The Infection: Zombies Awakening (Book 1) - EDITING

Chapter 24 - Responsibilities

It's been almost a week since a ghoul was last encountered. Thank god. My left ankle had healed mostly (enough for me to be able to walk properly at least). The swelling was subsided, the wound slowly recovering with time. Soon, it was simply a bunch of pinkish bumps and lines running up my feet. by now, only red marks remained on the skin of my legs.

And Remember and Matt were getting along more better then the last time.

We were now walking through a forest, a quiet forest. That didn't surprise me one bit since we were on quarantine grounds after all. But nervousness was trying to creep into me.

Ignoring that sense, a question randomly comes up in mind to distract me. "Matt?"

"Hmm?"

"Umm...." I tried to ask, "How come Remember didn't sense your presence during the time when we first met?"

Remember, probably close enough to have heard that stopped as well, and turned to Matt.

"Its sanitizer." Matt answers glibly, without looking back.

Sanitizer? Struck clueless, I quickly caught up to him. Didn't want to fall behind after all.

"Sanitizer?" I repeated, just before Matt stops ahead of me. Finally catching up, I too, stopped beside him.

Beyond us, was a river. A busy sort of shallow but clean enough to walk through it. Were we going to walk across it?

But that was not what Matt had in mind, as he takes off his cap and drops his bag down.

"Good." Matt smiled, ruffling his brown hair a bit before saying, "We'll wash here."

Wash here?

"What do you mean?" I had to ask.

"We've been travelling pretty far if you askme." He replied. "And it's been almost 2 weeks since we had a proper hygiene."

I looked down at my outfit. It was way longer then that for me. He was right. My outfit was covered in bloodstains and was ripped in many areas. And it was best not to check how I smelled. I was in a total mess.

"I guess." I sighed, making Matt chuckle a bit.

He then turns to Remember. "And you Remember, probably haven't even taken a bath for who-knows-how-long. Out of all us 3, you smell pretty much like..." Matt tried to find a more polite way to respond, but said, "Road kill."

For a moment there, Remember looked like he was about to punch Matt, but doesn't as he saw my horrified reaction.

"W-w-we all smell equally bad." I laughed lightly. Remembering when we first met, Remember did carry a terrible scent of decay. But somehow, I haven't really noticed it until now. Guess I got used to it.

"Now what?" Remember points out.

"We take a break." Matt answers. "God, we need a bath."

He then begins to take off his camouflaged uniform. At the same time another thought hits me: Wait a minute. We're going to wash here - As in take a bath? As in take off our clothes and-

"Wait a minute!" I yelped, hands in front of me. "I-I can't take off m-my clothes h-"

"Oh yea, your right." Matt reminds himself. Then sighing, I heard him mutter 'girls' before replying "If you like, you can wash over there behind that tree."

He then pulls out an oversized T-shirt from his bag and hands it to me. "Here. You can wear this when you're washing your clothes."

Looked at the tree and back to the shirt, a small gulp sounded in my throat. I was going to be alone. Alone while washing myself and my clothes?!