Claustrophobic | Skephalo

Just Reborn

Zak

After leaving the little red house, Zak really began to get nervous about returning to his old home. He left it after his sister turned, because it was too painful to see things like her bedroom, or the couch they would sit on, or even the kitchen table where their whole family used to sit together. Zak couldn't even think about his family half the time, unless it was in his dreams. The losses just made him feel so empty that it was better for him to avoid it and suppress his old memories completely.

He's an entirely different person now than he was back then before the zombies came, and Zak was afraid returning home would bring out the self he had been running from this whole time.

"How long have we been walking?" Darryl asks, bending down to tie his shoe. Dust coated the laces, making him sneeze.

"Only an hour or two. You're tired already?" Zak teases.

"No!" Darryl crosses his arms defensively. "I just want to know how far away we are."

"I told you it would take at least a few days to get there. I lived kind of far from the city."

"That's fine. Thanks for offering your place up. I don't know where else we could have made it to even that quickly."

Zak scratches the back of his neck. "Yeah, it's no big deal."

It's a huge deal.

The visage of peacefulness on Darryl's face made it impossible for Zak to express his concerns. He didn't want to disappoint his friend.

So they kept walking, usually walking through the street in the sun, but sometimes taking short breaks in the shade. Zak was always alert and on the lookout for any zombies, as he found out from his time in the elevator, he had a keen instinct for hearing the undead before they were in sight range.

As the hours went by, the city became less and less condensed, buildings became more scattered, and lone trees began to turn into small woods. Brown dust still coated everything around them, but it was not as heavyset as it was in the city.

While walking, Zak and Darryl talked a little bit about their lives before and during the apocalypse. They found a bunch of things they had in common, like the fact that both of them had dogs, or that the both of them graduated from high school. Zak never really stopped to think about his old life before, and how even things that he thought he hated, like homework, could play such an important role of shaping who he became. The smallest things, he found, made the biggest impact.

"Do you want to stop for the night? Set up a camp?" Zak asks.

Darryl shrugged. "We can keep going until it gets dark if you want. The faster we get there, the better, right?"

"Okay, yeah."

"Unless you want to stop?" Darryl raises an eyebrow at his friend suspiciously.

"What?" Zak questions.

"You've been acting weird all day."

"No I haven't!"

"I've known you long enough to know when something's wrong. C'mon, just tell me. Is it the fact that we're going to your old house? The Skeletons almost killing us? The zombie that you killed?"

He's only known me for like, a week.

"Jesus, Darryl. You don't need to bring up everything I'm stressed about!"

Darryl frowns. "I'm serious, Zak."

"I'm serious too. Everything is fine. We should keep moving."

"Fine."

They kept walking.

Oh god, I can feel the tension. Can he feel it too? I should say something. Maybe tell a joke? No—

Darryl was the one who spoke first. "Zak, do you know what month it is?"

Zak was caught completely off guard. "W-what?"

"Do you know what month it is?" He repeated.

"Um... No, I don't. I guess I stopped counting."

"Isn't that so crazy? How our entire lives used to revolve around this... Concept of time? And now that it's finally gone we realize that it's completely unnecessary? Sure, it's helpful, but we really don't need it, do we?"

"That came out of nowhere."

"Sorry, I was just thinking about my supply drops with the Skeletons, and how I always had to leave at the worst times," Darryl chuckles lightly.

"Well, I guess you're right. We can just live by our own clock now." Zak elbows Darryl playfully, completely shattering any tension that was previously there.

"Y'know? That sounds really nice."

"Before the apocalypse I would sleep all day and stay up all night. I was basically nocturnal," Zak says.

Darryl nods his head. "Me too. I remember some nights I wouldn't go to bed until the sun started to come up."

"Yeah. I kind of wish I had seen the world a little more before it was destroyed."

"Don't say that! Look all around, Zak. The plants still grow, the sun still shines, we're still alive... So I don't think it was destroyed, maybe just... Reborn."

They didn't talk much after that, the sound of their feet scraping across the pavement echoing off the empty walls was loud enough for Zak.

Not destroyed, just reborn.

He glances at Darryl, who was squinting to see up ahead.

And we're lucky enough to live through it.

Maybe going home won't be so bad, since Darryl is with me. Maybe I'm worrying for nothing. It'll be just like old times, when I would bring a friend from school over to play basketball or work on a project or something. And then they stay overnight and we would both wake up at three in the morning to George Lopez playing on the TV.

Yeah, it'll be like that.

As the two boys finally stepped outside the city borders, Zak turned to look back one more time at his shelter for the past year. He never would have thought that he would meet someone else out there in the crazy mess of a world he was living in, much less find himself getting so close to them.

There was still a few days ahead of them in their trip, but it would go by much faster now that there was less of a chance of being ambushed by zombies or Skeletons.

Darryl put a hand on Zak's shoulder, pulling him along a little. "Come on Zak, let's go home."