Walking down the streets again… like we were on a normal Sunday stroll. Passing cars and shops, and hoping the sun would stay out as long as possible. It would have been nice, if the cars and shops we were passing weren't abandoned and broken, glass shattered and blood splattered. It would have been nice if our hopes of the sun staying out had to do with keeping warm, instead of being afraid of when it went down, causing shadows for the infected to hide in.
Would have been nice if the streets didn't stink, and everything was overgrown with weeds and vines and nature had long ago began to reclaim it's territory. Windows were impossible to see through, unless you were right up against it, stained in gray and brown. Dark buildings that towered over us, their windows holding the eyes of imagination, stalking us as we walked down the street.
Once again, the reality of the outbreak hit me, and I felt my chest tighten and my eyes start to burn. All the families… all the innocent people…
"In here…" Dani said, stepping into a old starbucks. Without question I jumped in after him, pulling a gun.
"Where?" I whispered… Dani looked at me, and I suddenly realized he wasn't holding a gun, "why aren't you…"
"Let's take a break…" he said.
"We only went a few blocks!" I hissed. And then I realized he had seen the look on my face as reality hit me… the teary eyes, and exasperated face. I remembered Alex had told him to be sure I took it easy. But this was ridiculous. I put my gun away.
"I'm fine… we need to move…" I said. Dani stepped in front of me as I went for the door.
"Yes we do… and the sooner you sit down, the sooner our break starts… and the sooner we get on our way." He said. I crossed my arms. Everything in me told me… it wasn't going to happen. Years of seeing how I reacted to being TOLD what to do, told me, there was no way. It was just who I was… just my personality. Even if Alex told me to sit down, MAYBE I would have, after a long and tiring argument. Either way… I knew I was NOT going to take a break.
So when I found myself sitting in a chair, I wondered what the heck just happened.
Dani's eyes smiled, before he peeked out the door, his hand on his gun, watching for movement. A bit annoyed, and confused as to how I GOT in the chair, I huffed. But my eyes wondered back outside and I soon was overwhelmed.
We took a five minute break. Nothing to long… but enough to breath. I noticed Dani didn't seemed phased a bit as he looked around the once populated city. But before I could ask, we were up and back on track.
We wre about a block away from Best Buy… I could see the once bright blue and yellow sign, now rotted away and only the B_st _u_ showed. We were about to cross the street, when an infected stepped out from behind a car. Both me and Dani, laid flat against a Sherry's restaurant wall, as still as stone. Dani's hand went to the gun in the back of his denim's… and mine hand went under my coat to my own gun.
"Don't shoot it…" I whispered, "You'll attract others…"
"You want me to ASK it to leave?" Dani whispered back.
"You have a knife..." I said, seeing the sheath on his belt...
"I've got better aim with a gun…" Dani said… I stifled a growl.
"In here…" I said, and backed up a ways and stepped inside the Sherry's restaurant. Dani followed as I went to a back room, and found an electric room… and a metal ladder leading up.
We took to the roof, and jumped over onto Edward's theater, a clock shop, Freddy's Pawn shop, and then Garby's Grocery store. We eventually passed the infected down on the street, and then headed back down. We crossed the street, ducking behind cars, and finally got to best buy. I went straight to the back, and quickly browsed the aisles out of breath.
"Look for… something like… this…" I pulled out a clear box with a similar wire I was looking for, "But it says 5…" Dani nodded and quickly went around to check the other aisles. When he came back he held a box…
"This work?" he asked. I took and looked it over. As I read the back of the box, he spoke up again. "You're still out of breath… and you're face is red…" he said.
"That's because we ran…" I said.
"We'll take another break…" Dani said.
"Come on! By the time we finish this your pal Adam will have buried the bodies…" and to make it better… I started to cough. My anger, and exasperated breath and the cold air were NOT a good combination. By the time I finished my coughing fit, and Dani and made sure nothing had heard… I knew I wasn't getting out of it.
"We'l sit in the back…" Dan said. Headed to the back around what I think was suppose to be the computer desk. We sat behind it, a big screen TV up on the wall in front of us, acting as a mirror that let us see the rest of the store. I involuntarily huffed down, suddenly grateful for the break. Dani sat next to me, holding his rifle across his lap.
For a while we sat in silence, like we had last time. But I could tell Dani was thinking, and eventually I found out about what
"What's… it like? You know… turning…" Dani asked. I leaned my head against the desk and sighed
"It's not fun. And each time is worse than the first." I said.
"Does it hurt?" Dani asked. I liked my lips, feeling a bit awkward.
"At first…" I said, "The bite stings like heck… and every nudge, and breath slowly becomes more and more agonizing. You begin to feel just uncomfortable. You get really thirsty, and hot. Then you begin to feel like your skin is on fire. You can feel the infection work through your body… infest every cell every muscle. Every time you breath it's like you fuel it… and it works further into your body. I can feel… everything… I can feel each muscle strand it attaches itself. It's an exploding pain… like it's tearing you apart from the inside. The first time it happened, I felt like I was suffocating, which made me panic. My family was fighting off infected for weeks I screamed so loud."
"24 hours of that?" he asked. I shook my head.
"No… 15. It feels like years. But then it reaches my heart… and there's one last… unbearable explosion of pain through my entire body. Everything burns. Your eyes feel so dry, and your mouth feels like it's in a pool of blood. Muscles tighten so hard, they rip. And then all at once, you know… it's in your heart. It's infected. It feels like it's going to burst, stretching everything around it as it beats."
"It's it suppose to be… when it reaches your heart everything goes numb?" he asked. I nodded.
"Yes… that's when you officially turn. But I don't. I feel everything. And that's the second phase… and the infected are lucky they can't feel it when it comes." Dani was silent.
"Eventually it wears off, and you're left shaking, hungry, thirsty and sore. You realize your muscles didn't really tear, you're heart wasn't going to explode, you skin isn't burned, and your mouth is blood free. Everything still hurts because the memory is still fresh. But it doesn't last."
"still… for a body to go through something like that… it can be traumatizing." Dani said. I nodded.
"It was. For a 12 year old girl it was the end of her world. But my family helped me through it." I said.
"No wonder you can hardly keep up…" Dani muttered.
"What?" I looked at him.
"Nothing…" he replied, "Where to next?"
"Circuit city… two miles up…" I said. Dani nodded, and stood up before holding a hand down to me.
I took it.
We started down the street, dodged infected, checked a few random stores that looked promising and kept moving. But it took us a lot longer to get to circuit city then I had hoped, and by the looks of the sun, we would get their just after dark.