Remain Human: Changed

Part 4: Roadside daydreaming

10:45 AM

Driving down the road, it turns off to the left while going down a slope, winding through the small hill for some 250m before you see your first bungalow. Due to its bungalow-standard walls, you can't see much beyond the second floor but driving  further down where the large gate was, you get a view of its front at least: Broken shattered windows encased in decorative iron grid-bars, tall, heavy oak double doors broken open with one of them precariously hanging on its hinges. Potted plants once green and alive now withered, dry and a magnet for insects. A once well-maintained beautiful garden had become a miniature jungle. Bits and pieces of glass, plaster, concrete and marble litter the porch and surrounding area. Where there used to be a small pond now laid a muddy puddle more algae than water, its green surface reflecting the sun in algae-green shades and cracks the size of your foot could be seen from the base of the exterior wall. Looting and the earthquake haven't done this place, and others places any mercy at all. And then there was the ever-present threat of the Pale-virus still stubbornly waiting after all this time for unsuspecting healthy people to infect.

But you're smarter stuff. You're the person to think twice about a particular situation especially after surviving in the woods for 1 and a half years, and while the reckless side of you has still hung on, its lesser now. You certainly won't be going inside a hospital just to get medicine and then subsequently get infected while in there because its a charnel/morgue house. Hell, why would you even get medicine if from the beginning you ensure you don't get sick in the first place? All because you decided to do fuck-all and not take proper care of yourself?? A good number of people learnt that the hard way and a significant portion of them did not live to be careful about their current situation.

You pushed the thoughts back into your head as you continued driving down the slope past the bungalows. Most, if not all of them, had suffered the same fate as the first bungalow, albeit in various states of damage. A few houses you passed had partially burnt down, partially collapsed or remained mostly intact with plastic tarp covering just about every single window. You've taken a peek within all these houses before, especially the sealed houses. Even with supplies running low, people would still prefer starving rather than going pale and dying. Mostly the same thing for the pet-owners too. Even now, you can't get rid of the memory of their covered bodies and the smell of decay from said bodies.

The slope became even and after a 100m of straight  road and scattered garbage, you turned a corner, past a burnt-out delivery van, turned a left, straight again with a gentle upward slope, right before you reached an intersection. Turning a right, you travelled down a straight road for a few minutes before reaching a canal where you turned a corner and drove parallel with it. From there onwards its a mostly straight path towards the Industrial district where the warehouses are usually located, placed near the Shopping district. Turning left mean that you'll be going through more beaten bungalows and around the area which you have cleared prior. Going straight would lead to a dead-end consisting of a half-collapsed house and a half-buried van. 

Can't even get easy driving and traveling options out in the Apocalypse. Those government people should have had at least have had some common sense when the Pale Virus hit.

As you drove on the cracked road, overgrown road, you gave occasional glances towards the other side of the canal. A abandoned warehouse that back then, kept all sorts of wooden supplies and furniture. Now said wooden stuff had made the warehouse its funeral pyre, leaving behind a burnt, vine-covered carcass. But for all its damage, it did give you back some memories that you liked back during the final good year.

Remember night times? Trying to sleep but only getting yourself restless as you listened to the noise outside your 4-room home in your apartment in the city. Hearing the occasional insects chirp their nightsongs from the small garden-playground in front of the apartment as a faint night time ambience for this particular block of apartments is one thing. But the distant passing of cars driving along a tarmac road was something else entirely. To most people, it would have been noisy and frustrating to even try and sleep with these noises. But to you, it was therapeutic. The sound of cars speeding away on asphalt in the distance breaking apart the silence of the night and the occasional chirping of insects was calming. Helped you sleep in a trance-like manner. It was also a constant companion back in college when you were studying. good days then. You kept hearing it from the industrial sector, where the small warehouses were. Despite the distance from there and where you lived, the sounds still helped you regardless.