Day's limp body sagged against the metal wall and shock contorted her facial features. As the reality sank in, disbelief immediately etched itself into her brain and the fear made her eyes widen.
"What-" She shook her head and tried to sink towards the torn carpet, but immediately Josh was there, holding her up with his bony frame. The single hand held a surprisingly firm grip on a bunch of clothe, but as the material ripped, Day fell back anyway and her head snapped against the wall. "Ack," she muttered as she rubbed it, trying to comprehend this.
"Go," Josh snarled, a raw edge in his voice. "It isn't safe here, Day." As his hand hovered pointlessly above her, a barrage of Sunless behind him staggered forwards and swiped with sharp and filthy nails. He cursed and launched a backwards kick, sending them toppling each other over. "I can't see you become one of them, too." This time was softer, sadder.
"No," Day finally struggled to her feet and swallowed dryly, feeling stinging tears well in her eyes. "I can't leave you."
But Josh finally lost it. "You idiot," He shouted, and a few Sunless behind him staggered from the force of his voice. "You just met me! Why should you care? Go away, get out, get out, get out!" He shoved his back against a concealed switch and his fedora hat popped out. He grabbed it and fixed it sloppily over his blond hair. But his last words stung the most. "Most of all," he finished, "I don't care."
Day lost sight of him at last in a horde of red-eyed corpses who were as dead as they were alive. As they were mysteriously ignoring her, she slung her pack that had been shoved under the shelter with her over her shoulder and wiped away burning tears, straightening and turning on her heel to leap over one of the torn walls of the helicopter and landing with a thud on the ground outside. The broken copter's headlamp flickered. The rain was barely a drizzle.
Eyes flickered at her in the surrounding forest.
Trembling, Day waited as violent fear seemed to tear open her insides.
Nothing. She began to run.
Wicked-fingered branches tore at her exposed cheeks as her clumsy feet tripped over overturned roots, and she sometimes even rammed into trees in the pitch black that pressed against her widened eyes. She repeatedly whispered desperate, unknown prayers to herself and clenched, and stretched out her shadowed fingers. As a last tree root caught against her foot, she collapsed in a sobbing heap and waited for the imminent doom that awaited her. She repeatedly whispered one word to the tear-stained soil, desperately.
"Daybreak." She pounded a raw fist against the ground.
"Daybreak." She rolled over and stared at the ceiling of dead, polluted branches.
"Daybreak," she gripped a slime-covered tuft of grass and twisted it, suspense tensing her limbs. I should never have left home. She thought. Then, in deep despair, there is no daybreak.
Confusion. That was who she was, what she lived for.
"No," she whispered fiercely in a choked voice. "That's my name, to heck with it all!" She pulled herself to unsteady feet, a hand brushing delicately against her torn skin, remembering the unneeded panic that had blurred even her thinking. Carefully, she laid herself down again, and settled herself against a dip in a gnarled tree's roots, lining it with a thin, linen blanket for the most comfort she was going to have that night. She tried to sleep, but half asleep, nightmares plagued her of the Sunless, the helicopter about to crash, Josh and his new red eyes-
At this she sat bolt upright in her fitful slumber, her pants ringing out in an empty forest, skin tinged with a thin covering of salt from her cold sweat. As she tried to fall asleep, her fears seemed to come to life. She was nearly convinced that she heard Josh moaning her name eerily across the distance between them, and at this, she turned over and abruptly sat up, for there, illuminated in the grim light of morning, when the hurricane she had hardly paid heed to began to cease, was her friend.
Josh grinned, and his eyes flashed yellow in the grayish glow from faintly illuminated clouds. "It took me a while to find you," he admitted, and fell against a rotting tree, sinking to a mattress of debris and rotten leaves with a sigh of exhaustion, "But here I am."
Day shied away from his scratched hands and bleeding face, expecting his eyes to turn red and his body to overtake his mind. She waited, trembling. But Josh only laughed bitterly. "I'm not contagious," he told her ruefully, "but I have had the virus for years. My body has been fighting. Years."
"Oh," Day could only whisper, "wow. Well," it came out before she could stop it. "I'm immune to the virus, but I could still become one of them."
He stared. "Scared of the dark?" He tried, "Everyday fear of suffocation and loneliness?" His eyes were widening by the minute.
"Yes?"
"No wonder they were ignoring you. They sensed you would soon join them."
Day winced. "Please don't put it like that."
Josh waved her away with a hand. "Face the truth, kid. It's going to happen sometime soon. And to think," his face reddened, "I risked my crappy life for you! And it didn't even matter!"
"Whoa, whoa," Day jumped up as his face darkened in rage. "Cool down. It was you who kicked me out. I didn't even have a choice!"
"But you knew," he added, and he himself staggered to his feet and took a trembling step forward. "You could have at least told me!"
"I was scared!" She protested valiantly. "There were at least a dozen human killing machines out there and my freaked out brain couldn't process they were only focused on you. Speaking of which, if you have the thing, why did they attack you?"
Josh's face gleamed white in the shadowed settings. "They're attracted to the virus they create," he whispered this now. "They desire it, they want more. But if you don't need the thing to become part of them, they leave you alone."
"Howawa," Day breathed.
"Help me walk," Josh muttered and gripped his shaky head with his hands. "And let's go."