The Road | {Yani / Vasco : Zombie Apocalypse}
Jan 3, 2023 1:07:11 GMT -5
Post by marguerite harvard d2a (zori) on Jan 3, 2023 1:07:11 GMT -5
Yani Izar
He would have stayed and died.
She thinks of it when she sees the sun rise over the ridge.
She curls up in her layers. A jacket with a zipper that sticks in the middle; a shirt she’d been wearing the day he’d uttered the word to go; long johns underneath; overalls, because they could never go out of style. All of this to keep her warm because she’d never set foot outside of eleven, where snow had been rare enough that she remembered as a small child being woken up late at night to catch sight of the first few flakes from the porch. So she didn’t miss the miracle, when they’d all melt by morning.
Yani thinks of his staying every day now.
She wants to tell him that it would never have been his fault – any of this – but he would always believe that there was something else he could’ve done. As though the days that led up to the plague could’ve been avoided; that history hadn’t already written for them to die, just not then.
Not when the bodies had started to be burned, and the capitol had told them to stay in their homes.
Not when her cousins grew sick and died and came back again – when her uncle had needed to stab his own son through the eye to stop him from gnawing off his arm.
They had prayed and they had planned; they had written to the rest of the district, had spoken over the radio, had tried to coordinate supplies but –
The world screamed back at them, had told them that they were foolish, had demanded their help and their aid and their solutions, had raged and burned, had seen the fear that led to riots, and then, far worse than any of that, the silence.
Her mother and father and she sat in a big empty house with the doors bolted and barred but with winter peeling away every ounce of food and grain in their cupboards.
When it grew cold and dark and the lightbulbs lost their glow, her mother Emma had said that was enough. They could not see the end of the world by candlelight.
Her father had begged for a few more days. He’d wept like a child when they walked through the kitchen one last time to be sure they hadn’t forgotten to take anything.
“I hope it warms up today,” She said softly over her father’s shoulder. As they trotted along together on horseback. “Maybe around lunch time we might find a place to camp?”
