| Empty Graves Part Six: When I am afraid I will trust in you The following morning brought no avail of levity to the situation. The clouds in the gloomy sky were still threatening as the pitter-patter of a gentle shower caressed the streets and the outside plague that clawed at the barricades on the edge of town. As each day passed and a new one was born, hope seemed to slowly slip through everyone's fingers as they simply stood and watched their loved ones pass away and the already walking dead outside act as examples as to what these loved ones were to become. Due to the temporarily sturdy nature of the barricades, the dead found it hard to even manage to crawl past the first line of defenses. However, the system was not full proof and within just a couple of weeks of the attack, one man on the ground patrols had been bitten in a foolish attempt to thin out the numbers of zombies at the barricades. He had leapt onto the roof of one of the family saloons and had proceeded to try and bash the brains of one invading zombie out of its skull. But in his haste, he slipped on the wet hood of the car and he fell to the floor, stunning him for a moment, a moment, which the monster that stood beside him ceased to take a bite out of his flesh. Another patrolman came to the rescue, but he was too late, and despite the efforts of the medical teams, he was dead within a night. By the next day he had become one of them, attacked one of the medical staff and been shot dead in under an hour. Since then, a localised epidemic had reached into the small town of Fort Severn, but fortunately, it had been contained somewhat by a 'no helping hands' quarantine. During this time, several of the men and one woman had died, leaving the mangled, lifeless, walking shells of what they had once been. They walked for no longer than a moment before their sentence was sealed and their souls were sent to their makers. Jake knew this situation was growing serious and the localised epidemic within the perimeter of the sealed off town was only proof that they couldn't keep the deadly effects of the walking dead at bay any longer. As Jake sat at the window of his room, staring out into the dull and drizzly morning that stank of death as a shallow holler rolled through the streets, the hopeful vision of Mary came into view once more. Her face in the window of her darkened room was a thing of beauty to him and no sooner had he seen her face than he had crawled out of his window, jumped off the porch roof and was proceeding over to her house to climb the trelace outside her window. "Oh Juliet, 'tis your sweet face that draweth me closer to you with the passing of every moment of every day," said Jake as he put on his best Shakespearean accent as he flailed his right arm towards the sky. "Come on Romeo, get you're ass inside," replied Mary as she helped Jake inside her room. As he entered into her room he could hear the sound of Mary's parents reciting passages from the Bible, the same thing his parents were doing at this very moment. "How are you, are they coping with it?" asked Jake, moving his line of sight towards the stairwell from where the sound of God's word emanated. "They're doing well, so they think. But I know better. They're just delaying the pain of what's really out there," she replied as Jake moved closer to her, wrapping his arms around her chilled body, a gentle kiss on the forehead acting as a warm return to the past days she had lived in Fort Severn, what was once a bustling fishing community, but what was now another scene of a plague that swept across the country and now the world without prejudice. "Yeah, my parents are the same. I think my father's close to the edge. He hasn't let go of that hunting rifle for the past week as far as I can remember. I'm worried." "I'm worried too, Jake. Tell me things are going to work out," said Mary softly as she sat down on her bed, Jake following her. "I'm not sure if I can tell you that, Mary. I certainly can't tell you it however, if we don't come up with some sort of way of getting the hell out of this place. This place is a prison and we need to get out soon. Those things out there are everywhere." Uncomforted by this response, Mary wrapped her arms around Jake and pulled her chilled body closer to his to gain some warmth. "You're shivering, are you okay?" asked Jake. Mary didn't answer, simply responding with a tighter squeeze on his figure to try and share his warmth he had somehow managed to hold onto amidst all this chaos. "Mary, are you okay?" asked Jake again. "This is never going to end is it? This isn't going away." Jake's frown turned into a sorrowful expression as he gripped onto Mary even tighter, rubbing his hands up and down her back to try and warm her up a little. "Someday it will, Mary. But when that is I really don't know. Soon I hope, but something tells me this isn't going anywhere else anytime soon. We have to get out." As Jake's words sank in, the prospect of leaving her protective home behind in light of recent events a fear of hers, Mary began to well up. Her eyes filled with tears and she tried to hang onto them as long as possible, but she eventually gave way and let them flood down her face as Jake brought her head away from his chest so he could once again see her naturally beautiful image once more. But on sight of her tears, Jake soon filled up as well, but not wishing to show her his weaknesses, instead retaining his composure for her sake, he choked back his tears and pulled her back into his chest, cradling her in his arms. "Things, someday, will be all better again, we'll find a way out of this mess somehow, we're going to be fine. This isn't enough to take me away from you, I'll never leave you, you know that right?" said Jake as Mary wept in his arms. "Someday this will be over, Mary. One day this will be all over and we can get back to our lives and live like we did before, this isn't going to be the end of us, the end of Fort Severn, or the end of the world. There are many others out there who are strong, and they, like us, will pull through this. We'll beat those things out there." As his propagandist words finished spewing from his mouth, Jake felt a tear welling up again in his eyes, but this time he just let it roll down his face and soak into his sweater collar as Mary still held herself close to his chest, cherishing every breath he took and every word he said, every moment they were together were going to last forever as far as she was concerned. She didn't want to give up Jake, her parents, her life or her home. But she knew that something along the line was going to have to go. What that was she didn't know, she didn't want to know, but at the same time she did, but for the sake of the nightmares she was flooded with every night, she made herself to forget the thoughts she had swirling about her head as Jake's warmth exuded a sense of security, keeping time ticking over slower, so slow that hopefully those things outside wouldn't matter anymore. |