Deceased

Chapter Three

The air seems to warm quickly as I walk, and I'd like to strip off the thin long sleeved shirt I'm wearing over a tank top, but I know I'll burn in the sun. A tarp I had found was the reason I did not burn while living on the roof of the building.

I remember the day I had found it, setting out to get supplies in order to make the spot for shade. I failed a few times in setting it up, one of which resulted in me kicking things and yelling obscenities which attracted some unwanted attention. The biters were around my building for a week. I figured out how to put up the tarp and had laid down in the shade blissfully. The tarp held out great against the rain too. A couple of tiny holes had managed to make their way into the tarp recently, but it's not like I had any use for it anymore.

I come back to the present, listening to the barely audible noise of my boots against the gravel of the road. I had long ago learned how to keep myself silent, at least when it came to walking. My mouth was another story. I think back to when I was younger and would explore the woods and pastures around my old home. I would silently make it a little game with myself to make my feet become as quiet as possible, even on dead twigs and leaves. That had won me so many games of manhunt, as well as saved my life a couple of times within the last year.

The trees around me remain silent, except for the wind rustling between the leaves. The grass is long and overgrown, but hopefully by winter, especially if it snows, then it will be flattened out. It makes me uncomfortable imagining what could be hidden in the knee to waist high grass.

I clutch the knife strapped to my hip, prepared to take it out in a moments notice. I keep two more on my calves by my boots. I don't like guns.

My father used to take me shooting, as well as hunting. He never had a son, so I think he had always tried to make me into one. Puberty and periods he did not want to talk about. I smile and laugh quietly to myself. My mother had always forced me to wear dresses and style my hair glamorously up until I was a teenager. She didn't like that my very dark brown hair refused to curl. I grimace thinking back on how she had always placed tons of aching bobby pins into my hair to keep whatever hairstyle she made that day stay in place. Despite finally putting my foot down on what the both of them wanted for me, I managed to find a way to stay in between the ideas of my fathers tomboy and my mothers princess.

I exhale slowly, sadness washing over me. My mother had been in a city and gotten bit while working in the hospital. None of us knew what was going on. Just that something was spreading fast and killing people... Well sort of killing them.

She had worked in the hospital long enough to know what happened to anybody who got bit. They were taken to the top two floors of the large hospital. They never returned.

She hid her hand from everybody, bandaging it as well as she could. She told her coworkers that I was sick at home with a stomach bug, reassuring them that I hadn't come in contact with any of the diseased. They allowed her to leave early and she drove home to us as quickly as she could, although she was sweating profusely and clenching her teeth in pain by the time she arrived.

As soon as she returned home to us she brought my father into their bedroom. I was only sixteen at the time, and as a mother I guess that she had just wanted to protect me from seeing her like that.

Without any schoolwork and limited use for electronics, I was left pacing back and forth outside their door. The schools had all been closing down in hopes that it would slow the disease and failing electricity and Internet connection made communication difficult. I remember hearing a scream from my mother and my fathers comforting words before I opened the door, without knocking.

My mothers hand was clenched into a fist inside of a glass bowl filled with a clear liquid. My nose scrunched up at the smell of the rubbing alcohol. The liquid didn't take long to turn crimson in color.