WARNING: from this chapter on, you may encounter graphic descriptions of violence and elements of survival horror.

Chapter 14 - The Rain

June

x x x

His head didn't hit the concrete when they tripped only because it was shielded by her hand. He tried to grip the material of her sweater, but his sweaty fingers slid down the slippery fabric. After a moment, the woman abruptly rose from her knees, improved her tight grip around him, and began to run again. With his head pressed against her chest, he could hear her heart pounding and her breathings wheezing with terror and exhaustion, echoing in her whole body.

"Mom," he whispered. "I'm scared."

What answered him was a loud bang of an exploding nearby car and the terrified screams of both men and women, running in different directions. In all this chaos, he could only hear his mother's voice as he was pressing his ear to her chest.

"Everything will be fine," she comforted him in a shaky voice. "Everything will be fine…"

He wanted to believe her. He swallowed and looked around. Everything around them was falling apart. The building of his nursery school was burning like a torch. There were people on fire running frenziedly on the streets. Some of them were lying on the ground, motionlessly. And some were acting weird, running around, screaming hellishly, lunging at others.

"Don't look," his mother covered his eyes with her hand, pressing him even closer to her chest. "Oh, God, we're almost…"

Something hard and heavy hit them with such force that the woman released him. He fell to the ground, hitting his back against concrete, and rolled a few meters away. When he stopped, he saw his mother lying with her back on the ground, fighting the dark figure of a man who attacked her with outstretched fingers like claws, roaring loudly.

"Mom!" he screamed as he lifted up from the ground and tried to get to her.

"Heero, run-"

He froze, unable to close his eyes. The monster let out another hellish roar and bit into his mother's neck, tugging and ripping the artery. His mother's eyes went wide with terror and pain, her limbs turning numb, her mouth congealed in the shape of the word 'run.' The fountain of blood gushed and flown down on the concrete, staining it forever with red; just as in Heero's mind, the image of his mother, devoured by the monster, was forever captured.

He couldn't run. He couldn't move.

And then the monster turned his mad eyes at him, his mother's blood still dripping from its jaw.

x x x

"Heero!"

A familiar, anxious voice pulled him out of his nightmare, and his eyes shot open. For a moment, he didn't know where he was. He couldn't catch his breath for a long moment, and his heart was beating so fast that his chest hurt. Struggling in a nightmare, he fell off the couch, where he laid himself to sleep yesterday night.

"Heero," he heard the same voice again. He looked up. Relena was kneeling by his head, a worried expression painted on her face. "You had another nightmare?"

Heero blinked, then covered his face with a hand, rubbing his eyelids hard, as if trying to wipe away the memory of a nightmare. "It's an understatement," he muttered, then sat hunched on the floor.

They spent the last weeks on the road. It surprised even Heero how much gasoline was preserved in the abandoned trucks or cars they were passing by along the way. And the motorcycle itself functioned well. Thanks to that, they were moving so much faster, covering much more ground with each passing day. They were passing by forests and rivers, countrysides and bigger cities, motels and farms. Now, when there were no humans to be seen, all these buildings seemed so out of style. They didn't match the surroundings, so nature slowly claimed her territory.

Nevertheless, the journey south seemed endless. Heero concentrated on driving, choosing smaller roads, usually less destroyed, and less barricaded by the abandoned cars. In places like these, it was also much more probable to find useful stuff and food, and no hunters were stalking the area. Judging by Relena's movements at the passengers' seat of his motorcycle, he was guessing that she was watching the surroundings. The road was much more repeatable and the views as so. At times when he felt her fall asleep, he was grabbing her jointed hands to make sure she wouldn't fall off the motorcycle.

And so they reached the city of Charlotte, North Carolina. They made a stop in a tiny house on the outskirts. The house was typical to the limits, but its furniture was well preserved; they both could sleep decently, Relena on a twin bed in the bedroom, Heero on the sofa in the living room. And having such convenient conditions to sleep apparently awakened the old horrors.

Heero shot a look through the window. The sun was already high in the sky; he had to oversleep a lot. The weather was a bit gloomy; it was evident that the first summer storm was coming.

"We need to get going," he stated, brushing brown hair off his face. "Otherwise, we will have to go in the rain."

Then, when he was ready to get up, he felt a tug of the hem of his shirt, and two ocean-blue eyes stared at him in consternation. "What?"

"Heero, I've never seen anybody suffering from a nightmare this much," Relena said quietly. "Usually people turn from side to side, they murmur something incomprehensible under their breath... but you… your body acted as if you were there again. Where you witnessed that something that's still hounding you."

His instinct was telling him to run. Her cerulean-blue eyes were vetting him. Relena slowly revealed and reopened his old wounds with which he had learned to live, covering them with oblivion and healing them with the will of survival every day in this hell on earth, with no hope for a salvation to come. And now, that creature kneeling on the ground near him was dangerously approaching his soul.

"Tell me, Heero," Relena whispered, insistently. "I can't keep on watching you suffer during these nightmares. Maybe if I..."

Her words hung unfinished in the air as Heero gently moved her hand away from him until she released her grip on his shirt. "Everyone has their nightmares, Relena," he said firmly, letting go of her hand. "One must learn to live with them."

"You don't have to do it alone," Relena insisted, "you can share it with others."

Heero shrugged. "In the end, you always end up counting on yourself."

Relena took a breath as if she was about to say something, but he sent her an unfriendly frown. That repeatedly crossing a clear boundary he had set irritated him. "Get ready to leave."

When he thought he had already cut the subject, Relena gave him a small, thoughtful smile. "I hope that one day you will trust me."

She said nothing more, and he felt too confused to think about her words. As they left their hiding place, a storm was gathering over the city, surrounding the tilted skyscrapers with a gloomy aura. Dark clouds emitted a loud murmur as if warning of entering the city.

Perhaps there was another way they could have chosen that day. Maybe they should have stayed in the hideout one day longer. Maybe if they knew the danger they were about to face, they would have acted differently.

However, this did not happen, and their motorcycle was mercilessly approaching the southern districts of the city.

x

As usual, Heero avoided the center. Unlike Washington or Baltimore, Charlottle City never had its quarantine zone established. The reason for this was the extraordinarily rapid and unstoppable increase of cases of infection in the first weeks of the epidemic. The virus spread there much faster. Too fast to try to save anyone here, too violently to risk spreading the virus to surrounding areas. That is why the government decided to bomb Charlotte and hundreds of other cities in the country where the chances of saving anyone were too low. Bombs were falling for several days and nights, destroying everything in their path and killing not only the infected but also those residents who, left by themselves, didn't manage to leave the city by themselves. According to the idea: sacrifice a few to save many. Or something like that.

Now the city seemed like a vast battlefield. Skyscrapers in the center were either in ruins or leaning dangerously on unstable ground. Some districts have been literally wiped off the face of the earth. The buildings were burned or demolished, streets ended with deep bomb holes. Burnt stumps of cars and street lamps hung on the sidewalks, there was hardly any greenery in the city. It stank of death everywhere, and the wind roaring in the city spread this stench to all its nooks and crannies, though there was no trace left of people after so many years.

The atmosphere was even worse because of the raging storm. The lightning strikes that repeated more and more often brought thunder that echoed around the city. Heero carefully chose the road, trying to avoid turning into dead ends. Instinct told him that they should drive through as fast as possible. Although the city seemed deserted, he sensed that it wasn't safe here. Unfortunately, the streets were often impassable, forcing him to make a detour by another road dangerously approaching the former city center. More and more often, Heero was finding himself thinking that he saw some movement in the dark interiors of abandoned buildings, in underground passages, or just on street corners. Several times he noticed on the sidewalks, in places naturally roofed by buildings, corpses of the infected. Taking the form of flowers and stems, the bodies ceased to remind people.

Soon Heero felt the first drops of rain on his face. Black clouds completely covered the sun, and the city became dark as if night had fallen. The steady roar of their engine began to be interrupted by the thunder of a storm raging over the city.

"Heero," he suddenly heard Relena's concerned voice behind him. "I think I hear something."

The rain increased, but Heero knew what he meant. "I hear it too. We should get out of here."

Then suddenly, the space around them was illuminated by a blinding light, followed by a loud bang that made the ground under their feet tremble. The air around them chilled, and after a moment it burst with a hot wave of heat. Heero instinctively stopped the motorcycle, leaning on the handlebars and feeling Relena's body hitting his back.

The lightning struck the only tree that still stood in the area, or rather a dried-up stump sticking out of the ground, which flamed up almost immediately like a huge torch. The thunder echoed in the surrounding streets, bouncing off the empty skeletons of buildings. With this echo, a terrible sound from hell came. The scream was worse than that given in the worst torture. From so many throats.

"Heero!" he felt Relena's hand, tugging at his shirt. He didn't need to turn in the direction she was looking to know that the infected were approaching them, drawn by the loud noise of the thunder.

"Hold on tight!"

The engine roared loudly, but not enough to draw out the sound of the approaching infernal horde. Water from puddles sprayed from under the wheels, and Heero directed them in the direction of the only unruined street. Behind them, the roars and sounds of dozens of feet were getting louder. As they drove past the empty, still standing, ruined buildings, more infected were running out. Heero sped up; the engine roared, warmed up the strongest in these twenty years. He couldn't go faster, although he managed to keep his distance from the infected. But they were still chasing them tirelessly.

"Heero," he heard Relena scream through the chaos. "They are still coming!"

"I know."

"What do we do?"

That was a good question. The gasoline almost ended as a result of long hours of driving. Figures. They had to think of something quickly. Suddenly, a road sign flashed above Heero's head, still hanging sadly on the scaffolding.

"We are approaching the airport," he shouted back to Relena, "we will lose them there."

"What?!" Relena yelled.

"The airport!" he repeated. "Just hold on."

The airport was destroyed by bombing as one of the first targets to cut off the escape route. Among the ruined and bombed tracts of such a massive object, it would be easier for them to lose their persecutors who were still hunting them down.

At least, that was what Heero figured that moment.

TBC

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