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Barry’s eyes opened to darkness. Such pitch blackness that it was as if his eyes were still closed.
Am I dead? Was the first thought that crossed the young man’s mind.
He tried to move his arm to check his own pulse but when he did so, he only succeeded in twitching his finger. How long exactly had he been out?
He felt as if he hadn’t moved in years. Barry let out a deep sigh, at least it appeared his lungs still worked. If he couldn’t move he had bigger problems to worry about than whether or not he was on earth or in some afterlife.
He decided to slowly work his limbs out of entropy.
“Come on . . .” Barry muttered to his lifeless hand, trying to twitch that finger again.
Fuck, he sounded awful. His voice came out hoarse and cracked. Barry’s throat burned of thirst, like the lining of his esophagus had turned into sandpaper.
The hand twitched. He breathed a sigh of relief, and from there he was able to slowly move his hand in front of him. Right as Barry did that, a flickering light came on, the sudden brightness causing his hazel eyes to squint.
Once his eyes had begun to adjust, he could see better where he was. Above him were metal, silver ceiling panels, beside big, rectangular lights, most of which were either off or in a consistent state of flickering.
He sat up, slowly. Working the rest of his limbs out of their paralytic state took another hour or two, he couldn’t tell. His mind was still in a bit of a hazy state.
Standing up was another issue. Barry hopped off the surface he laid upon and his knees and ankles immediately yelped in pain and buckled underneath him. The floor was cold and dusty under his hands, as he caught himself. His bare feet felt like there were tiny people poking them with very small needles. That made him realize. His feet were bare. And so was his chest and arms and torso. The only thing he was wearing was a pair of plain, white boxers.
It was almost on this realization that goosebumps started to crawl across his flesh and his bottom jaw began to tremble ever so slightly. The frigid air turned his breath to vapor, and if his hands weren’t currently stabilizing him as he stood on all fours, they’d probably be shaking.
Alright. First on the agenda: Clothes.
The young man thought.
Barry slowly started to pull his right leg out in front of him, the thigh of his left leg beginning to jitter and strain from keeping him balanced on one knee. When he was in a bit of a lunging position, he pulled himself up again, his hands instinctively grabbing the surface he’d been laying on just a few minutes ago.
Now he could see that surface semi clearly. It was a metal table, with a white pad on it . . . and the top of it was curved upwards. It was a hospital bed. That would make this a hospital right?
This room looked like a hospital. Plain silver floors, though they had a layer of dust on them, and white walls . . . there were what he assumed to be medical devices around, though they all appeared long abandoned as well. And there were several windows that indicated other rooms in this place, but three were broken, and the others were too grime-covered to see through.
All the windows that led outside were covered in hard, metal panels. Like this place was on lockdown or something.
Once Barry had stood up successfully, he staggered out of the room, the pins and needles in his feet becoming more agitated. What he was looking at now was a huge room with a big row of desks that curved in a U shape with a couple computers, that had been gutted for parts. The windows that led outside were all in the same boarded up state. There was also . . . old, dried blood on the floor of this room. The CSI in Barry recognized it had to be at least a month old.
It looked . . . sad. This was clearly a research place of some sort . . . and it looked so dejected now.
Barry noticed more light filtering through one window than the others. He slowly approached it. There was a big crack in between two of the metal panels, so one could look out. And once he did he wished he hadn’t. There was a reddish haze in the air, and the building across had been burned to a pile of scorched, grey bricks surrounded by ash, and there were a couple broken down cars, with shattered windows, headlights or windshields, one of these cars had dried blood scattered across its hood . . . the color combination of hard, rusty brown and the flowery yellow of the car was clashing.
Overwhelmed, Barry staggered backwards away from the window, his legs threatening to buckle under him again.
Then he detected a sound. Footsteps. Behind the desks there was a hallway, and it sounded like it was coming from there.
While this whole place felt ominous, Barry was so eager to meet another human being to tell him what is going on here. Why had he woken up, nearly naked in some kind of hospital, that looked abandoned and was littered with signs of past violence. That being said . . . and while he wasn’t aware of it . . . his chest started to rise and fall quicker as the footsteps approached.
Then the footsteps stopped. And he came face to face with their source in front of the hallway. A man, of about Barry’s height, maybe a little shorter, with short blonde hair, that looked grey at the tips, not due to age, but to dirt, and a face that he couldn’t quite see much of because he was wearing a hard, black mask over his mouth and nose, with a springy, black tube that stretched off it, behind his back. The man was wearing a Kevlar vest with a long scratch down its front, and as many earth toned layers as he seemed to fit on his body. There was a holster on his hip that held a pistol and in his hand, he held another pistol. A pistol that was currently shaking like crazy and Barry had a feeling it wasn’t due to the cold.
Barry cleared his throat, despite it still feeling dry as wax paper, and croaked out a “Hello?”
The man in the mask aimed the pistol at Barry where his hands proceeded to shake more.
“This area is contaminated. What are you doing here?” He said, his voice muffled by the mask.
Contaminated.
“I-I don’t know, I just woke up!” Barry said, holding up his palms,
“. . . oh my God, you’re the patient.” he said, lowering his gun.
“The p-patient?” Barry’s head was already beginning to swim.
“There’s a story about a coma patient that stayed in this area, I didn’t believe it, or I thought you were dead for sure, so did everyone else, that’s why no one put a mask on you . . .”
“. . . oh my . . . what happened? Why would I need a mask?” Barry said, his voice cracking and his hands shaking more violently now.
It was so, so cold . . .
“. . . that’s right. You wouldn’t know. The U Virus.”
“W-what’s U stand for?” Barry couldn’t help but ask.
The blue eyes that poked up from the mask looked grim. “Undead.”
That’s around the time Barry passed out.
—
Eddie had brought Barry to his camp. It was a humble thing. Just a bus without wheels he’d taken shelter in when the outbreak happened. He’d boarded up every window, with enough space in between boards to let the smallest amount of light filter in through. It was about 4 pm in the wasteland, that meant the sun was getting around to setting. It would be dark soon.
Most of the seats of the bus had been ripped out over the years and that was fine. There were only 3 or 4 left. Inside was packed with weapons, canned goods, water, clothes. Cloth made good armor against the Us, or against the raiders. Raiders were the whole reason he’d gone into the STAR Labs research building in the first place. Ordinarily he never would have entered one of the most contaminated places in the city, but it was better than trying to fend off Axel Walker and his team of bandits.
He’d tried to make him understand he’d be willing to share his supplies if they could just talk but Axel was rarely even after supplies. He was terribly bored now that everything available to rob had been robbed by one bandit or another.
That brought him to the patient. He was laying on a mat made of knotted together t-shirts Eddie had made and had been for the last hour or so.
Eddie was stirring some canned beans on the makeshift stove he’d made, when he saw the patient’s hazel eyes flutter open.
He’d gently fed the patient some water earlier to help him wake.
“. . . where are we now?” The patient questioned.
“My camp. What’s your name?”
“Barry . . .”
“I’m Eddie.”
“. . . you look better without the gas mask, I must say.”
A chuckle rose out of Eddie’s throat. It was nice to hear a joke around here. It was nice to have someone else to talk to.
Barry sat up.
“Oh. Here. Put these on.” Eddie handed him some jeans and a red sweatshirt he’d found a few months ago. “I hope they fit.
Barry pulled them on, gladly.
“. . . you look nice in red.” Eddie told him.
Barry let out a shaky laugh, glancing at his shoulder, in what Eddie interpreted to be a gesture of shyness.
“Are you hungry?” Eddie offered.
“Yes, please!” the other man replied, eagerly.
Eddie pulled out a metal bowl and gave him it, when it was full of beans.
“So . . . a real zombie apocalypse, huh?” Barry said, hesitantly, through the bean juice he was slurping.
“. . . yeah.” The older man cast his eyes down, looking into the pot.
It was difficult to really comprehend that less than a year ago Eddie was living a perfectly normal life, with a job, and a social life. It all happened so fast. The outbreak. The death. The people flocking to other cities and other countries. And now he was all alone. And no one knew if society would ever get to where it was again.
“. . . how long has it been going on?” Barry asked.
“. . . 10 months and 3 days.” Eddie gestured to a series of scratch marks dug into the remaining bus seats he’d been using to keep time. Like one would in prison.
“. . . holy shit.” Barry breathed out, shakily.
“I know it’ll take some getting used to . . . and I’m sorry you didn’t really get the chance to adjust. But if it means anything . . . you missed the worst of it.”
The sun was nearly set now. The sky had turned from hazy blue to soft pink, and now to violet. Eddie lit his little generator-powered lantern, and set it in the center of the bus, beside the bean pot, so there was a cozy, yellow glow, illuminating the area.
The generator let out a soft hum, like a large, bumblebee, hovering in the machine.
“So what now?” Barry asked Eddie.
“. . . you can stay here for a while. I’m actually really lonely.”
Barry glanced around the space. He didn’t know Eddie very well . . . yet. But if what he said was true, and it looked like it was, then the only thing he could do was stay with him for now.
“. . . alright. We’ll . . . protect each other.” Barry said, with a slight smile.
And together, the two of them would wait out the long storm, of bandits, zombies, and erratic weather until the earth healed again.