I found myself rising in the new day in bed with every limb on my body aching. The familiar pain helloed me once again, and I groaned in the realization that I’d been broken so many times.

After I succeeded getting up on my butt, I tried to grasp all information from the day before.

The bandage on my head felt soft, but I didn’t remember applying them last night. I just blacked out and fell to the floor.

My clothes now weren’t even drenched.

And Chase was nowhere to be seen.

“Chase?” I frantically called him.

I stepped my foot to the floor and walked a little. I struggled at just doing that, but I finally reached the door to find that it was unbolted. 

Outside, the morning was as lovely as before the pandemic. I could hear birds chirping and leaves swaying, but still nothing on Chase. 

Three minutes later, he appeared from across the street while carrying a brand new backpack large enough for hiking. And he also smiled seeing me healthy and awake.

“Where the hell have you been? What happened before I woke up? Are you still hurt?”

“Whoa whoa… just take it easy. I was just checking that car shop right across the street. Some tools are just too good to be missed and also, I found some chips and two canned hams. I didn’t check every room, though. We can head there if you feel better.”

“That’s…” I wanted to be angry towards him for leaving alone without a companion, but I just couldn’t. “Nevermind.”

He slumped to the couch and threw his back away like in frustration, though his lips formed a smile. I noticed a small glint of pride and satisfaction in his eyes. Should I be proud of him, for being able to take care of his own ass and tending me while I was sleeping? Or should I be mad for he was being ignoarant and reckless.

I opened the conversation to exit the awkward atmosphere. “You feel good?”

“Aside from getting really banged up thanks to a car crash, yeah. I’m not wounded, I mean, fatally.”

“Thank God for that. And thank you for umm, moving me to the bed, and applying bandages, and umm… changing my clothes, I guess.” I felt a bit weird that he did change my clothes, but I grew not to care after a few seconds.

“Hey, you did a lot for me already. I had to repay that.” Chase’s voice seemed glad. He selflessly appreciated my gratitude.

“Yeah. Still, thanks. Where did you find bandages, though?”

“There’s a small drug store next to this motel. Every shelf is basically emptied. Just found some specific drugs and luckily some bandages. I did grab a few woman’s stuff.”

Seeing the crowded table on my left let me to understand what he meant. Some few packages of pads. 

This kid is a legend indeed.

We ate the ham canned food for breakfast and to be honest, I was really worried about not having our supplies anymore, but Chase did a fantastic job at keeping my mood alive. He knew that I had a lot of burdens. He gathered quite some supplies that my worries began to wear off.

Still, reality hit us hard and we had to at least have something if we wanted to survive, so we decided to explore the car shop across the street. Some rooms he hadn’t explored yet could contain precious stuff.

Chase wasn’t the type of boy who would dare to explore new places without me, but I think he tried to get out of that comfort zone. I think he wanted to toughen himself up, you know what I mean? He forced himself to be an adult. 

Now, back to exploring the shop.

The distinct smell of spare parts, oil, and cars filled the first room that we were on (which Chase already covered). The second room was the storage section with every item we didn’t need, like tires and spare parts. The unfamiliar stench of rubber hit my nostril, but it was still better than the odor of death.

Let me just summarize our exploration of the shop. We found practically so many rooms with no predator and no dead human, and we were thankful for that, and we found some more packs of foods (mostly chips and expired organics).

The one thing that we dearly needed was a new vehicle and we easily found it there also. At the back of the building lied a garage with a polished, black 2001 Honda Civic with modified rims and dark windshields.

I want to point out that the car was not stealth at all. When I revved the engine, it just blasted like a beast, which is cool if the pandemic didn’t happen, but in this world, it would just alert every predator.

Grabbing the steering wheel was a strange sensation. Last time I did it, I crashed and bled myself almost to death. I tried to swallow the ridiculous thought of trauma to the back of my head.

Hopefully, this one didn’t drive us straight to hell.

And we exited the garage into the rear driveway and inwards onto the main road.

“Here we go,” I said with a sigh. Chase and I immediately pulled our seat belts. I tried to slow down every time I got wary, but my confidence spiked up after a couple of minutes.

The road was smooth almost for the entirety of the way. Only a very few amount of predators were around, which is good.

Driving a few miles north, we arrived at the small town of White House which I heard so much yet knew so little about.

Our first pit stop was at Richie’s Hot Wings. I parked the car behind the restaurant just to make sure everything would be fine, and I scanned the neighborhood with the many houses and buildings. No predator could be seen.

The backdoor of the restaurant was bolted with a small padlock, but getting through it was not a struggle with my brand new axe. The door swung and we walked inside with our flashlights leading the way.

At this point we were already used to smell shitty scents, so we proceeded without complaining. Everything was ransacked, torn open, tossed here and there by someone or something. The entire place was a mess. It was also dark which gave us a conspicuous sensation of danger.

“What the hell happened here?”

As we stepped inside the dining area quietly, I saw a small figure which made me stop my pacing. Chase wondered, but I shut him up.

There was a small predator, a kid, standing ten feet away from us. He stared and stood quietly, looking at the wall in front of him like it was an expensive painting.

Apparently, it wasn’t just a wall. A man was on it, slimed and stuck to it, body half destroyed. We saw that form before in that office the previous day, and now we saw it again.

I heard Chase’s rumbling stomach growled like crazy. He felt sick, but me too. The half-dead predator on the wall, I thought, was the little kid’s father. They must’ve ransacked the restaurant but then realized the kid was infected. Or maybe it was otherwise.

I think, though I’m not quite sure, that if most of your body was destroyed by the brutality of the predator, you will become like that slimy dude right there.

The kid predator hissed, then turned back only to see us staring blatantly towards them.

It hissed again, shrieking madly.

I raised my axe, ready to strike.

The kid ran to me, and it jumped as a boastful lion preying a small deer. 

I swung the light axe toward its head. I smacked the predator right on its right ear, and as that happened, pieces of skull and flesh flew open in the air. 

The predator fell, twitching for a few seconds when its blood burst out. After that, it stopped moving.

And Chase puked.

I rolled the predator’s body over and scanned her face. She turned not long ago, and I could even guess her age before her cruel parasite took over.

And she was wearing a cute, blue shirt. 

I watched a lot of zombie movies, but almost none of them display kids as an infected. Reality is often more painful. There are a lot of youngsters being the victims of humanity’s cruelty. This TALVID consumed too much good people and innocent children.

“Shit. She couldn’t be older than ten,” I said, more to myself. 

When I approached the predator on the wall, her supposed father, it didn’t move a single bit, but after a few seconds, I saw the guy breathing slowly. It must’ve known I killed its kid, though I felt no guilt running through my veins.

I chopped its head and ended his suffering. Now he could rest peacefully. I did hope he could gain peace.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said, gesturing my head to Chase.

Chase followed me back to the backdoor again. In the kitchen, we collected some frozen nuggets, fries, and canned hams, and then we exited the place for its own sake.

I started the car and drove away, and until a few miles later, neither of us opened our mouths. The apocalypse kept giving us new challenges, and some of them really mocked life.

We decided to pull over when it was darker in the town of Plum Springs. We chose another small motel as it worked for us twice.

Nothing really happened in the night. We woke up freshly at almost seven and had breakfasts, and then siphoned another car for fuel, and continued our journey north.

“The city Louisville…” Chase chewed his expired gum rather enthusiastically. “The city is big, but I mean, we have to go there or it’ll be a pretty far detour.”

“Yeah. I had a pretty ugly experience in Louisville once.”

“Yeah? Oh do tell me!”

I laughed remembering the story. “About three years ago, that one dude, big guy, bald, rather ballsy, approached me when I was eating dinner with Ashley. He just came and hugged me without saying anything first. He said he wanted to marry me.”

Chase almost spitted out his gum. “He did what?”

I laughed. “He said he’s the biggest fan and he would literally die to marry me.”

“What did you do then?” Chase’s face grew enthusiast. He smiled tightly hearing my ridiculous story.

“I said politely that my parents wouldn’t allow me on such things just yet. But to let the man to feel better, I agreed to save his number and promised that I will sometimes call him. He was a bit dumb ‘cause he didn’t ask mine, maybe too overwhelmed by his own action. I never called him.”

“Oof that hurts. Bet he’ll say bad things about you since then.”

“I bet.”

The city Radcliff was just located outside Louisville, so we decided to spend the night there before entering the big city. It would be a challenge the day after, so we needed an early rest.

We found a motel next to a supermarket, so we decided to also check the supermarket for maybe some loot.

Before we even step foot on the parking lot, a sight stopped us. 

“Shit. Hide!”

I grabbed Chase by the arm and led him to a dark corner behind a wall. There, we peered to see what happened in front of us. 

A boy, not even fifteen years old, was chained to a car’s spoiler. He struggled, cried, screamed, but the group of people in front of him laughed at him without mercy. The two chains seemed to grip both his wrists super strongly, excruciating his thin skin. He was crying pathetically, and also yelling ‘help’ and ‘stop’ every three seconds.

I counted four adults. One was holding a shotgun, so there would be no way for me to approach and save the boy. I could only watch and wait.

“Ti, won’t you do something?”

“No. There’s nothing I can do. If I do something stupid, they will shoot the hell out of me.”

Chase didn’t like that at all. The boy seemed to be by his age, just paler and sicker. He was almost stripped down to nothing, tortured gleefully by these maniacs. What were they doing?

One of the men kneeled right in front of the boy. “This is just the first phase of what you will get. This should be a lesson to not steal from us. This will be the biggest mistake of your life.”

The man poked the kid’s nose with his hunting knife. The smile on his lips formed a soul of a villain, wicked and dirty in every way. The strong sensation of hatred grew on me towards him, though I had not a single clue what the kid did to them.

Nothing deserved such a punishment.

The man smirked wider. “And it’ll be your last.”

The other man started the car. The revving scared the little boy. He was sweating down his cheek.

“Punch it, Andre!”

Andre drove the car slowly, dragging the boy chained to the car behind it. He screamed for help, yelping, crying, his agony was wailing to the air. It was tough to watch, but the last thing I had to do was to leave the place.

The kid’s bare skin brushed the rough lot’s asphalt, sheering him thinner and thinner. Blood came off after a while and his agony only brought satisfaction to these savages.

They laughed. The group of people with black jackets and punk attributes mocked the boy while he was being dragged five miles per hour. 

Thirty seconds did feel like thirty minutes watching that torture. 

This is the world I live in now.

The car finally stopped, braking spontaneously after the group’s leader gave a nod.

“That was just the first lesson, honey boy. The second will make you want to crawl out of your skin.”

Another guy came out of the Walmart with a can filled with brown liquid. The content of the can flashed to my eyes as I realized what I witnessed.

“Literally, this will make you want to crawl out of your fucking skin!”

The man who seemed to be the leader poured the can of gasoline onto the boy. He was gasping hard, trying to breathe, trying to plead. It splashed to every side of his body, drenching his hair and everything about. They all just laughed and spitted, lunging their tongues out and mocking him. The leader reached towards his pocket: a match.

I couldn’t stand it. I just couldn’t.

I didn’t say anything to Chase (who was almost weeping at the time). I crept slowly, trying to be as silent as possible. Their attentions were drawn to the boy blanketed in gasoline, so I sneaked and prepared my axe for an attack.

When the guy with the shotgun was close to my reach, I swung the axe high and stroke his head with anger and hate filing me in. I shattered his skull, pressing my axe deeper and deeper until blood spurt out violently. His blood rained on us, surprising five people in front of me.

I pulled the axe out as the man fell to the ground. I immediately snatched his shotgun and cocked it like I knew what I was doing.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hang on a sec!” Said the leader, gasping hard. “Let’s just talk about this, alright?”

They didn’t look intimidated at all. They looked cautious but not scared. None of them flinched. None of them even cared when one of their companions was choking blood on the ground.

“Leave that boy alone!” I shouted towards the rest of the punks. Hatred and fear coated all of me.

“And who are you? A hero trying to save the day?” His tone gave me a filthy sense of horror.

“I’m the bitch you don’t wanna mess up with. I have a gun in my clutch and I won’t hesitate to blow all four of your fucking asses right this instance. I will dance over your dead body and piss over your churned brain.”

They all whoa-ed at me, and the leader clapped his hands. “You are a terrific bitch, a really pretty and brave one. You’re definitely my type.” The smile on his disgusting face gave me a terror.

“Enough chit-chat, let the boy go,” I commanded.

“Alright, alright,” he said calmly, his movement controlled and collected.

The boy looked at me with two wet eyes. He was thanking me in a really scared way, but he was still spitting our gasoline from his small mouth. His whole skin was still painted in wet gas.

The leader went down and was about to unlock the boy’s chain, until he ‘accidentally’ lit the match and dropped it right to the boy’s hair.

Flame leapt as the intensity of the atmosphere rose. The boy screamed while the fire was eating his body nefariously. He shook uncontrollably with frantic and despair, and the yellow and red beast seemed to not smother when he danced around while his death was grasping in.

“No!” I consequently pulled the trigger and blasted one of the men into the horizon. The shotgun threw me back, but the guy I shot lost his right arm and plunged to the ground, screaming out loud before death caught him. I cocked again, aiming my gun towards the leader. I shot the next bullet and his head splashed red in front of me. He lost his face and dropped down lifeless beside the burning boy. The two men ran away, shitting their pants after seeing my cold action.

Chase came with panic and nervousness on his face, but he came with a bucket of water hauled to his hands. The boy was still screaming, and I could even see his hair and skin deteriorating bit by bit. Chase splashed him with water, putting the angry flame down after several tries. 

The fire died, leaving the poor boy with burnt skin and bald head. Some parts of his flesh were exposed. Smoke rose from every cell of his body, and his wounds deformed him.

He coughed three times. Then, his head swung down and he breathed his last breath of air. His chest stopped moving, and his body stayed at the chained position. 

There was nothing we could do to save him.

He died right in front of us.

Death took him right by our eyes.

And soon, guilt took over me once again.

I could’ve acted quicker.

I could’ve done something differently, if I saved him sooner.

This is my fault.

I killed him.

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