As Kaan slowly opened his eyes he heard a voice whispering in relief right next to him.
“He’s waking up.”
“We can see it Dean, give him a little space.”
Thar said chuckling lightly. Dean was slightly embarrassed but still smiled as he watched Kaan open his eyes. He moved next to the wall Kaan was recleaning and rested his back on it.
When Kaan opened his eyes fully and fully woke up the first thing he realised was the sharp pain in his shoulder and his head. His upper body was naked and he saw the wound on his shoulder was bandaged tightly, it stung badly and his mind was worn out by the constant usage of [I See The Worst] once again.
When he looked around he saw that they were on one of the floors of the apartment where they fought with the werewolf. He was under the window, the moonlight was falling on the window and illuminating the dark corridor for them, it looked like it was a full moon, or close to it. He saw all of the eyes of the team members were on him. Thar and Emily were looking good, at least on the outside. Dean had a wound on his right leg and it was similarly bandaged as Kaan’s wound, it didn’t look bad either.
“Kaan how do you feel?”
Thar asked eying the bloody bandages around his wound.
“Not that good but tolerable. I’ll be good enough to move if I rest a bit.”
“Alright we were also taking a break already, I think that’s what we need after everything.”
Everyone agreed with Emily’s words. Fighting against zombies was one thing but killing people and fighting against a werewolf which was both intimidating and scary and to know that you could be killed if you were weak was exhausting both mentally and psychically.
Though Kaan was resistant to those feelings because of his situation it must have been hard for his team members. It took a toll on your mind to accept this new reality and act according to it and Kaan especially admired them to be able to keep up with it rather than trying to avoid the hardships on their way.
Now that they had time everyone began to eat something as they didn’t have time before and it had been a while since their last meal. Kaan first gulped a painkiller to decrease the stinging feel on his shoulder and his head and then put on one of the blue spare T-shirts from his bad and put it on.
After that without opened his bag and took one of the canned foods and ate what it contained. He was not a picky eater so it was not important what it contained as long as it was filling. It didn’t make him full but it was enough to suppress the hunger, he also couldn’t eat much as whenever he did, it made him extremely sluggish afterwards.
“By the way, do you think the government is down? Since that strange massage, we haven’t heard from them, and we haven’t seen any action from the army, I think I saw a few policemen but they were trying to survive, it is like order is completely gone. ”
Dean asked after a while having another bite. It occupied his mind as there was no action, no sound coming from the side of the government and he couldn’t believe that everything could be fallen this fast and could take a chaotic turn.
“What could they do? The media is off, the communication is off from what we see there are also problems with electricity… I don’t think they had a plan for Apocalypse Dean. Although we heard an announcement from the loudspeaker in the streets as we head towards the dormitory at the beginning all of this, it was probably someone local who knew things were going to go bad and take action for the people, right Emily?”
“Yeah, a woman, right after the announcement of the system, warned everyone to move in groups rather than moving alone and look for weapons and for somewhere to shelter and warned them about the zombies right before they appeared. She tried to lift the haze from people’s minds. In the beginning, not everyone was ready to accept the things happening around them, some even just watch people getting eaten in a frozen state without realising that the next one to attack would be them. I think she helped many by making everyone aware of the danger.”
Emily still couldn’t let go of the image of a child getting eaten by a zombie. When the not everyone took her seriously even after the massage coming from the system. So when zombies appeared while most of the people were aware of the danger thanks to the woman who warned them, not everyone was ready to digest these new pieces of information or just outright didn’t believe it or thought they were ready to handle what was coming on.
While Emily and Thar were leaving the park they were sitting in, she saw a boy attacked by a zombie as the mother of the child watched frozenly the dead body of her son on the ground torn apart by the zombie.
Emily tried to act and save the boy but she was just too far, same for the Thar who she made aware of the situation. No one was able to do anything in the chaos as the number of death raised in the park. The mother was shocked by the sudden attack and when she was aware of what was happening her son was already dead and zombies were feeding on his body. After that, she just stood there with empty eyes and watched her son’s body eaten by a zombie until people dragged her off until she shared the same fate as her son but she looked already…
“I don’t know about the army. Maybe they decided to shelter and create a safe zone or maybe they were not able to reach this area because of some other factors. They might have even decided to leave their job, you know the mentality of everyone is for themselves. Not that I would blame them much as this is not something normal. There are many things that could have happened to them. Also if the government was present, what could they exactly do to help us without an army? Yes, they might have helped to organize people but they could also create more chaos as they don’t know more than we do. So I think waiting for help was never an option, we need to get stronger as we could so we could help each other. People are vulnerable in the moment of crises and leaders are the ones who knew how to use it to the best, not always for the good of the people.”
Emily was actually happy that there was no government as the people were most vulnerable in the moment of crisis and could follow bad decisions quite easily and be used by others without even realizing it. Maybe it was bad to think like that but she thought it was necessary for people to stand up for themselves and experience the cruelty of this new world, rather than waiting for some kind of false saviour, like the government, without any struggle, because if they did that they would never be ready the hardening conditions of this new world and their incapability would cost everything. What they needed was strong individuals ready to face with bad of this world, and they were only born from facing hardships, and by luck.
Dean nodded to their answer. He just felt a little strange to suddenly have government disappear from their lives. He thought it would be better to have government alive as he thought they could assist people in various ways but after listening to others' thoughts, he realised that his thoughts were superficial. Of course, he also did think about the bad sides to some extent but he mostly thought it would be good to have them, was he thinking wrong?
Kaan didn’t add anything to this conversation as he thought having government or not didn’t make much difference, there were many important matters to think about. Government could handle normal people easily because of many factors that were present in normal circumstances but could they handle someone who can use magic or someone who could easily kill people by poising them without even them realizing it in this ruined world?
There had to be [Strategist] or [Manager] or someone from the same field who was ready to work for only to good for people so they could level fastly to handle people and put them into good use to create a new order quickly and this was a very unlikely situation.
It was better to let new people be born with the [Leader] class and level by making mistakes and right so in the future, there would be many reliable people around the lead of someone who knows how to lead, that is if they could survive in the first place but that was up to their efforts. There were more important things to think about before the government.
And in this matter, Thar shared the same idea with Kaan, with people's absence, as they were busy fighting for their own lives, there were many occupations that would outrightly collapse and cause damage to a big area. He just hoped precautions were enough and people took action, which he thought was unlikely given the situation they were in, to prevent occupational hazards before they caused harm to the people and environment on a large scale…
After that, everyone continued their meal in silence. After everyone was finished with their meal, Thar put out a bottle of whiskey from his bag with a smile on his face.
“Are you serious Thar?”
Emily said with a slight frown on her face.
“Come one, just a little won’t hurt anyone, right?”
“Do as you please, just don’t get drunk.”
Emily sighed and leaned back with her eyes closed. Thar and his passion for whiskey, Emily quietly smiled as she watched Thar looking at the bottle in his hand excitedly. She was a little amazed actually, she didn’t even know he had a bottle of it in the bag, when did he put it in?
“Don’t you worry you know I don’t get easily drunk.”
Thar smiled with a playful glint in his eyes.
“So who does want to share this bottle with me?”
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He looked at the two with expectation in his eyes.
“No, I’m not good with alcohol, thank you.”
Kaan quickly turned down the offer and returned to watching outside from the window. Thar sighed in disappointment at Kaan’s direct answer and didn’t even try to persuade him, which he would do normally and most of the time succeeded but it didn’t seem his tactics would work on him so he quickly turned to Dean.
“What about you Dean? Are you up for some good whiskey?”
Thar said with an inviting smile on his face as he shake the whiskey bottle in his hand to Dean’s side.
“Well… Why not?”
Dean smiled as he gladly accepted Thar’s offer. What was better than dealing with this new fucked up reality other than sharing a drink with a friend?
“That’s my man. Let me come next to you.”
Thar said with joy that he had someone to drink with a quickly pulled out two glass cups as he moved next to Dean. It was not long before they finished two cups and Dean got enough but as Thar filled another cup and pushed it on his side before even he could say no, he awkwardly began to drink again. Kaan saw Thar watching Dean with a grin on his face, was he doing it on purpose? Emily must have also realised it and when Thar was about to fill another cup for Dean, she threw a bag of right at his head.
“Ouch, why was that!?”
Thar acted as if he was angry with a mischievous smile on his face as he turned towards Emily.
“Stop messing with him Thar. Do you want to carry Dean as we move?”
Emily massaged her temples remembering the last time Thar did this and nearly one of their friend was dying in a car crash, she got used to him doing this but she thought he would stop after that but it looked like she was wrong.
“You were doing it on purpose?”
Dean asked as he looked up at Thar. Thar grinned at him.
“Yeah sorry, Dean. It’s always fun to see how long they’ll go without saying a simple no even if it bothers them or they don’t want to. It’s always better to no rather than wait for the other side to stop, right Dean?”
Thar looked Dean in the eyes with a smile on his face as he lightly grabbed Dean’s shoulder. Seen Dean nodding him lightly as his eyes slowly fell to the cup he was holding, he got up with the whiskey bottle and cup in his hand and then headed next to Emily.
“Hide the cup, let’s drink again sometime when we can drink to our heart's content without thinking about tomorrow!.”
Dean felt a little stupid and also a little tipsy yet he felt what Thar was trying to say or maybe he was just toying with him but seeing how friendly he was he just smiled him back and nodded to his offer as he returned next to Emily.
Now that the room was in a lightly warm and cosy mood Kaan thought it was time for a talk between the team members about the future.
“Emily.”
Kaan called to her finally withdrawing his eyes from the sky.
“Yes?”
“We’ve come here good and we’re doing fine considering the things happening but I want to know exactly what you want to do with this team. As you’re our captain, or at least this is what I am seeing, what exactly do you want from us? Was it just to have us with you as it was what looked like the right thing to do after our exchange of help or do you have a far-reaching purpose for the team that you want to create to follow?”
Emily was in silence for a moment in the face of his question. Not that she didn’t have an answer for him it was just that she wasn’t waiting for him to ask this right now so she waited for a while to gather the words to convey her thoughts to answer his question.
“Now I thought about it it’s actually very simple, I want to stop the evil. I know it sounds kind of funny saying it like this and also ambiguous, but you know the guys we faced in the supermarket, the ones who wouldn’t kill innocents without a doubt for their own good, the ones who killed that man and hanged him for to be eaten from zombies to just scare people away from the supermarket.”
She got quite a moment as she remembered the wrongdoings the future would bring to them and how the ones trying to stop them would be crushed until no one stepped up to save this dying world.
“They are one of the evils that I want to stop, no, I want to kill them so they would never be able to hurt anyone because they just could. Because if we wait for someone to stop or just close our eyes to their vile actions, everyone will suffer. But when I asked you and Dean to join us I just wanted to move together as I thought we could repay your help to us, not to drag you with me to kill some psychopaths. I know it's dangerous and our actions also going to be also immoral at times, the things that we had to do, but that’s what I want to do because it’s something someone had to do without waiting before it becomes too late and I will look for people who would agree with me and help me.”
She said in confidence and after fishing her words look into Kaan’s eye, waiting for an answer. As the other party didn’t say anything and looked at her sharply, she began to get anxious for nothing out of nowhere but didn’t reflect it outside as she knew a person’s pose was very important and carried a massage. Especially in front of those eyes looked as if they were judging her, or were they? it was hard to read his hollow eyes and she might be seeing just what she wanted to see from them.
While Kaan thought it was a plan that didn’t completely align with his views, these were good virtues if one could follow them. But actions would change people, and the values they follow could torment them and even corrupt them. It was easy to say you would do good but when it came to acting many would give up as that could put them in danger.
Not that Kaan thought Emily was not sincere with her words, actually he thought she could do it. He just wondered if she was aware of the path she wanted to walk in, the actions that she would have to commit and the choices she had to make for the greater good of people but that would hurt her and the people around her.
“It’s good, the things you said. But could you really follow them, Emily? Could you sacrifice yourself or the team you gathered, which worked and struggled for the good of people, for the greater good when the time comes? What would be more important to you, the good of people around you or the good they will bring to the world in exchange for an important part of themselves? In the end, we would be murderers even if we are killing the bad ones you would lead your teammates to kill others, it’s not the same as killing someone for necessary, do you really want to do this Emily?”
After hearing Kaan’s words Emily wanted to say ‘I do.’ but she couldn’t. Maybe if she was only speaking for herself she could answer but could she talk for other life? She wanted to stop the evil so they would have a future. It was but would it be fulfilling to know no one around her lived in that world?
“Let’s hope things will not come to that, captain. I would assist you in your as it does not conflict with what I want to achieve, of course, if you want me next to you in your pursuit. As Thar said, we make a good team, right?”
Kaan flashed a smile to their side which didn’t seem to reach his hollow eyes at all. All of the three in front of him felt a little strange as it was the first time seeing him smile but understanding that he was trying to break the tense air, Thar quickly made thumbs up with a smile on his face and began to blabber about how ‘good’ of a team they were and how well they did until now, of course passing the unwanted details. Seeing that his smile was not doing any good Kaan but the thing he wanted to achieve was done thanks to Thar, Kaan quickly turned his normal expression as he watched them.
If she put the greater good all over everything, she could simply say, ‘I do’, as for a better future for the world, their life was a fair exchange. She could also say it was their free will to join her on her journey, was it fair for her to carry the weight of the decisions she made for the good while they were the ones willingly following them? Or she could say no and deny that things would be as Kaan said. But she just struggled for an answer as she thought about the responsibility around her at the same level as her purpose.
Also, the question Kaan asked her was kind of extreme, while some part of it was what she had to face, most of the time things wouldn’t come to what he said and one could think differently than him on the matters. The path she wanted to follow was troubling for many reasons and having someone who could help her even if it conflicted with her ideas would be good for them.
He wanted to see what kind of future was waiting for someone who had a purpose like this, was it going to be like the many others he experienced in his visions or a very different variety he never knew before? And if a time came when everything was at stake for them after following this path, he would have a say in that fate.
"Of course, you're welcome on our team, on our side, Kaan."
Emily said happily as she didn't wait for an answer like this from Kaan. Even if she still didn't know much about Kaan, she knew he was capable and strangely in this little time, she felt she even could trust her life to him, he didn't look shaken against anything they faced so far, as if he was ready to face anything so she was glad to hear someone like Kaan was accepting to be next to her in her mission.
Dean looked at Emily as he listened to Thar talking loudly and happily. He admired her resolve, how long has it been since the madness started and she was already thinking about the future and ready to act for the good of the people, he was not even going to talk about Kaan, until the moment he was like nothing was different from normal.
Dean really admired her but wondered if he could follow her on the path she wanted to continue. While he wanted to take revenge on his friend, he was having a hard time digesting that he had to kill people, could he really follow her, them? Did he really share the same mindset with them, what was the thing he exactly wanted to do in this fucked up world?
“Dean, you don’t have to think about it too much right now and give me an answer. It’s just what I want to follow, it’s not like I am going to force people to do something they don’t want to do or go after someone, we are just trying to survive right now. You’re already done much by throwing your life into danger for someone you didn’t even know, that’s something to be respected in my eyes. You can follow us even if you share, you have a place in this team as a core member.”
“Yeah, you’re are always welcomed, my only drinking buddy!”
“You can’t be serious for a second after drinking, right Thar?! Do you want me to throw the only bottle you have?”
Emily sighed as she lightly punched grinning Thar right on his left arm. Both of them looked in high spirits.
Dean smiled as he watched both and their words really ease the needless worries he had. Right now he wanted to follow them and wanted to be a part of this team as he really viewed them as good people who he wanted to be around. He was going to see if in the future he was going to decide to follow a different path, right now he belonged to the team.
“So what are we doing now, are we staying here for the night or continuing our path?”
Kaan asked them after watching them talk for a while.
“Is your arm okay?”
Emily asked him.
“it’s as good as it’ll get, I don’t think it’ll trouble me much.”
“Alright then, there wasn’t much left actually. We could reach the cabin in the red stream forest in twenty minutes if we don’t face another problem. I think it would be much safer if we spent the night there and easy to guard than this place. Let’s get going if there’s no problem.”
‘Wouldn’t it be better if we spent the night in here?’
Dean wanted to ask them, he wasn’t against the idea of continuing the road but… he just wanted to stop dealing with monsters straight out of a nightmare at least for today. But he saw that three of them were already ready to move so there was no need to, probably Emily knew better so it was time to get into action. He sighed and grabbed his sword hoping that they’d only face zombies and not something like the unnerving undead werewolf, just for today, he had enough action which they nearly faced with their death.
Everyone got up and stretched then put their bags on their back and got ready to move once again in the dark with the flashlights on their hands.