F*** Cancer, This One Did Us All In.

18

  She's not here.

  I knew it. I could tell that both Amelia and Eric knew it too. If she was here then she would have come barging at us, but there was nothing. Nobody came at us, dead or alive, and we all knew what that meant.

  But either Mfundo didn't know, or he didn't care, because he still went searching. He ran around the house twice, checked the garden three times and he even opened up the front door to see if she was out there. Luckily Eric managed to pull him back in and close the door before a zombie noticed him.

  "She has to be here." He said. "She has to. She's just hiding here, somewhere."

  "Mfundo," Amelia gently said. "You've already checked the house more than once. The back garden is empty. Even if there were any hiding places in this house, she would have heard us and come out by now if she was here."

  Mfundo leaned back against his couch, in the living room where we all sat. I could see the tears brimming on the surface of his eye, as he breathed heavily and tried his hardest to make them stay there. But the spilled down the side of his face and soon more tears were spilling and suddenly Mfundo was crying, full out sobbing on his couch. I felt so awkward sitting next to him, so I wrapped my arms around him and I could feel his entire body shaking, as he cried his lungs out.

  "We're going to find her." I said. "We have to find her. Mfundo, maybe she wasn't in the house when this all started. Maybe she was already on her way to pick us up."

  "Yeah," Amelia said, jumping onto my idea. "Mfundo, according to Eric, the virus only took effect somewhere around four. Maybe she was already on her way to the school when it started."

  "She's somewhere out there." I said. "And we are going to find her."

  "Thando!" He suddenly yelled and stood to his feet, pushing me and Amelia back.

  "Tha – what?" I asked.

  "My fish. I need to check to see if they're okay. Thando and Themba. I need to feed them."

  Then, he ran out of the living room and into his bedroom.

  "I'll go after him." Amelia said and started to rise from the couch but Eric, who had been leaning against the wall, suddenly walked towards her and shook his head.

  "No, we should probably talk about some things while the mental case isn't in the room."

  "Give him some slack, Eric," I said. "We still have no idea where his mother is so just leave him." It took me a few seconds to be surprised at my own words, but nobody else seemed to notice.

  "Look, I feel sorry for the guy." Eric said and raised his hands under Amelia's scrutiny. "I do, honest to God! But he isn't in the right head space right now to be making informed decisions and you know it."

  Amelia didn't look happy but she sat down.

  "What do you want to talk about, Eric?"

  "I think we should stay here for the day." He said.

  "What?" Amelia asked and she didn't even bother to hide her bafflement. "We can't do that. We have to keep moving, we have to find our families."

  "And that will be a lot easier now that Mfundo can just charge his phone and call them."

  Oh my god, phones. I had actually forgotten about those. After everything that had happened, with Mrs Hobkins and Connor, it had just kind of slipped from my mind.