Hey! Been a while, hasn't it? I've been doing a lot of original writing recently, and totally forgot about this thing until now.
I'm pretty happy with this chapter - I wanted to get back to the post-apocalyptic vibe of the first part, and I think this does that quite well. Let me know what you think in the comments!
It doesn't take him long to pack his meagre possessions into a backpack – along with several of those damned nutrient drinks – and of course, a few guns. Even those with magical scythe-arms couldn't be too cautious, after all.
He doesn't cast another look back at Death City as he speeds away on his orange motorcycle, dust and sand spraying behind in his wake.
Five hours, it takes.
Five hours of sand, and yellow, and the same songs, and missing Maka.
It is accurate to say you miss someone after less than one day of being apart from them? It wasn't even enough time to fully absorb their absence, surely.
Despite this, he does miss her. The thought that he might not see her again rips a fresh hole in his chest every time it crosses his mind. Every time, he'd forced to tighten his grip on the steering wheel, so that he doesn't do something like turn right back around and back to the academy.
He can't do that.
He won't do that, for her sake. And his sake, too.
Before he'd headed off, he'd managed to nab an old iPod with decades worth of music on – something he'd forgotten the last time he'd left, so he has something to entertain him through the tedious and perilous route through the Nevada desert.
His mind flits back to months prior, when their biggest problem was wasting away in that very same desert. They all would have died there, too, if Black Star and Tsubaki hadn't happened along and saved them.
He hates that he almost brought them so close to the end.
And he especially hates that Black Star, of all people, had to be the one to rescue them.
...
What an inconsequential thought.
Still, after all this time away, Black Star's insufferable ego still managed to raise Soul's hackles, even if just by an inch.
Eventually, sand and dust and sun give way to rocks and boulders and trees. The sun begins to peek out from the distance; squeezing in every gap between the trees; painting the sky purple.
Not wanting to fall asleep at the wheel, Soul figures that it's probably high time that he found somewhere to curl up. The whole point of leaving during the night was to prevent a spectacle, but as his yawning becomes more and more frequent – he wonders if it was an exercise in futility. After all, he's messed up his sleep schedule for days to come.
He finds some roadside wooden shack to call home. He's not sure what it's purpose is, perhaps some sort of information hut, or a shop? It's a two-room, wooden box. Four walls is all he needs – something to shade him against the sun.
He plops his belongings inside and barely scans through the place with his eyes, his knees already sinking down as his back closes the door. Napping in stealth mode, you could call it that. He's half-squatted down on his knees. His head resting on his forearms, still slick with sweat from the warmth, as sleep takes him.
His mind drifts pleasantly away, letting him imagine that he's back at the academy with Maka and not alone in some dirty shack, sleeping against a wall.
When he wakes up around four hours later, his first priority is to unjumble his thoughts and figure out where the hell he is.
When that's ticked off, he makes a mental note never to travel during the night again, and gathers his belongings together once again. He unfurls a map that he found in one of the drawers of the shack, checking his route a couple times for good measure. Then, he folds the thing back up and stuffs it in his bag – now almost too full to carry anything else.
He sets off on his bike as soon as he can, wanting to cover as much ground as possible in the few short daylight hours he still has left. Travelling during the night was safe in a sparse area like the Nevada desert, but closer to cities? It was best to keep somewhere secure after the sun went down.
For obvious reasons.
He's a little worried that his zombie fighting skills might have become slack, having been protected at the academy so long, especially now that he's on his own. He almost forgets to scope out the gas station he comes across for zombies, doubling back as soon as he realises his mistake and cautiously scanning through the whole place.
Luckily, it's safe. Otherwise he might have met a premature and rather unceremonious end, having hardly even made it out of the state.
Nobody wants to die at a gas station.
He's only been travelling for an hour or so when he starts to realise that there is somebody following him. He can feel it – there's somebody out there. The ground and the air are thick with it, the rumble of life, of an engine.
He feels the hairs of the back of his neck start to prickle as he revs his engine, trying to increase his speed but finding, to his chagrin, that he's already at his maximum.
"Stupid thing," he curses to his bike, willing it to go faster. "Who is out there?" he mutters to himself.
Was it a zombie? Surely not; zombies hadn't learned to drive in the last few months, unless Soul had missed something.
Soul sighs, thinking that he might as well give up right now if zombies had learned to operate four-wheel drives. His entire survival rests upon the assumption that he's cleverer than them, and if he's not, then he's certainly doomed.
He keeps going for a few miles, trying to tell himself that he's being paranoid.
He'd been paranoid before - unsurprisingly, it was a pretty common feeling in this kind of environment. But this feels different, somehow, and it doesn't shake off after a few miles. In fact, as the miles tick over, it seems gets more intense. Like whoever is behind him is gaining on him, somehow.
He even starts to think he can hear it – the rumble of an engine, the sound that rubber tyres make on ground.
Maybe it's just in his head, though. Maybe it's all in his head, though he's starting to doubt it.
Soul knows better than anyone what being truly alone feels like... and he's not alone out here.
His bike engine makes a straining noise, forcing him to lightly squeeze the brakes. "Shit," he curses to himself, slowing his bike just a little. If he carries on like this, he's going to burn his tires down, or overheat his engine. He slows his pace, turns down onto a smaller road. He hadn't accounted for this change of route, and he doesn't know what it's going to mean. He hasn't got time to get his map out, so he just keeps going – hoping that he doesn't meet a dead end, or an impasse, or a block of gridlocked cars.
He grits his teeth and keeps on, weaving in and out of the cars dotted about on the road with ease. Every five minutes or so he narrows his eyes, trying to gauge whether or not he can still feel the other presence, and every five minutes, he feels it stronger.
"Goddammit," he swears again, starting to sweat from a mixture of heat, exhaustion and gnawing anxiety. He's been on a tapering road for a couple of miles, and whoever is following him doesn't seem to be letting up at all.
Still, he pushes the pedal to the metal and soldiers on. Figuratively, of course, in a motorcycle there were no pedals.
After another frustrating ten minutes, Soul decides that his best option is to stop and find somewhere to lay low, wait for the threat to pass. He slows to a crawling stop outside an abandoned looking building, resting his his bike upon a rusted old sign for a 7/11.
He tries the doors, first, but they're jammed shut. Dead-bolted from the inside. This shop must have been a hiding place for someone after the virus hit, he figures. Which means that there won't be any food inside, either.
His stomach growls violently in opposition to that last thought.
A few minutes of careful examination reveal a small back window – half boarded up – which offers a gap just skinny enough for his wiry frame to shimmy through. He needles his backpack through the gap first of all, hearing it thud to the floor on the other side, and then proceeds to stick his arms in, following it.
It takes a little hard work and a lot of grunting, but eventually he manages to get his entire body through, his hands grabbing onto the door frame opposite the window as lastly yanks his leg inside. As soon as he does, his hands slip on the door frame and his entire body immediately free-falls onto a hard, tiled floor.
"Ow," he groans, clutching his hip. After the initial pain subsides a little, he manages to stand up and dust himself off, taking stock of his current surroundings. He's in a small, cubicle-like room. It's a little grimy, and there's a very unclean toilet to his immediate left. "Gross," he bemoans.
It's worth losing whoever is following him, though.
Being silently followed was seldom a good thing, especially out here.
He wonders briefly if the person behind him was even aware that they were following him – maybe they were just travellers, too, other survivors on their own route.
Even so.
He had met his fair share of unfriendly survivors. And he wasn't too passionate about the idea of trusting anyone right now, either.
He lays low, squatting on the floor with his gun cocked and his backpack between his legs. It feels like it's been a few hours since he last had a drink, so he rummages around in his pack to find a bottle of water and twists off the cap.
It's always tempting to glug the whole thing down at once, but Soul's not fully out of the desert yet. He has to be patient, rational. He uses an almost herculean amount of restraint, taking only the smallest of sips to hydrate himself and then closes his eyes. He screws the lid back onto the bottle and sinks back against the wall.
The awareness of company keeps him from lulling back to sleep.
He waits there for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes.
Nothing comes to pass in that time, so he stands up. He opens the bathroom door, trying to get a better understanding of the place he's decided to stop in.
He wanders throughout the unlit store, shining a pocket torch in order to see. He's met with nothing more than empty shelves and a few rats which scurry around his feet. A few more steps reveal that he was right – someone was using this place as shelter. Whoever it was, they had gathered together a few sticks. There's evidence of a fire being made, although it probably burnt out a long time ago.
It's too depressing to wander any further, and besides, Soul doesn't particularly want to see an emaciated body in any state of decay. He hesitates where he stands, not sure what to do next.
He's just contemplating heading back out the restroom window when he hears the definitive noise of a rumbling engine outside the window. His ears prick up like a dogs, waiting for the noise to pass him by.
It doesn't.
It stops.
Outside.
His body freezes in panic and he quickly darts behind one of the shelves.
There's no way this is a coincidence.
Whoever was outside, they were looking specifically for him. They'd followed him here.
"Shit," he hisses to himself, and crouches down. He waits for something to happen next, wondering if whoever it was would sneak in the back window, the same way he did. Soul's stomach drops as he bemoans himself for forgetting to seal it shut.
There's an agonising silence for about five minutes, before a catastrophic noise makes him jump out of his skin. A huge burst of energy explodes from somewhere. It's like a bomb has detonated by the front doors to the shop, destroying anything in it's path and creating a large crashing sound.
Debris and dust fly up all around him.
He jumps back, darting behind two more shelves and crouching low again, waiting for the dust to settle.
When a quick peek around the shelf reveals that his intruder has managed to blow off the entire door – sunlight now streaming into the previously darkened room - he realises that he's outclassed. He can't hide, not here.
Fighting is his only hope, now.
He transforms his left arm and with his right, clicks the safety off on his handgun.
"YOOOO!" a voice echoes from all around the debris. "Soul, buddy! Where the hell are you?!"
Soul freezes.
A whole second passes, as realisation settles in.
His arm slinks back into human flesh and he lets his palm smack against his forehead in a moment of simultaneous relief and intense frustration.
He steps out from behind the shelf, suddenly face-to-face with his blue-haired, chaotic, idiotic friend. Against his better instincts, he cocks his gun towards Black Star's grinning face.
"You scared the crap out of me, you total idiot," he growls, not moving the gun.
Black Star grins and shrugs, relieved to see his friend. "What are you gonna do, shoot me?" he asks with a guffaw. "Come on, I thought you'd be happy to see me," he walks towards Soul with a spring in his step, straight into the path of Soul's gun.
Soul lowers his hands. "You could have just called my name, first," he groans, putting the safety back on and stashing the gun in his pocket. "Instead of blowing up the fucking doors."
Black Star smiles and throws an arm around Soul. "Where's the fun in that, pal?" he chuckles. "Besides, you were driving all night. I knew you needed something to keep you awake!"
Soul's brain must still be in survival mode, because he feels nothing but a strange sense of satisfaction as his fist smashes against Black Star's jaw, sending the other boy careening to the floor.
"Well, shit," he sighs, glancing down as Black Star clutches his mouth in pain. His eyes dart back up to the giant hole in the door which has compromised the 7/11 and he scratches his head. "I guess we had better find somewhere else to lay low."