She looks at her reflection, unclear over the murky water, but the sunken cheeks are visible. Throwing some stones in and trying to make the buzzing inside his head die down but fail horribly, she leans closer to the edge.
Head clutched in between her own grasp, she slaps herself.
Once.
Twice.
The third ends up with a hard pinch, trying to make herself stay awake.
It's been quite some time since she had started wandering alone, perhaps months but she had stopped counting ever since the last death she had seen. Or maybe because her phone had been broken from the encounter and she's got nothing else on her to use for reference. Staying in a place would be easier, as with settlement comes stability, but moving across cities has not been done due to a mere whim of wanting to see the world, but a necessity now, with how those odd beings have taken over various nations.
Is there any real haven at all?
Though, when it comes to the extent of the actual damage they have brought, she doesn't possess a single clue. She was not sure if all media was lost, as almost all towers were immediately struck down. Electricity's still working though, so perhaps that's a good sign. It means some people also managed to make it through, and somehow still work despite the tough times. Or maybe they have chosen to stay for they see it as the better option at the time of chaos.
Or maybe there's just no other option at all.
She reaches an empty convenience store, and aside from some cans of pet food and trinkets, most of the sweets are left so she took a haul of those with longer shelf lives and fit what she can in her camo backpack. Some cat food who have human grade labels for consumption are also taken, as she's been lacking some meat for some time now. It's not as palatable as what you usually taste in canned food like meat loaf or corned beef but still, food is food. Entering the staff office, she sees a stash of cup noodles hidden behind a pile of documents and she almost leapt in joy.
Almost.
Until she noticed the lacking bottom parts, bitten by rats most likely and she cursed them in her head. Rummaging through cabinets she sees some protein bars, a box of cigarettes consumed halfway and a lighter, and takes them all in her pockets. Upon clearing another desk with papers strewn all over it, she sees a phone that, hopefully, would still work once charged as it would not turn on after trying for several times. Plugging it in to a powerbank she always brought with her, she decides to check it for later and packs it away.
Instead of leaving immediately after the hunt, she sits at the stall beside the doors, looking through the glass walls and remembering the hustle of the once busy streets, now only filled with litter and leftovers. The blood streaks are quite heavy on the pavement but they carry the shade of rust and tar so it must have been some time already since catastrophe passed by. There are a few fingers and limbs, scattered brain and eyeballs, now pecked by birds or bitten by insects in a swarm party.
Her head throbs once again.
She takes her haul and proceeds to walk away without looking back to the path towards an empty room in an abandoned building that she had checked the day prior for possible intruders or other beings. It still seemed devoid of life, in the same state she had left it, but she'll never know. After all, there are twelve floors with possibly about ten rooms in each and she doesn't have the energy to check it thoroughly one by one.
Though she did check on the recordings of the cameras that thankfully, still do work and sees the mess before it reached its stillness. She reaches the entrance and rings the bell on the counter, says greetings to no one but an empty chair, and takes the stairs towards the fifth floor, to the room with the key card left in it and with the window large enough for an escape in case an emergency happens. She had even placed large trash bags below it so that it could break her fall in the process. Of course, only if things get out of hand.
Right now, her body screams for sleep.
She prefers not to be fatally injured without any doctors around. Getting sick to the point of delirium was not part of her survival bingo card and definitely not an experience she wants to go through again. Turning on the tv only leads to nothing but the emergency alert announcement. She already had an inkling of what could have been shown but still, she's grasping for any other signs of humanity. Or maybe she just wanted to watch the new season of her favorite series, that might never get another season again. For obvious reasons. Might as well consider the last episode she had watched as the finale, if only it did not end in a freaking hanging plot twist that made her wish with all her heart to discover what the ending was supposed to be.
She takes her pouch full of power banks and starts charging the ones already used up, turns on the phone she took with the faded cobalt blue casing void of designs and hums along to songs on a playlist named 'live like it's the end of the world'.
How fitting.
Most of the tunes might have been downloaded illegally with how the files were named but who cares? Who's going to tell her it's not right anymore? And she remembers downloading videos of dramas she could not easily access by using some websites that did lead to a broken laptop, but during that time, it was worth it.
Laws are laws when there are things it could govern.
Synth pop beats filled the room and she dances silly, until she felt her stomach rumble and ends up opening a can of cat food, paired with a cup of pudding and a bottle of precious water. She looks for a cup and finds some paper ones left beside the empty water dispenser. Contaminating her limited water supply is a no-no. Using water to rinse her own cup all the time feels like a waste as well. Well, that's a dilemma for another day. She snaps out of her thoughts and returns her attention to what she considers a decent meal.
It's quite tasteless, without any seasoning as it's supposed to be for pets, but enough to fill her stomach. She takes her medicine pouch and checks for some antacid left, as this is her first proper meal of the day and she can feel bile rising up her throat. Vomiting it would be a waste, with the effort brought into rummaging what she can salvage.
As she has finished cleaning up, she turns off the phone to save battery power, and notices how quiet an evening it is, the calmest she has had across the time she has spent wandering around. Perhaps the empty streets were already a sign that the tension had long passed.
Yet she felt wide awake. Afraid that the quiet is nothing but an illusion she's making in her head. That something would go down and she'll need to run again. It leads to the cover of the flush for the toilet bowl placed in front of the double-locked door, turned off lights, and curtains covering the whole window.
Her insomnia has just gotten worse, but she's worked in a field that requires less sleep so she's kind of used to it. But the longer it's been going on, the murkier her thoughts felt like. She hugs her knees and sits on the floor looking outside the window once in a while by peeping through the lifted edge if the curtain, instead of lying on the bed and hugging a pillow. It's moments like this that eat away on her sanity, after trying to fool herself with the short-lived quirkiness.
It's in these moments that she hears those voices again.
Will you really be trying to escape again?
You belong here, don't you?
Where were you when they needed you?
You're nothing but a useless fool.
You actually think your degree can help you right now?
One day you'll trip, and you'll die alone on the pavement.
Pretend. Just pretend.
She holds her head before she ends up slamming it to the wall and slaps herself three times once again until her vision's fog has been lifted off and her ears free of their persuasion of death.
I see.
It's just that one voice that's never gone.
Somewhere along the dawn as the first crack of light slips through the curtain space, she felt her eyelids get heavier and she reaches dreamland.