Void

“Sometimes… I wonder if it’d be better to forget. I just… maybe it would hurt less. That's all. Because they’re gone, and maybe if I didn’t remember what was missing, well, maybe I wouldn’t be so scared to leave this place. Is it so wrong to wish to forget?”

Peregrine’s words ring in your helmet like a bell. It is a sentiment you would empathise with if you had empathy. Sometimes– Well, only glimpses. Nothing that could count as a real memory. A memory of a feeling, if anything. Or a memory of remembering a feeling.

Colby's discovery – two strains of the contagion – complicates things. But when the Relic Seeker suggests Din Talin as a possible second testing site (‘the zombies are different there’), all eyes turn to you to chaperone. You leave Devo locked in a storeroom under Raindrop’s watch and Peregrine with a promise not to leave without you.

It is a route familiar to your feet. The Relic Seeker seems content to stare wistfully into the middle distance rather than assail your stoicism, so the journey passes without much comment. Your gun remains in your hands the entire time. You see no zombies. The scent of eager death grows stronger with each hour.

There is a glimmer of it too in the Relic Seeker’s eyes; a denial of death, though self-imposed rather than environmental. A refusal to let a memory rest.

You wonder what it must be like, to look upon these barren outskirts and see a better time. You were here, once. One of your first groups, still in shock from the first wave. Not ready for the second. And dead a minute later. One bullet each, between the eyes.

Now, all is still. You listen for the tell-tale shift of feet that might indicate an ambush, but you are met with disappointing silence. The Relic Seeker casts nervous glances round every corner, but proceeds. Your gun does not leave its back.

It winces each time your foot thuds into the ground as you dare any raiders to show their faces. They do not oblige.

You hear chimes on the wind and the Relic Seeker pauses. The choking death filling your head mixes with the sweet decay of flowers and blood. It reminds you of – nothing at all. There is nothing worth being reminded of. Up ahead, you see a Bausanan shrine, filled with the buzz of raiders. They shift without the stiltedness of your habitual victims, yet from the gaping wounds and sagging skin they must be zombies.

The Relic Seeker stares searchingly into the crowd. You follow its gaze as it tracks one figure, weaving through the bodies in a silent dance. It looks, but it sees someone else. You can almost see the recollections appearing, replaying in miniature in the bright of its eyes.

Something rises within you. Envy? Pity? A loss of a more permanent nature might help. But a gunshot might startle the rest. First, the test.

You prod the Relic Seeker in the back with the barrel of your gun. It stumbles, casting a nervous glance back to you. You do not move. It creeps further forward. You prepare your gun.

A pebble skitters off its toe, tumbling off the kerb with a loud plink! A zombie turns. You take aim. And then – it runs. The Relic Seeker takes a step forward, then another, and the sea of bodies before it parts in scrambling panic. It runs, entering the shrine itself which, within a minute, is empty.

There is a neat line of bodies at the back of the shrine, marked with precise gunshot wounds. One of them is Naomi. These ones do not belong to you.

The Relic Seeker stares, bereft.

Perhaps it is better to forget.

You see no zombies on the way back. Your finger itches.

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