The Dead Don't Bleed

Appear

Word Count: 2,090

Thankfully, they didn't have to engage with the horde that had been coming their way, he and Chyra were quiet enough to slip by without so much of a sound from either of them. They were now on their steady trek back to their base.

The cans in the bag clanked quietly, and Keith watched as Chyra readjusted the weight on her back so there was nothing but the low crunching of their shoes on the cracked sidewalk and the sound of wind curling through the empty shells of buildings and crunching pavement under them. They had passed a few broken down cars, maybe a lone tree or two pushing its way out between the cracks in the pavement, it's bark bloody and scratched from something or another. It was a normal sight now, Keith had grown used to it over the years, but thankfully, the one sign of danger, he needed to look out for was nowhere in sight, for now.

And if one did decide to show its face, they'd regret it, he thought grimly. His fingers carefully traced their way to the sheath strapped at his back, he was pretty sure there was still blood dried onto it from their last encounter with an exceptionally large horde. He and Chyra had to leave what little they scavenged to get out of there alive, they went hungry the next week, and had to ration what was next to nothing of their remaining supplies.

But they were alive, and that was all that mattered.

It was the only thing that mattered.

But however hard his life seemed, he couldn't complain too much. He had a dry place to sleep, enough food to keep him from starving, and a close friend to share this crappy world with. He knew there were some people out there who had it worse off than he did. He'd known more than a few kids who were left out on their own with no one but the undead to keep them company and he knew from experience they never made it over a few months out on their own.

He had been one of those more lucky survivors, thank God. After Shiro died, he had been out on his own for about a year, living off of things he could scavenge out of abandoned stores and torn-up apartments. Scraping together enough food to barely get by and tearing open any zombies that came close to him with a fairly new katana he had found in some broken-in pawn shop the first few weeks on his own.

He had been on the brink of starvation when he met Chyra. It was during a brutal winter where the wind refused to cease and she had been sloshing through the sewer in favor of keeping just a little bit warmer than above ground. At the same time, she just so happened to come across where Keith had been resting for the night, huddled, cold, and starving and after some slight convincing that Keith wasn't dangerous and they both were living out on their own with no human interaction, they made a pact to stay with other and have each others' backs.

They've been together ever since.

Well, not together together. Just as friends.

Keith couldn't imagine falling for a girl as tough as Chyra, she had saved his life, gave him food, and he would never forget her for it, but even though she was just a little over a year older than him, Keith saw her more as a mother figure than anything else. She nagged him, beat some sense into him when it was absolutely necessary, but he couldn't say there weren't at least some times when they got along together as close friends just enough to know something or another about each other, but besides the rare heart-to-heart between them, there wasn't much to tell.

After a month or two of just getting used to each other, Keith learned that Chyra had lost her brother to the disease of undead that had taken over the city the night of the breakout. He had slaughtered her parents in front of her and she had been lucky to get out alive. She had almost died before she had even made it out of the house, the only thing she had left to show of that night, beside the bloodied and torn clothes on her back were the small scars dotting her dark hands from trying to claw her way through the screen door at the back of the house that had chosen that night to get stuck tight.