Alive Inside

[enkerzed]

Jeffrey shivered as he tried to sleep on the floor of the mini mall, feeling the chill in his bones despite the number of blankets covering him. When he felt the need to rub his arms for warmth, he knew that sleep wasn't going to come easily this time either, but then again it never did since the beginning of the outbreak.

It must have been two years now, maybe three, since everything had gone to absolute hell. There was no start or end to it, you were either simply caught up in the middle of it all or far away enough to see what was coming. Jeffrey was one of the latter, but ultimately it didn't matter. The virus, the infection, the whatever the hell it was, it was an airborne thing. Unavoidable and horrifyingly virulent. Millions of people all over the world were dropping like flies in their houses, on the streets, it didn't matter where, only to rise again and make millions more turn into god-fucking-damn zombies; actual, literal zombies. Chaos ruled quickly and brutally, and the few number of people immune to whatever was in the air became even fewer as time went on.

For all Jeffrey knew, there were only a handful of people left in the world, and the last survivor he knew had just died a month ago from overdosing on sleeping pills, of all things. Sleep wouldn't come naturally any more, the man had explained when he and Jeffrey had met in the mall, talking to pass the time. The mall had been empty since the beginning, but it was a good place to fortify, hole up in and sneak out for supply runs. There had been other survivors and things were good for a while... but they were all gone now. Dead or lost. All that remained in the mall to show that they were ever around were the words 'Alive Inside' spray painted on the door, along with their names written in permanent marker underneath, each one - except for Jeffrey's - crossed out with a neat horizontal line.

As Jeffrey lay curled up on the icy floor, he decided that he would cross out his name on the door tomorrow. It wasn't like anyone else was going to do it for him when the time came, and at this point he didn't expect to last much longer with food getting scarcer and more dangerous to find. Well, he knew what starving to death looked like and he didn't want that. Perhaps it was time to move somewhere else... or take enough sleeping pills to not have to worry about anything ever again. It was not the first time he considered it.