Virus: The Infected

There is nothing on this planet that I love more than the eyes of the infected going from dead to complete nothingness as my lethal arrow narrowly slices through one of them. My best friend, Tyler Jude's menacing expression disappeared at that instant and is now replaced by a mocking smirk showing off the bodies he dropped until his eyes catch the one I struck down laying on the ground with my arrow stuck in its eye. His eyes slightly widened in surprise at my quickly improving archery skills, he made fun of me for snatching the bow and arrow from the display box inside a sports supply store on the way here. He'd said: ‘What are you gonna do? Throw the bow at them?’ I chose to ignore that. Even though I sucked at these things back in my school days, there were no other options for items to use as weapons inside the store. It's not like I can throw footballs at them. Other than baseball bats, and hockey sticks, this was another weapon available in the store that had the possibility to work because of its size and damage— if used right. Surviving the walking dead always involves doing what you can with what you have and I had this. Plus, the good old knife throwing was beginning to get monotonous for me, I desperately required something different to throw at them. Although Tyler was right about me having zero understanding of how to operate a compound bow, I was confident I could learn. I mean, our ancestors started from somewhere to master archery skills, and I'm pretty sure it began with them picking up a bow first. So who honestly cares about what Tyler has to say? surely not me. The running and the climbing that we were forced to do most of the time maintained our muscle strength thus making it effortless for me to pick up the bow and shoot. Sure, picking it up was easy but managing it? not so much. It was a huge struggle for me and my shoulders to get used to it at first but somehow, I did. I don't think somehow is the perfect word to describe it— that's just me downplaying the pain of my dying shoulders from holding the bow steadily. Fortunately, I didn't give up. I kept waiting for the pain to subside and would attempt every day on a spot completely isolated from everything which Tyler and I found in the middle of the woods surrounding this town when we first arrived here. Thank God, It wasn't for nothing. All the hard work paid off, at first I started by aiming for random marks on trees and birds sitting on the branches. It was painful to see me miss every shot. Maybe it was a miracle or maybe It was the hours I put into training, in a matter of days, I could precisely shoot at birds from more than ten feet away. And that was weeks ago. Now I just struck down my first kill, the first of their kind. Yeah, sure I wasn't Katniss yet but In my book, this is something worth celebrating. However, we have nothing but used-up old batteries and rusty knives inside our bags. We ran out of food this morning, the last thing we ate was an expired chocolate-flavored energy bar broken in half for the both of us. We are recklessly trying to find something to eat. Not desperate anymore, something beyond desperation fueled by hunger, just two idiots willing to die for food. Breaking off the little staring competition we had going on, Tyler and I exchanged a look that meant ‘time for action'. I scanned the cloudy skies above for any signs of rain then nodded back to him. This is how we communicate most of the time, unspoken words, purely eye signals. We jumped off the metal fence that was already halfway down, presumably, from the infected pushing in on them with their weight. When the massive spread started, I was told there were too many of them breaking into the buildings, crashing into windows. Tyler said everyone was unsafe, only hiding under basements was guaranteed to keep people alive, If they had an adequate amount of food until the infected passed through or—until they were distracted by a sound loud enough to separate them from their group. If that didn't happen, you would be plagued by the sound of their footsteps right above your head which was similar to the sound of an elephant wearing shoes in muddy soil and slowly dragging its massive legs to wherever the food might be. That's what Tyler compared it to, I didn't go through that to know. I slammed my back against the aged crusty white painted wall that wouldn't stop sticking to my skin and silently moved to the only door on this side of the building. There were a few rotting bodies on the ground, we saw these through our binoculars yesterday. However, now seeing them up close reveals that someone had been here a few weeks before us or even days. The bodies weren't old. I shook my head to Tyler, lifted two fingers in the air, and signaled him to follow closely, creeping open the door we silently slipped into the empty mall. This mall has been our main target ever since we found an abandoned house not far from here yesterday morning. I observed this mall while sitting on one of the buildings in an unfinished construction site, watching through my binoculars all afternoon, and finally decided to come today. It looked empty yesterday but we could've been wrong. Everything is going smoothly for now, yet, sirens go off in my head warning me about all the possible dangers of walking into a dark empty mall. Anyone or anything could be lurking in here. Regardless, we used up the batteries to our flashlights last night to climb down the construction site, plus, we've been on an energy bar diet for two days now. The lack of nutrition is definitely affecting us, it was clear earlier when it took everything in me just to fight one of them. Tyler isn't any better, he looks skinnier than ever and breathes too heavily after each clash with them. We need more food and better food, we need more weapons even if it's baseball bats and soda cans. Despite our unmistakable talent at surviving, Tyler's throwing knife and my bow and arrow are not going to keep us alive for long especially, in small towns like these where the food supplies are very limited. The upside of this is that they have fewer of the infected unlike other places but all of the food stock has been raided by people who pass through to go to somewhere like New York since it's the only city that was rumored to have more survivors and fewer infected ones which I personally don't think is any safer than where we are now. Tyler thinks otherwise. For me, it's merely a myth. New York could be overrun as any other city around the country and perhaps the world, if it hasn't happened yet it could happen at any minute with everyone around the country going there seeking this so-called haven. All it takes is someone to get infected and bite another uninfected being. That is why, by this logic, I'm starting to think the whole world may have been turned upside down— not just America. It makes sense, In these almost three painfully long years, nobody heard any news from anyone else in or outside of the country, and the radios are still filled with static hissing. It has become quite clear that we're all alone and back in the era where we have to hunt for food as if time just spun backward and sent us back to the dark ages. Hunting for food and fighting to stay alive is what we have to do to survive and that's why we're here right now. We passed the empty stores that had been raided clean by other survivors and reached the school department, some of the shelves were down with their contents spilled out on the floor. I could see them from the daylight seeping in through the bare open backdoor which I just now remembered that we forgot to shut when we entered. This could be a problem or potentially turn into one however, on another thought, the light is the only reason we have some vision of the pens and pencils on the floor. Useless stuff. I saw the huge poster hanging on the ceiling, it was a skinny, almost doll-like Asian woman wearing only lingerie with both of her hands covering her breasts. Ladies department. I began to sprint towards it with Tyler hot on my heels, reaching the nearest rack I tossed a pack to him. Clumsily, he caught the D-cup bra, eyeing its content Tyler went silent. His breath slowed down then I heard a clink. His knife. There was a stare that I couldn't make out in the darkness, he couldn't be this mad over a silly joke. That's just not Tyler, we used to tease each other every time, and I highly doubt a bra joke would be the final straw for him. “I was jok-” He shushed me, and that is when I realized where his eyes were focusing. Behind me. I didn't make a move to turn. The rattling sound made the hairs on my body stand up, I held my breath. Tyler was already pulling me to run, I fought his grip to finally turn back to see the bloody-faced monster lunge toward me with a loud shriek, it knocked down the stands filled with makeup tools and was right behind us. We took off into a heavy run, somehow, it was faster than both of us and It was only a few seconds away from reaching us. I stopped running knowing I had to do something to save us both. Tyler yelled at me when it lunged for me but it was too late for him to help.