TO DEATH & BEYOND ▹ tlou

[ 01 ] life cycle of a butterfly

"Don't look! Get your head down." Sarah was quick to pull back Diana from fully seeing the outside. The corner of her eyes only caught the distant explosions trailing behind. And then she lowered her head, as low as she could, to avoid getting a glimpse of anything from behind the car windows.

An overwhelming wave of noises sounded from every direction, it's a mix of loud police or ambulance sirens, terrified screams of civilians and air vehicles sailing above them. Diana feels like her insides are being clawed and set on fire. She no longer has the strength to tighten the hold she has of Sarah's hand, her fingers hanging limp at the older girl's grasp.

Diana is alone. Her entire family is dead. She's far away from home and their whole town is in a frenzy in the middle of the night. 

"You take 70—,"

"71, I know,"

The ride takes a hard right on the roadside.

"Daddy—," Sarah began.

To which Joel quickly cuts off, "We don't know."

"They're saying it's a virus. Some kind of parasite," her uncle Tommy blurted out. Which made Diana's stomach drop.

"Is it from terrorists?"

"We don't… know."

"Are we sick?"

"No, of course not." Joel reassured, though he sounded less convincing.

A higher intensity of fear stirred inside Diana's chest. The Millers might not be sick but what about her? She doesn't live with them and her Nana turned into something else. 

"Why did things blow up?" Sarah spoke again. 

The car radio was turned on in hopes for a news source or announcement that might help them, but they hear nothing but static from the other end. "No cellphone, no radio. Minute ago, newsman wouldn't shut up," the other Miller sighed.

"How do you know?"

"What?"

The older girl started to choke up in tears as well, "How do you know we're not sick?

"They're saying it's mostly people in the city. That's why they got the highway blocked off."

As they navigate through the dark, deserted highway the path lights up in the distance. Fire has consumed the entirety of a farmhouse at the nearby fields. 

"God. It's Jimmy's place." Tommy said as they drove past the burning home, a stunned silence taking over the whole car. Until Sarah spoke again of a realization Diana had been dreading to hear.

"The Adlers would take Nana into the city. To the hospital for stuff," she glanced briefly at the girl beside her, careful as she thread her words.

"That's right. They would," Joel nodded with a slight reluctance in his tone. "That's probably why."

"But… you'd have to go a lot… right?"

This time the child with them let out a cry she hasn't done in a very long time. One that is very toddler-like, it scratched her throat terribly and reduced her face into a red mess flooded with tears. Diana didn't want to wail like a baby throwing a tantrum, she knows the people who took her in are trying their best to get them out of this disaster.

The last thing they need is a kid having an uncontrollable fit. It's distracting and ear grating, the young Adler is well aware of that.

But she truly is terrified from the bottom of her heart. Her sickness started more than two weeks ago and based on everything she knows so far her grandmother classified as an "infected". That could be what caused the old woman to behave violently. Similar to a zombie. The undead people who are bitten by another infected. Diana saw a couple of scary movies about it and her classmates sometimes act as one to scare each other.