Chapter Two: The In-between
In-between: situated somewhere between two extremes or categories; intermediate.
Day 1
After a seemingly endless night, Daisy and her friends woke with the Sun. Reluctant sleepers were stirred by the harsh light striking their closed eyes. Daisy walked over and shook Kat's shoulder when she remained abed. Poor Kat rubbed her still asleep eyes with weak fists while Daisy stepped over a despondent Nina on the floor.
She once again looked out of the lone window of their room, searching the city for some sign of movement or life. All that was to be seen in the street was a mass of the stray dead, ambling along and snapping their jaws at each other. It seemed impossible, for Daisy the thought of the dead rising with a hunger for human flesh sounded like something out of a horror film. Daisy could feel her heartbeat strong and fast in her chest, she was beginning to panic. Many people were averse to change, feared it like nothing else. There had been a change in the night, and Daisy knew it to be irreversible.
Never mind the walking dead, the sight of bodies strewn across the street and blood staining the pavement was enough to see this change. Daisy looked over the skyline and saw spirals of grey smoke rising from accidents unknown to her. One such spiral she saw lead to a crashed car at the end of the street, she saw a woman halfway through the windshield, wreckage piercing through her chest. But she was still moving, blood dripping from her lips as she reached toward her fellow dead.
"What's it look like, Daze? Is everything ok? Back to normal?" An awake Kat questioned meekly, already knowing to dread the answer.
"No." Daisy said flatly. "I think it's all gone."
"What's all gone?" Nina asked with a furrowed brow.
"Everything." Daisy backed away from the window and collapsed onto a bed, pulling up her legs and hugging them to her chest. Beside her, Glenn was sitting awkwardly, uncomfortable imposing on these strangers.
"Wh-ha ha, what do you mean, everything?" Glenn asked with a disbelieving laugh. Daisy just gestured towards the window. He went and looked out at the devastation that Daisy had seen. "Oh, God. Oh, no. Shit!"
And the panic spread through the group like the dead could be seen spreading through the city. After they'd all seen the spectacle, a silence had come over them.
"What are we gonna do?" Jess asked in a desperate whine. She looked to Daisy expectantly.
"I dunno, Jess! Shit." Daisy reached across and picked up her charging phone, seeing that the charging had stopped midway and remembered the power outage. She unlocked it and dialled her mother's number, though she only heard a dial tone when she brought the phone to her ear. Daisy gave a reluctant sigh and stood, making her way to the door.
"Wh-Daisy, you can't go out there!" Kat said, scared for her friend.
"Someone has to." Daisy said, closing the door behind her. She looked up the length of the hall, and saw that nothing had changed since the night before. Daisy pursed her lips, trying to brave herself, and walked towards the door across from theirs. She put her ear against the door and listened for any sounds telling of life. Daisy heard nothing. Her hand reached for the doorknob and turned, finding resistance. It was locked. She sighed in annoyance and moved to the next door, forgoing listening for sounds to try the doorknob first. It turned smoothly, and the door was pushed open slightly.
Daisy heard something, the same moaning that she had noticed the night before. She ventured into the room, calling a warning 'hello' to any people inside. The room was a mess, suspicious stains on the bed sheets and clothes strewn across the floor, this was a special kind of hell for Daisy.
The moaning seemed to originate from a door to the left of Daisy, so she pushed it open as well. Daisy saw a man crouched in the corner of the room, curiously facing the wall with a hand scratching at the space beside him. Beyond the moaning, a dripping sound could be heard coming from the corner. Daisy saw a wound in the man's side, red blood dripping methodically onto the tile floor beneath him, collecting into a sizeable puddle. It was doubtless that this man was one of the dead, the same as the ones in the street, and the one that had chased Glenn into the hostel.
Daisy backed away slowly, but the man was alerted to her presence when her shoe scuffed against the carpet in the next room. Its head snapped towards her, nostrils widened as it smelt her and began to rise, edging towards her with a limp. Daisy closed the door hurriedly, and it started to scratch at the door. She was, for the moment, safe. Daisy's heart was again pounding in her chest.
A choked sob escaped her as she turned her back to the door and the dead thing behind it. Daisy sank to the floor, leaned against the door and tears began running down her face. She felt her hand touch something wet, and lifted it in front of her face to see that the blood that had edged under the door was now covering her hand. This caused a wail to escape the panicked girl, she rose out of the growing puddle and ambled her way to the hall.
Daisy re-entered her room and saw her friend staring in horror at the blood that covered her hand and the back of her pants. Everything was only getting worse.
Day 4
It had been four days since the dead first started to rise, and Jess was getting hungry. With the girls, and Glenn, being too frightened to once again venture out of the room, they had begun to get cabin fever.
Daisy was both surprised and not surprised at Jess' capacity to continuously complain, even in the face of an apocalyptic disaster. There was nothing to be heard in the city, save the very occasional scream, siren or lone helicopter, so things were looking bleak. They had decided the day before to search the hostel for food, having exhausted the minimal supply brought by Nina and the scarce finds from adjacent rooms.
It was, of course, Daisy and Glenn that had been chosen for this task of finding food. Kat, Nina and Jess had always been reliant on Daisy for the more practical, adult aspects of life, and it had become clear after only four days that they would rely on Glenn in much the same way.
With no dead being encountered during the journey down the hall and down the stairs, Daisy and Glenn were doubting that their luck would continue. They had reached the front desk, and turned left down a hall near the stairs after seeing a sign indicating that the kitchen was that way. The door labelled 'kitchen' was locked, so Daisy and Glenn stopped to listen for any possible dangers lying within.
They shared a questioning look, both shaking their heads to show that they had not heard any suspicious noises. With that, Glenn turned the door knob and eased the kitchen door open. He entered slowly, hands by his sides with no weapon to raise.
Daisy couldn't see any of the dead in the room, just a few tables interspersed in the dining hall, rotten food decorating abandoned plates and glass sprinkling the floor where someone had dropped a drink. They spotted a door on the opposite side of the room and made their way towards it, stepping over the broken glass and an oddly placed lone bagel. Again, they pressed their ears against the door, cautious of any unwanted occupants.
As Glenn made to push the door open, Daisy grabbed his wrist. She had heard the same groaning as before.
"There's one in there." She whispered harshly, her eyes going wide in panic. Daisy was beginning to think that their plan to get food was a bust.
"Well, they're kinda just people, aren't they?" Glenn asked her hesitantly.
"Yeah, but dead!" Daisy emphasised. "I don't think they'll give us the food if we ask!"
"Uh, then let's…get some weapons! We can kill them, or-"
"How do you kill a dead person, Glenn?" Daisy asked franticly. "Can you, even?"
Glenn looked as though he was trying to concentrate. He looked around the room, stopping when he came across a butter knife on the table nearest to them.
"Well, physically, I assume if you just…kinda stab them. They'll have to die?" He didn't seem so sure.
"I don't think a butter knife's gonna do it!" Daisy whispered sardonically.
"Can you find anything better?!" Glenn stressed. Daisy looked around and spotted a broom leaning against a wall. She picked it up and waved it around sharply, giving Glenn a doubtful look. "Let's just, do it. Okay, Daisy? We'll go in there and…stop 'em somehow."
At her decisive nod, Glenn made his way back to the door and pushed it open, rushing in with his knife raised. There was a woman there, wearing what looked like it was once a chef's uniform, now covered in blood and ripped in the stomach. When Daisy looked closer, she could see that the slash was in the person as well, that organs she didn't care to name were spilling out onto the floor in a pile.
Glenn looked back at Daisy, who looked back at him with panicked eyes. "Hey, lady!" He said hesitantly. The dead woman looked up, head tilting and jaws crunching at him. "Oh, god. Uh, we need…food." His voice got weaker, as she began to stumble towards him with arms rising up to grab at him.
Glenn stumbled back into Daisy, who clenched at his arm, and raised the handle of the broom at the dead woman. She kept coming, running into the broom which stopped her progress for only a second.
"Do something!...Get it in the brain! My mom said that that's the only way to kill them, the brain!" Daisy said, her voice rising. Glenn leaped forward, knife first, and aimed it at the head of the woman. It was only a butter knife though, too dull to do anything but cut the woman's skin a little. Daisy's eyes leapt around the room, landing on another knife that was larger and noticeably sharper.
"There!" She shouted, pointing at the knife. Glenn followed her movement and picked it up, turning back towards the woman and steeling himself to strike. As she came closer, he flinched behind his arm, knife raised and landing right in her eye. There was a sickening squelch as the knife went through the eye and into the brain.
Suddenly, the dead woman fell and stopped moving. Daisy breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that it was finally, properly dead. Glenn turned towards her shocked, and they both smiled reluctant, relieved smiles at each other.
Daisy backed away from the corpse, and looked deeper into the kitchen. There she saw a heavy metal door, that doubtless had food inside that would last the group a while, until their next foray into the world of the dead.
Day 9
Things were getting worse. The room stunk like Daisy couldn't believe, the food that they had gathered from the hostel was dwindling, and the group was going mad with worry and uncertainty.
"We have to go." Nina said resignedly. Daisy looked to her, questioning. "We can't just stay here, you guys. It's not safe, there's dead people all over the place. We should…leave the city."
"Wh-why?" Jess asked her, terrified at the thought of going beyond the room, and being amongst the dead.
"Won't it be safer out there? There're less people outside of the city, so it would make sense that there's less of…those things. Daisy?" Nina looked towards her, eyes begging for support. When Daisy thought about it, what Nina was saying seemed to make sense.
"Yeah." Daisy said. "I think we should…get some supplies, and leave."
"Mhmm. But where would we go?" Glenn asked with worry.
"Just, anywhere. We can think of the where after we go." Nina said, seeming desperate to get out of the place that she perceived to be filled with danger.
"Okay, so…is it agreed?" Daisy asked, seeking the opinion of all the group members. When she got a nod out of everyone, she nodded decisively herself. "We can leave tomorrow. We'll, stop by the corner store we passed on the way here, and then we'll go."
With that, they sat in silence, anticipating and dreading the excitement of the day to come.