A Day In September - BTS Zombie au

1. The Bright Bleak

Blegh.

How boring.

Mara can't seem to choose where to go scavenging next, so she's decided to just stare out the window of her floor in the hopes that she'd make up her mind. Daylight broke about an hour ago, and the birds that once welcomed the sun with an airy song, were deadly quiet. Only the sound of the rustling trash that the wind carried could be heard. Swirls of newspaper and sometimes leaves, could be seen twirling in the hot of the concrete floor to the wind that blew seldom. Mara was currently entertained by it, her derailed train of thought far too gone to get back on track.

Responsibilities were heavy baggage for Mara to carry. Though she was already an adult, she'd missed out on too much in the two years post-outbreak to say that she really learned much about being a grown up. A grown up in the last era, that is. Responsibilities and adulthood had been a part of survival after the outbreak as well, but now it meant literal life-or-death survival. You didn't strive for success in the business world or in Hollywood. Hollywood didn't exist anymore, nor did the old business world. There was a whole new offer on the table, ready to gamble, not with money but with life. This new era brought along new business, new responsibilities.

Mara learned that the hard way.

You had to grow up faster if you wanted to live to see another bleak day. Despite the dull life that Mara lived, for some odd reason, she really wanted to live.

She'd ask herself if it was incredibly naive of her to believe that after the chaos that'd ensued, she still find her parents alive.

'Tis better to have a sliver of hope than be sucked dry of it, she'd say, hoping to one day feel her mom's embrace once more.

Maybe just one last time and I'll be okay.

I could die right after, be ripped to shreds, or die at the hands of bad people, but I'd still die with a smile on my face, knowing I'd been granted my last wish.

It was still unknown what might have happened to them, and there was no telling if their faces would surface amidst the crowds of decaying, rotten corpses that mindlessly walked. Mara's stomach would drop every time she thought of that. It was the casual slip of negative thoughts that Mara always tried to block out.

So she liked to assume her parents were alive, because nobody wants to assume their parents are dead.

There were some worrying times in which Mara would have nightmares of blurred faces that reached for her. They'd call her name in dragged-out moans and plead for her to come closer. The faces were unrecognizable, yet the familiarity brought tears to her eyes at the moment of wake. She'd hoped to see her parents before she forgot what they looked like. That was her fear: a fear of forgetting those who've kept you grounded and full of hope.

Again, Mara chose blind optimism.

Without it, Mara could no longer tread on the seemingly endless trail of uncertainty.

The days were boring-as always-and in the long stretch of hours gone by like days, Mara found herself sitting on the same rickety chair she'd found in her recent safe spot. It didn't provide as much comfort as it did splinters, but it was a necessary to keep her at the perfect height for vigilance.

At a building on the fifth floor of what once used to be (from what Mara can gather) an insurance agency, Mara sat by the window. It bore a thin glass that'd been partially fogged by dirt and mold. It was a window that was fairly intact, considering most of the windows in the vicinity were blown to bits after car explosions and military bombings and what not. The history of it didn't matter, as long as it gave Mara partial protection. It had a nifty latch that she could lift, mobilizing the bottom half of the window for the air to breeze the room a little. It'd often get too stuffy in the room, and Mara appreciated a little bit of air to breathe.