The sound of feet scrabbling against pavement seemed to echo through the cold of the night, making my presence painfully known to anything close by. White puffs of air curled in tendrils around me as I panted from exertion and the pain blazing in my side. I wasn’t sure how close to death I got but I knew that with each step, if I didn’t rest soon, I was inching closer to death once more. The thought nearly made me choke.
In the dark, there wasn’t much to see until it was right in front of you. I didn’t want to take any chances using a flashlight either, knowing I was in no condition to hold my own if the infection got near me. But the loss of sight was unnerving, anything lurking around me and waiting for me to step close to feed on me. I knew it would be a brutal death too from how I’ve seen the infected feed. They wouldn’t bother with the mercy of killing me first.
My shoulder suddenly struck something hard, a sharp cry escaping my lips and causing birds to fly off in every direction as I hit the ground. I didn’t know what to grab first, the gash that was bleeding out in my ribs or my shoulder that now felt dislocated. Fear had me in its vice stronger than it ever has. I was dying, alone and now I knew something must be coming for me in the darkness.
“Please…come on…Mom please…” I started to cry quietly, begging any sort of higher being that fucked everyone over to fix this. With a new tremble to my limbs, I managed to crawl across the pavement back towards the large object that I had run straight into. My bloodied hands patted the material, feeling the cold weight of metal against my flushed skin. It seemed to be a wall, giving me both hope and dread for what this could’ve been.
Dragging myself and trying to keep my crying quiet, I managed to find a window high up. The urge to give up and let myself rot was getting stronger while my vision was dimming, even in the dark. It would be so much easier to lay down and fall asleep even knowing I would never wake up. I didn’t even know what I was surviving for anymore.
But the image of my mom was forever burned in my memory and I couldn’t let her sacrifice be for nothing, even if she had doomed me to a life in hell instead.
Shrugging off my backpack, I managed to toss it up against the window. The pack slipped right inside, making a loud thump on the other side. Pausing, I waited for the sound of infection or anyone else inside. There was nothing though, reassuring me that maybe the place was empty and I would have a night of peace after all.
I struggled to climb through the window, my side aching while my shoulder screamed to be popped back into place, both things that had to wait till I knew I was safe. But safe had a new meaning now. It didn’t mean a nice home with locks and family. It just meant a night where I could sleep an extra hour before I had to survive again.
When I dropped inside, the fall hit me hard and the wind was knocked out of me for a moment as I laid there broken. My panting filled the dark space while I let myself cry, clutching my shoulder and knowing my blood was leaking from my shirt now from my side. I had no antibiotics, no bandages and my food was running low again. If I decided to camp out, I’d die of starvation or blood loss before the infected could ever find me.
“You reek.” The harsh whisper of someone close by made my body tense painfully as I choked on a sob, my eyes closing. Someone was here after all and I was at their mercy. I could barely move and I started to realize I hadn’t seen my pack when I fell so I had nothing to use to defend myself. I had heard horror stories from the occasional person I crossed paths with, tales of cults and cannibals and people who would do atrocious things to keep you alive and useful. I would’ve thrown myself into a pit of infected before I ever gave my life to the hands of a stranger. And yet I had no choice.
I wanted to beg for mercy, for forgiveness for intruding on this man’s territory but I could barely breathe through my tears as the person stepped close, a flashlight flicking on and blinding me. I stayed completely still whether frozen from fear or pain. My head was limp against the cold ground and my eyes closed to brace myself against whatever this man chose to do. I could only hope he would kill me quickly.
“I’m not a monster…” the man seemed to whisper to himself before I felt myself being dragged against the cold ground.
— — —
My eyes were glued to his back as we trudged back to the warehouse where we had first met however long ago. My head was hung in shame, realizing what he must’ve assumed I had done when he woke up and I had been gone. The guilt gnawed at me in a way that made me want to apologize a million times, but I knew spoken words meant little to nothing to Sanemi. I didn’t want to make this any worse than it already was as I stayed a couple steps behind him.
“Sanemi…I saw the number of supplies we had this morning. We’re running low and I got scared for us,” I whispered, glancing behind us to make sure we weren’t being followed, my hand twitching at my side by the knife I kept strapped to my thigh. “I thought I’d be back by the time you woke up so you wouldn’t worry…”.
“Just shut up. I’m not gonna talk about this with you right now,” he grumbled, the muscles in his arm flexing with restraint. I sighed in defeat from the dismissal, hoping that by the time we got back that he would hear me out a little better once he had time to cool down. It was a slim chance though.
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