Take Me Home • h. styles ✔

8 | To Bite the Dust

HARRY

     It had been exactly one week since I last stepped out of my home. Today marked another time for me to take the treacherous roads of hell, but this time I was not alone. My initial plan was just to take my best friend out for a brief visit to one of the most iconic spots in London, and up until at this moment as I drive, he had no idea where we were going. Surprises would always make the little guy over the moon, and before we leave the British capital soon, I wanted him to take at least an eventual look to one of the places that he had only visited once in his life.

     You might be thinking if we were afraid as we simply rule the empty roads, and as for me, I was. I was always anxious because of the impulsive movements of the Creatures that lurked around either in the open areas or the dark corners of the city. I knew that Niall was fearful as well, but I had to give him credit for he was able to conceal his trepidation away. In fact, he was sitting next to me in our Land Cruiser with his eyeglasses on, his hand strumming on his wooden stake as he was imagining it as a guitar. There was never a single day when this Irish lad wouldn't sing or hum a tune of one of our songs. Well, I couldn’t blame him for it, because the ennui of living in a post-apocalyptic world was too excruciating most of the time.

     It was just nearly afternoon when we were cruising past the twisted, shadowy lanes of London and turning past the old, cracked buildings which continuously disappear from view as we went by. Since there was absolutely no stream of traffic, I took the opportunity to show off the speedy driving skills that I had learned last year, not even caring about the few Creatures that were unconsciously shambling across the streets. Despite the strident noise that our vehicle kept on making as the tires skidded on the hard ground, the Infected were too dawdling to make any contact with us and I was really grateful that there were none of Them that were capable of sprinting just like what we had encountered outside Tesco before.

     “Harry, where are we going by the way?”

     I suddenly lit up, and the corners of my mouth tuned up, eager for him to know my upcoming surprise.

     “You’ll find out later. We’re only about five minutes away.”

     “Five minutes? That’s way too long,” he said derisively as he removed his sunglasses off his face, then putting out his foot on my lap.

     “We might get killed with what you’re doing. Your foot distracts me.”

     “Nah, you’ll get used to it.”

     Everytime the car would pass a street, there were about one to three Creatures that I would see shuffling on some corners of the lanes. Sometimes out of curiosity, I would deliberately decelerate and take a look on how diverse each creature looked like. I saw a naked, slender male one, its skin mottled green and black, missing most of its skin and half of the muscle mass from its back, dragging a child’s tricycle behind it.

     Another one was an elderly creature still in her quilted nightgown and heavy slippers, her skin a waxy yellow, lower limbs mottled black from settling blood, ambling slowly down the Great George Street which was a few miles away from our destination. From one look they may look rather harmless, and there would be thoughts in my head that I wanted to help them, but everything had its limitations. They were not as innocuous as they seemed to be. Sometimes I would wish that God would give me super powers to make everything back to normal, but I guess that there’s a reason why this was happening. Time would soon tell why, and as long as I was still breathing and alive, I would find it out sooner or later.