Immunity

10

Anticipation startles me from my sleep. I sit up, and look out through the glass windows of the library. It was still relatively dark, only an orange haze in the distance told me it was close to sun up. I could feel myself bubbling in hopes of seeing Zaylin and Dad again. Maybe once I found them we could figure this one out together. But then, the thought of the possibility of seeing their wasted and destroyed bodies shook me to the core.

I shove the thought away, and wait patiently for the others to rise. They're almost slower than the sun.

Its roughly eight o'clock when we finally leave the library, me with a light smile on my face and my baseball bat in hand. There were even less bodies on the road now, so more had people had changed. I frown, and I try to bring some passivity back into my mind. I still hadn't seen a body that even slightly resembled Zaylin or Dad, and it bought the smile back to my face. Even the sun disappearing behind some clouds couldn't dampen my spirit.

"So, how do we get into this place?" Hugo asks from behind me.

I turn, still smiling. I already had a response. "There's a loading dock in the back, it has direct access into the inside through a shop,"

The manchester store. Our store, and our home for a little bit. Going through there meant I would get my answers, and fast. Please be there, I thought, Please.

We walk silently through a hole in the perimeter, a light breeze making a piece of barbed wire scratch eerily on an old dryer. I look over and see Hugo frowning. I bite my lip in fear. What if he wants to go back? I hoped that the fact we couldn't hear any infected would convince him to keep going.

He doesn't say a word as we walk underneath the cover of the car park, and I'm grateful for it. They're boots crunch over the gravel of the car park, sometimes softened as they stepped on the weeds that sprouted out of the hard ground.

I finally saw the loading dock in the dim light ahead of us. "There it is," I say.

I hear guns click behind me, and I tighten my grip on my bat.

I jog over too it, and the others fall closely behind. I throw myself up the loading dock, my sneakers hitting the concrete with a squeak. How strange it was to be running back to the place I had run from a few days ago.

I hover at the door. "I'll go first," I say, turning to the group. Hugo frowns, and Jax murmurs something to Ace. I think Ria snickers.

I don't understand for a second, but then I realise its because that was the plan all along. They were going to push me in first, regardless. I roll my eyes.

I prepare myself before I throw myself through the door. I stop and listen for movement, raising my bat out in front of me, prepared to swing it at any moment, but also prepared to drop it and embrace my father or my sister.

But there as nothing. Not a single noise. The silence burned my ears like acid, slowing eating away at me.

I run further into the store, looking in the back room, under the counter. My breathing quickens as every place I look in is empty. Empty. Empty. Empty. They had to be here. They had to be here. They had too.

They were'nt here.

Suddenly, I'm over come by the feeling of loneliness. Why were'nt they here? Why could'nt I find them? I needed them. I needed them. I'm alone.

My softball bat hits the floor with a metal clang as I press my palms to my eyes. Hot tears dribbled through the cracks in my fingers.I felt so hopeless as I tried to breath properly, inhaling, exhaling.

It takes me five minutes to get myself back under control, even then I feel like my emotions are hanging in the balance of one tiny string: if that snaps then all the control goes.