The Beginning of the End
Part 8
Chapter dedicated to my bestie sagegreen127, posting early today just for you 💚
Jake and Susie had been keeping the boys moving for a couple of days. Susie hardly slept, her mind forcing her to replay the events of the past week over and over again.
She was becoming less and less verbal. Speaking to Jake with fewer words every day. Her responses went from full sentences, to sentence fragments, to single words. Anything to keep her from conversation.
"Sue, you wanna start a fire?" Jake called, trying to get the boys to settle down after a long day of driving.
"Yeah," Susie called back, setting to work with the fire. Her hands made easy, practiced moves, having gotten used to the action of starting a campfire when they stopped every night.
It was easy to get into the swing of this routine. Get up, move, find supplies, move, stop for the night, and repeat. Repeating the cycle over and over again, was one of the few things keeping her sane.
Jake was doing his best to "make it up to her" after the death of thir father. Despite his numerous efforts to make his sister feel better or prove that he didn't mean to destroy her trust, Susie remained unresponsive. That's not to say that she was actively angry at him or that she was behaving in an unjustly cruel manner; Susie simply ignored his attempts and acted like it hadn't happened.
If there was anything still left of Susie, it was that she loved her family. Her parents may not have gotten along with each other in the best of times, but they were still a family and they pulled it together when it mattered the most.
Susie had taken on somewhat of a parenting role for all her brothers, not just the younger ones. And even at the ripe age of sixteen- now seventeen, she knew that she had to pick up the slack that their parents had left behind. Although, in her mind, she definitely attributed some of this feeling to her guilt about being the one who had taken Frank and Margaret Summers away from them. Sure, they had aready turned into mindless husks by the time Susie did them in, but- you know what they say- the devil's in the details.
"Sue? How you feeling today? We've been moving a while, maybe it's better to take a break here for a few days," Jake suggested, examining his sister's sluggish movements.
"Can't. Stationay camps are a bad idea. The longer we stay in one place, the sooner the dead catch up to us," Susie said, seeming anoyed that Jake had even suggested this.
"We've found reasonably high ground, if something was coming our way, we'd see it," Jake argued, keeping his tone even.
"Doesnt matter if we can see it if it comes from all sides," Susie said, shaking her head as she sat beside the fire. She looked to Luke and Liam, the two boys were sitting side by side opposite her, playing with some toy cars they'd found.
"Cmon, Sue. I'm supposed to be the big brother here. Take a break for a bit, I'll call the shots for now," Jake said.
"What? Scared I'll shoot you in the head?" Susie asked, anger begining to take over her features.
"What? Susie, I-"
"No, Jake. I see how you've been looking at me since Dad. I know what you're doing here. You think I'm broken and you're trying to fix it. Newsflash, asshole, the world is fucking broken!" Susie whisper-shouted, trying to keep her words away from Luke and Liam's ears as well as anything that may be lurking in the general vicinity.
"Susie, that's not what I'm doing, I swear! I don't think you're broken, okay? You're just tired. And probably traumatised. I just want you to be okay," Jake said gently, reaching for Susie's hand.
Susie yanked her hand away from his reach, her glare reaching uncharted levels of frustrated.
"You think I'm not broken?"
"Of course-"
"I am, Jake. Everything that's hapened? It's not just a crisis anymore. It's an apocalypse. This is end of the world kind of shit, Jacob. We are not going back. We can't. Not anymore," Susie said, letting out a pained sigh, "honestly, I don't think that you're going to live. I don't think you can. You're too good. Your soul is still there. Your conscience. You've still got humanity left, Jake. Too much of it. I'm losing it. Every day I feel less and less like I'm even alive."
"You're right," Jake said, "you're right. I don't want to admit that the world is gone. I don't want to lose who I am, but I know I have to. I just- is it so bad to be hoping that somehow we can end this? Somehow we can be who we were, y'know? I could go back to school and you could go back to making those shitty pizas with Glenn."
"I can't be her anymore, Jake. I killed mom and dad. I did that. I have to live with it. I couldn't just go back to high school and pretend that I'm concerned about fucking homecoming when my little brothers no longer have a real family all because I pulled the trigger on mommy and daddy," Susie tugged on the ends of her hair, desperately wishing that Jakke would just accept that it was over. That their days were numbered and there was no end in sight.
"I wish I could take it all away from you, Sue. You've always been here for all of us, and now? Now even more so. All the more reason to stay here for a while. Get some rest," Jake said, "please. For my sake, take a breather for a day."
"This isn't a good idea, Jake. Stationary camps are dangerous. Every time we make a noise, one of those things hears us. And then, they walk. They don't stop walking until they find us and while they're looking, they pick up their freinds and eventually? Eventually we could have hundreds of them on us and they'd just seem to come out of nowhere."
"A day, Sue. Just a day. And then we'll go."
"Fine, Jake. A day."