May Peace Grace Us

Chapter 37: Reaching to her old habits

Aila and her family were already some distance from the city boundaries when they decided to call it a night. The journey to her uncle Joseph’s house on the outskirts, which is quite a distance away, was tough as they encountered incidents a few times on the road. But they successfully took away the RVs without any other after-problems.

Connecting the two RVs, they then left for the villa and headed to the enroute to the national roads. Their ride was slow as the other vehicle was being pulled by the bigger one. One of them could have driven the smaller one or they could have stored it in the space Judith has. But it turns out that Judith’s space cannot place the RV after she had stored all the supplies she could get in the mansion as well as the family car they used to drive.

As for having someone else to drive the other RV for a faster trip, both of her parents had joined hands to not allow Aila to drive. Something inside of her parents does not trust Aila with the van in fear she will do crazy things referencing her past life where traffic is mostly no more of a problem. Not that Aila could refute them, she did develop crazy driving skills that even Eugune at that time would not easily do.

Besides, even if they have plenty of gas to burn, they ought to save as much as possible. Who knows what will happen and they run out of it during the whole roadtrip? They might need to abandon one of the RVs midway if that did happen.

Aila wanted to argue that even if they ran out of gas, there were plenty of stations they could refill on the way. Besides, worse comes worse, they still have Travis to store the RV with no problem when they meet up. But she lost her voice just as she wanted to lay down her preposition and decide, her parents are just too authoritarian when they decide on something entirely.

As they are aware the night is destined to be sleepless, Stephen makes sure that his girls sleep first while he takes the first shift in guarding their van. Every four hours, someone will wake up and take over the night watch.

Aila volunteered to be the second one to be on guard for the night. She wanted to stretch her nerves and exercise her old habits during her shift. She missed being herself and wiping out zombies since she returned in time, to act out to her elements in ways the civilized society will not accept her acting. It is about time she touched her old stress reliever.

Her father immediately fell asleep after he woke up Aila. He needed a lot of sleep as he wanted to be the one who would drive the van. He may allow Judith to take turns with him during the whole ride, but he ultimately does not like to tire his wife. So he could only converse as much energy as possible.

The first minute of her watch was boring. There was nothing in sight and only the light of the light pole in the highway gained her attention. The solar-powered lights lit up the way as the crickets play a music that perhaps those in the countryside are very intimately used to. The night wind is also quite cool and calm in a way that has her relax her guards subconsciously.

Perhaps there would be no action like she thought it would be.

At the moment, they are in conjunction with the city boundary and let them be in the gray areas of which the roads are.

It is a sparely unpopulated place like most of those on long highways that stretch all over the country. Though they are currently in an abandoned park that is really in need of major renovation to be a safe place.

Judith has mentioned that this place used to be popular with many people coming here every weekend. However, a series of deaths happened and the company had no choice but to close their doors. It was a noisy thing back then and now the place is a place of horrors that everyone has been avoiding now.

Considering that this place is quite remote and there are not many visitors here most of the time, the chances of zombies appearing out of nowhere is really small to begin with. This was something she knew, but really she just wanted to make herself motivated.

And somehow fate did not fail her.

To the east of where she is currently, Aila picked up some familiar sounds. It was slow and at times dragging. Almost intimately, Aila was drawn to the sound like moths were to flames.

She spent her early days of the apocalypse scared of these sounds before. It had been cemented in her mind and heart that she could never mistake it for anything else. Before she learned to kill them, she memorized every sound they made to deduce how dangerous it was for her. And even when they became more destructive and harder to deal with, she could always find the pattern of the noises they made.

Aila had a blood-thirsty smile as she waited for the creature to get near where she was now. She readied her knife nearby as she casually left the vicinity of the van. And, of course, she made sure that her prey would be following her. She walked a few steps and closed her eyes to immerse herself in the memory of her older self.

Strolling like she was in a perfectly peaceful night, she even hummed a rather eerie song that came to her mind. Grunting sounds came to her ears like an addition to the music she could only hear. And when that something had joined the conjunction of her shadows, Aila made her move.

Slammed her knife hard to her left, Aila opened her eyes like a beast who is on its hunt. A viscous liquid was felt in her hand, but she did not care. There are three more of the undead nearby. Like a cheetah, in a lightning flash, she swiftly dealt with them. Staining her cheek in the messy way she wanted it to be.

“Too bad there are so few of them here.” Aila said as she took out wipes she had prepared beforehand in her pocket. “These four are hardly a challenge at all. Not to mention, these zombies are not really the ones that could really pose any threat at the moment.”

Examining the spoils of her conquest, Aila observes them to see if these zombies are those initially infected or were they like the woman they saw earlier. And to her discovery, three of the corpses are those who are infected, while the other one was a victim that was eaten by one. Examining more, none of the three had shown the signs that it was them who had eaten the other. This makes her suspect that there is more in this park just waiting to be disturbed.

She then piled the corpses at a safe distance before she poured oil on them. Lighting a match, she then watches the carcasses burn until they are charcoal black. Although those already dealing with zombies no longer move, burning them for good measure is the best course of action for them. This way, the chances of them reviving is closer to null and couldn’t be a more sure way to decrease the number of enemies at hand.

Humming a mindless tune, Aila stepped on the carbonized bodies until those that were thoroughly crisped by the fire turned into dust. It was a good pastime if she were asked, but after she was done, things became boring once again. So she decided to take a walk in the vicinity of their RV.

Aila dared not go far in the case wherein one of her parents woke up half-way. She does not want to have a scolding fest as much as possible. Knowing that their anger was only their way of showing how much they care and love her, it does not change the fact that being scolded is uncomfortable.

Other than being afraid of her parents being angry at her, her past life habits simply did not allow her to relax if she did not see her loved ones within her sight. She lost her loved ones so early that she was not willing to see them, it was any harm at all, and her friends also shared the same sentiments as her.

In fact, her death back then was also in a place where each of them could check out their situation at any time. As she was someone without ability in their group, they always placed her in a place they judged as safe. Most of the time, there was one of them staying to look after her, but one time, due to the mutant animals nearby and those evolved zombies, all manpower was mobilized to neutralize the threat as fast as possible.

Left alone to do as she pleased, Aila was attracted to the sound of fighting. Though it was already a general rule at the time that unrelated people should stay away from conflict as soon as possible, Aila was strangely drawn to the sound like a cat to a laser point.

If she had realized this world was her making earlier, she would have recognized the mutant animal and easily connected the existence of the mutant animal to her protagonist. She once wrote a passage about this creature meant to limit Alfred from wandering far beyond his current ability. After he is strong enough, he will kill that animal to unlock new places to explore.

With a stroke of curiosity, she took a peek at the protagonist’s team fighting with an enemy of his. Then, when they get too rowdy and wild, their ability accidentally kills her, who was only a bystander in the whole thing.

Briefly, Aila felt sad as she thought of the events that happened afterwards. She was sure her friends had left the animal alone after they fended it off from their settlement back then. They might have been so angry when they saw her mutilated body after it was blasted by the powers of the fighting parties. For sure, if her book was longer and she would write about her friends, her hyenas would be the greatest villain the protagonist will ever face.

But she had already died at that time. She has no idea of what happened afterwards. Even if she did know, what could she do? She had better focus on the present to make sure that she and her loved ones could live as long as possible together.

Having a few laps and ensuring there was no more harm at the moment, Aila just returned to the RV at the third hour of her guard.