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┏━━━━━ CHAPTER FIVE ━━━━━┓ ★゜・。。・゜゜・too far gone ──── Chicago Rhee
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❝ I know I'll be alright But I'm not tonight I'll be lying awake Countin' all the mistakes I've made ❞ — i lost a friend, FINNEAS
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FLASHBACK 6 months into the apocalypse 2010
DEEP, STRAINED COUGHS SOUNDED THROUGHOUT THE TRUCK, the person victim to their spasms hunched over in a pool of sick as they attempted to gain their breath back. Their face was tomato red and their lips had no pigment of life within them, an alarming sight to see. There was no solid answer on whether they would power through or succumb to their body's frail state and leave the world behind. We had tried everything to help them, but it never seemed like enough, for they just got worse.
They shivered underneath my touch their skin hot on the pads of my fingers. I dampened an old cloth with what limited water I could salvage and placed it against their forehead. A sigh of content escaped their lips, their eyelids relaxing. Sweat was collecting on the base of their hairline and their skin was a ghostly color.
They hadn't moved much in the past couple of hours, their weakened form remaining slumped against the car door in the backseat. I had provided them backpacks to rest their back against so that their comfort levels were far better. I don't think they even noticed, however.
Part of me feared catching whatever they had. I don't think our group would last much more if that was the case. We had no shelter but the rusted old truck, the metal framing around us feeling more like a prison rather than protection. Would we let ourselves get wiped out? Was this our end? I had never imagined having a heroic end, but I at least would have wanted far more than death from sickness. It also didn't seem like a pleasant way to go, choking on your own vomit and mucus or drowning in your sweat from an unbreakable fever. But did we ever have a choice?
Far too many people have already wasted breath on begging for a peaceful end in their sleep, with nothing but static on the other end. I feared death, for this reason, knowing that any moment could determine how my life played out. I feared having it jump on me, just as much as I feared slow, agonizing suffering. And watching as my friend gradually slipped from the physical world, her feeble hands grasping to find grip on the edge of the cliff and pull herself up, I wondered if it was already too late. That in caring for her, making her last moments as comfortable as I could, I had sealed my fate being in such close proximity.
