To Be A Survivor

Chapter 38: Fight For Me

This place is scary. That's the first thing Singer notes here in this small, abandoned town. It's not the first town she's seen that's like this and it probably won't be the last, but there's just something about this place... it doesn't feel right.

She nudges Wesley with her elbow. "You feel it too, right?"

"What?"

"How creepy this places feels."

"Oh, yeah," He answers, casting a look around. "I thought it was just me."

"I don't think we should stay here."

"We're only staying for a night."

"We shouldn't stay at all." A cold feeling runs through her-her blood, her bones. There's an alarm going off in her mind and she can't figure out why.

"Every place we go to will seem unsafe," He argues quietly, but his eyes are just as shifty and uneasy as her own. "No matter where we go, it'll feel creepy. It's the zombie apocalypse."

"Yes, but this place feels different... as if there's people here. Alive people. Or at least alive somethings. I think we should go to another town."

"That's not your decision to make."

Singer sighs and looks ahead, her eyes meeting the ones that have been looking back at her and Wesley for nearly an hour now.

"Your dad's been watching us like a hawk," She comments, and Wesley rolls his eyes.

"Yeah, I know. I don't know what he thinks we're gonna do."

"It's not you he's worried about." She wraps her arms around herself, eyes downcast. "He's scared I'm going to get you hurt, or worse-"

"Expelled?" He laughs, but his grin fades after one look of her hard, annoyed features. "Sorry, just trying to lighten the mood."

"You can't exactly lighten the mood, Wes. Not with this one. Four people have died in a matter of days. Not weeks. Days. My great uncle and his son died three days ago, and we couldn't even take the time to properly mourn. How terrible is that?"

"It's uh, it's pretty bad."

"Exactly! And each time someone died, I had something to do with it."

Wesley looks away, refusing to offer a response. She knows why. Of course, she does. Wesley is one of her closest friends and well, maybe something else, or at least was something else before the apocalypse. He's not answering because he's thinking about his mother. It's been just barely a week since she died, even less than that for his sister.

Singer doesn't know if he blames her for their deaths or not. He's never said and she's never asked; She's too afraid that the answer might be yes.

Of course, she knows it was her fault. There's no actual denying it on her part. She can still see the blood on her hands, dripping off onto the pavement of the abandoned little town. It's there, and it always will be, even when she focuses hard enough to make it disappear, she knows it will still be there when she lets her guard down.

It'll be sundown soon. They have maybe three hours to find food and a place to sleep, which makes her all the more uneasy. The thought of sleeping here in this town makes her stomach churn. Something just... isn't right here, but she can't figure out what it might possibly be, not without exploring which she's definitely forbidden to do. Trouble finds her very easily. She doesn't need to go helping it do so.

"There's some nicer looking houses up ahead," Reggie says, his steps slowing to a stop before he turns around and eyes those behind him. He tries to hide his sneer when his eyes land on Singer standing next to his son, but he fails. "We're going to split up and raid the pantries. We'll look around a bit to find which house is the safest, and that's where we'll sleep for the night."