song: this is our life by Des Rocs
HARRY'S POV:
I wake up to screaming.
I hadn't planned on sleeping tonight but I guess at some point I had managed to crash on the couch out in the living room without knowing it.
Instantly, I'm awake and sitting upright on the couch, head pounding from the half a bottle of whiskey I downed before stumbling face-first onto the couch to take my unprecedented nap.
Even though everything seemed somewhat muted from the alcoholic haze I had awoken in, I was suddenly aware of the fact that the screams were not mine or Niall's, the only other boy who I shared this flat with.
They were hers.
Motherfucker.
And god were they loud.
I think she was trying to scream actual words out between all the yelling but I couldn't make anything real out from my position down the hall and hers behind the locked door.
As if right on cue, I watched Niall pop his head out from the doorway closest to my spot on the couch, his bleach blonde hair sticking in every direction and his face dripping confusion.
"What 'da hell?" He mutters sleepily, reaching up to rub his eyes as they adjusted to the dim light coming from the kitchen.
I groan in response, reaching for a nearby pillow to slam against my face. "I don't fucking know." I muffle into it.
"How do we shut her up?" He snaps back at me, probably eager to get back into bed with whatever random girl he brought back with him tonight. Who I can also probably bet passed out before he could kick her out, hence the bitchy attitude.
"I said how the fuck do we shut her up?" He says louder now.
God, Niall does not like his sleep to be interrupted.
I groan again into the pillow but mutter a quick, "I'll handle it." before Niall snaps a 'Thank you' and promptly retreats back into his room, slamming the door behind him.
He can really be such a bitch sometimes.
Somehow I manage to drag my hungover body up off the couch, kicking away the empty whiskey bottle I find laid out by my feet when I stand.
Nowadays, not only were things like alcohol ridiculously expensive, but it also wasn't very easy to get your hands on any in the first place. However, when you were someone like myself who happens to hold a lot of power in this 'new' world, the luxury of downing a bottle of liquor that probably costs more than some people's college education in today's money, was more of an everyday item.
I started to stumble down the short hallway that connected the various rooms in the flat and once I arrived at the door of my room, I could hear the screaming much clearer.
When I had first woken up on the couch, I assumed she was awake and just pointlessly screaming to be let out, even though we both knew that wasn't a possibility. But now, even through the door, it was clear that she was screaming in her sleep and was probably thrashing around violently in my bed.
I could make out her yelling things like, "Stop!" and "Don't leave!", along with various other desperate pleas.
Oh great, not only is she annoying but she's also mentally unstable.
No way was I going in there now.
As I leaned my body up against the door frame and pressed my forehead into the nearby wall, I brought my fist up to connect with the door, sharply banging on it repeatedly to make sure she heard me. I hoped that would shut her up quickly but the yelling continued.
"Fuck me," I muttered, pressing my head harder against the wall.
I banged over and over again on the door, my brain feeling like it was literally knocking against my skull with every hit.
I was too hungover for this shit right now.
Still, no success.
I knew Niall was about to come back out of his room and probably demand I go into the room to shut her up but I had no intention of doing that.
I have no idea why, but ever since I had to drag her limp body up off the ground after drugging her, something about her presence had constantly annoyed the living hell out of me.
I also had no idea why I had let Louis convince me not to kill her.
"CAN YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP?!" I finally bellowed against the wall, at my wits end with the yelling and I continued banging my fist again in one final hit against the door.
Then, silence.
I groaned in relief, head still pounding, as I pulled myself away from the door frame, trying to stumble my way back to the couch it seemed I had made my bed for the night.
Never mind the door to the spare bedroom that sat only a few feet away from the one to my own room.
I wanted to be as far from that crazy bitch as possible.
~~~~~
VICTORIA'S POV:
I barely slept at all last night.
In fact, the only time I had managed to pass out, I had woken up an hour later to my chest heaving and my throat raw from the screaming nightmares. However, it had been the person screaming at me through the door to 'shut up' that had made me keep myself from falling back asleep again, afraid that of what they would do if I did end up yelling again.
I had never missed Sam and her comforting, non-judgemental words about the night terrors more than I had last night.
Eventually, I watched the sun slowly rise up over the dilapidated and half-ruined city-scape through the glass balcony windows from my spot on the couch in the somewhat of a living room where I was laying on my side.
I had opted to try and get some sleep on the small sofa, too freaked out by the bed I had woken up on only hours before. As I sat and soaked in the glow of the faint golden sun that was peeking through the bare window whose curtains I had stripped it of, I couldn't even begin to process everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours.
Or what was possibly going to happen in the next twenty-four.
Were they actually going to end up killing me? And when would it be? Today? Tomorrow? Was keeping me alive after yesterday just some ploy to give me false hope for a few days, only to rip it away in a week? What the hell did they need an 'assistant' for? Or, was my fate ultimately going to be being used for something worse than an assistant?
I hated all of this.
All I wanted to do was lay here on this couch, basking in the sun for the rest of this probably miserable day but I was instead interrupted by even more banging on my door, followed by a quick turn of a key into the door lock. Before I knew it, someone was swinging open the door causing me to jerk back up into a sitting position and come face to face with Harry.
I watched him instantly glance towards the bed, probably searching for me still sleeping in it, but he was met with nothing. I could tell from the back of his head that he panicked for half a second, before darting his head to the couch where I really spent the night.
"Get up." He barked as he avoided making eye contact with me as he shut the door behind him. "I have a job for you."
Slowly, I stood myself up off the couch and began to make my way to the little hallway that separated the two spaces in the room as Harry quickly walked over to his dresser and plucked a few articles of clothing from it. From there, he entered the bathroom where he spent all of thirty seconds doing what I assumed was changing his clothes, since afterward he stepped out in what looked to be a fresher black T-shirt and jeans.
I watched as he ran one of his hands through his hair a few times, trying to fluff back some of the seemingly unmanageable black curls that streamed down and around his face.
God, I fucking hate his guts but he does have nice hair.
"What's the job?" I managed to squeak out, suddenly feeling very nervous the second the question was asked. I hated that this person, who I barely knew a thing about, made me feel afraid for my own life. I loved being in control of things, knowing exactly what was going to happen every second, being able to plan out even my exact reaction in some cases. But right now, I was completely out of my element.
He stares back at me, his face void of any kind of readable emotion. "Fucking told you yesterday." He murmurs as he makes his way closer to me until he's only inches from me. "You're an assistant. So now you gotta do shit."
Then, before I know it his hands are roughly grabbing me by my forearm and dragging me out the door before I can even protest.
~~~~~
As Harry hurriedly dragged me out of the apartment, he quickly thrust a granola bar of some kind into my hands with a sharp, 'Eat this', before proceeding to further drag me outside the door and into the hall.
Once we finally stepped outside the apartment and I heard the satisfying click of the door behind us, I started to try and take in every single detail of my surroundings. If I was soon going to try and escape out of here, I needed to try and identify anything at all that could help do so.
As Harry began to pull me down the hallway towards an elevator located at the end of the hall, I looked around the space and found it to be just as normal as any old apartment building would have been before the zombies came. Dozens of doors just like the one that led to Harry's apartment lined the hall and once Harry had yanked me inside the elevator with him, I found my voice.
"Are all the floors of the building like this one?" I asked him as I walked to the back of the elevator and rested myself against the wall. I watched as Harry took only a single step in and positioned himself right in front of the doors so his back was turned to me.
There was a short pause of silence before he finally uttered a single word, "No." He said.
"No?" I questioned. "What do you mean no? Then what are the other floors like?"
This time he paused and remained silent, refusing to answer my question.
"What are the other floors like?" I repeated.
But before he could utter any kind of response, the elevator came to a slow stop and the doors slid open.
"Follow me." He grumbled before quickly exiting the small space. I took a step to follow him out but the second I was outside, I could feel my breath hitch.
I don't know what I was expecting to see when I stepped out of that elevator, but whatever it was, it wasn't this.
The floor Harry has brought me to is bursting with life. Dozens of people are hurrying around and ducking in and out of side rooms located in the large, open space that I conclude must be the skyscraper's lobby. I look up to find each little room boasts a sign above its doorway that read things like, "GROCERY" and "PHARMACY" and even, "SALON".
In addition to all the bodies moving around, the room is filled with noise. People shouting greetings to one another, people laughing, even people just sitting around having idle conversations.
It almost looks like a mall of sorts. This huge space filled with cafes and shops and luxury places like salons, all brimming with people who look genuinely happy.
I haven't seen anything that looks like this in a long time.
In front of me, Harry has paused for a moment, probably to let me witness the sight before me and give me a second to take it all in.
"Oh my god." I breathe out, only semi-audible to anyone around me. "It looks, I mean it looks," I stammer. "It all looks so normal."
Once again, there is no response from Harry but I see him shift a little.
I continue to keep my eyes glued to the room and am even more shocked when I see a little group of young children go skidding past me, barreling towards what looks like an arcade.
All of this feels like some kind of weird dream.
"What is this place?" I manage to ask him, still in some weird state of shock.
"A camp." He responds shortly.
I lightly scoff. "This isn't like my camp at all," I tell him.
I hear him grunt from his position in front of me and even though I could stand here in this one spot for the next twenty-four hours to take in the complete and utter normalcy of the sight I'm witnessing, that still wouldn't be enough time for me to bask in it. But before I know it, I feel Harry's firm grasp around my upper arm once again and he resumes pulling me towards some unknown destination.
I start to think to myself how crazy he must look right now, practically dragging this random girl across the center of the room, very obviously against her will. And while I expect the other people in this lobby to approach us and maybe stop him, or at the very least shoot us weird stares, they do the opposite and stay silent.
Not a single soul does so much as glance in our direction. Absolutely no one says a single thing to us or pays a single ounce of attention to me whatsoever as he leads me towards one of the many shops in the space, this one adorning a sign that simply reads, "BAR".
Unlike the other storefronts, this one has a smaller entranceway and a bouncer positioned out in front of it. And even though it's barely mid-morning, there's a line of people already waiting outside to be let in by the larger man out front. I wait for Harry to pull me along into the line with the others but instead, the second the bouncer looks up in his direction, he's unclipping the thin velvet barrier and ushering us inside.
"What the hell?" I mutter as Harry pulls me deeper inside the place before I can protest.
If the line out front wasn't indication enough, the bar itself is also packed with people knocking back drinks, even though it can't even be noon yet.
The whole room is darkly lit with the occasional strobe light flickering in and out, illuminating the people dancing about the place.
And the dancing.
I've never seen dancing like this.
People's bodies are practically folded in upon one another, grinding and pulsing themselves against each other to the beat of the blaring music.
The whole scene unfolding in front of me borders on being ridiculous not only in this moment, but also within the current state of the world.
And Harry seems to breeze right past all of it.
He seems to be leading me to the back of the room and all around us, I can hear people calling out for him, sounding mostly like female voices. I even see a girl with wild blonde curls, dressed in a skin-tight red dress, try to practically climb over another group of guys to seemingly get his attention.
But Harry just keeps walking.
I also watch as he curtly nods to some of the bartenders to my right as they focus on serving the demanding customers in front of them. From all angles, people are shouting orders over the counter and tossing little black cards back and forth that I infer are used as some form of currency for the drinks.
I want to turn around and ask nothing short of a million questions to Harry this very second, but I think that even if I was brave enough to try, he would never hear me over the thumping bass. I think you'd have to be practically on top of someone to hear what they're saying.
I've never been in anything like this place, much less a bar before everything in the world changed. I was still in high school when the outbreaks started, well before I turned the legal age to get into a bar to drink. Sure, I had been to a few high school parties where cheap, warm beer had been passed around in little red cups, but nothing like the alcohol sloshing, sex-fest I was currently viewing.
Moments before Harry busts into a door I see a few feet from us, the same girl with the blonde curls comes barreling into us from out of nowhere.
"Harry!" I hear her squeal excitedly, pawing at his shoulders as if to try and pull him into some kind of awkward half-hug that he quickly declines. I watch as he quickly side-steps her and almost pushes her away from him, which she promptly frowns at.
"What's wrong baby?" She coos at him, her lips pouting and hands still outstretched towards him.
He doesn't respond to her, instead turning to face the door once more and fiddle with a keypad next to the entrance I hadn't seen earlier.
"Where have you been?" She asks, clearly trying everything she can think of to get him to speak to her. Her face is starting to get even more worried and Harry doesn't seem to have a care in the world as he focuses all his attention away from her.
I feel like I need to help her somehow. She just looks so defeated.
"Um, Harry?" I shout over the loud music. "This girl is speaking to you."
All at once, Harry's body goes rigid and he turns back to face us. I watch his face shift to pure emotionless and I feel the same hand from before return back to my arm and tighten around it again.
A little too tight.
"Oh my god, THANK YOU!" The girl shouts back at me as her face instantly lights back up into a tight smile. "You are SO sweet! And Harry, as I was saying-," But her words are cut short as her eyes travel to my arm where Harry's hand is wrapped and her face falls again. "Oh." She simply states. "I see you've found a new bitch to play with."
Well, that was not the reaction I was expecting.
My mouth instantly falls open as her eyes narrow in pure disgust. "Slut." She hisses at me and turns toward Harry again. "And fuck you." She hurls at him before turning back around and disappearing into the crowd of people.
Then I hear Harry snort in laughter.
"What the hell was that?" I shout back to him, still in shock over the whole interaction. Once again, his face shows no emotion or any kind of smile, but I could tell by his single quip he found that situation hilarious. "Who was that?"
But he only snorts again.
Then, he hits two buttons behind him and the door finally swings open, revealing another short, dark hallway.
"In," Harry commands as I tentatively take a step inward.
I feel Harry follow in behind me and the second he does, the door we just opened, shuts again and another in front of us opens.
"Move." Harry barks again.
Wow, a man of many words.
The second door immediately dumps us into a massive space, that after a quick look around, I realize that it must be some sort of office. In front of me sits a single desk that has been topped with dozens of piles of papers and an older looking computer. Quickly, I start to realize there are papers everywhere.
Small mountains of them are littered around the space on a few other nearby tables, but they especially begin to stack up around another door located in the back of the room.
"Well," I hear Harry say from behind me. "Get to work."
"What?" I say as I turn to face him.
"Work." He simply states, nodding to the desk with a simple gesture. "Do it."
This man speaks like a fucking caveman I swear to god.
"What are you talking about?" I ask again, extremely confused. "What work do you want me to do?"
He sighs and reaches up to his face to pinch the bridge of his nose like I'm asking him the hardest question in the entire world right now. "All these fucking papers." He starts. "Do with them what you'd do at your shitty hippie camp and get them out of here."
And with that, he's walking away from me and heading towards the door in the back.
"I'll be in my office." He says, leaving me standing at the front desk alone. "Don't bother me unless you do decide you'd rather have a fucking bullet in your skull."
And then he's gone, slamming the door behind him.