You Can't Survive Alone

Part 17

The Next Afternoon
I hear the main door close loudly, and heavy breathing. Nick and Aaron must be back from their supply run, but judging from the breathing I hear from them now and the gunshots I've heard for the past few minutes, something bad happened.
Nick rounds the corner to the watch station running and out of breath. "Jess. Get Jess as quickly as you can."
Immediately I get up and run to Jess's room. There's a sign on the door that reads "KEEP OUT", but she wouldn't mind if I came in because of this. I'm not sure why Nick didn't just go to the hospital in the other wing, and then I remember: the hospital doesn't have the cure yet. Someone must've been bit.
"Jess!" I yell, hitting the door with an open palm. "Jess, we need some help here!"
She opens the door immediately, and waits for an explanation.
"Someone's been hurt. Nick and Aaron were out on a supply run, and I think Aaron must've been bit, and you have the cure and the hospital wing doesn't yet."
Jess runs back into her room, grabs a white box with a handle on it, and rushed back out, nearly knocking me over on her way past me. I close her bedroom door and follow as fast as I can.
Through the hallways, down the staircase, into the entrance. I see someone on the floor in a little puddle of blood, but it isn't Aaron- Aaron's standing just outside the entrance, pistol in hand, shooting the mass of zombies running toward us up the street.
I've never seen such a huge group of zombies; they've always come in one or two, but this group must've been twenty at least. I pull my sword from its sheath on my back, and run out to stand next to Aaron. "Need a little help?" I ask.
"It'd be much appreciated," he replies, aiming and firing once again. I run out toward the zombies- the opposite way any sane person would run- and start mowing them down with my sword.
As I fight, a red haze goes over my eyes, and I no longer think. My subconscious sees where every blow will come from, where every blow would land, and I block and slice and chop without thought, performing a deadly dance and a battle of grace. Dipping, swaying, side stepping the mindless enemy, who attack with tooth and claw. And suddenly, everything stops, as I hear the bullet hit the final zombie and it falls to the ground, amongst its brethren. I'm breathing hard, standing about fifty feet from Aaron, who appears to be pointing his gun at me- wait, why is he pointing his gun at me? I raise my sword in a silent salute, and he drops the gun. He must've thought I might have gone full zombie for a few moments, and I guess I kind of had.
I turn around and look at the carnage around me. The asphalt spattered with blood, the bodies in a rough circle, twenty feet in diameter. Most of the zombies exhibited slash and stab marks, and relatively few had bullet holes. I had taken down about fifteen zombies; Aaron had only killed five.
"How did you-?"
"I don't know." His footsteps approach from behind, and I stiffen. Having people near me right now feels dangerous, and I motion for him to stop. "Don't come closer," -kicking one of the bodies- "you don't want to come close to me right now."
He takes a few steps back, and I turn to him. My body is itching to attack, but my mind remains in control, stopping me from exploding like the time bomb I am.
Wetness drips down my cheek, and I wipe away some blood mixed with sweat and tears on the side of my face. I squat down to the ground but don't sit- don't want blood on these designer jeans. I nearly laugh from the absurdity of this scene- Aaron, standing about ten feet from a circle of gore, with me, crying in the center.
He looks like he wants to come comfort me, but there's nothing much he can do. He can't even come too close to me in case I go rabid and attack him. Instead of coming over to me, he edges closer to the circle and squats as well. "Are you alright?" He asks.
Why do people keep asking me if I'm alright, when I'm obviously not? I mean, for God's sakes people- if someone is sitting on the ground crying, they're probably not all right. In fact, they're probably the farthest thing someone can be from all right.
Instead of snapping at him, though, I say, "not really." It's the closest I can come to the truth, which is that I am really, really far from 'all right'.
Eventually, he steels up his nerve, and walks over to me. I don't move as he sits down in the small clear spot I occupy, I don't react as he slides his arm around my shoulder. He doesn't talk, and for that I'm glad; I don't think I could hold much of a conversation at the moment. But we sit there as I finish getting control of myself, as I return my brain to a sense of normalcy and can finally think without the injured parts of my brain taking over.
We stand together, and he slides his arm off my shoulder and takes my hand instead. We walk together, away from the circle of gore, hand in hand, up the steps to the White House. He lets go of my hand and holds the door for me, and I steel myself to see what has happened inside.
A boy, maybe fourteen or fifteen years old, sits on the floor. Jess and Nick stand nearby, watching him. He holds a book close to his chest, and his glasses are slightly askew on his nose.
Nick walks over to me and Aaron, leans over, and whispers, "We're calling him Hobbes. That book he's carrying, it's one of the old Calvin and Hobbes books, and he won't put it down. He hasn't spoken a single word since we found him in the apartment building, but he was completely alone." Nick looks more specifically at Aaron, who's busy studying the boy. "Would you mind talking to him? Jess and I think you might be able to get him go talk."
"I'll give it a shot, but I make no promises. Remember: I tried talking to him when we first found him, without any good results."
Aaron walks slowly over to the boy, the way you would approach a wild animal. He kneels down next to him, and whispers a few words to Hobbes, who waits for a moment, then responds. I let out the breath I hadn't realized I was holding, the tension in the room broken.
I'm still holding my bloody sword, and I feel like that isn't exactly helping give the boy the best impression of us. "I'm going to go clean off," I say to Nick. He nods, and I creep around the edge of the room to the staircase. I don't know exactly where the water in the White House comes from, but it feels heavenly to step into the cool spray and wash myself off. These clothes are pretty much ruined, I realize. I'll need to get another pair, sometime soon.
Finished cleaning off, I walk through the door that attaches the bathroom to my bedroom, and pull on a pair of sweatpants and a clean(ish) exercise t-shirt. A new pair of socks and tennis shoes on, and I'm ready to go as soon as I clean my sword. I grab a washcloth and head to the bathroom sink, which I turn on and run the cloth under. I put a little soap on the cloth, and run it lovingly over my katana. This sword has saved my life multiple times, and I will take as good care of it as I possibly can.
As I'm standing by the sink, I briefly look up into the mirror at my reflection. I'm startled by the person I see looking back at me. My hair has grown down to my collarbones, and my face is thinner than before. My arms and legs have muscles that weren't there before everything, and I'm thinner than before. My eyes have a tired look about them, as though they were saying "I've seen my share of terrible things, and many of them will never leave me."
I'm not sure I like the person I now see, and I'm not at all sure she likes the old me either. The old me was soft, and wouldn't have survived as much as I already have. The new me wonders why I didn't enjoy what I had before, while I still had it, and why I always insisted upon being so glum about my life. Didn't I realize that things could get a whole lot worse than going to school every day, seeing my friends, hanging out with my parents- being normal. The definition of normality has changed, and humanity has changed to match it.