Chapter 3: Boundaries

Four and a Half days since first infection

I managed to make up for my miss use of words by making her the best breakfast I could. She couldn't get a good grip on the utensils so I had to feed it to her. It was kind of awkward considering she was shy when it came to personal stuff; every time I brought the fort to bear with its load she would look at me and then quickly bite the food off of it and chew slowly while maintaining eye contact with something other than me. Throughout the rest of the day she seemed to give me the cold shoulder until quite suddenly she came up to me with a question. "Can we go on a walk around the city? I don't remember anything other than that storage closet and I'm interested in having a look around." She asked. We hadn't done anything since breakfast except lounge around my beat up apartment, occasionally an infected would wander around and hear us in the room and attempt a break in. This always seemed to make her jump, even when we heard them coming down the hall. It only took a moment or two to send them on their way, their curiosity filled with an order to explore the other side of the territory.

Taking her outside would be a hassle, the only clothes she had was the shirt I had given her, other than that she was still in her underwear from the waist down. I don't know if other infected got cold or not, but every now and then I would catch her shivering so I assumed so. I nodded my head in agreement which seemed to brighten her up a little, I could almost feel the coldness fading away until she shivered again. "Wait here, Ill go take a look around the empty rooms for some pants your size." I said, walking towards the door, closing it lightly behind me. I walked down the hallway, opening any door I could and breaking down any that wouldn't budge. I had soon amassed a rather large pile of woman's clothing and had piled them into a basket. All the clothes were small or medium in size ranging from light pink to dark black. When I pushed the door open I heard her let out a gasp as I slid the giant basket into the apartment, closing the door behind me again. She looked at the pile cautiously then looked at me for assistance, I had nearly forgotten about her problem and then realized something. I'd have to help her change clothes on a day to day basis.. this was going to be a rather awkward living situation.

Together we sorted through the various pieces of clothing, anything she liked we set down in a pile next to her and anything she didn't like we put next to me. The things she did like were kind of opposite of what I expected of a out going girl like her, lots of dark colors, nothing revealing mostly clothes that would bundle you up and keep you warm. I guess she felt the cold a lot worse than anyone else did. When we had sorted through the pile I took the left over clothes and tossed them into the basket and placed them out in the hall. After that she had me help her change, which again, was a very awkward situation for the both of us.

"Don't look! Keep your eyes closed but hold them still!" She said ordering me as I held out a pair of underwear. If she had been any other infected I'd have shut her up for the attitude, maybe have her stand out in the cold all night only to come crying back to me and be more obedient, but this girl was completely immune to my control. I felt her legs slip past my hands and pulled up, I let go as soon as my hands ran up past her waist which received a little yelp from her, which she muffled herself. Soon after she was dressed and seemed to have forgotten the past few moments, or has just chosen to ignore them, taking my arm again and very nearly cutting me with her long knife like fingers. I looked down at them just barely digging into my shirt sleeve which caught her attention. "Sorry, I can't control their sharpness." she apologized. I shook my head, patting the back of her hand. "We need to find you some gloves."

We walked for what seemed like hours, checking out every little corner of the small territory I felt comfortable showing her. She was very curious about what I could and couldn't do, asking me questions non stop for our entire walk. "So... does it work on me?!" she asked quite suddenly, she seemed extra curious about this fact. I looked at her cautiously then looked away, mumbling out a small "No." which seemed to please her. She tightened her grip on my arm quite suddenly when we both noticed a group of infected huddling over something, they made tearing sounds along with a wet ripping of whatever they were huddled over. Vivian huddled behind me in fear, I think we both knew that what they were huddled over was someone unlucky enough to be caught. The corpse wouldn't turn, he was torn to shreds and after major damage was dealt to the body the virus didn't have a use for the bits left over. At least, that's what I assumed after seeing infected eating people for the last four days, seeing some get up and some not. She shook quite frantically, he claws dug into me quite deeply causing a stiffening pain to shoot through me.

"H-hey...ease up a little.. please." I stammered out, taking here attention off the feasting infected to me, noticing her grip she let out a yelp like earlier but had forgotten to muffle it. The sound caught the Infected's attention, sending their gaze to us. They didn't look satisfied with their meal, and the situation soon became apparently worse to me when I attempted to command them to continue eating and disregard the human like food that stood roughly one hundred feet from them. The command bounced back at me like a ball thrown at a wall would, we were at my territory's boundary, and they were outside my control range. Once outside of my territory I lost control of them momentarily, the only way for control to be restored would require them to stay within my boundaries for at least a day.

One of the infected screamed at us, dropping a piece of what looked to be a kidney to the ground.

"M-m-make them go away..." Vivian stammered out, still very much afraid of the infected. I could tell what was going to happen before it did. An infected only screamed when it was about to charge, and charge it did, straight for Vivian. It came soaring at us at full sprint, its friends a short ways behind it. I didn't want to have to kill in front of her, I figured a harmless infected girl who's retained her humanity could be shielded from the violence of our new world. These infected gave me no other choice, I cocked my arm back behind me, making the bones in my arm crack violently but not from stress. It was like if you were to crack your knuckles. In a flash I used my inhuman strength to shatter the infected's skull, the headless corpse flew backwards knocking one of the others onto its back. The remaining infected kept up its charge, as I swung my hand back and then forward into its chest, impaling it on my arm. I regarded the corpse coldly, tossing its lifeless remains into the wall of the nearby store. The last infected struggled to get up after being knocked down. I didn't give it the chance to, instead I charged this time, as it lay on the ground arching its back into a sitting position. I wound up my foot and delivered a kick to its head, which was sent flying like a football and sailed over the building down the street.

I admired my kick, my male lust for violence taking into account my strength and sending a pulse of praise throughout my body. I turned back to Vivian, who seemed to shake in terror. I walked up to her slowly, causing her to take a hesitant step back, but didn't take another as I closed in. I stopped a few meters from her and stood still. Her eyes shook with the rest of her which I doubted was from the cold.

"...Why didn't you just send them away?" she asked shaking softly.

I just hung my head in shame, I noticed she started to tear up which caused my head to dip lower.

She rushed up to me suddenly and buried her head in my chest, and her claws in my back, but I absorbed the pain for her. She started crying harder into my chest which only strengthened her grip.

I cradled her head in my arms and rocked back and forth slowly, like a mother would cradle a child.

"I'm sorry... I just... didn't want them to hurt you..." I said softly.

We stood there till the street lights flickered on, and then they suddenly blanked out. Looks like the city's generators had finally given out, which meant they were in utter darkness when we got back to the apartment. For now I continued to cradle her head and took in all her grief and withstood my pain.

I wouldn't let anything like this happen to her... even if it killed me.

A.N: Big chapter here, hope you guys enjoyed it. What really inspired me to write so much today was the suddeny growth in followers and fav's for this story. Now I know this sounds like normal popularity craving BS but when I see stuff like that I feel more oblidged and more in the mood to write.

Also, if you have any suggestions or if you want to see when the next chapters coming out, head on over to: .com Ill be doing updates of chapters there if the writing for them takes too long, as well as some personal updates. Ill just let the first post there speak for the other things I thought I'd bring up. See you guys again when chapter 4 is released!