Since the army all but gave up on trying to fight all of the infected out of the majority of the area and the government had stopped funding ways to cure the infection, hordes of lawless people were gathering together and calling themselves the Cleaners. Cleaners were ruled by no one but themselves, according to their mottos, but everyone knew that there had to be a brains somewhere in all this madness. They acted without tactic and without warning. Groups of them traveled together with weapons of all sorts and attacked civilians as they pleased. Claiming to be ridding the world of the infected, at first, no one argued with them. Now no one argued with them because it was almost certain to be a death sentence. We had never personally run across any Cleaners so far on our trip. That is, until we went into that bar...
According to their radio frequency, the only one that bothered playing anymore, the attack on the building had not been random. An older woman by the name of Sybil was said to be hiding out there under her son's protection- he was heading the business, saying to help any travelers who needed him. Somehow news had gotten back to the Cleaners of her harboring, and therefore an attack had been issued in secrecy. But with it being the Cleaners attacking, no one was going to be leaving there alive- infected or not.
According to the station, Sybil had wanted to live out her last few moments in her right mind up on the stage that she grew up performing on, and that was why she and her son, Marc, never left the old building to be taken by the infected or anyone else who may have wanted to settle there. She'd made an agreement with Marc that when the time finally came, he was to end her life before her mind was lost to the infection. The broadcast never told how she'd become infected in the first place, and I wondered just how much this old woman had seen in her lifetime...
When the Cleaners raided the bar and Quinn and I headed out the back, apparently Marc was the first to confront them. They stated their business, and before they could notice the old woman on stage, Marc pulled his gun. One gunshot and Sybil fell to the ground. After that... Everything just broke loose. And that's all the broadcast had to say.
So many innocent people dead because of a mercy killing between mother and son.
Quinn lead us out of the small town and back into the woods that surrounded the roads that headed out. We kept our heads low and the blankets we'd taken up over us. The old, green color of the fabric acted as a perfect camouflage in the dense trees, which I thought about being useful in the future. Quinn had warned me multiple times before about becoming distracted for even a moment when we were making our way from one place to another with all of the hunters and infected about, and I knew better by this point. Yet this split second of actually thinking of the future, like we were actually going to make it another day, and I was paying dearly for it. My foot hit a root that was protruding from the ground, and with a loud thud, I had fallen. Quinn looked back quickly and froze.
My breath caught as I saw the look on her face change from anger to horror, and after swallowing the thick feeling in my throat, I slowly turned my head towards the direction her eyes were in. There, not a hundred yards from us, was an infected man feeding on the carcass of something that he held in his hands. Time seemed to stop all around us as his head jerked to look me in the eyes. Or... it would have seemed that way. He stayed still for just long enough for me to make out that he had no eyes. Instead, veins hung from his otherwise empty sockets and bugs flew and crawled all around his face. He couldn't see us. After a moment that felt like hours, he went back to his meal and paid us no mind.
Without breathing and without taking my eyes off of him, I quietly stood to find Quinn had moved silently and was now right beside me. She took my hand, a little too hard, and we tiptoed away from the infected man as quickly as silence would allow. Perhaps I shouldn't have been looking to the future. It didn't seem like I had one to look towards.