The Flares

That Poor Frightened Bastard

Sometimes I have to remind myself who I am because there's nobody else to do it. Nobody to remind me that I'm a little obnoxious, or messy and lazy, to get annoyed with how moody I could get sometimes for no reason other than wanting a bit of attention from my frantic parents. Sometimes I repeatedly remind myself of my own name because I'm so afraid of losing sight of who I am.

Jasper. Dubious. Jasper? Hopeful. Jasper! And I'm finally reminded of who I am, and just how insane I've become.

I managed to clean my baseball bat thoroughly, and reminded myself to stock up on wet wipes. Hopefully ones with a lemony scent. Cleaning semi-dried blood off of a baseball bat isn't as water conserving as imagined, but I'm glad I did it.

If I forget about the fact that these ravenous, dangerous creatures were once people, I feel less guilty about killing them. But I can't. And I don't. By my standards, I'm fairly normal, and no normal person should ever have to get used to the idea of killing someone else. I don't know if they're still there inside, trapped behind thick layers of hatred for non-infected people. When I bash my bat into the sickly face of the infected, are they secretly pleading with me not to from behind those hollow black sockets?

I was alone, and left to my own assumptions about how things worked in the new world. I wish I had a purpose, like knowing that this was all to blame on the people in charge so that I could storm into their castles, guns blazing, and stop them from destroying the world, but as far as I know they're probably dead too. Or hiding. Too afraid to face the world they once corruptly stole from, they hide away in bunkers and wait for the countdown to come to an end as they waste away. I was on a trip down a one way street that lead to a dead end, and each inch I move is another step that I can't go back. And if there's no way out, and a very dim ending, you might as well make sure that the ride is the best ever.

My calves burned intensely from my constant movement along the burning asphalt and I decided to take a break. My skin was really pale before the flares began, now I looked terribly bronze, and had tan lines in the worst possible places.

I found a gas station and decided it would be as good a place as any to rest for five minutes. I could probably stock up on some supplies. The mechanical sliding doors stood closed, and the glass panels unaffected by any of the tremors. I was going to have trouble getting in, but felt at ease knowing that there were no infected in here as well. I placed my backpack on to the floor and shuffled through it for a hunting knife, which I prodded between the doors and twisted to get a gap between them. Once I had an inch of space, I was able to get the doors open.

The dusty smell punched me in the face as I entered, followed by the smell of rotten food. It was dark inside, but illuminated just enough for me to see what I was doing. The shelves were untouched, though most of the items had gone bad by this point. I raised a bag of gummy bears, but it felt like squeezing jelly between your fingers. Melted together. The ice cream display gave a sour smell, and I shut the panels hoping to contain the odour. I found some hard candy which seemed to be alright, as well as some twizzlers. No canned foods though. Looters are a plague, man.

I was happy with the drinks. Most of the shelves were empty, though it was mostly sodas missing, which I was alright with. I opened the display and remembered a time when I was hit with the cool air that was stored inside. The dusty smell intensified instead. I took ten bottles of water to stuff into my pack, as well as a warm coke for now, then I left my pack and bat at the counter and hopped onto it to sit.

I took a sip from the warm beverage. The taste was unappealing. The warm coke just seemed to sit in my mouth until I forced it down. It wasn't cool in the store, but it beat trudging along the highway outside. Looking out through the murky glass window, I could actually see the heat rising from the ground in wavy strokes until they dispersed into the air.

Following the heat was the silhouette of a person running along the road. It took me a while to register that it was a person and not an infected because this person hadn't almost tripped yet, and I hopped off the counter to the glass panel, and began banging on it.

"Hey, over here!" I screamed frantically, "Hey! I'm over here." The person didn't even turn once as they continued down the highway. I rushed to grab my backpack, putting it on in a rush as I grabbed the bat and ran towards the front doors.

The highway just outside lead towards a small cluster of buildings. High structures obscured my view, giving fragments of shade as I rushed past in my efforts to find this mystery runner. The buildings became more closely packed as I rushed through, enough so that not any sunlight could seep through, immersing the space into a cool darkness. The ground was damp with small puddles that struggled to evaporate.

I stopped when the person came into view in the distance, and my mystery runner had come to a grinding halt across a large pool of murky water, with moss growing around the edges and vines growing up the buildings that surrounded it. I rushed to one edge of the body of water as the person, now identified as a male, stood there looking at me. I could see him, and he me, and I saw the relief on his face at my presence. I wanted to scream out for him to stay there, and my mouth opened to form the words, but nothing sounded because deep down, I was terrified of attracting infected.

He took a few steps towards the edge of the pool, but then he paused. His look of relief turned to horror, and I squinted curiously at him before I realised what he might be afraid of. I turned on my heels and found two Infected rushing towards me. I let my backpack fall from my shoulders onto the ground with a loud thud, and tightened my grip around the handle of the bat.

The creature ran awkwardly, like it had been limping towards me, while the closer one rushed with an unnerving speed. I let the creature get closer, counting down in my head before swinging the bat to its head. I didn't have time to finish it before I rushed towards the second one, repeating the action. I hit it in its neck, and let the crack speak volumes for the damage I had done. Before the first one could get back up, I returned the baseball bat to its skull and watched as it caved in with a crunch and spurts of blood, and I did the same to the second one. I turned around, triumphant and proud of my accomplishment. I had proven to whoever this stranger was that I was safe to be around. That I could hold my own with the infected, but I was sadly disappointed. Whoever he was, he was long gone by now.

He had probably assumed that I wouldn't stand a chance against the creatures and ran before they killed me and turned their attention to him. I was a little mad at him for assuming that, and for leaving me alone, but I was especially mad at him for the hope he had given me.

The hope of not being alone. The hope of hearing another person's voice. The hope that even though our deaths were quickly and inevitably approaching and there was no purpose to survival, I wouldn't mind it because I had someone to share the end with. I now hated him. That poor scared bastard. Next time I'll run and let you deal with them, whoever the hell you are.

I let out a breath of rage, then turned to take out my frustration on the skulls of the infected. Ten head bashes and a loud scream of anguish later, I sat on the edge of the broken earth that housed the dirty water, with my bat clean and my backpack at my side, feeling a little better than earlier.

Despite my anger, I was happy that I had come across the mystery runner. It didn't kill my hope that he ran away from me faster than Kim Kardashian left that baseball husband, it ignited something new in me. If that terrified guy could survive on his own, surely there was someone out there capable of keeping themselves alive.

As I sat there on the edge of a pool of dirty water with two dead, disfigured infected lying in a bloody mess behind me, even though I felt lonely, I knew I wasn't truly alone.