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Bright. Bright yet heavy. Brightly dull. The birds weren't singing, haven't for a while. But the world wasn't quiet, oh no. It hasn't been quiet for a long time. Months. No, not months, much more. Years. It's been years. Not decades, that much he knew of. But it's been a long while.
Joshua knew that much. Dark eyes flickering throughout, heavy eyes. Broken eyes. A tilt of a head, a crack of fingers, that echoed so loudly, so deadly. A shame that Joshua was far too gone to care. Joshua was too dead. No, not like everyone around him, or better yet, everything, but the remaining humanity inside of him was long gone. It had to be, too, to survive in the world he did.
In a way, he wasn't too different from the sick surrounding him. Just like him, they all had a sole purpose; Eat and Kill. Joshua was like that, too. They all were. Living was a faraway concept from days much easier than these. Now there was no such thing as living, only surviving.
Every few second Joshua would question why. Why survive? What's the point? Why not give up? It's clear that the world was trying to get rid of its most awful problem; humanity. So why fight against it?
Joshua didn't have a reason anymore.
He used to have. At first, to find them. His family. Almost dying all the time, living like a paranoid scared rat. No one could blame him, too. Everyone that remained was like that at first. They still are but far more trained. Everyone's still scared. Maybe not of them but scared of something.
Joshua found survivors here and there who managed to build him up enough until they parted ways so Joshua could make sure his family was still alive. With each passing day, he lost hope of them withstanding but he prayed.
All for nothing.
Joshua found them. Back in the house that he grew up in, he found them. Dead. Groaning and crawling towards him, ready to kill. It was horrifying to Joshua. To anyone, it would be, really. The house was a bloodied mess with limbs sprawled and organs everywhere. And yet, they still moved. With a greenish-purple skin and missing parts, crawling and making the noises that present Joshua became so familiar with.
Joshua was devasted. He could throw up, he almost did, feeling such pain that his knees faltered. He fell. And his little sister, once so full of life and innocent, so loveable, crawled up to him with blind eyes and a slack jaw, moaning and hollering incoherent things. Not that they had a meaning. But Joshua wondered if they had. Maybe it was the part of Elissa that was still alive, pleading for forgiveness for not being able to control her body. He wondered so hard, every day.
She almost bit him. Grasping his leg so tightly as she dragged her body, that lacked the lower body, hungrily reaching to bite his leg and satiate the never-ending urge and hunger.
A loud bang and Elissa wasn't almost biting him anymore. She was on the ground, unmoving. How the dead were supposed to be.
"Were you bitten?" Rough, spat, cold. Joshua looked up terrified, so lost, so forfeited. A shake of his head, a choked sob.
Joshua was too naive back then. He lost part of that after reality came crashing down. He would never see them again. Never talk to them again, never complain to them, never hear them complain, never piss them off, never get pissed off by them. He lost his family.
And although his integrity had been harshly, coldly been ripped straight out of him that day, although Joshua believed that every single ounce of life had been ripped out of him, life proved him wrong.
The man helped him up, still rough, still cold, still deadly. With the life they lived, you couldn't be anything else. Oliver, his name. And he saw how lost and scared and hopeless Joshua was with a glance. Oliver took him under his wing. Oliver taught Joshua everything he could. Granted, it took a while, a long while, but Oliver softened to Joshua.
It was them against the earth. It was them against the dead, it was them against the living. Against the hunger and evil, against the world. They survived together through everything.
Joshua could remember every moment with Oliver so clearly. Standing up, strolling around like he wasn't at the apocalypse. Josh grabbed a knife and began to sharpen it. Head tilted to the side, eyes heavy like never before. Eyes far too dark, far too lost, far too dead.
Oliver strengthened him. Taught him how to shoot, how to stab, how to kill. Taught him how to hide, how to be deadly silent, how to hunt. How to see the world, how to survive, how to love. Oliver taught him how to bend the world to his rules, not to get bent by it.
They were alone and together for so long. Lived through so much. Joshua became too dependant.
Joshua was still too reliant, too naive. Too stupid.
They found a community. Suddenly it wasn't just them anymore. Oliver didn't trust them at first and Joshua neither. People from the community didn't either but they all learned that none were evil, none were putrid. After months and things felt the closest to normal it could. Joshua was getting used to it. Joshua was still human. So was Oliver. They were living the best they could.
But nothing lasts forever. It never did, it never will. Joshua was still innocent.
The butterfly effect is something really funny. How a little screw could annihilate almost all the population of that little build-up place. Joshua could never stop reliving that night. Ever.
They got in. A big herd. There were so many, so so many. So many to so little weapons, so little strength. Many were lost that night.
Oliver was bitten. Not mutilated like many others but he was still bitten. He kept it a secret for a while. As they moved, nomads and homeless, Oliver got ill. Badly ill. But the group never left him behind until his last day. Joshua could remember those days easily with a heavy soul, a heavy heart.
"Promise me." So silkily rough, so lively dead. So hopelessly hopeful. So Oliver. "Promise you'll live."
Oliver wasn't blind. He could see from the moment that Joshua found out he was going to die how Joshua was dying with him. He didn't want that. He wanted Joshua to keep fighting until he died or to die fighting. He didn't want Joshua to give up like he did when he saw his family.
Joshua did. He promised because that was Oliver's deathbed wish. He promised knowing that he probably couldn't keep it. But he would try.
Joshua was so stupid back then. Grieving silently over how he had lost everything. But he hadn't, not until he lost Oliver. Joshua was hopeless then. Now? Hope was such a foreign concept.
"Josh?" Soft, pitiful. He stopped sharpening the knife, turning around to look. A sad smile on the boy's face. Joshua hadn't been the same ever since Oliver passed away. He wasn't the little strong yet the too soft man he used to be. Now he was just cold. A killing machine, they would say behind his back. A living dead one. A quirk of his eyebrows, eyes too dull, maybe duller than the dead living ones'.
"They're going on a supply run again."
A nod from Joshua, who slipped the knife back onto its case, that was tied over his hip. Oliver would joke over how badass his knife was, a knife that had a little heart craved on its handler. Joshua had given Oliver the knife as a joke just to get it back on the last day, so painedly and awfully agonizing.
It wasn't much but Joshua would cling onto every little thing of Oliver's that he still had. Even if it would hurt him enough to make him fall down, he would still keep Oliver alive, in his memories, in his heart. Even if Joshua hated thinking about it.
Getting the guns and strapping one to his ankle, under his jeans, Joshua wondered why. Strapping the other to his hip, he sighed. Slipping his jacket on and gloves he glanced up.
Why survive? Why fight when there's nothing to fight for? Grabbing the bag and slipping it on his shoulder, he locked the door, seeing the other survivors.
Each step was meaningless to Joshua, so why? Why was he holding on so tight? Why did he still cling onto the little hope Oliver left behind for him? Why couldn't he let go, why did he fight so hard to keep Oliver alive when he was long gone already?
Why?
A stupid promise. He had to fight because of a stupid promise. How meaningful was that? How meaningless was that? Stopping in front of the leader, Joshua gave a single nod. He got a hesitant nod back.
And he took out the knife. No, not the one he kept because of Oliver, another one. One that didn't hold any meaning to Josh.
Joshua still prayed. Not for his family to be alive, not for Oliver to be alive, but to be together with them once again. A silent movement, just like Oliver taught and a body fell on the ground.
The world wasn't quiet. The sound of moaning and groaning coming from mindless creatures came from all over. The sound of Joshua's knife was silent but still there.
He wondered why. A step back, another body down. A shake of his head. Now wasn't time to think, just to do.
A sigh, so exhausted. Why?