerge, blaming us both for waking him up when we got out of the car. I walked around to the trunk and started folding the blankets we'd used, setting them to the side and reorganized the supplies we'd accidentally kicked out of place through the night. The boys pulled the middle row seat up again, leaving the back down for supply room. I got in the driver side, Daniel in the passenger, and Enzo in the back. We got in the car for safety purposes. Obviously.