Finding A Safe Haven

Chapter Five

The world is near to it's end.

I can feel it in the air. I can feel it even in my bones. I can smell it in the bed where the little girl is beside me, her chest heaving softly and her hands clutching to my waist, making sure I will not abandon her.

Across the room, K stood up from his own bed as the moonlight from the boarded window creeped through the slits, lighting him up like a ghost walking in the night. I gazed up at him for long, long enough for me to see the lone tear gently sliding down from his face.

He is thinking of him. There is only him in his mind.

I ease out of the bed, placing the teddy bear the other people in this haven gifted to the girl in her arms and tucked her properly. I placed myself next to him and break the cold silence in the room.

"What is it?", I asks quietly, following his gaze through the slits of the window.

Outside, we were able to see the guards even this far at the two watch towers. They were walking slowly at the top with their eyes down on the increasing number of zombies outside the metal gates. I will not worry about that for now.

The center of my worry is Takumi wearing that kind of face for already a few days now.

"What are you thinking of?"

He squinted at me through the dark and his answer makes me remember what I should've revealed earlier.

"Takashi"

Well, it looks like now is the right time to say it while the two of us still had a chance to be alone and I have a hunch, this could be the last time of my peace.

I slowly turned my head to him, sliding a ghost touch on his arm to make sure he will listen attentively because I'll only speak of it one time.

"Takashi is aliv...."

A horrified scream from the bed cuts me off. We both turned to see the girl sat up and in only a second, found herself in my arms. Her small hands wrapping around my neck while sobbing into my chest.

Takumi and I can only stare in each other's eyes, knowing the alone moment together with him was already over.

The night ends with me not being able to say anything about his brother.

To say that he is alive out there and never giving up on his hope for them to reunite again.

_______________________________________

"Survive wherever you are until we found you again, Angela", Nicholas whispered to the air as he stand in the corner of the street, the desolate city looks even more scary this late at night yet he was not scared.

He was more scared of the fact he may die without seeing her again.

There is always a question going on in his mind. A question he can't quite understand sometimes as to why he even felt it in the first place.

The question is: Why did he manage to care about the girl in just a short time?

Howard appeared behind him, his lacrosse stick on his hand. "Thinking of her again?"

Nicholas removed his eyes away from the remnants of a once-alive city, brimming with people and bursting into life. But now that the world had changed, it was brimming with zombies and exploding into every person death's everyday.

Gazing at Howard quite warily, he asked his own question to him. "Why did I manage to care about her in just a short time? What's wrong about me?"

His bestfriend smiled at him wistfully. "It's because every moment now in this world is going too fast. The lives of everyone, the time and your emotions for a person"

"I hated this feeling", Nicholas admitted, not noticing the frown on his friend's face. "I shouldn't care about some girl who we didn't know if still alive or dead"

Howard then glanced up to the sky, a reminder of her last moment with him back to the farmhouse returns.

"Do you want to know something about her?"

He was replied by a silence of Nicholas and instead, heard him sighing frustratedly.

"She said something about you before she disappeared on us"

Nicholas's attention was picked. "What did she say?"

"Do you really want to know?", Howard decided to messed with him. "And here I thought you said you shouldn't care about her"

Just as he expected, Nicholas's brows quickly furrowed and his chilling glare were pointed at him yet Howard was not too affected anymore.

"Will you say it or not?", his tone had turned cold then suddenly and he looks away from him. "It's fine even if you do-"

Howard stopped his words with his own, shutting him up. "She thinks everyone needs a person like you in order to survive long in this apocalypse"

And without a fail, he saw a growing smile on Nicholas's face as he looked at him again.

"But that's not how I look at it, though"

He raised his eyebrows in question as Nicholas looked upward, up on the turning off and on lonely lamp from the skyscrapers from afar, signifying something in his own outlook in this world.

On. And. Off.

Alive and dead.

It perfectly described the person behind him, Howard.

"We don't fight to survive. We fight for the future"

The signifying moment was gone the time they both heard a gunfire erupts and the two of them ducked for cover behind the parked car which is really their big mistake. The windows of it exploded, showering them both with shards of glass and they did not worry about the sting of it in their back as they hear the scream of their youngest friend, Takashi.

He's calling for them. Not for help but mentioning someone is with him inside the abandon music store where they left him earlier so that he could sleep.

Nicholas and Howard run from cover to cover, looking out for the shooter every second with their heart wanting to explode out of their chest because of how fast it beated and it only got worse once a man who had a sharp cheekbones walked out of the music store.

Their heart dropped at the sight of Takashi's head locked into his arm, trying his best to escape him but stopped on his futile action as the man grins like a cheshire cat, his gun aimed at the kid who shouted for them to get him.

"Do you really think...", he trailed off then shocked the three of them as he let go of Takashi and clutched on his stomach, laughing at their scared faces.

".......I would kill kids like you?", he continued once he was done on his hilarity and shocked them again when he whistled.

The three of them jumped in shock as another stranger leaped off the truck a twenty feet away from them.

He was so different from the first man. He had piercing on his ear, his hair was bleached in blond and what stood out the most is his fox-like-eyes that crinkled at his smile onto their way, wanting to them to be at ease.

Then he said something that they will not understand for now. "He will not have the heart to kill you especially when his daughter he is searching for is the same age as you"