Two Roses On The Garden Wall

Two

July 5th, 2025, Day 701

"Where is everyone?"

Bad and Skeppy both looked around the house, checking everything and everywhere. Twice. But there was nothing, no one. Bad felt anxiety building up inside him. They were gone for two days and disaster had struck. Now every possibility was rampaging through his mind: what if they got killed by a group of raiders? 

What if they saw the flare and left the weaker unguarded and were killed by the zombies? 

Had they been abducted by aliens?! 

Bad wouldn't know, unless he somehow found them. Then he remembered he wasn't completely alone. He still had Skeppy.

Skeppy stood next to him, also looking worried. He was silently scanning the area, as if their friends would just pop up out of nowhere and everything would be fine. This had to be a cruel joke, right?

"Bad, no one's here... why aren't they here?!" Skeppy was blatantly in distress, but Bad couldn't do anything to calm him. He finally took the diamond hybrid's hand and led him to the corner Skeppy grew roses in. 

To Skeppy's horror, only two roses were left standing tall and proud. The rest were all wilting or dead. 

"Great. Just great! The rest of the Islanders disappeared, I'm stuck with you of all people, and my roses are all dead! Great!" Skeppy threw his arms up in exasperation, then put his hands over his eyes with a groan.

Bad looked at the roses and sighed. He hoped that wasn't an sign. "Skeppy, they're just flowers. We have potentially dead people to worry about right now." Bad reminded Skeppy. Skeppy whipped around and glared. 

"Just flowers?! You've never cared for anything since this started! Of course you'd say they're just flowers." Skeppy looked upset and hurt. He was making a bigger deal out of this than there needed be, but he was scared. 

His family was gone. They were gone, and he couldn't do a damn thing about it.

Bad was silent, just standing there in the darkness. The moon cast eerie shadows over the island, and it streamed through the leaves of the maple tree above them, speckling the little rose garden with it's sliver light, and showing clearly each of their expressions.

Bad felt hurt after Skeppy's outburst, like the diamond hybrid had dug a knife into his heart and twisted it. His comrade was his only friend left now that the other Islanders had disappeared into thin air, seemingly spirited away by some force beyond their comprehension. 

Skeppy, on the other hand, was still seeing red. The flame of anger and fear burned brightly in his eyes and even more so in his heart. 

His hand was curled into a fist, as he stood next to the roses, the moonlight on his face giving the bright red of anger a bit of a mellower look, which was good for poor Bad, who knew that those words held some sort of truth to them.

"Skeppy, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to sound insensitive-"

"Save it. You just don't want me to be mad."

Skeppy cut him off, walking briskly past Bad and down to the docks. The demon felt a spark of anger. Why wouldn't Skeppy take his apology? He followed Skeppy down the hill and to the dock, and reached out to put his hand on Skeppy's shoulder. 

The diamond hybrid shrugged him off, glaring. The whole interaction was bathed in red anger and fear, swirling together into a terrible combination of two of the worst emotions to have when you're in the zombie apocalypse.