Deceased

Chapter Six

We've been walking for hours now. Alex has slowed down a lot, fatigue showing in her heavy steps and slumped shoulders. I've stopped casting glances at her, still not believing she killed three of those things. I cringe, realizing I don't like the idea of her being that close to any of them.

Weird.

I realize how rarely I've even had to get close to those things or kill them. I usually just run. I'm good at running...   I haven't felt any emotion about somebody being that close to a biter since the last Alex. And before that, my parents.

When I left my house that night, I just wandered the streets. Everything was a mess. By this point, life as we knew it was evaporating quickly. My parents had kept me inside the house the last few months. I hadn't been able to go outside of my small gated community.

I remember in the first days how often I would call and text all of my friends from school, and we were all pretty freaked. There came a day when nobody replied or answered my calls. I don't know what happened to them. Well, I have a guess, but it's not something I want to think about.

I was so surprised at what I saw in the streets. Utter chaos. There were more people then. The numbers of humans to disease were probably one to three and the difference was drastically increasing each day. By the end of the week, the count was one to twenty. Networks gave up broadcasting by then. A day later, no electricity was working anywhere in the city. Staying in the city was not only a hazard because of the biters, but also because of the people.

Staying alive doesn't always mean doing the right thing. It's all about how much guilt you can live with.

Men and women were grouping up, ransacking anywhere they thought to have what they wanted. Instead of helping other survivors, they fought and killed them for supplies. Even laughed about it later. I once followed a group who went around an entire gated community and one by one dragged families from their homes just to torture and kill them. One victim, wearing expensive jewelry and clothing, saw me hiding. She begged me to help her, as her husband was already in the road, his face unrecognizable from where they slowly ran it over with a vehicle. I barely escaped with my life because of her. Their leader saw me, but he let me run away, laughing and moving on to the next house.

I found a group who all seemed decent a few days later. We moved out of the city, working together to fight off any biters we encountered, and sharing whatever supplies we had. There were ten of us and we did good for a couple of months, once killing a mob of forty biters that had sprung up on us. By the end of their existence, there were thirteen. Not including myself. I was the only survivor of the group when everything went to H-E-double hockey sticks. Haven't been in a group since.

"Look up there," I tell Alex, pointing up the road at some buildings. "Looks like we're almost there!"

She immediately straightens, a sigh of relief escaping her tiny lips. We both speed up a little, excited at the prospect of rest. The sun is on our necks, it's heat unrelenting on our bodies, which are covered in sweat.

"We have to find somewhere to eat some food for dinner before we can make camp, okay?"

"Okay."

"Keep a close eye out for any movement. One wrong move means death out here."

"Got it." She scans the area, as do I.