The Decaying

Small Mercies

I wiped the dripping sweat off the back of my neck, feeling the immense sun heat burning my skin as I walked.
"Why can't I have the rifle?" I complained to Kayl, my best friend since childhood. He rolled his eyes at me for the fifth time in about ten minutes.
"I told you. Because you have better aim with the shotgun."
I sighed and shifted the heavy .45-70 in my arms, grimacing at my aching muscles.
It was so unfair.
Kayl stomped off ahead of me, leaving me to clamber over the fallen rubble with my short, wiry legs. I growled.
"Could you slow down? Some of us have kinda short legs!"
Kayl laughed and slowed ever so slightly. He spun around, walking backwards.
Show off.
"Short legs aren't gonna slow things down for you if we get attacked, is it?" He mocked. I bared my teeth at him and hurried to keep up.
"Let's just get to the Shelter so I can change my clothes. I've been feeling the wind through my back all day," I complained, fiddling with the tear in the back of my jacket. Kayl smirked as he kept walking, his pretty leather jacket showing no signs of wear or tear.
I honestly had no idea how he'd kept that thing so perfect for so many years, no matter how much shit we went through.
"Come on Bailey, we're almost there!" He called. I let out a huff and ran to catch up.
We finally rounded the corner of the abandoned street and I caught sight of the Shelter.
An old, buckled garage door that led to a large underground car park. We had painstakingly moved the abandoned cars inside into strategic positions, so that we had a nice little area to live in in the centre, and carefully planned out escape routes in case of emergencies.
I jogged up to the garage door and shoved it up a little. Kayl ducked under, and his fingers appeared beside mine, holding the door up for me to follow through. Once I was inside, Kayl let the garage door fall back down softly, and grabbed his matches out of his backpack. I quickly lit my lighter, illuminating approximately a meter around me. Kayl led the way towards the protective circle of cars, and helped me climb through the shattered window of one. Once inside, he threw his match into the small, makeshift fire pit, the logs immediately flaming up. I closed my lighter off and dropped my heavy backpack and shotgun on my ratty mattress.
"Home sweet home," I muttered, kicking off my dirty boots. Kayl set his own belongings down on his stretcher. He flicked one leg over the edge of the stretcher and flipped down onto his back.
"Aaah, I'm dead," he groaned, already half asleep. I smiled.
"I hope not, or I'd have to shoot you," I joked. Kayl grinned and chucked a small, plastic packaged object at me.
"Here, I found this during our last raid," he explained as I held the thing up. It was a granola bar.
"Woah, how'd you find this?" I exclaimed. Kayl shrugged.
"One of those old warehouses we searched, it was just left on a shelf, gathering dust," he mumbled, eyes half closed.
I quickly wolfed down the food, and followed it with a sip of water from my water skin.
Food, packaged, human food, was a rare treat these days.
Any supermarket or warehouse had been pilfered or destroyed years ago.
Sometimes, if you were extremely lucky, you could find one or two forgotten items, but normally there was nothing but debris.
For the last five and a half years, since we had been on our own, Kayl and I had turned to hunting stag, rabbit, and pretty much any other mammal we could find for food and skins. My own jacket was made from deer and bison skin, with small rabbit fur trims. 
I was pretty proud of myself for making it, using the skills my father had taught me when we went camping and hunting when I was younger.
But you had to be careful.

Any creature that had come into contact with the Infected, as we liked to call them, was off limits.
Even just wearing the skin of Infected animals could lead to horrible disease and illnesses, and usually ended in death. Kayls cousin, Joseph, had died that way.
We'd managed to find him by chance back in the beginning, but he hadn't survived long. He just wasn't careful enough.

But we were.
Five years ago, my family were slaughtered when the Infected had attacked us. My mother, father, and little sister were killed, eaten, torn apart by the viscous monsters. Kayls parents had been killed at the same time, way back when the apocalypse first began. Kayl and I were lucky and smart enough to run and hide up the top of an emergency staircase, shaking and praying the Infected were too stupid to know how to climb stairs. When we came down, we were greeted by the sight of our dead family, small pieces scattered across the ground, and little trinkets laying discarded in pools of still warm blood.

I scrunched up the little plastic packaging and rolled onto my side to look at Kayl.
"You reckon we'll ever find other people?" I asked nonchalantly.
Kayl opened his eye to stare at me.
"Years ago, I promised that I would get you out of this mess of a place. That still stands. I swear I'll get us to safety, where there is no need to look over our shoulders for zombies, or carry guns around like another arm. Okay? I promise."
I nodded and smiled gently. Kayl quirked his lip, his shiny lip ring glinting in the fire light, and rolled over to go to sleep.
I closed my eyes, and slowly drifted off, dreams of war and blood floating through my head.