Regeneration

Chapter 30 - Brush With Death

"Vámonos," Marco hollered while peeking out of a window.

We gathered up our things and ventured out... back onto the hunting grounds in which we were the prey.

Going on foot seemed like the best option, we couldn't afford to attract any attention to ourselves.

We kept low and as silent as possible, hiding, running along where shadows were cast.

Thud...

I bumped into Romero who halted abruptly in front of me.

He tilted his head and I looked in the direction; around the corner, were two hunters tearing into a poor soul that had managed to survive up until now.

It looked like a young man around my age, his face was so disfigured that his identity was barely discernible. I tore my eyes away; my stomach turning at the sight.

I placed a hand over my mouth to prevent myself from throwing up.

We managed to slip past them remaining unnoticed.

I surveyed the broken windows of abandoned shops as we walked through the street. A foul scent lingered in the air and I wrinkled my nose in response; the city that was once full of life now reeked of death.

We kept walking in silence, looking out for any sort of movement as we did so.

"It smells," I spoke.

"Might have something to do with all the rotting corpses around, Hermosa," Marco said from behind me.

I rolled my eyes at his response.

My eyes shifted to Romero who was walking beside me. He wore that solemn expression of his, his eyes focused on the road ahead of him.

There was a silent tension between us since we talked about the safe zone. Though we didn't say anything I knew the both of us felt it.

The reality was that Romero and I were two ships passing in the night. We were never meant to be in each other's lives. My heart sunk a bit at the thought.

"How much farther is this place?" I asked trying to direct my thoughts onto to something else.

"Roughly an hour," Romero answered.

I sighed loudly. He looked at me, his lips tilting upward in a barely-there smile.

"So aren't you going to tell me how you two met?" Marco asked smiling devilishly.

Romero glared at him clenching his jaw.

"It's just a question." Marco threw his hands up in surrender.

I felt a tinge of pain thinking back to the night I lost my family.

"The night of the evacuation," I paused, "He saved my life."

"Sounds romantic," Marco smirked.

Just then the sound of a glass bottle rolling caught our attention, causing us all to halt in our strides.

A few meters ahead of us stood a lone hunter, its attention had been drawn to us as well.

The hunter didn't move when it saw us but stood there with its head twitching in a lunatic manner.

It made me wonder if the person wasn't a hunter at all or just a madman roaming the streets, however, the raised veins by his eyes confirmed that he was a hunter.

"Well, what do we have here," Marco said as he began moving forward slowly.

He slid a machete out of his waist holster and continued towards the hunter.