Chapter 7
"La-La-La-La-La-La..." Rosie was back to singing her songs as we trudged through the forest in search of a decent meal.
"C'mon, Rosie!" I laugh.
"What?" Rosie giggles, "I thought you enjoyed my lovely singing voice!"
"Enough, Rosie!" I lightly punch her arm, "Are you trying to attract looters? Do you have some death wish I should know about?"
"Death wish! I'm already dead!" Rosie says as she trips over a tree root.
Boom.
A gunshot echo's somewhere in the distance, silencing both Rosie and I.
"Let's move," I grab Rosie by the arm.
Rosie just nods, and does her best to follow me.
"How close do you think the shooter is?" She asks.
"I don't know, but I don't want to stick around and find out," I whisper. "Just keep quiet. The farther away we get, the better."
Rosie bobs her head again, "Where are we going?"
"There's a town about a mile away from here," I say. "It should have some fresh water, and food for us."
"Is it abandoned?" Rosie asks cautiously.
"Yes," I answer quickly. "Even if there are people still living there, I doubt they'd give us any trouble."
Rosie just nods her head again, and for once has nothing to say.
The two of us stumble through the forest blindly for about a half an hour. Every once and a while we stop to make cover our tracks.
Eventually, we make it onto an old run-down road. Cars were littered up and down the street in front of us. It looked as if the people driving them had left in a hurry. Purses were left untouched, keys remained in the ignition.
Something bad must have happened on this road.
I looked over at Rosie, who was confused to say the least.
"What happened here?" She whispered.
"I don't know," I respond, while walking over to a nearby car that was parked on the side of the road. "It must not have been good though..."
Rosie shudders, "Do you think they were evacuated?"
"Evacuated?"
I couldn't help but feel confused. What did Rosie mean my evacuated?
"What do you mean they were evacuated?"
Rosie shrugs, "Whoever owned the cars. Maybe when things got bad, they were evacuated."
Rosie continued talking when she noticed how I still looked confused, "You really don't remember, do you?"
I shake my head quickly, and shift my eyes to the ground.
"It's okay," Rosie says softly before talking again. "Entire towns were evacuated because of the virus. Thousands were sent away to camps, or to other countries. There wasn't really any warning before you were taken...People would just come in trucks and haul you away. When my families radio still worked, we used to hear all about the evacuations..."
"Were you evacuated?" I ask.
"No," Rosie says sadly. "My family waited, and prayed that we'd be rescued. They thought that if we were evacuated we'd be safe. But no one ever came for us..."
"Anyways," Rosie laughs gently, "How far are we away from the town? I'm starving to death over here!"
I smile at Rosie's lame attempt of a joke, "We should be there in a few more minutes."
"Thank God!" Rosie dramatically clutches her stomach.
"Are you done with the theatrics yet?"
"Nope," Rosie giggles.
If I could have stayed in that one moment for the rest of my life, I would've. I know I'm dead, but in this moment I felt alive again.
In this moment, we were safe...
Boom.