Unusual Happenstance 2 (continued)

I awoke, and thankfully, not glassy eyed and with a taste for the meat of man, but something much more innocent. A candy bar. A taste of a life I, no, we, had all once known and lost. Of civilization, and Sunday mornings that were just what they were, instead of the incessant struggle for survival which we had all grown accustomed to. It was at this particular moment as my mind awoke but my eyes refused to follow suit, and remained in defiant sleep that I smelled chocolate and caramel, and my ears picked up the sound of delicate jaws grinding the soft, sweet delight. I hoped against hope that what I imagined in my dreams was real and peeked, forcing my eyes to open just a little and scanned the room before me. A small flame was burning in the center of the room, the smoke drifting out of a hole in the ceiling. The walls, moldy and paper peeling were being dried by said flame. The windows were covered, allowing no light in, although it appeared to be day, through the vent in the ceiling. I assumed I was either the top floor of a high building, or a short, one story construct. A figure, to the right of where I lay on the cold hard floor, sat slowly nibbling away at that little piece of heaven. Dark was the room, the hole in the ceiling admitting few of the secrets the room held, hence the figure remained in the shadows, preventing my sight from identifying it. It sat in a way only a living man would sit, back against the wall in a lazy manner, one hand upon something sword shaped and the other holding the candy bar. It was not my savior it seemed, for this shadow was one of a large, stocky man. He noticed my attention upon him, and picked up something and threw it across the room to me. I picked up the treat as a dog would, greedily, and shoved the whole thing into my mouth barely getting the wrapper off. I swallowed, chunks still remaining, but I didn’t care. I tasted heaven, but more importantly, I tasted a chance to fulfill my burning hunger. It was mildly sweet, a lot bitterer and had a hint of sourness to it, probably due to the mould that must have grown on it. Within moments, my stomach heaved and the meager contents came spilling out onto the floor beside me. The figure in the shadows laughed, but I gave no heed to it. With my hands I scooped up what had been inside my and as I was about to drink the soup, the figure shouted and stopped me. “You can clean that up, but drinking your own puke’ll just make you sicker, man. You’re not used to the sugar yet, I guess. I’ll head downstairs and check with Esther if there’s anything else that’ll be lighter on you”. “I, I” I tried to reply him, but the vomiting had taken its toll on my throat. “It’s ok, rest first, then talk. You’re the first person we’ve seen all month that hasn’t tried to kill us yet, but I guess there’s plenty of time for that, eh?” with that the figure stood up and in the dim light I could see his features. It was indeed a very large man, as I had suspected. His skin was dark, and he had the look of a person being fat, once, long ago, and had lost a lot of it very quickly. But all in all, he seemed healthy, and didn’t have that mad, yellow gleam in his eyes as I had seen in some all too often. As he walked out of the room, he paused, “Name’s Andrew, if you were wondering”. I wasn’t. My stomach took up too much of my attention for me to pay any to anything else. Most of the soreness in my body had gone, thanks to my rest, but nothing can satisfy hunger but solid food inside the stomach. I rested my back against the wall, thinking about what had just befallen me. There I was, on the edge of a cliff, and below me, death when I was rescued by someone who had no reason at all to do so but so many to refuse me. Mankind hadn’t died out after all. And with this promising thought, I renewed my hope of a brighter future, or at least one where I could get lunch every day without fail. Trying to ever be the polite guest, I took off my tattered shirt and tried wiping my spew off the floor, exhausted as I was. My arms shook, and my fingers trembled. Never in the world before had something like this been so taxing on me. I had cleaned up about half of it when footsteps in the hallway alerted me of my host’s entrance. Just as before, in one hand he held some food and the other a crossbow pointed at my throat. This time, however, I could see that the girl who had taken me back had followed him into the room, looking curiously at me and with some apprehension. Maybe even now she doubted herself for bringing me back. She was just as beautiful as when she had found me, and as I stared at her, my eyes were drawn to hers. Beautiful wouldn’t describe it. There was something else in those eyes, not just beauty like you would have seen in a photo but something more, and it always drew you in. all at once my mind had left my self-pitying thoughts and all I wanted to do was talk to her and to know more about her. Andrew’s deep voice brought me back to reality. “Now I know staring at ester is real fun and all, but I think eating’s a lot better for you”. I was surprised, I hadn’t known I had been staring at her for so long. Embarrassed, I tried muttering a reply, but my voice still barely came out. “Here”, she said, coming out from behind him. “Here’s a bit of water. It’s not much, but it’s what we can spare”. I took it from her and drank.

About half an hour later, I found myself in a bathroom. Esther had brought me here to clean myself up after I had eaten. “There’s boiled water in that bucket over there, don’t waste it, but I guess I don’t have to tell you that”, she told me. I wandered to the mirror and for the first time in a long while I saw myself. I looked more dead than alive. The skin on my face was peeling from sunburn and cracks had formed on my dry lips with dirt getting in between them. My hair was covered in dirt too, and oily from the touch of it. I had never noticed. My eyes were sunken holes, dark circles underneath accentuated by the hollowness of my cheeks. Looking at myself, I was surprised she hadn’t killed me when we met. I looked like a zombie. Earlier I asked the both of them how they could have made such a home for themselves, away from the cannibals, both alive and dead. The roads and cities would have been teeming with the undead and everything else would have been stalked by the living. Not only that, but the reason I had never tried to stay in a house before this was that the undead preferred to hang around buildings. Maybe they could remember being alive once, tough very little of it. This was explained to me when they told me we were staying about a kilometer from the road in what used to be a meth lab. Hidden from everything, it was pretty safe, “just don’t try licking the walls”, as Andrew had told me with a smile. He knew about this place from his life before as a dealer. When the infection got really bad, he simply headed here and worked on turning the interior into what could be considered a house. There was another house nearby with a lot of food but no occupants. Most probably the previous owners had been stocking up for the infection when they caught the virus too. He found Esther while he was scavenging one day.

Sighing, but grateful for my luck, I soaked a rag in the water and started to wipe myself down. The water felt good on my skin, and I had never dared to use clean water in this way. There was already not enough to drink, while I was out there. A sudden shout came from outside, startling me and causing me to react with such force I knocked ever the bucket. So much for conserving water. I pulled on a new shirt and jumped into my old pair of jeans before running out of the bathroom. I met Esther and Andrew in the living room. Andrew was gripping the crossbow while she seemed to be trying to notch a homemade bow and arrow. Both their faces were strained. It was then I realized for the past few days while I was slowly dying outside, a group of zombies had caught scent of me and were tracking me when I was found by Esther. It was no wonder that I kept feeling like I was being followed. They had tracked our scent here, and were smashing their hands on the doors and windows, slowly breaking the thin plywood used as a barrier.