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

36. Home

  I felt Fear course through me, but I walked through it. Everything I had done, everything I had suffered and lost would all be worth it. My family. I was going to find my family. And I couldn't risk dying before.

  I found a body, it was getting too easy to find these bodies, and reached down to it. It's head was caved in, teeth smashed and skull broken, fragments of it bursting through the skin and piercing the brain.

  I removed my hoodie and long pants, revealing the hiking uniform underneath. I rubbed as much blood onto me as I could, my eyes burning with tears. Whether from the reality of what I was doing or from the sickly smell of the city filled with rotting bodies, didn't matter.

  I was about to leave it in any case.

  The farmhouse was a good kilometre out of the city. So, if I kept at my steady pace of a muscle-paralysing headache for God-knows-how-long every hour, then I should make it by midafternoon. I looked up to the dark sky, felt a random tear fall down my face and reflect the light of the sinking moon, and trudged through the Fear-stricken lands.

  I never really noticed it, but loneliness was very crowding. It seemed to be everywhere, it's presence pressing down on me the more I moved. Loneliness made Boringness, and Boringness and Nervousness, and Nervousness was not at all welcoming for me.

  Well, you don't get to complain. You made the choice to be alone. You chose to save your friends from you. You don't get to complain. After everything you've done, this is the least you deserve.

  I know. I know. I know.

  There was silence. Of course, not complete silence. Even with my damaged ears I could hear screams and fighting and Fear whispering down my spine. But there was silence. And my thoughts were gathering.

  Everything seemed so surreal, as the early morning sun began to rise, lighting up the sky with pink and red and orange and blue, everything seemed somehow peaceful.

  I'm not saying I didn't piss myself every time a Flesh-eater walked by, but I was getting used to it. Unfortunately, I was getting used to it.

  However, I was too close to take any chances, so I found another body and smeared more blood.

  I swatted at a fly and accidentally hit my eye. There was the pounding pressure behind it that didn't help and only brought me to my knees and grunting very gruffly with my hands hovering just above my eye. It began to tear up and I kept it closed, kept it closed for all it was worth, and got to my feet. There was the metallic smell of blood that seemed to come out of me, but I didnt think to much of it.

  Feeling thirsty, I drank from the water bottle. And drank. And drank. And then it was finished. I was looking at the bottom, cursing myself, still feeling thirsty, so goddamn hungry as well, and I was wondering what I was going to do, then realised.

  I wasn't going to do anything. Except walk. I wouldn't stop walking, not until I got to the farmhouse. I was mentally exhausted, the Fear and headaches continuously wearing me down. I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't keep on trying to live. All I could do was walk, because my family was all I had left. I would go to the farmhouse and look for them. If they weren't there and there wasn't some sort of clue for me, then . . .

  Well, there are worse places to die.

  But no more water. No more food. Anyways, according to Science I can go three days without water. Three days. I would make it to the farmhouse in one. Then it would all be over. One way or another, it would all be over.

  I risked opening my eye, and while the air cut agaisnt it and made me hiss from the sudden dryness, I didn't close it again. After all -

  It was the least I deserved.