Buzz

The Camp

Will POV

We were walking down a long and hot highway. I kept my coat on - it made me feel safe: hidden. The heat radiated off the tar of the massive road. Despite its width, we had to squeeze through cars every know and then - I was vigilant for hidden Cannibals.

To my surprise, so was Logan.

It was a creepy and stressful feeling - seeing a massive highway full of abandoned cars. It felt as though a threat could come from any side. A large threat - as in, where were all the owners of the hundreds of cars?

The cars were powdered by dust and shards of glass from shattered windows and, or, windshields. I was overly tense, expecting a massive horde of Cannibals rushing toward us.

Logan has a demanding aura if he wants something. He doesn't say anything, doesn't act any different. But you still pick up that he wants to say something.

"What?", I hissed at him when I caught him eyeballing me for the seventh time. He didn't recoil or flinch as I expected him to.

"Aren't you getting hot", he indicated at my coat. I was getting hot - I was boiling inside the black coat. But I won't take it off. The coat hid me. It hid what I looked like. It hid who I am. I wanted it that way.

"No", I said simply.

We continued on in silence, passing a car with a decomposed driver still strapped in. He reeked of rotting flesh - and was missing half his skull. I slyly covered my nose as we passed it - Logan also seemed repulsed by how he squinted. Other than that he seemed unfazed.

"How old are you?" Logan asked out of random. I found myself wondering why it mattered but distracting myself from my ever present paranoia would be beneficial.

"Twenty three."

"You look younger than that", he had a mocking tone to his voice but my blank face cleared that right up, "I'm twenty four. Got a football scholarship and I'm studying... I was studying actuarial science. I was in my last year..."

What does he want me to say? Does he even want me to speak?

I nodded my head as a reply. He looked at me expectedly while trudging alongside me - in reality I was the only one trudging. He slowed down to keep up with me.

"What about you", he asked nudging me gently with his arm. The nudge felt strange. Maybe because I hadn't had human contact in a long time. It felt foreign.

"I was a psychiatrist."

"A psychiatrist at twenty three?"

I nodded again. He hid his surprise by looking forward. We passed an overturned bus held up by a car wedged under it. Some windows had blood splattered on them from inside the bus. Like an abstract painting. An expression of desperation and fear.

Accurate.

"My brother and I got seperated three weeks ago. I kept looking for him though. I didn't - and won't - give up hope. It's stupid, I know. But I can't even imagine him being dead", his strong voice wavered ever so slightly at the end. No one else would've picked it up, and I saw that he thought that. But I picked it up. I heard the crack in his resolution. I heard the doubt. A commodity in this time.