Life with Hunters

Ch 6: Drowning...

It had been a few days after my encounter with my friends. Whatever emotions I once had before were now gone. All of them. I was just... Numb. I felt nothing. I didn't laugh or smile. I didn't cry. I didn't scream. Nothing. I barely spoke anymore. My facial expression was always blank. My eyes empty. The pack had tried just about everything to get me to show emotion again. Nothing. I was broken. Empty. Numb. I still did my usual tasks I always did for the hunters. I opened doors, I kept watch for survivors, stitched up torn clothing, treated wounds, scavenged in small places the hunters couldn't fit into, etc. But I wasn't the same girl who would talk out loud to them, laugh at them when they did something cute or foolish, sing to them, smile at them brightly when I was excited or proud of an accomplishment, get angry when they did something stupid and I had to clean up their mess. I wouldn't ask for cuddles with puppy eyes anymore, something they were always willing to give me at the drop of a hat, I didn't play with them anymore either. I became distant emotionally and physically. I was so blinded by what happened with my friends that I was completely oblivious to how I was hurting the pack with my being distant. Things spiraled out of control so quickly that I shut down. I couldn't mentally function like I used to. I developed the bad habit of wandering away from the hunters and going off all on my own. I got in trouble every time for it, but I continued to do it very often. As in all the time. Every few seconds or so. The pack as a whole were getting very quickly fed up with my wandering off. Especially since they didn't like getting screeched at by the alpha for not keep a closer eye on me. At one point a hunter found a collar and a leash in a store we were rummaging through. He did try to put it on me and I let him. It was the alpha that stopped and him had a very angry "word" with him before throwing away the collar and leash. Well today I just so happened to have wandered too far from the pack. And I got lost. In a large city of all places. Where there's tons upon tons of infected. I could hear the pack losing their shit and looking for me. Calling for me. But I kept moving. Farther and father away from them. I ignored their calls. Their crying, their angry screeches, their whines, everything. I was drowning in nothing. And I wanted to keep drowning. I didn't want to be saved. So why can't they leave me be? Why won't they just let me drown? I hate feeling so empty. I hate feeling numb. I hate feeling nothing... At all. I wasn't paying attention to where I was walking, and I didn't notice that I walked into a park and towards a large lake. I slipped on some wet and loose mud and fell into the cold murky water. I didn't make any effort to swim back up to the surface. Much less try not to inhale water. I let my body sink and my vision fade to black, hearing something splash into the water after me.