La Mort et ses Merveilles ✔

2. The Exile of the Innocents

La Mort et ses Merveilles

Chapter 2: The Exile of the Innocents

It's been almost a month since the motel robbery. Driving from one ghost town to another, scavenging for supplies, life didn't seem too bright. But looking at my little sister who was asleep in the passenger seat beside me, I knew I had to find the strength to go on. No matter how little the will I had to live. Even if I didn't want to live for myself, I had to live for my little sister.

The skies seem dull and there doesn't seem to be any colour in the world. Was it just me, or was it the disrepair? I wouldn't know. My heart still ached thinking of my father.

He had always been there for us, especially after our mother left five years ago. He was ex-military, and he quit to get a more conventional job in the town, to be there for us. He'd always work late nights at the workshop just to get a little more to help his kids. He especially doted Isabella, she was the apple of his eye, the love of his life. My mother leaving dealt a huge blow to him, and I remembered the nights he'd spend drinking alone, but he got his act together for his children that he loved so dearly, Isabella and I. He had saved so much in hopes of sending me to college, but of course that never happened. Not after the outbreak.

I found a shovel in a small garden shed a stone's throw away from where we were staying. One of the zombies were stumbling about nearby, hissing and moaning at nothing in particular. Taking a deep breath, I reassured myself that everything was going to be fine. My heart racing, I snuck up behind the creature, before bludgeoning its skull with a hammer. The limp body fell to the ground with a loud thump, the sound of brittle, rotting flesh crashing into the hard soil.

Always aim for the head, that was what my father thought me. Sure, I had killed some of those things before, but it had always been with my dad supervising me. His watchful eye making sure that nothing could hurt me, so I was never in any real danger. I once tried to stab a zombie with the claw of a hammer, and while it did pierce the skull, it ended up being lodged in it. Took me a while to get it out.

"If one of those things had company you would have been dead by now," my father told me as he put a firm hand on my shoulder.

My eyes on the deserted road in front of me, I couldn't help but feel my lips curl into a slight smile as I reminisced the good times I had.

We buried him in a plot of land nearby. Isabella insisted on helping even though I told her not to. With that, we both dug a grave at the base of an oak tree. The funeral was just the two of us standing over his fresh grave. I held my little sister's hand and we just kept silent. I had no words. There was absolutely nothing I could say. But after a while, I finally found the words that I needed to say.

"I'll take care of her," I said solemnly. "You don't have to worry."

I fashioned a crude cross by nailing two slender pieces of wood I found in the shed, and staked it into the earth at the head of the grave. With a permanent marker I wrote his name on the wood. I didn't want him to be forgotten.

Riley James Rosendale

30/3/1970-4/5/2018

Isabella squeezed my hand as we walked away. My mind was in a flurry, I had no idea what to do or where to go. The rations Isabella had managed to save for us would last us for a bit, but it would be gone in no time. If we wanted to continue surviving, we had to do something. We had been searching the few houses and stores nearby, but the town we were in seemed to have run dry. Whatever buildings we haven't looked through were full of zombies and were just far too risky. There were other towns nearby and I guess we could try to scavenge. Besides, there was nothing left in this town besides painful memories.