THE INFECTED: PART 8

Hello again, I must address this as it doesn't pertain to the prompt at all again. Well, maybe a little but I just wanted to get this up on my profile as well, once again, language warning, enjoy part 8!

                                THE INFECTED PART 8

                                                   NOW…

“Oh god, stay with me, please! Stay with me. You can’t do this! Please, I can’t lose you!” I say, tears rolling down my face.

I put pressure on the wound but it’s no use, the blood is just rushing out through my fingers.

“What am I going to do!? Oh god.” The sound of choking is echoing through the dark, cold woods.

“Do you have a community? Where is it? Do you have a Doctor there?” The man kneels down beside me trying to help me put pressure on the wound.

“It’s too far! We won’t make it.” I say.

“I have a truck. We can get him there. You drive, I’ll keep pressure on the wound in the back seat and just get us to your community. We can make it, we just have to go now!” He says as he pushes harder on the wound.

I nod.

As we are running through the woods, all I can hear is choking, coughing, the sounds of pain. We make it to the mans truck, we load up, me in the drivers seat, him in the back applying pressure just like he said.

“The keys are in the-yeah, you got them!”

The keys fall into my lap from the visor, I start the truck which howls to life, headlights illuminating the previously dark woods, I follow the dirt path out onto a nearby road and floor it to Salvation.

                                                    THEN…

Abigail opens the gate for me and I step through the opening, my feet can barely lift as I drag them across the pavement. I’m exhausted, inside and out. Antonio meets me with a hug and a bottle of water.

“Sarah…did you find anything this time?” He asks.

I shake my head no.

“Nothing, I went further out than we have before and still couldn’t find anything. It’s almost like he never existed. I just wish that…the last time we spoke…”

“Shhh, it’s okay. Let’s go home. Get you cleaned up and you can lie down for a minute, take a break.” Antonio says with a smile while checking for bites around my black ooze soaked clothes.

“Antonio, I can’t. I have to get back out there. Michael could be in trouble and needs us. I have to-“

Antonio looks down and then to Abigail.

“What?” I ask.

“We wanted to have a talk with you but I wanted to wait until we could let you rest for a little while before we brought this up. It’s about Michael.”

“What? Is he back? Have you heard something on the radio?” I ask.

“No, nothing like that. Sarah….we think it’s time to-“

“No.”

“Sarah, it’s time to give up. He’s dead and we all know it.” Abigail interrupts.

I turn around and look her in the eyes, silent for just a moment before I punch her in the jaw, she falls to the ground.

“You don’t get to decide that, he isn’t dead! This is Michael you’re talking about, he may be just some old man to most of you, but he was my friend, he was the one that helped me prepare for this world. I didn’t know ANYTHING until I met him. So don’t you DARE tell me he’s dead.”

“Hey, hey, let’s calm down.” Antonio grabs me from behind and hugs me. “Abigail, you okay?” Abigail stands up and nods her head as she holds her jaw.

“I’m sorry, Abby.” I say as tears start rolling down my face.

“We’re all good Sarah, just don’t ever hit me again please, it kind of sucks getting knocked on your ass.” She pats me on the shoulder and walks back to the gate.

Antonio is still holding me from behind, I hold his arm with my hand and just cry.

“I know that it’s hard, but we need to just accept that this search for Michael is a lost cause. He was my friend too, he taught me how to work the radio, how to tell if a person is lying, some survival skills that I didn’t even know about. He was a good man, Sarah, none of us are discrediting that, but this search is going to get you killed. You need to rest, you need to eat, and you need to be around us again. Spending so much time out there on the road with the infected, that’s got to be awful conversation.” He chuckles. “After you’ve rested up a bit, we can go out together, one last time. Okay? You and me. One last time to give it one last bit of effort and then we’ll call it, deal?” He says.

I nod my head. “One last time.”

                                               NOW…

We get to the gate of Salvation, headlights blaring into the community, Abigail screaming from the top of the lookout.

“Who are you!? Get out, let me see your hands!”

I get out of the truck.

“Oh god, Sarah, what happened to you!?” Abigail climbs down and opens the gate, rushes over to me. “Where’s Antonio?”

“We have to get him to Harvey, now!”

Abigail looks in the backseat.

“Holy shit! Who is that?” She gasps.

We unload from the car, rushing over to Harvey in a panic. Blood, sweat and tears are leaving a trail from the truck all the way to Harvey’s home office. Abigail slams her hand on the door.

“Harvey! Hey! Harvey! We need you, man!” She shouts.

Everyone is looking out of their windows, coming out to see the commotion.

Harvey opens his door, barely putting his glasses on as we shove ourselves into his home.

“What happened? Who are these people, Sarah?” Harvey asks as he’s prepping for stitches.

“This… this i-is Antonio…” My voice croaks as I’m holding back more tears.

“What!? Oh my god..” Harvey begins wiping away the blood from Antonio’s face which just keeps dumping out of the wounds on his cheek and his head.

“I did it..I was the one that hurt your friend.” The man that helped me says.

“It was an accident” I say.

“And who are you?” Harvey asks while attempting to stich the wounds up on Antonio.

“My name is, Brent. I didn’t mean to hurt him, well, I did but not him specifically.”

“He thought he was Victor. He escaped from Victor’s compound and Victor and some of his men were chasing Brent and we just happened to be in the same area as our new friend here.” I say.

“Wow, well I think you made it on time. We can stitch him up, but he may need blood. Does anyone know his blood type? Sarah?” Harvey asks.

“It’s B Positive.” I say.

“I’m B Negative. I can give him my blood.” Brent says.

“Well, that’s a strike of luck I’ll say.” Harvey says as he motions for Brent to sit down next to the table that Antonio is laying on.

“What can I do? I want to help.” I say.

“Here, keep wiping the blood away so I can try to get a clean stitch.”

I keep wiping the blood away and can finally see Antonio’s eyes again, he looks scared and hurt.

Harvey is finished with the stitches which are holding just fine, blood is finally starting to clot. Harvey has hooked Brent up for the blood transfusion.

                                              THEN…

“All ready?” Antonio asks as he shuts the car door.

I nod my head. Antonio walks over to me, gives me a hug. Sometimes I feel as though I don’t deserve this, love and affection from another person when I’ve done unspeakable things just to stay alive. I’m a therapist, or was a therapist and have solved all of my own problems by killing people. Is a therapist even worth it to keep around in this world? No, not really. Which is why I made myself useful by becoming something else. Antonio releases me from his embrace, he gets in the drivers seat of the car, I throw my bag into the backseat and get into the passenger side, the leather seat doesn’t get too hot to touch anymore since the fall started, which is nice. Abigail opens the gate and we make our way to look for Michael one last time.

“Hey, Antonio?” I say.

“Yeah?”

“What were you before all of this?”

“Oh, does it really matter at this point?”

“That’s actually kind of my point. There is some things that I’m sure paid off in the end such as military or doctors, but does it all even matter?”

“Well, I was an assistant manager at ‘Jim’s Dollar Shop’ in my hometown. So, I’d say, my job before this, doesn’t really matter now. Then again, did it even matter to begin with?” He says with a chuckle. “Why? What were you?”

“I was a therapist. I’d like to think a pretty decent one. It was more than enough money to put food on the table, to pay my bills and then some. I just don’t think I belong in this type of world. What the world has become, a therapist doesn’t belong here.”

“Well, it depends on how you look at it. You’re an excellent fighter and an incredible scavenger. So you were able to adapt to what the world needs you to be. I’m assuming you know how to tell if someone is good or bad which must count for something too. Right?”

“Yeah, sometimes you can’t lump someone into just one or the other though. A person can be good in a bad way or bad in a good way or several other variations of both, together. The things we’ve had to do just to stay alive, that may make us bad people.”

“No, that just makes us survivors. Adapt and overcome. Remember?” He places his hand on my knee.

“Right.” I place my hand on his. “I can’t read everyone, by the way.

                                                       NOW…

I sit on the ground outside of Harvey’s place, back up against the wall, my hands dripping with Antonio’s blood, shirt stained with it as a reminder. I’m just now realizing how exhausted I am. Antonio’s screams of agony echoing through my head like a stuck record. If we wouldn’t have went out this one last time looking for someone who is either dead or doesn’t want to be found, Antonio would still be-

“Sarah?” Abigail asks as she shuts the door behind her. “This may be a pretty stupid damn question given the circumstances but, how are you?”

It’s that question that makes reality settle in, that sinking feeling in my gut that reminds me of the world I’m living in, within a second, tears are streaming down my face.

“FUCK!” I scream as a cry echoes through my body with the force of a wild beast escaping from it’s captors.

“Yeah, I thought as much.” Abigail sits next to me and places her arm around my shoulders, I lean into her, whimpering.

                                                       THEN…

Antonio stops the car.

“Hey, look at that.” He points into the darkness of the horizon.

“That’s a campfire. Could that actually be?”

“Only one way to find out, but just incase it’s not…”

“Be ready. I know.”

I’ve had to kill a lot of the living and the dead since Michael vanished. The search for him didn’t yield the results I had hoped and every trail I got onto, lead me to bad people. We park outside of a wooded area that’s about a mile from the camp we saw only to be greeted with heavy fire immediately. Antonio and I duck behind our car as bullets pelt the windows, the mirrors, and of course, the tires. We’re not going anywhere in this anymore.

“Michael! Stop firing!” I shout to no avail as the bullets keep coming.

Antonio fires into the trees, I follow suit. The firefight goes on for a few minutes until the bullets stopped coming our way, we stopped firing as well and suddenly the woods are full of silence, a few shuffles and moans through the woods as the lurkers begin moving towards the sound.

“You good!?” Antonio shouts. No answer.

I slowly creep around the back of the car to get a view into the woods, the fire still going, but silence apart from the groans of the dead.

“Let’s head in there, see if he’s still breathing.” I stand and move towards the camp. We cautiously move through the dark woods, avoiding the lurkers if we can, taking them out if we need to. We hear rustling and then suddenly Antonio is on the ground, at first I can’t tell if it’s a lurker or someone living. I can’t get a clear shot, nor can I get close as they’re crawling around in the dark occasionally letting the light hit them. I’m catching glimpses of Antonio’s face, increasingly more blood. Grunts and shouts, fists hitting flesh.

“Antonio! I can’t- I can’t get a clear shot!” I shout.

Suddenly the fight stops, it’s silence in the darkness aside from the heavy breathing, then I hear the choking.

“Oh god!” I rush over to where the choking is coming from and see Antonio laying on his back in the dirt, choking on his own blood as more blood gushes from his wounds on his face.

“Still…..here….” Antonio chokes out those words.

I quickly point my gun into the darkness, surveying the woods, watching, listening for any sign of life. “Whoever you are, I’m going to kill you, so might as well not prolong the inevitable, come out.”

“Are you not with Victor?” A deep voice grumbles from the night.

“Victor?.....” I feel a chill run up my spine. “N-no…”

“I’m so sorry! I thought…I thought you were him, finally coming to finish me off!” The man shouts.

We sit there for a moment, the sound of Antonio choking startles me back to reality.

“Oh god, stay with me, please!”

                                                           NOW….

“The man that did this to him, offered him his blood, did everything he could to make up for it.” Abigail says.

“Yeah, I know. The crazy thing is, if that was the old me tonight, I would have shot him on the spot.” I sniffle. “But, Brent acted out of fear of Victor, and I now understand that completely, I’m terrified of him, I would have done the exact same thing if put in that position. Act first, think later. He went for the kill because he thought he was facing Victor and his men. I just-“

“NO!” Harvey screams and a gunshot emerges from the office.

Abigail and I jump up and burst through the door. There we see Antonio standing upright, latched onto Harvey’s neck. Brent pointing a gun at them both.

“WHAT!? What the fuck is going on!?” Abigail shouts.

“I don’t know! Harvey was just getting ready to send you two out to bury your friend and then he shot up from the table and started attacking Harvey! When was he bit!?” Brent screams while trying to get a good shot.

“He-he wasn’t!” I scream back as I pull my gun out, walk up to Antonio and with a tear streaming down my face, I pull the trigger and he falls to the ground. Harvey falls next to Antonio, grasping for the wound on his neck as the blood drains from his body until he goes limp within seconds.

“I don’t-I don’t understand what just happened. We weren’t bit. I know it.” I mumble.

Abigail starts searching Antonio for any bite marks but she can’t find any.

“There’s none.” She looks up.

“Yeah, because we weren’t bit. I don’t understand….”

“I do.” A familiar voice echoes from behind us.

A chill runs up my spine, sweat immediately begins to bead on my forehead. This is impossible. It can’t be. Before I can turn around I hear the cock of a gun and feel the cold barrel touch the back of my head.

“Now that I have you, right where I want you. I think it’s time we have a little discussion, Sarah.” Victor whispers into my ear.