The Price of Humanity

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Twenty-Nine

I retreat from the window slightly, making sure that he doesn't have a clean shot at me if he was to shoot. He doesn't seem to have any inclination to though, he only watches me.

With one of those sadistic smirks on his face, just like the other two had. Like they know something that we don't.

I continue looking around the building searching for any more onlookers. Sure enough, I find three more lurking around in windows, all armed with rifles but only watching us.

I walk backwards, still facing them until I my back hits the counter and I'm finally out of eyesight from them.

"Alicia?" I breathe in a sharp intake of breath and feel dangerous emotions start to boil up inside me. Not noticing that Adam is calling to me, I jog out to the back of the pharmacy where my brothers have holed up some of our essentials in the bathroom.

"They're watching us." I say, storming into the bathroom. Both the twins look up immediately and wear a worried expression on their faces.

"How many?" Gale asks, ready for action straight away. He shares a look with Zane though and calms down slightly.

"Four." Zane sighs and runs a hand through his hair in frustration.

"They're sending more in." I look up at me brother, slightly surprised.

"You know they're there?" Zane nods and makes eye contact with me for the first time since I've walked in.

"We can't go anywhere due to Mia's leg and so yeah we've been watching the area. They've got more in buildings out the back, they're getting ready for battle." I start to panic slightly at that.

"Battle? We haven't done anything to them." I say both anger and fear in my voice.

"They don't care. You know the stories, they just attack because they can, and for our supplies." Now it's my turn to run my hand through my hair, I've kept it down since I haven't been fetching any supplies, or eight-year-old girls, and keeping it up for too long just aches.

"So, what do we do?" I ask looking up at my brother, our leader, with my big brown eyes, a surprising amount of anger in my voice. He cracks and pulls me into a hug trying to either comfort me or calm down my anger, I'm not quite sure.

"We wait for Mia to get better and then we get out of the city. As fast as we possibly can. And we hope they don't attack before then." I nod and take deep breaths, walking back out into the main room of the pharmacy.

I dig around in my bag and sit on the cold floor, pulling out the familiar notebook. I cross off today's date. Day three hundred and forty-two.

I hear the shuffling of footsteps and look up just in time to see Adam come and sit by me, trying to be careful of his shoulder.

"What's that?" He asks, I look back down at my notepad and after a few moments of internal conflict, pass it over to him, there's nothing too private in there anyway. "You record everything?" He asks, flipping through the different sections.

I nod in reply and mentally check off the sections as he flips through them. Days since the end of the old world, current date, list of supplies, some random drawings, my thoughts, and the tally of how many I've killed.

The part with my thoughts made me tense slightly, most days aren't all sunshine's and rainbows, barely any are, and there are some pretty dark thoughts in there that I really don't need him or my brother's knowing about.

When he realises what he's reading though he flicks through the pages at a speed I doubt he could read at. He turns to the last page filled with tally marks and looks up at me questioningly.

"It's how many corpses I've killed." I say to him he looks back at the pages and furrows his eyebrows in thought.

"We call them walkers." He says quietly. "1,026. That's a lot." I nod and look down at my hands.

"Averages at three a day. Which really doesn't seem that much with the amount of them out there but...it builds up quickly." I pick at my nails, trying to look at anything but Adam.

He flicks back to the front of the book and notices something about tomorrow's date. There's a small dot, in pencil, in the corner of the box, not something I really wanted him noticing.

I write all the dates in pencil so that I can reuse the same page every month, no point in wasting the limited paper I have, or the one pen I have.

"What's so special about tomorrow?" He asks, looking up at me. I try to keep my face neutral since a million things are probably running through his mind at this point in time. Birthday? Anniversary? Period?

Surprise folks, mother nature doesn't give you a break, not even if the dead are walking the earth. He doesn't need to know which one it is though, since he won't be with us much longer.

Only until we get out of the city.

"Nothing, it's just a random dot." I say, taking the notebook back and shoving it in my bag.

"That's blatantly a lie." He says, eyes not wavering from my face. I look back at him and make eye contact, mentally telling him not to press it.

He shrugs his shoulders, wincing when he tenses the muscles in his bad shoulder. I stand up and offer him my hand, he gladly takes it with his good arm and pulls himself up.

I stumble a little at his weight and he steadies my when he's fully standing, hand planted firmly on my hip. When I've got my balance back his gives me a smug smile and removes his hand, walking over to see Mia.

Zane stands over by the window watching me, he lifts his eyebrow suggest something that can't and won't happen. I shrug my shoulders giving him an 'I can't help it' look and his chuckles, face turning serious again as he looks out the window.