The Diseased

C.17

Chapter Seventeen


"We made it..." he murmured breathlessly. "We're here."
Greg sat upright in his seat, looking around outside, but finally towards the empty seat next to him, and I instantly knew that he was hoping that Madeline would be here with him, stepping out of the car, a step closer to having their normal lives filled with ease returned back to them.
I wouldn't ever have that-they should have gotten a chance at it, though. They were so close.
As Ben practically ripped the keys out of the ignition and discarded the keys that were now pretty much useless to him, he swung open the door and threw himself dramatically out of the car, falling on his knees and laughing manically, which caused me to laugh hopelessly at the brunette boy, who flung himself out of the vehicle. Instead of turning my attention to him, though, I opened the door to help Greg get out of the car. When Ben saw my actions, he stood and helped his father out of the car, too.
"How are you feeling, Greg?" I asked slowly, staring up at him. He shrugged simply, and stared at the car behind us, as if Madeline was still inside or something.
"So...there's a bunch of cars crammed over there, so I'm pretty sure that's where the school is?" Ben suggested and pointed in the direction of where he was sure the school was.
"Then that's where we'll go." I affirmed, and looked back at Greg, who was staring hopelessly back at the car, his arms out as if he was straining to hold onto something.
I thought about what to say to him-to console him, to ask if he was okay. I knew what he was going through, and I knew just exactly what I wanted everyone to say to me. I wanted someone to just be there for me and let me have their shoulder to cry on, have someone hug me and tell me it was okay when I would awake scared and confused and exhausted when I was waking up by myself from a nightmare in the abandoned preschool. Greg didn't have to go through this, and I wanted to prevent him from experiencing the traumatizing things I had to face and go through. He didn't have Madeline, but he had his son, and he had me. It probably wasn't the best, and more than anything, he wanted his wife, but at least he was going to have some people to comfort him.
"Are you alright, Greg?" I turned around and faced his back. "Do you want something to eat? Or drink? Because there's plenty-"
He shook his head, and that was when I started to hear his weeps.
"No." he mumbled. "I just want Madeline. My wife."
Ben's eyes watered slightly, and he made his way over to his father and hugged him tightly.
Maybe it was just something that happened for me, but whenever Ben had hugged me, I had instantly felt better. Before the apocalypse, he probably did have a long string of ex-girlfriends whose hearts had been broken miserably-or maybe he was just the opposite, a quiet nerd whom read books all day. But for all I knew, he may have been a jock, and the captain of the football team, a stealthy quarterback. Though it was hard to picture him to be a snobbish, self centered boy.
I, however, was a quite the introvert. It was most likely with my history of just being secluded to my family, and not being very social at all that made me so quiet and such a wallflower.
I looked up at Greg, and slowly inhaled, exhaled, and smiled.
"It's okay. I miss my parents. And my brother. It's okay to want-"
"I almost hurt her." He murmured under his breath. "And...and Ben..." he added, looking down at his son, horrified. "This is my punishment, isn't it?" Greg whispered hoarsely, and fell to his knees. "I...I can't, Beth-"
"Greg, no, listen, look, he forgives you. You did not mean it. It's just this apocalypse...it's getting to you. And it's getting to me too, and to Ben, and to everyone." I looked towards Ben, and he nodded immediately.
"Don't you see? We forgive you, Greg, and Madeline did too. She loved you-she still loves you. And she wants to see you make it. She wants to see you find the cure and have a happy life with Ben. Okay?"
He didn't say anything.
Just nodded.

I had seen photos of the red bricked building, standing tall and wide. Academically, my mother had told me that it was a prestigious college to attend. It was also probably one of the most well known, which instantly made me care about my grades more than I did before. I wanted to get into this college, and flaunt and boast to everyone I knew, bragging that I had gotten into Harvard, and they would gawk at how brilliant I was, and how smart I must have been to get into such a school.
I never did, though, because I never graduated.
But now, I was finally going to get in.
Just not in the typical way, and be able to attend classes and that sort of thing, no, I would be getting in and finding a cure to this epidemic.
As we approached the building, it was noticeably different from all the photos I had seen. There was fresh, bright red blood to match the rust colored bricks, and there were hoards and crowds of people, making a very large, noisy racket at the front doors, trying to break them down.
"Try and get push yourself all the way to the front, shove your way through, alright?" Ben ordered to Greg and I, and I nodded, making sure that Greg was still behind us.
I shoved through the crowds of people, all frail and fragile people who were just as starved as we were. Over in one group, I saw multiple people sobbing. I froze in my steps to overhear their conversation.
"Martha...how long did you hide this?" An older male asked calmly, those his eyes read pure despair.
"I'm sorry!" The younger woman shouted, crying and screaming, throwing her hands all over the place frantically. "I didn't want you to kill me! That's your policy, is it not? Someone's bitten, oh! Can't save their life, not even gonna try, so we might as well shoot their brains out, huh Vick?"
He sighed, reaching slowly for his gun.
"There's no way to save you...the infection has most likely already spread throughout your body-"
"Oh god, no! Please, no! Vick, I won't tell, I'll keep quiet-please don't kill me, no!" She wept, trying to escape from the circle of people. But the rest of their group had blocked her in, and two other men were holding her down.
"June, tell him something! Come on...Cassie, please! Make him stop, don't let him-"
I couldn't see the scene very well. But I knew he had shot her. Her crying stopped, and her nervous, frantic movements had silenced, as well.
"Beth, just keep moving," Ben stated, and I blinked out of my state of eavesdropping and not moving at all, and started shoving past people and walking once again. But I couldn't stop overhearing the other conversations from the other various groups of people.
"Koran, the baby...how is it-" an anxious mother asked, but was interrupted by her husband, supposedly, who held his hands on her shoulders.
"We will be fine, Mae. We just need to hope for the best, and bust these stubborn doors down, okay? In fact, you should not move a muscle, and try to relax, so that your water doesn't break when we don't need it to." He finished with a warm smile, and a soft kiss on his wife's forehead before leaving to go to the doors, and help contribute towards the breaking of the doors.
The woman, Mae, caught me staring at her, and she offered me a small smile. Embarrassed from eavesdropping, I kept my head down and continued shoving and walking.
"You were bitten, weren't you?" a voice questioned.
"No!" a shriek responded.
"Then let me see your arm, Jessica."
"Why? You don't trust me?"
"As of now, no. Show me your arm."
The young girl squeaked, and showed him the arm that did not have the large, bloody gash in it.
"Jessica, your other arm-"
She huffed and stuck out her other arm.
"No, but it's not what it looks like. I was bitten by a dog, a Rottweiler. It got me and I was trying to hide it, because I knew people would think it was a Wanderer or something, but Ned-no, stop. I know it looks like a bite but it was that dog, it was that dog! Don't do anything stupid-no! Put that gun down-"
I had no idea how some could just so effortlessly kill their loved ones. Or friends that they had grown close to, even.
"Matt...those people. Got food. Good food. We need...we need to get 'em, jump 'em, get their food." An old, sixty or so year old woman snarled. I looked in her direction, and I was thankful that she wasn't pointing at us and was pointing at this group of four who were proudly flaunting their canned goods, which was rather stupid of them, instead. The woman had an ugly mess of stringy and wirey grey hair, and her body was practically bones with a thin, wrinkly layer of skin over it. It had looked as if she had zero grams of fat on her.
"I see 'em. Stupid folks think they ain't gonna share their stash? Hah!" The man, who looked just like a male version of the extremely slender lady, cackled loudly, and even held his hands together, just like an evil villain would in a cliché horror film, or something of that sort. My parents had always particularly loved old, corny films, whether they were comedic, romantic, or scary.
My parents-
"Mom?" I whispered, almost positive that my mother was just feet in front of me, facing someone who looked just like my father. They were talking, laughing, smiling, care free, just as they had been their whole lives.
Her hair was a lighter shade of golden blonde than it typically was and it was slicked back in a high ponytail, which was odd, because she had always worn her hair down and straight, because she had always complained and whined that if she couldn't perfect a good braid the first time, it was impossible and she couldn't do it. Perhaps my father had put her hair up in a ponytail for her. He said that it was crucial, top secret information that he knew how to style hair in buns and braids, which made me laugh as a child. She adorned large, thick black boots, those like the ones she would wear when she would dress up as one of the Kiss band members, however these were just a tad smaller, and they lacked the extreme high heel and it also didn't have the fake, foam spikes she had thought were hilarious. Equipped with this, she wore an oddly fit jean jacket that looked sort of weird on her, but maybe it was just because she never wore those, no matter how cold it was. She had always claimed that they were what red-necks would wear, and she had always despised 'swamp people'.
My father was there with her, wearing almost the same thing as her, except fit for a male, of course. He wore black, leather boots, yet instead of a jean jacket, he wore a thick black sweater, that was a perfect fit for this sort of weather. I was incredibly jealous of this sweater, and I immediately wanted one like it, or one like Ben's.
I was about to run towards them-I knew it, and Ben knew it. He grabbed my shirt from behind, preventing me from running.
"Stop, Beth, we need to focus-"
"My parents!" I cried, exasperated and pointed madly at the happy couple that was talking calmly, as if this whole apocalypse had never occurred in the first place.
He sighed, almost as if he was accepting the fact that he might lose me, and let go.
I turned around, and before running off towards them, I tried finding them again, but I had lost them from my view. They were gone. I was in utter shock-they were just here.
Or maybe it was just my paranoia, creating something good for once.
Or creating something to fool me, and make me go mad. Raging with anger because my parents whom I adore so much...dead, are now somehow here in Massachusetts and alive. But they aren't. They're dead. Ceased to exist.
I wasn't sure if I would ever come to terms with that, or if I would ever accept that I wouldn't ever, ever see them again in this dimension.
Raged with anger, I didn't bother checking to see if Ben and Greg were behind me. I pushed past and shoved against people with all my might, not bothering to look back and apologize if someone had fallen. It was their own fault for standing in my way.
Ben chased after me, and just as he neared me, he placed his hands on my back, but as if on instinct, I swatted his hand away. These doors were going to open, and they were going too soon. They had to. I wasn't sure what my life was going to end up being like after this apocalypse, but I just needed to know. I desperately needed to. I was so sick of living this nightmare every day, the same thing. For the longest time, it was just waking up in a preschool by myself, and then it was driving in a car and just keeping to myself, not wanting to bother anyone. And now, it would just be about trying to bust these doors down, not stopping for anything. I was so curious, too, to know if a new type of government would form, and if they would just wipe this out of history, as if it never happened and it would never be put into children's textbooks to learn about. Or maybe they wouldn't, because again, they're children, and they wouldn't want to alarm them and make them worry, causing them to think that the Diseased would ever roam the earth again. Little insignificant things would make up such a big difference in the lives of these children, the smallest things.
After ages of pondering random questions like these, I had finally reached the front entrance doors. Men and women, but mostly men, were throwing themselves, throwing rocks, shooting and wasting their bullets.
There were a few cracks, however, in the glass, some large and some small. They were scattered throughout the large Plexiglas doors, and wherever they were, people were designated in that spot, trying to see what they could do to break it down. Some actually thought about it before doing some wild, crazy action, while others relied just on pure luck as they stood back, and then ran, ran as fast as they could into the glass, their plan failing miserably. There was no possible way it could work, though. An easier, a more effective and full proof plan on busting the doors down would obviously be by using a bomb.
I turned around on my heel to see Ben right behind me, and behind him was Greg, who's eyes, I just noticed, were so similar to Ben's. In color, and the way that their purple bags hung under their eyes.
"Okay, why don't we go around asking people if they have bombs and...and we'll trade them for something. For what? For...for food, or for some other weapons. Right?" I confirmed, waiting for the approval of the two.
They both simply nodded, Ben more eager than Greg was.
"We'll meet back over here when we've asked...say...five groups each? I think it'll start to get dark again, we should head back to the car and sleep there."
We were all convinced that was a good idea, so we nodded and went off in our separate directions to ask people and groups if they had anything of the sort related to bombs.
I had chosen to speak to the pregnant woman and her husband who had returned to her. I hadn't remembered, but I was almost sure that their names were Koran and Mae.
"My, my, I thought I had said something funny, for you had kept staring at me, my darling!" She cried with a sort of bohemian accent.
I laughed slightly and shook my head politely, standing closer and bending down to give the husband and wife a formal hand shake.
"No, um, you just seemed very familiar...like my neighbors, you know, before the apocalypse..." I trailed off, chewing on my lip.
"But anyways," I coughed, and smiled understandingly. "You do know how everyone's trying to break down these doors?"
"Of course."
"My friends and I, see, we think that a bomb would be the best to break the doors down-"
The husband, Koran, laughed immediately, cutting me off.
"Darling, don't you think we've tried that tactic? Anyways, it didn't do much damage. Maybe it was the sort of bomb that we used, but it was our last one. We're not sure if any newcomers have come baring bombs, but if they have...we're sure to be on the lookout. Because though the bomb we used was small, it was the thing that caused those cracks in the doors, if you look close enough. We just need something stronger."
I pursed my lips and nodded. "Alright...I'll go ask around. Thank you so much for your help!" I thanked them, and debated on which group to go to next. Without a doubt, I knew that I wanted to avoid the two that looked like the picture perfect image of a poor country, which was struggling with hunger.
As I moved on, I saw Ben speaking kindly to those people I had first listened in on, the one with the man named Vick who shot the girl who just wanted to live. But I suppose he did have a point. There was no chance in her surviving. Death was the only option, and he had given her the less painful choice. Actually, it was the most gracious thing he could have done, instead of letting her die and then feel this awful, horrible pain and then she would reanimate into a living, moving corpse.
Suddenly, I was fond of Vick.
As I was unintentionally walking and roaming around, lost in my own thoughts, I accidentally collided with two burly men, a nasty snarl on their faces.
"Watch where you're going-"
I immediately skidded away, knowing that they could instantly hurt me without even trying very hard. However, just as I was getting away, one of the men grabbed the collar of my shirt from behind, preventing me from escaping.
"Are you gonna say sorry?" He sneered.
I took a deep breath, and shook my head, signaling that no, I would not say I'm sorry for something that wasn't even partly my fault.
"Well, then, I think we need to teach this little girl some manners-"
"I was just going to ask if you had a bomb?" I asked quickly, probably not slow enough for the big, baffling idiots to understand anything I said. Which was actually stupid of me-it would only make them angrier.
"Excuse me?" The other one shouted, gross and nasty saliva flying from his mouth to my face, causing me to cringe.
"Do you have," I started, making sure the morons heard me. "a bomb?"
The man let go of my collar, allowing me to turn around and face them.
"Why would you need a bomb?"
I pointed towards the front doors eagerly. "See, this couple said that they had tried using a bomb to blow up the doors and get in, but it was small, so it didn't cause much damage. But it did make those cracks. So if we get a bunch of bombs, or just a big one, we can break those doors...hopefully."
They both looked at each other, and then shook their heads.
"No. It's useless."
"Then why do you stay here, if you're so negative towards this whole thing?" I frowned, with my eyebrows furrowed.
The man who had held me by my collar pinched the bridge of his nose, sighed, and looked down at me.
"My sister was in here when it started...in her dorm. I..." He paused, as if he was trying to find the right words. "If this does end up working...I just want to know if she survived."
After I walked off, I never saw him again. Thinking it over, I wasn't sure if I wanted to, but I was just curious to know if he had ended up finding his sister.
I wandered off, searching for people that didn't seem worthy of hurting me, but at the same time, people that looked like they would have bombs. Eventually I found myself speaking to the new people that had came, those who were proudly boasting all of their supplies and materials. Those who the two frail people wanted so desperately so attack.
"Excuse me, sir-" I started, but the man cut me off, with a smirk.
"No, little girl, we don't want to trade with you, or just give away our supplies. Please go tell your mommy and your daddy that we said we're not looking to trade with anyone, and that sending a little girl wasn't going to make me feel bad. So, please don't come back and talk to us. We're far too busy to deal with these other folks who want our things, you know. Maybe you can ask someone else."
I immediately hated this man.
And as much as I wanted to tell him off, yell at him for being so inconsiderate when people are here starving, and scream at him for being so cold and heartless, because what if my parents never, ever made it to Massachusetts? What if they died before they got a chance to realize what was happening to the world? And here this man was, drunk in his own perfect image of wealth, boasting and bragging about a can of peas or something of that sort. It would be his own fault when he dies, when they kill him, when they take everything he had.

Incredibly tired from being denied from so many other people, I trudged back over to the front doors, waiting for Greg and Ben to come back. I sank to the floor, hugging my knees and shutting my eyes faintly, blinking often so that I would know if they arrived.
I turned my head and faced the thick glass doors, wondering if this whole thing was a ploy, a trick to get innocent people to believe in something for their own good.
Whether if it was or if it wasn't, I had decided to believe that we would find a cure, and everything would end up being fine.

"How could one fall asleep right here, especially with all this noise around her?"
I groaned and looked up to find Ben smiling down at me. I returned the smile, though it was obvious that I was incredibly tired. I wearily stood up, using the hand he had offered to help, and looked around.
"Where's Greg?"
He pointed to where he had parked the car. "He had already started to go back to the car. I think he's hungry. I am too, though, so I wouldn't blame him. Do you want to go?"
I didn't respond immediately-I was still so tired and practically half asleep, so it took me a while to process what he had said. But when I finally did, I nodded as eagerly as a tired person could, and we walked hand in hand, shoving people aside to get out of the crowd. When we were out of the crowds, we walked more calmly together, slower and steadier.
When we approached the car, Greg was sitting in the open trunk, rummaging through the crates. Finally, he pulled out a dinner-in-a-bag, waving it to Ben and I.
"There's a pot-we can make a fire and boil water." He explained simply, causing Ben to break out in a wide smile.
"That's a great idea-I'll start building the fire. Beth?"
I shook my head, clasping my hand over my mouth to cover my yawn.
"Tired."
He frowned, tugging my hand like a little child. "Come on, how long has it been since you've had an actual dinner instead of a granola bar? It can be like a celebratory dinner, you know, for finally making it to Massachusetts." He grinned.
I wasn't at all in the mood to start preparing a fire so that we could eat dinner, but it seemed to make Ben so happy if I did so, so I obliged.
After I stifled a 'fine', and 'only if you get the supplies', he eagerly nodded and raced to find as many sticks as he could. He looked like a dog, fetching sticks.
I smiled to myself, amused, as I searched through the crates to see if there were any supplies for starting fires like a match, a lighter or a fire-starter. When I finally came across a small lighter with just enough fluid, Ben came racing over, with loads of sticks in his arms. We arranged them in a sort of upside down ice cream cone shape so that the fire was lit inside, and so that someone could easily hold the pot above the fire, sort of like a teepee. Greg had volunteered to hold it, which Ben and I were both fine with.
Ben poured in the contents in the bag, after he had poured about two bottles of lukewarm water in. I had read it briefly-"Chicken Alfredo and Fettuccini". I remember my mother saying that if one food was her weakness, it would be that. Being a typical eight year old or somewhere around that age, I would say that pizza or Cheetos were my weakness.
After we had watched it sizzle in the boiling pot of water for countless minutes, until Greg had claimed it was done. We didn't have anything to place the food on, so we all directly ate out of the pot with individual wrapped sporks that smelt of cardboard that I had found in the cafeteria of the school that I had somehow thought would be useful someday.
It was absolutely delicious.
It was obviously no five star dish, but it was something other than a granola bar, so it was heavenly. I was instantly delighted that Ben had insisted on making a celebratory dinner of sorts.
Once we had all finished shoveling down multiple scoops of the food into our mouths, the pot was pretty much scraped clean, and we were far too tired from our meal to find a lake or something to clean it in, so we simply left it alone in the trunk of the car. Greg slammed it shut as Ben and I climbed into the car to find a somewhat comfortable position to sleep in. We had later found it in each other's arms.
He kissed the top of my head as I pulled a blanket out from underneath a car seat that smelt of cigarette smoke and alcohol, but I tried to ignore it. I would rather smell that foulness than freeze to death in this car. I pulled it up over my shoulders, making sure to cover Ben as well so that he didn't freeze. Greg slept in the front seat with a blanket of his own, with the seat reclined back as far as it could go.
As I stared outside the window at the dark blue sky, stars twinkling brightly, I had decided to count each one individually. My mother had had her methods of falling asleep, which was singing every Kiss song she knew in her head by memory until she deemed herself tired and fell asleep. My father would simply count sheep, in which my mother had shouted at him for, saying that it was too boring. My father had said that that was the point-if it was boring, he would get tired, and fall asleep. After that discussion, she thought it was actually sort of clever, but she never admitted it to him. Aaron would actually just watch cartoons on TV, due to the fact that he had his own TV in his room. He thought this was just such a great honor and an extremely big privilege, being that all his friends apparently didn't have their own TV in their rooms, so he used it as much as he could to prove to my parents how much he loved it.
I would try all of these techniques, but none worked as great as mine, for me, personally. Counting the stars until my eyes grew weak and heavy, and I'd instantly fall asleep.
As I did so, using my favored technique to fall asleep, Ben had started twiddling my hair between his fingers, playing with it. Even though it fell just a few inches below my shoulders, it was still just long enough for him to play with. It was relaxing in a way, even, his actions. It had helped me and allowed me to fall asleep much faster than I had thought I would. I had only gotten around to thirty stars when my eyelids started to fall eventually, I drifted off to sleep.

[ there's going to be one more chapter, and then an epilogue, just in case you were wondering. thank you for reading! ]
I apologize in advance if you're looking for a Walking Dead fanfic. Just so you know, I adore theWalking Dead, but none of the characters are in my novel. thank you for understanding & enjoy!x