The Light At The End Of The World

Jasper

"June!"

A voice that seemed distant brought me back to the present with Grace. I was on the ground my eyes and throat burned, I realized that I must have been screaming and I thought I had lost my voice. I cried more clutching at her legs like a little girl, screaming wishing that this was all a dream. Wishing for my parents to come back. I missed them deeply and each passing year doesn't get easier. They get harder.

I've lost so much since they passed.. the world ended.. I've lost my innocence. I've killed people.

I kept screaming till I couldn't scream anymore and all I could do was choke on my tears and throw up the last contents of my meal.

I realized Grace was screaming my name over my own, she was grabbed by a Changed her gun was shoved into its mouth and was pulling the trigger frantically, but it was only clicking. I pulled my gun shaking so hard I couldn't shoot straight, Grace can't hold on much longer the guns pushed through the back off its mouth I think he just bit her. I fire twice at the Changed's head, turning to grace I see her bawling and scrambling back her hands and arms covered in blood and bits of the Changed.

I reached for her hands to examine the injuries, I managed to grab her hands while she tries to pull away screaming.

"Let me Go June!"

I wiped her hands forcibly on my shirt three of her fingers was bitten. Tears started flowing down my face.

"Grace, I- I-" I started to say before Grace tried reaching for my gun, I was faster. I gripped the pistol in my small hands and leveled the pistol between her eyes.

Her eyes pleaded for me to help end her suffering. I couldn't.. I've grown attached to her. I loved her.

"Please June, just do it." Tears brimmed in her eyes before she closed her eyes making them fall into the rain soaked earth.

I turned my head to the side, not wanting to look as I started to tighten the grip on the gun. I pulled the trigger.

Click.

The gun was empty Grace let out a sigh of relief before she collapsed crying while trying to wrap her bitten finger in a piece of torn cloth. I heard rustling in the woods behind, making me jump a little. I turned my attention behind me, I grabbed my knife from its sheath and tried to point it in the direction of where the noise was coming from. My breathing quickened and I could feel my heart pounding against my chest. My anxiety levels were rising almost to the point where I couldn't breathe. "Fucking show yourself Coward!" I shouted into the woods, hoping for an answer but hoping it was nothing at the same time I couldn't take meeting another person and losing them just days after I met them. Without a word a boy around my age or maybe a few years younger, stepped into the clearing of the camp. His long dark hair fell over his eyes in a few strands. He stared at me unblinking with a crossbow at his shoulder.

"Just cut the damn hand off. You can still save her." The stranger said in an ominous tone his emerald eyes bore into my very soul, and I hated it.

I thought to myself that could work, I've seen it done before.. But I'm no surgeon so I don't know anything about the human hand or where to cut. "Who are you." I said as I got between him and Grace.

"I'm Jasper, I know people who are looking for you June Atlas. Some of these people I want dead. So I can either turn you In, or you can help me kill your brother Daniel." He said with a dark smile. A smile that I am terrified of seeing.

I could feel myself start to get angry and red in the face. "How the hell do you even know my name."

"Like I said, your brother is looking for you, and i'll get a large sum of food rations if i turn you in." He said and leaned down to inspect a downed Changed. He did it in such a manner that sent chills down my spine.

"How did you even track me down? I left him for a reason. He is sick. I got my sister as far away as possible from him so he could never touch her again. He raped her. Her own brother raped her. And me.." I said as the nights of being tied up in the basement next to my sister came flooding back to me. "We were fucking twelve.."

"What your brother did to you and your sister is unforgivable. And he is doing the same thing now to countless other women. And his men help him do it out of fear. It's a big operation June and it will be difficult to walk right up to your brother and put a bullet in his head. He'll be expecting your revenge. He also wants another turn with you." He grimaced as he said those last words.

Daniel was thirty now if i remember right and I planned on never getting near him again.

"What do I need to do."I said and I pulled grace to her feet.

"That hand needs to be removed now or the infection will spread killing her in a day or so." Jasper said as he lowered and disarmed his crossbow.

Grace's eyes went wide before she fainted in my arms. I stumbled back a few steps as I adjusted to her small frame falling into mine. It took awhile thinking the situation over in my head before I laid her down on her back and I grabbed a few 'First Aid' supplies from my bag. I turned back to Grace and I stroked her hair away from her face and looked sadly at her right hand where the blood had already soaked through the poorly tied cloth and started dripping into the earth before being washed away and turning into rusty colored mud.

"June, I can help." Jasper said as he kneeled down beside me.

"No, I have to do it. I'm the reason she got bitten in the first place.."

Jasper took out a large hunting knife and offered it to me. It was clean. I accepted it and felt its weight in my hands before I brought it down onto Grace's wrist. The blade was sharp enough to cut flesh as if it posed no resistance. At once a fountain of red came from the wound, the ebb and flow in time with her steady beating heart.