I clung onto her body, the smell of blood nearly making me puke as I sobbed loudly. Shaking her, I screamed for her to wake up; to be strong and stay alive.
"Cheyenne, please. Don't you dare die on me!" I screamed, not caring if I only attracted more infected. She didn't open her eyes, though, and I hugged her close to me, tightly grabbing the fabric of her jacket.
"Please.. Don't leave me.. You're the only one I have left," I sobbed, unable to even see her anymore thanks to my tears, "I can't do this on my own."
"Just wake up." A voice told me. I shook my head, brushing my hand through Cheyenne's hair.
"I'd rather just die with you," I cried out, placing a soft kiss on her forehead and lowering her a little, looking around me for my gun. I spotted it a few feet away from me and, after carefully placing Cheyenne on the ground, stumbled over to it, snatching it from the wet leaves. As I raised the gun to look at it, I noticed my hand was shaking uncontrollably, almost to the point that I couldn't hold on to it anymore.
"Cry, please. Wake up." The voice came again but I ignored it, slowly raising the gun and placing it against my temple, trembling as I placed my finger on the trigger. I took a deep, slow breath and pressed my eyes shut, dropping onto my knees.
"Cry!"
It was the moment I forced my eyes to open again that I noticed I was no longer in the forest, with the cold barrel harsly pressed against my skin. As I noticed Felix inches away from my face, I got a strong sense of deja vu, thinking back to the last time this exact thing had happened.
"Thank god, you're awake," Felix whispered, letting out a sigh of relief. I tried to stop hyperventilating but it wasn't working very well, my breathing coming out fast and short no matter how much I tried to calm down.
"Hey, listen to me. You're fine, breathe with me, okay?" Felix grabbed my shoulders and I looked up at him, trying to match my breathing with his'. It took me a while but it eventually worked, my breathing slowing down to a more comfortable speed and my tears coming to a stop. When I raised my hand to adjust my mask, I realized I was not wearing it anymore. It must've fallen off because I was moving too much.
It surprised me it bothered me so little. Normally, whenever someone — didn't matter who — was able to see my face, I would panic and hide as quickly as possible. But not this time. Not with Felix.
I took a minute to quickly look around, seeing me and Felix were the only ones awake. How had no one else woken up? I mean, hadn't I screamed in my sleep?
Almost as if reading my thoughts, Felix answered my question, "I figured you wouldn't really want to wake everyone up, so I tried my best to keep you from screaming or something like that.." He scratched the back of his head and sighed, shifting his position on the ground. Just like last time, I had managed to crawl all the way to the wall without waking up, which was quite an accomplishment to be honest.
I pushed myself up from the ground, using the wall as support because I was feeling incredibly lightheaded. Wiping my eyes from the tears, I felt Felix's eyes on me the entire time I stood there so I turned to look at him, seeing him stare with a worried look in his eyes.
"I'll get you some water. You need to drink something," he said, quickly standing up and marching towards the stairs that led back to the main room where we had left our backpacks.
"I-It's okay, really." I stopped him, shaking my head a little and wincing when that hurt my head as well.
"You call that okay?" he said skeptically, crossing his arm over his chest and raising his eyebrow.
"Felix, I'm fi-" "Don't you fucking dare say you're fine, because clearly you're not," Felix loudly interrupted me, looking around to see if any of the others had woken up from his voice, which they had not.
"You're definitely not fine," he then continued, his voice quieter than before. "You don't sleep, you barely eat, and on top of that you're probably the one looking after the group the most."
"I'm not looking aft-" I argued, but he cut me off once again.
"Yeah, you are. You're always watching out for us and I appreciate that, I really do, but isn't it time to look after yourself now?"
I thought about that. I knew he was right: I had been looking out for the group a lot lately, and I blamed myself every time someone got hurt.
After Felix realized I wasn't going to speak up, he signed and gave me a stern look. "Listen, if you're not going to look after yourself, I'm going to. You need to get your shit together, dude."
"I don't need your help," I mumbled, looking at the ground.
"Cry.." He stepped toward me, placing his hand on my shoulder. "Please. Let me help you."
I shook my head, shrugging his hand off. He can't just barge into my life like this. I never even would've met him if I hadn't gotten attacked by that stupid dog! I just wished I could go back to not knowing about this group. Not caring about them. I wanted to go back to being alone without having to worry about others. I couldn't deal with this — with all of this!
"Just leave me alone, dude! It's none of your business! I want you to get out of my fucking life!" I screamed, and right when I did, a loud explosion came from somewhere upstairs. Everyone startled awake — whether it be from my voice, the explosion or both — and looked at the ceiling in shock. Entoan jumped up from his mattress and stormed upstairs without giving us as much as a single glance. It was then that I remembered I wasn't wearing my mask and I quickly turned away before anyone could get a good look at my face, focusing on a crack in the wall.
"What was that? What is going on?" Scott's sleepy voice came from somewhere behind me. I heard multiple footsteps and I heard Jack's heavy breathing.
"What's happening?" he muttered quietly and I heard Mark comfort him. This probably reminded everyone of when we were in that city and the bombs started going off.
"I think a trap just went off," Snake said. "Let's go upstairs to talk to Entoan and Dlive."
I heard more footsteps as some of them ran after Entoan, and I dared to peek over my shoulder to see who was still here. Apart from Felix, Russ and Scott, everyone had gone upstairs. I quickly turned away again.
"Has anyone seen my mask?" I asked almost inaudiably. They shuffled around for a bit and I felt a tap on my shoulder, so I held out my hand. Someone — I believe Scott — handed me my mask and I quickly put it on, letting out a sigh of relief.
"Is everything alright?" Scott asked cautiously when I had turned back around, looking between me and Felix, who was looking hurt. I ignored the guilty feeling that suddenly appeared and nodded.
"Yeah. We should check out that explosion."
Scott gave me a nod and, after looking between me and Felix again, went upstairs, not wanting to further dig into this subject. I followed him, pretending not to notice the worried glances Russ was giving me.
When we pushed open the door to the main room, we saw everyone standing near the small window in the wall. Dlive had climbed up a chair to reach it and was peeking through, scanning the outside. The sun had already risen, but the fog prevented us from actually seeing anything apart from the street next to the base.
"Maybe it was just an infected that stumbled into a tripwire?" Minx proposed. Jack nodded and Dlive stepped down from the chair, dusting off his clothes for no reason.
"Could be," was all he said before walking towards the bulletin board and writing something down with a pen that was almost empty. Entoan took his place on the chair, leaning forward and pressing his face against the window.
"So.. What now?" Russ asked quietly and Entoan quickly turned around, jumping down from the chair and landing on the ground with a loud thud.
"That explosion probably attracted more infected, but they'll wander off once they get bored here," he said casually, dragging the chair away from the window and placing it back to stand around the full table with weapons.
I was starting to wonder how these guys had managed to stay here for so long without going crazy. I would never in my life be able to stay in the same place for years on end, repeating the same boring routine every day. I would've already tried to leave about a million times.
Apparently, I wasn't the only one with this thought, as about 3 hours after the ordeal with the trap that went off, I overheard a conversation between Scott and Snake about this exact matter.
"Yeah, I was wondering that as well," I casually joined the conversation, making both of them look up at me. "I mean, it must be horrible to be stuck in the same place for this long."
"Yeah, exactly. They've been here ever since the apocalypse started," Scott agreed with me, glancing at Entoan and Dlive. The two of them were sitting around the table at the moment, whispering with each other while sometimes pointing at some papers that were lying in front of them. When they realized were were talking about them, they turned and looked at us, asking us what we were talking about.
"Well, we were wondering.. How do you guys live here for years without going crazy?" Scott asked, deciding not to hide that we had been talking about them.
"We don't." Entoan shrugged and Dlive nodded sadly.
"We've been trying to leave for months now," he said, looking at the ground. His face suddenly seemed to brighten up and he looked at us with a smile. "Actually, you guys might be able to help us. Here, let me show you something."
He stood up from the chair and we shared a curious glance, standing up and following him. He opened the door to the outside. It made a lot of noise, making everyone glance at us in surprise. Scott said something about us leaving for a few minutes and he ordered the rest to stay inside with Entoan, which they all thought was a good idea.
Once Dlive had closed the door behind us, he mentioned for the three of us to stay quiet, which we did of course.
We crossed the street — avoiding a bunch of traps on the way there — and got to a building that seemed like an old garage. Actually, it was an old garage. We had to climb a fence to get to the front of the building, but the moment I dropped myself on the ground again, I gasped at the huge amount of infected wandering around here.
The street in front of the garage was littered with them, some of them appearing to be eating something that was lying between two stranded cars. I narrowed my eyes to try to see what they were feasting on, but there were too many of them surrounding whatever it was.
"Just follow me, we don't have to disturb them," Dlive whispered, staying in a crouched position while slowly shuffling towards the building, keeping close to the fence. He pointed to an opened window that — seeing from the stacked boxes underneath it — had been used as an entrance for quite some time now. He mentioned for us to climb through first and we did, one by one landing on the ground inside the garage and waiting for Dlive to climb through as well. When he was safely inside, he let out a sigh in relief and smiled, pointing at something behind us.
"That's what I wanted to show you."
I turned and my eyes widened at what I saw. Right in front of us was a dark red pickup truck, the paint chipping in multiple places and the door handles rusty. One of the headlights was shattered into a million pieces and the bumper had definitely seen better times. The tires still seemed surprisingly intact in comparison to the rest of the car. It was meant for 4 or maybe 5 people, but — although it wasn't the savest because you'd have absolutely no cover to hide behind — more people could sit in the back.
"A car? Does it work?" Snake asked, walking towards it and peeking in through the window.
"That's what we've been trying to accomplish," Dlive explained. "We've changed the tires and managed to finally fix the engine about a week ago, but it has no fuel. We still need to find a way to get some."
I walked around the car as well, peeking in at the old leather chairs. The inside still in a perfect state. Just as I was about to ask where they had found this truck, Scott laughed and smiled like an idiot, turning towards the two.
"I have an idea."