Sempiternal: • Contaminated • || BOOK 3#

37. Contamination increasing

"In total we have only eight people who passed away," Namjoon announces loudly to the entire auditorium.

Gathered there for having been the communal dormitory for the day and being able to efficiently check for any eventuality. Being dangerous to be in a building that could have been weakened because of the fire. Jin hits his fingernail on the edge of his finger, again and again, anxious. Jin wouldn't want Namjoon to talk. He has a bad feeling.

"Four of them from gunshots, two of them from suffocation and being consumed by death despite trying to make it; finally there are two people, deceased by fire" Namjoon counts with his hands behind his back. "Eight people who died from a can of meat or a can of peaches... We also have injured dogs, birds in critical condition, but... Eight dead, just from cans with shit in them."

Yoongi looks alternately at him and the people. They look scared and nervous. They expect Namjoon to say that everything is okay, that he will give them peace and they can return to the normalcy they have. This is not the case. Never this time.

"If you all think everything is okay now, that the danger passed" He laughs wryly. "No, it really didn't. Eventually they will come again. Who knows whether or not they will repeat the technique" Jin mumbles his name, Namjoon pays no attention to him. "They stole food from us, clothes too; miraculously they didn't get to the infirmary and kill those who were there. They would have. They clearly don't care. So, no, we're not safe and we never will be."

"Namjoon!"

"Our only alternative is to attack" There is surprise among the people. Jungkook drums his fingers on his back. "Revenge, retribution, simple desire. I don't care how they take it, how I need them to take it: we must do it because we have no one" He opens his arms and drops them. "No one is going to defend us, no one is going to help us, no one is going to stop it from happening again but ourselves" he repeats in a vibrant, hard voice, as if holding back anger or the urge to say worse things that will perhaps turn everyone against him. "So, if we intend to live, to have a space to be in until the evacuations begin, we have no choice but to defend us tooth and nail. That's the reality and regardless of whether they don't like it, that's what we have to do."

Namjoon walks down from there, leaving with his chin up and pushing away anyone who might be in the way. Too constipated and tense to know what to respond to what felt like an attack from Namjoon. A sort of threat to what they will die if they don't dare to be a little more like those who killed eight people here and took their things.

However, it is very obvious to Jin that they are watched for a few more seconds. Mixed with fear, anxiety and the shock of the moment, they are angry. They are fed up with feeling tiny and that everyone is ignoring them and attacking them at will. They want to be strong, they want to prove the hard way that they can be.

They allow contamination to enter and spread so fast that they don't even care about the consequences it might bring.

~ * * * ~

"They go out all the time to monitor the areas they marked. Thus, they are less in their group at that time. By starting several fires around them and crashing several cars into the barriers they have we'll be able to get in, take their stuff, take out Twice and also finish them off."

"Finish them off?" Jin repeats. Namjoon as soon as he saw them enter the barely opened meeting room started spouting a verbiage of options to attack. Jungkook sat leaning back from the table, Taehyung to one side; Yoongi standing a scant three feet away from the table; Hoseok more secluded with his legs pulled up on a couch and Jin dare not be quite close.

Namjoon's hands are streaked with dirt, his face and hair full of sweat, smoke and grime; even his clothes are dirty. It was he who started making the graves for those who passed away and Jin and others helped him soon after. Most of them dozed at least for a while. Namjoon hasn't slept a wink since the fire at twelve o'clock at night and right now it's six o'clock in the evening.