Knives sliced through every fiber of my being, sending me spiraling in a whirlwind of pain. Fire erupted from my soul, burning through my identity and wrecking who I built myself to be. Some unknown force kept blasting me down into the bottomless hole of hunger, but I kept climbing back up, clinging on to the last vestiges of my humanity. All of these painful feelings were caused by the little girl sleeping next to me, and my taste buds were going wild, my skin on the verge of exploding.
No, this wasn’t skin that my hands were gripping so tightly onto. This green, disgusting muck was radioactive ooze—the same ooze that a zombie would have on their bodies. I felt empty in so many places, like a living black hole. Could I even call myself living? This was the most dead I've ever felt in my life, and I’ve been in a coma for days once.
I wished that this emptiness was the only thing I felt, but the urge to devour this girl was taking over my mind, and I couldn’t stop my body from creeping over to the girl. A viscous green oozed out of my mouth and landed on the girl’s neck. My fingertips pressed against her arm, my bones shivered in excitement, my jaw slacked open—, vicious growls escaping my mouth everything in my body was telling me to let my instincts take control.
However, that urge would be thrown out the window the moment I saw the kid’s face. Once again, Sunshine was intruding into my mind, breaking it somehow, and her eyes were wide open. Had she been awake this entire time? Were the sounds of me fighting my own body too much noise to sleep to? Why the hell was she sleeping next to a goddamn zombie!?
“Jerome… don’t give up so easily,” she whispered, calmly clawing at the wooden floor. “You did all that winning this past week, but you can’t even beat yourself? The Jerome I know would never lose like this.”
Jerome…? Jerome Hunter!? Why the hell am I in that cheap prick’s body? When the hell did he turn into a zombie? If this is what that guy has to deal with every day, then get me out of this body! I might not really like him, but I wasn't so cruel that I was going to let him kill his own child.
It took an insane amount of effort, but I was able to rip one of my hands off of Sunshine’s arm and started to lift it upwards. Surrounding my body with a forcefield was the first thing to do in my mind, but my ability had other plans. While the energy in the atmosphere did move to my palms and form a bubble, it didn’t cover my body like I wanted it to. Instead, the energy followed its own rules and moved where it wanted to go. My head got in the way of that.
Suddenly, my body—my real body—burst out of Jerome like a soul tearing free from a corpse. I crashed onto the floor, and my gaze snapped forward, cursed with the sight of Jerome’s headless body collapsing onto his daughter as she watched in stunned silence.
“There was no other way…” She picked herself up, struggling to place her dad on her shoulders. “We have to… find him some energy so he can regenerate.”
“We? Is there someone else here?” I asked myself, scanning the room.
“I'm talking to you, Dante.”
The kid’s words made me jump, her sentence pushing everything I thought of this situation off a cliff. This was the second or maybe third time she called me out directly, and the knowledge I had on her Radius Ability was changing more and more by the second. Some part of me was aware that this illusion was caused by her power, and yet a bigger section of my mind made me go through with it. Something told me Sunshine was going through the same thing too.
“Do you mind taking my dad off my hands?” she asked, gently placing him on the ground. “Zombies aren’t usually that heavy, but Jerome is really heavy for me.”
“Piss off with that!” I shouted, stomping towards her. I pulled the kid up by her hoodie and said, “You better deactivate this mind trick of yours, or I’ll make you!” I expected fear on Sunshine’s face after that intimidating threat I made, but I was weirdly met with sparkly eyes and a gaping mouth.
“Woah!” she exclaimed, reaching for my face. “You look so cool now. Is this a mask or-”
I reeled my head back “Don’t touch me!” I threw her back on the floor, gritting my teeth. “I swear to God I’ll do something you don’t like if I’m not out of this shit in ten seconds.”
“Unfortunately for you, I don't know how to do that.” She grabbed Jerome’s arm and began to pull him out the door. “I’m in the same boat, so you’re just gonna have to stick with me for now.”
“That’s BS,” I replied, following her. “What about everything before this moment? My dad, my mom, my sister, the other goddamn kid?”
“It seemed like it was following an event that happened in your life, and now it’s doing the same with me. Best we can do for now is go with the flow.”
Doubt still filled my mind, but it didn’t sound like Sunshine was lying. After all, I still wasn’t sure if the girl I was beating on was my sister or Sunshine.
I sighed, scratching my scalp. “Fine, but if this goes south for me-”
“You’ll kill me? You know you can’t do that, right? This is an illusion in your mind.” She pulled Jerome out the door, strain in her voice. “We’re just as fake as everything else here.”
“Quiet!” I took Sunshine’s father off her hands, holding him on my shoulders. “Watching you struggle was getting pathetic to watch, so I’m taking him off your hands.”
She rolled her shoulders. “Oh, thank you. This walk will be way easier now.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Just tell me what’s the plan in getting out of this shit. I can’t afford being stuck here for the rest of my life.”
“Well, aside from you being here, this is something that happened to me and my dad last week.” She took off her backpack and pulled out a book named “Apocalypse for Dummies (AKA People Who Call Radions Zombies)”. “We’ll just have to retrace the steps I took back then and maybe we’ll find… something.”
“You better hope we find something quick, or you’re-”
“Screwed?”
“I was gonna say ‘or you’re fucked’, but that works too.”
***********
The kid and I stopped at a few places, asking for directions to a secret location where a dormant nuclear bomb was supposedly hidden. Her book called it the “Big Daddy,” claiming that activating the bomb wouldn’t cause much damage to the area since its energy had weakened over the years. When I asked Sunshine why she couldn’t just stack a couple of other zombies on Jerome and call it a day, she said their energy levels wouldn’t be enough to heal him. Although, with the way she kept spitting facts about the bomb at me, it seemed like she just wanted to see the thing blow up.
After more hours passed by, we came across a shed behind a pile of bricks. There were burnt bodies sprawled across the suburban neighborhood, so black that I couldn’t identify if they were humans or zombies. I wondered what a little girl would have accomplished coming here until Sunshine began walking to the shed. I laid Jerome on the ground and threw some bricks over his body till he was mostly covered.
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Once that was finished, I walked over to Sunshine, standing there silently. That was when I realized she was staring at an older looking woman sitting in a rocking chair just in front of it, whistling casually as though everything else around her didn’t mean a thing. It wasn’t like the area was infested with zombies, but I wouldn’t catch myself chilling alone in a shithole like this. The woman glanced at me for only a second, before she went back to rocking.
“Hey,” whispered Sunshine, tugging on my pants. “Can you start the talking this time? I don’t feel… comfortable.”
“The hell are you so uncomfortable about?”, I replied, covering my scarred side. “You said you’ve already been through this before. And you know better about what you need than I do.”
“The last time I started, I was stuttering like an idiot.” She began twirling her hair. “I can’t talk well if my dad isn’t around, so you do it.”
I scoffed. “So how come you’re talking so well to me?”
Her eyes met mine, an innocent twinkle within shattering my reluctance. “Well, since Jerome’s gone, you’re the closest person I have right now… even if you’re a bad guy.”
Even though I thought the reasoning was pretty stupid, pity still took over my body and turned my head back to the old woman. She was clearly within earshot of us, and yet she didn’t pay us any mind. All the woman did was stare at the hellish landscape that was once a populated town with a slight smile on her face.
I crept toward her a bit, Sunshine still clinging onto me, and greeted her along with a handshake to follow it up. My grandfather had always told me that the quickest way to gain some easy respect points was to start off with a handshake. It had always worked before, though this dazed hag didn’t look at my hand. I guess that meant she wanted to discuss something that mattered to her and her only.
“It’s terrible what happened here,” I said. “Were all those people survivors you knew, or did you get here recently?”
She snorted while her eyebrows arched, her smile growing bigger. “I don’t know why you’re calling any of this terrible, young man. When I look around me, all I see is pure beauty. And that smell…” She took a long whiff of the air. “It smells like a new day is finally upon us.”
“Yeah, I’m sure it does,” I said sarcastically, the lady’s uncomfortable aura smothering me. “Me and this girl behind me are a pair of survivors, and we were hoping to see if you had any information on… uh…” I gestured to Sunshine to give me her book which she did. “We’re looking for a place called ‘The Nuclear Keep’. If you heard about it or know anyone that's been there, just tell us anything you know. Preferably directions.”
“I will thank that man for the rest of my life for what he did for us,” she continued, her voice soothing like a grandmother’s lullaby.
“If it’s cash you want, how much?”
“That man rained down explosions on this entire town with a sword and burned them all to the ground. He truly is the protector of the apocalypse.”
A man who rained down explosions with a sword…?
I bent down, trying to make eye contact with the woman. “Ma’am, did this guy wear the head of a horse?”
A flicker of recognition appeared in her eyes and, before I could react, she stood up and took my hand. An inhumane strength pulled me into the shed, and the only thing I could do was shout a pathetic “Hey!” at the woman.
The sound of the door slamming shut immediately set an eerie tone in the air. My eyes shifted to every corner, trying to see where the hell everyone was in the darkness. Part of that darkness was then shattered by a small flame a few feet away from me, followed by another next to it.
“What the hell is t-”.
My words were immediately thrown to the side once my eyes caught sight of the boy in the bed in front of him. He looked frail and small. Yeah, he was a kid, but he was much frailer, much smaller than a normal one. The woman ran her hand across his gray skin—skin that looked like he was born from sandpaper. If whatever higher being up there wasn’t already cruel to him, they decided to curse him with a mouth without lips and a nose without flesh.
I thought my sense of horror and pity would also be felt by Jerome’s kid, but her look of excitement said otherwise.
“Woah, you look so cool,” muttered Sunshine, to my surprise. I knew I was an asshole, but this girl might have me beat. She approached the bedridden boy and said, “I’ve never seen a zombie bite do this to someone. People usually die before they’re bodies start rotting. You should look happier, man. You’re spec-”
“Sunshine,” I interrupted, putting an end to her gleeful bullshit. “Maybe you shouldn’t talk so lightly in front of the boy’s uh…” I glanced at the woman who was staring at Sunshine with a blank stare. “Grandmother?”
“Mother,” the woman corrected. “The years haven't been so kind to me.”
Seeing the kid’s pathetic state caused me to remove my hand over my scarred half. “They haven't been so kind to your son either. Sorry for… your eventual loss.”
“You have pity for my son?”, she asked, turning her head to me.
I placed one hand in my pocket. “I have a soft spot for ugly little monsters who cause kids to scream in fear and women to laugh at the idea of them wanting to be in a relationship.”
“If you think my son is an ‘ugly little monster’, then you're very mistaken.”
I caressed my face and said, “Ugly monsters can sense when another of their kind is nearby. Pretty good ability too. Freaks and monsters should stick together since the world already groups us no matter the circumstances.”
“I don't think you two are ugly,” Sunshine joined in, admiring the boy’s features. “You guys look pretty cool to me.”
I lightly shook my head at her response, noticing the smirk creeping up on the woman’s face.
“You know who Jesus is, don’t you?”, I asked the lady. “That’s the only reason you brought us in here, right?”
The woman nodded.
“I would hope that he has something to do with the secret location I was asking about earlier. Although, it’s hard to believe that you even heard anything I said back there.”
She set the torches down inside two cups at a table behind her. “You were right to say that monsters should stick together, however, my son isn’t one of them. The real monsters were the ones that tried to have him killed.”
Sunshine turned to the woman, raising an eyebrow. “Why would they want to kill him?”
“This area was once a place with over thirty survivors, and me and my son were with them. One day he got sick, but he wasn’t bit. I made sure of that. They knew it wasn’t a zombie bite too, and yet something about his sickness didn’t sit right with them. Can you believe they wanted to banish both of us knowing we could’ve easily died out there? I told them to give us a week and if his sickness didn’t go away at that time, we would leave.”
“Clearly, it didn’t go away,” I muttered, my mouth tightening.
“Yes, and the worse he got, the worse it got for everyone else. It turned out that the sickness was contagious, and when a few of the men got sick, I knew it was a matter of time before they started blaming my son. So, I decided to call for the help of someone who could… handle the prob-”
“A killer for hire?”, I cut off. “You called a killer for hire and that was Jesus.”
“Only a killer,” she corrected. “You can't hire someone if no payment was ever given. He was just a kind soul who saw two innocents were in need of help, and in exchange, I told him where he could find a former… master of mine and her crew. The Central Islands. The place that used to be Central Park.”
I didn’t respond, still disturbed by what she so casually glossed over.
“Is the Nuclear Keep in those islands?”, asked Sunshine, noticing my silence.
“Tony Corleone’s slave owners go wherever the energy is highest, and they force others to ‘mine’ it for them. If this Nuclear Keep exists, then I’m sure they would be-”
“Just… hold on,” I snarled, staring daggers at the hag bitch. “Do you even know what this sickness, this disease is?” Her eyes narrowed, her smile shrinking but still there. “Look at you… You don’t even know what it is.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about”, the hag said confidently.
I started to pace in circles. “Of course you don’t, but you shouldn’t be so idiotic to think that what that boy has is some common cold or flu and not a contagious disease that will affect everyone around him.”
“I’m sure you know that a cold and the flu can be shared with other p-”
“Does that look like a fucking cold to you?”, I roared, pointing at the boy. “This disease rots your body from the inside out till you look like… that. Then, you die. That’s always the end of it. By keeping him alive, everyone near suffers the goddamn consequences.” I looked at the boy’s face again. His eyes were there, and yet they were so distant. “Look at him… He probably doesn’t even know what any of us are saying right now.”
The woman’s mouth remained shut, to my annoyance.
My lips quivered in fury. “You sacrificed healthy survivors to save a boy who’s going to die anyway.”
“I didn’t expect for a man who devoured his own mother and went unpunished for it to be this angry over me protecting my son.”
The red fog clouding my mind cleared the moment I heard those words. How the hell did she know about that!? That was some kind of mind game, right? This whole experience so far has been an illusion… None of this is r-
“Do you envy my son, perhaps?”, she asked, her voice growing unnaturally deeper. “Do you wish your father had shown this much love to you after you committed that heinous act? A love that would weaken the hatred your sister holds for you? A love that would show the UR that you’re not the irrelevant child they think you are?”
I began scratching my neck, avoiding eye contact with her. “Sh-Shut the hell up…”
“No… there’s more than that,” she muttered. The woman almost sounded like my father. “You wish my son, my dying son in pain constantly, was you. You do want to be punished for what you did, and yet your father won’t kill you for it. Your sister won’t either. No wonder your forcefields break so easily when someone stronger intends to attack.”
I unsheathed my pistol with a shaky hand. “Say another sentence, another fucking word, and I will-”
“You want someone to kill you because you’re too afraid to do it yourse-”
The urge to pull the trigger couldn’t be contained any longer, and the blood splattered across my face along with the body on the ground were proof of that.
Sunshine didn’t say a word, watching silently at the other end of the room.
I took a deep breath, placed my gun back at my hip, and said, “She said the Central Islands, right? Let’s go, kid. This place is starting to annoy me.”