Chapter Five

I still can't sleep.

I really want to, too. I want to be able to fall asleep and believe this is all just a dream. Even if it's not, and I wake up to the same scene, the thought of wishing it as I drift off to sleep would make the ability to sleep itself so worth it. I suppose not being able to is the disease's metaphorical way of telling me that this is real. To wake up from something you have to fall asleep first. Yeah, real cute.

I decided to take a shower. I didn't care if it only lasted for five minutes. I didn't care if it was cold. I didn't care if the water was filled with disease (can't be worse than what I've already got, I tell myself). When I pulled the faucet, water came out, and more than I ever had before in my entire life, I wanted a goddamn shower. I didn't even bother taking my clothes off. Too much trouble. They were dirty, anyway.

I step into the gentle cascade. I can't tell if it's hot or cold. Have I lost a sense of temperature? I don't really care right now. It still feels fantastic to close my eyes and let the water crash against my face and run down the rest of my body. My clothes immediately become soaked, but my infected skin absorbs very little, instead letting the water stream down my arms and fly off of my strange, sharp fingers. I remember when I was younger I'd let it do the same thing, and pretend I was shooting water out of my fingers, like I was an X-man with mutant water powers, or Squirtle. That memory skips through my head for a moment and I have one quick laugh about it before ejecting a melancholy sigh that is quickly drowned out by the noise of the shower.

The water stops. I didn't turn it off. I don't know how long I stood there under it – maybe about fifteen minutes or so. It was long enough for me to recollect myself. Opening my eyes and looking at the thing my body has become was no longer startling and horrifying, just… unsettling. When I awoke in the activity center restroom, I was shocked of course, but I still resembled myself. This time however, I can't even find anything left that resembles the me of the old world. For starters, I'm twenty-one years old, and in the past I definitely looked my age. Now, I looked the same age as my sister, fifteen or sixteen; and I can't help but find it odd that that of all things is disturbing me the most. Shouldn't the freakishly long knife-like fingers be at the top of the list?

I lie down in the middle of the living room, stretching my limbs out on the floor. The carpet begins to sop up the water from my soaking wet clothes. I let it, until the wetness starts to make my skin itch. I almost move to scratch it, before realizing what a bad mistake that would be on my part. To hell with it, I say, and rip my clothes off, throwing the remains to an empty corner, before lying down again. I stay there on the floor, naked, for an hour or so, just thinking. My mind jumps from topic to topic, too many for me to detail all of them. Random thoughts floating around, sometimes colliding with another, shaping each other, creating new thoughts that then do the same. It all goes nowhere for a while. I don't want to move. I don't want to think. I just want to lie here.

But one thought forces me up. I can't believe I didn't think of it earlier. My mother! Why isn't she here? She had taken the week off that the infection struck Louisville. I stand up, and make my way to the front door. The furniture and walls along the way are either broken or bear vicious slash marks across them. The front door itself is wide open, with its screen door torn to ribbons. That explains how I made my way as far as I did inside the house. Unable to sense anything, I must have torn my way through. Wish I could've seen that.

My mother's car isn't in the driveway, or parked in the street, or anywhere to be seen. She's gone, then. I doubt I'll ever see her again. I groan and slump down to the ground, leaning against the brick wall outside. I look up at the sky. Morning rays of light have been creeping around in the sky for a little while now. The world looks a little less reddish. That's odd.

It's almost sunrise, so I decide to sit outside and wait for it to come. My street is rather devoid of infected, when compared with the rest of the city. I can only spy two, both far off in the distance. Everyone must have been at work or school when it hit. Well, I was, at least. I wonder if my brother managed to escape somehow. He lives in Milwaukee; I don't talk with him much.

The sun crosses the horizon. I can't see it, hiding behind the houses across the street, but the sky is lit up in color, as is my vision. The redness is almost entirely gone, and things are the color they should be. That's a relief. My messenger bag has been lying out in the grass. I pick it up. It's wet with dew. I hope that book didn't get ruined; I still needed to read it. Picking it up, I realize I'm outside in my front lawn, completely naked. Despite that it is highly unlikely there is anyone within a mile's radius left to care, the realization still sends a shiver of weirdness through my spine and I find myself feeling very uncomfortable. I waste no time getting back indoors and closing the doors behind me.

None of my clothes fit me comfortably anymore. Fantastic. Mind you, I discovered this after spending 15 minutes trying to clothe myself with these stupid hands. I find it hard to do just about anything with them. I never really appreciated the craftsmanship of human hands until I get them traded for steak knives. Granted, my fingers still have their joints in them, but it doesn't help that much; it still takes me almost a minute just to turn a doorknob. I even destroyed two t-shirts trying to get them on, before realizing they were going to be too big for me in the first place. The strangest part though, is that, despite each finger being extremely sharp past the furthest knuckle, I can still feel the ends whenever they touch (or I suppose more accurately, rip through) something. It feels as if the bone itself, with all its sensitive nerve endings, is protruding out and scraping, slashing everything it comes into contact with.

I drift into my sister's room and swipe some of her clothes. A bra is sacrificed in the process of getting dressed. The clothes still don't fit perfectly, but hell if I care. At least I'm not tripping over my own pant legs.

After getting dressed, I ponder for a moment. What do I do now? It's a very reasonable question to ask myself. I completed what I originally set out to do, that is – get home. Sure, something weird happened along the way, but I'm still here. What do I do? Do I just… wait here, live here, in solitude? Until when? Until someone happens to show up? Will that happen? I could be here for the rest of my life.

Well… well, no! I can leave, if I want to! I mean… I'm not in any real danger, am I? I would think the infected still will not attack me. I suppose… I suppose the people I'd have to worry about are any survivors, like that... like that man I found by the water treatment plant. I still feel somewhat responsible for his death, even though in reality there was little I could have done about it. Even if could have fought back the infected that were attacking him, to him I would have just been another one of his assailants. I probably would have been shot. I imagine I look even more frightening now that I did then.

I should find a gun. The thought pops into my head, and it makes perfect sense. I need protection. A little pocketknife was cute, but it really was a futile effort now that I think back on it. I need something I can seriously protect myself with.

Though I'm certain I could find a gun if I took a fine-toothed comb to all the houses nearby and searched for one, that seems like wasted effort on my part when I could simply make the trek a mile or two to the sporting goods store or the Wal-Mart and nab whatever I want from there. They'd have a stockpile to choose from, anyway.

I decide to hold it off until tomorrow, however. I haven't even been home a day, and I'd rather stay here while I can, where things are much less horrific than the rest of the city, and I can get some well deserved calm.