Day's End

Old Friends

Mark's breath heavily heaved in and out as he pushed a ripped, broken couch against the front door of his new shelter. The man plopped himself down of the brown couch, sighing and rubbing his face with his scarred hand. Mark sat back and stared up at the ceiling, before the growling of his stomach broke him out of his peaceful trance.
              He pushed himself up; the force of which ushered another coughing fit from his weakened lungs. The noise from the fit irritated the walkers outside, causing them to release their irritation by scratching their rotten nails on the wooden door and snarling. The noise of the screeching forced Mark to shiver, like when one hears a fork rubbing against a plate.
              Mark continued on into the kitchen of the house and dug through the cabinets, only being able to find a box not even half-full with stale cereal. However, this didn't deter his demanding stomach as he practically tore it open, little of shoveling it in his mouth with his hands.
             After losing Brie, Mark had decided to move out of the dilapidated building, motivated even more by the fact that the fence was down and the neighborhood was overrun with walkers. His brow creased in sudden aggression; it was all her damn fault. Natalie caused this, was the thought Mark had convinced himself to be true. If only he hadn't let her get away, and if only he had killed her then and there, maybe Brie would still be with him.
             Mark sighed and threw the empty box on the floor; the dull, but loud, noise of the box hitting the floor only alerted the walkers at the door even more. He stumbled his way back to the couch, coughing a few times as he did so, and picked up his bat, which was stained with dry blood. The lips of Mark's mouth tugged downwards; tears welling in his eyes.
               She had turned so quickly. Rose had escaped not even thirty minutes before she came back, and Mark was so filled with grief he hadn't even registered her teeth sinking into his upper arm. That was why he now held his bat with his right hand, having previously been left-handed.
                 Mark had passed out after amputation; whether it be from blood loss or shock, he'd never know, but he wished for death nevertheless. However, it never came; he had survived, and he was indifferent about it. That's what angered him; he was indifferent about it.
      A man who had previously done anything to survive, be it theivery or murder, was now indifferent to the very thing he had fought so hard to do. As hard as he tried to find a spark of something, something to make him feel, he just couldn't; until now.
             Now, his negative thoughts were redirected to something else; someone else who stole from him. Rose, the woman who had stolen from him his love, his life, and his will to live. So, he concluded, he would do the same to her; steal from her her loved ones, just as she had done to him. No, Mark was sure he wasn't going to kill Rose; she needed to be kept alive. In times like these, being killed is a privelege and being kept alive is being put in hell.
             Mark gripped the handle of his bat tightly and walked away from the couch, dragging his weapon on the wooden floor as he did so. He weakly opened the back screen door to the house, and a walker stood, almost seeming inoccent as it took a few seconds for it to register that a person was standing in front of it. However, even before it could lunge and attach itself onto his flesh, Mark swung the bat once and down the walker went, killed in one swift, powerful stroke.
                He looked onwards toward the country plains, where fields of dead corn and other crops laid, where laid his freedom, and where laid his revenge.

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