Decaying Hearts

Chapter 2

    

For the first time I was able to take in the face of the stranger. Lenny was a man of average build, an inch or two taller than myself. He wasn't a clean looking man, most noticeably his facial hair was tatty and overgrown, but then again who was in this apocalyptic hell? In the old world, anybody that passes him would assume him to be nothing more than a pitiful homeless man. His face was naturally pale accompanied by a sharp nose and a stubborn jaw hidden by his dishevelled beard. His eyes were as grey as cold stone, but still as welcoming as living room fire.

He dressed himself in a red flannel shirt with a once white vest beneath it, no it had yellowed with age and sweat, partnered with a pair of tattered old jeans. Lenny also wore his distinguishing baseball hat, red and sported the once famous Nike logo, covering a head of thick brown hair that curled wildly at the nape of his neck. Nobody had the time for a haircut these days.

"So Josh, what brings you to this neck of the woods?"

"Oh the usual, just shopping for the missus." I said sarcastically, turning around to see ourselves stood in a department dedicated to woman's retail.

Lenny bellowed a rich laugh that seemed to contrast his mellow and friendly appearance; loud and deep, it bounced against my eardrums.

"Just trying to keep moving, I never really stay in one place for too long." I finished on a more serious note.

"S'pose it's easier to keep with moving with just the one guy?" He posed the question.

I could see him measuring up the risk factors. Was I part of group that would come looking for me, a violent group at that? A group that didn't exist.

"Just a one man band." I sighed nostalgically.

It was a lonely world now. It was difficult to choose between forgetting all that once was in order to survive the darkness that our world had succumbed to and just survive, and holding on to those memories to provide us some kind of hope. Sometimes it was just too painful to reminisce about our old lives. Parents lived on whilst their children became cannibalistic monsters. Children watched as their families were torn limb from limb, their innocence stolen before they even had chance to know what it was. Lovers became widows, with no other choice but to live without the other.

Sometimes living hardly seemed worth it.

"What about you? Are you alone?" I asked.

"There's a small group of us holding up in the old school building in the next town. There's 8 of us." He said simply, taking in our surroundings.

We stood in a ladies underwear department, old manikins dressed in lace slips and busty bra's laid askew table tops. Old red sale signs were tattered and torn hung sadly from the ceiling, some splattered with gore. A range of coloured silks, cottons, laces and garments of all styles had been left behind.

"There's a small group of us holding up in the old school building in the next town." He said simply, "there's eight of us."

Eight! That had to be the most people I had heard of to be in one place since the beginning! Months ago! Possibly even years! I had lost track of time a few weeks in, it seemed ridiculous to hold on to time when it was about to end. Simple aspects of the world seemed futile in this deadly era, an era that focused purely on survival.

The thought of seeing real people, real living people, brought me a new revitalised sense of hope. If there was a group of eight in just the next town, I couldn't help but wonder how many people could still be surviving out there. Maybe somewhere there was a whole town or community just waiting to wake up from this nightmare.