Us Against the Apocalypse

4 - Back to Square One

It was as if the past few hours had been some irrelevant fantasy which Bluebell had conjured up when she was half-asleep.

It was noon, a whole day after she'd left the abandoned pool, and she was beginning to question whether it'd even happened at all. Considering it was the only thing she could remember, she held onto it tightly, but there was something melancholic about holding it too close. She was searching for her old memories, or maybe ways to make more, but had so far encountered nothing but trees and pinecones.

Granted, she'd spent a lot of time sleeping; after all, she'd been exhausted after so much happening.

Now, with no goal in sight and no obvious way forward, Bluebell was stupefied and stuck in a seemingly endless cycle.

There was no way out as far as she could see, and all she was focusing on was reaching the end of the forest. She'd started recognising various trees and flowers after observing the wildlife, including which ones were safe to eat. It seemed as though a lot of animals had called this place home, maybe due to the lack of zombies, but luckily none of them were overly dangerous.

None that she'd encountered so far, anyway.

Government control here must've been tight. Bluebell had definitely been expecting to run into one zombie at least. Either that or Leo was lying, a possibility which she refused to even consider anymore. The group which she'd met before were the only salvation she had, and the only people she had left to think about. Pegging them as liars would either push her past the edge or send her spiralling into fits of rage, and neither of those options seemed appealing.

She often thought pointless things as she wandered aimlessly from one place to the next.

Her most common thought was probably what her life had been like a few days ago, when she was living relatively normally without any amnesia at all. Of course, she had no recollection of her life and couldn't yet tell whether the amnesia was even a bad thing or not. Regardless, she couldn't stop thinking about it.

It just wouldn't leave her mind.

Zombies or no zombies, her life was screwed, and she had no idea how to pick herself back up. As she wandered, contemplating, she stumbled across an old campfire which smelled strongly of smoke and dying flames. It was obvious from the dampened logs and overgrown plants that nobody had been there for a while.

The only evidence of human life in the first place was a small notebook, discarded on the floor and never looked at again.

More curious than cautious, Bluebell did what any teenager would in the situation and picked it up. It was caked in dirt, and any writing on the front would now be impossible to decipher. It was deep brown, giving it a trendy leather look, and was secured tightly by a padlock. The keys, funnily enough, were lying forgotten nearby.

Whether it would crop up again in her life or not, Bluebell still found the notebook fascinating and, quite carelessly, carried it towards the logs. While the campfire seemed like the perfect place to sleep, Bluebell wasn't wholly convinced that it was empty and would rather escape as soon as possible.

She ran as fast as she could towards the small bed she'd made which sat a good few meters away. She flopped down there and opened the notebook out on her lap. Her brain began buzzing with panic when she realised it was a diary, and she could easily be invading someone's private life.

It was a boy called Harley, and his name was imprinted in giant, scrawled lettering.

Despite every organ inside her body screaming at her to look away, Bluebell flipped to the bookmarked page. She was confident that reading the diary wouldn't do much damage.