Let This Never End

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

The sun was beginning to set and I hadn't reached the end of the town yet. This worried me, because I knew I would have to find a place to hide before it got dark. When it did, I would be no longer alone. The streets I walked across all day would become crowded with Rewinds.

Rewinds were the people who had been taken over by the Disease again after their death. They were called that, because when they died, it was like someone pressed the rewind button and skipped back to before the part where they died, as if it never happened. Only it did.

The name was still from back in the days everyone just thought the Disease was cured, that all their problems were solved and everyone could just go back to their lives of paying taxes and making sure global warming kept on going.

I could see the sun lowering behind the trees in front of me, turning the buildings into black silhouettes. The end of the city was still too far away. I would have to stay here for the night.

I cringed at the thought.

Rewinds had an instinctive distaste for daylight. They were able to endure it perfectly fine (scientists had tested that), they just didn't like it. They hid in dark places like basements and abandoned houses until the sun went down, and then their party started.

Of course, I didn't know if there were any Rewinds hiding in this particular part of the city. Some cities actually were completely empty, you just couldn't tell the difference between tenantless ones or ones inhabited with resurrected zombies.

I looked around and saw a house that seemed fairly untouched. It stood in between a hardware store and an empty building that seemed to have collapsed in on itself during the passing of the years. Pale blue curtains hung behind the glass of the two windows - which weren't broken, surprisingly.

The front door swung open easily, which worried me. The easier I got in, the easier it would be for Rewinds to accidentally stumble into my hiding place.

The old-fashioned house was messy and had obviously already been scavenged, but there was still some furniture left. The light that was coming through the curtains began to falter.

I walked over to a little wooden cabinet and shoved it through the wooden doorframe separating the living room from the hallway. Putting my back against it, I pushed it all the way across the old, dusty carpet, until the small but sturdy structure was against the front door. Please, I thought to myself. Let this keep them out.

I returned to the living room and found two lonely sofa cushions. The sofa itself was – weirdly – nowhere in sight. I wasn't lucky enough to find a blanket anywhere.

I didn't dare to go upstairs to the bedroom. The wooden stairway missed a few steps, and the way the slightest breeze made the whole house screech, made the decision not to go up there even easier.

I sat down on my make-shift bed and started undressing.

First, my new shoes. Careful not to damage my new, precious babies, I took them off and placed them next to me. My grey T-shirt was almost caked to my back with the 3-day old sweat. I stripped down to only my underwear and lay down on my back, staring at the ceiling.

The noises would come.

They hadn't started yet, but I knew they would come soon. Unless this town really was abandoned, but it seemed unlikely to me since every other town I'd been to before hadn't been, either.