The Last Day

Chapter three

Hadlee didn't want to go into the room. Her mom and dad were already in there, they said she was in one of her better moments, but they were afraid it wouldn't last.

She took a deep breath and walked in.

The infirmary had gotten considerably more crowded, and now fifty people were among Georgia as victims of the Pestilence.

Rowan's brother Kade had fallen sick as well, he only lasted a week with the fever. Georgia was a little more stubborn, and Hadlee feared that she would survive the first stages only to become the hollowed thing they were when they continued to live with the Pestilence.

Hadlee entered, the smell of lingering death in the room. A nurse had offered her a face mask but she refused. She didn't need it and she wanted her sister to see her face to face.

She walked through the room in silence. She saw a wife sobbing over her husband. A mother and father saying goodbye to their only son. A young boy holding each of his parents hands as they passed.

Hadlee had to bite her lip to stop herself from breaking down.

In the back corner, she saw the familiar figures of her mother and father hunched over a small form.

Hadlee approached the bed cautiously, and looked down at her sister. Her face was as white as the blankets she laid on, but tents of blue and grey replaced the natural red blush that should be on her cheeks. Her eyes were bloodshot and underlined with dark crescents, and her hair was thin and oily.

Hadlee sat down in the chair by her side and forced a natural smile onto her face. "Hey Georgia. How you doing, girly?" She asked sweetly. Georgia's lips trembled, they were tented purple. "I feel bad." Her voice sounded far away, not quite how it sounded before.

Hadlee nodded, reaching out and stroking her cheek. It was cold. "I'm so sorry, Georgia. We will find something. The doctors and I are working hard to find a cure."

Something in her expression changed. "Try harder! Why are you okay when I am not?! I- I don't feel good! I want to go home! Take me home!!!" She began to thrash and Hadlee stumbled back in surprised, her mother and father jumped to calm her but she wouldn't still.

Military soldiers ran to force her down, and Hadlee yelled at them to be careful with her. She had noticed more soldiers had shown up since the Pestilence hit pod 113. Before only a few soldiers in the medical field roamed the camp, now marines, army men, and others guarded the camp. Nobody was allowed beyond a certain point. They wanted to keep the Pestilence in one area so it wouldn't spread.

Hadlee watched the soldiers tie down her screaming sister. She whipped her head, her teeth bared like an animals. She looked frail and weak, her arms skinny like toothpicks, but she easily pushed away a soldier.

"They are like skeletons." Rowan had said the night his brother had died. His eyes had been out of focus and he openly wept at the loss of his brother. "Except they aren't exactly dead. They are just hollowed shells, y'know? Not really human anymore but in the back of your mind you still have to remind yourself that those bones were once your friend, your family... your baby brother." He furiously whipped his tears away with his leather jacket sleeve.

"That wasn't my brother back there who died. Who almost strangled a doctor who was just trying to help him pass less painfully... that was a skeleton... a Skel."

Hadlee's face twisted into horror. Her sister was Past the Point of No Return. Her sister was a Skel.

***

"Come back!" Blaze yelled from behind her as she sprinted through the forest. She didn't turn back around.

"Please! I can't save her on my own."