Regeneration

Chapter 7 - Stranger

I felt an explosion of pain in the place where my heart rested. A hole was bore there, a black hole that was threatening to consume all of me, leaving nothing.

Part of me had been ripped away, my chest felt hollow.

I never knew a pain like this.

My hysterical wails echoed as I desperately shook my mother's body. I knew full that people didn't come back from the dead, but this was my mom. She wasn't dead, she couldn't be. This wasn't supposed to happen. If I shook her hard enough, she would come back to me.

Why won't you come back to me.

I squeezed Nylah's stiffening hand and desperately willed it with all my might, hoping for a miracle that would never come.

The weather worsened with torrential rains and vicious winds howling around me.

Thunder rumbled, threatening to crack open the sky as lightning flickered like a loose light bulb. It was as though the storm that raged within me projected into the atmosphere.

The rain was cruel, stinging against my skin, as it poured down like a thousand arrows released by angry archers.

I clung to their bodies, desperate for a sound, a moan, a goodbye.

Realization nailed into my heart as all the sound around me faded like I was underwater, drowning in my sorrow with heavy chains around my ankles slowly sinking deeper and deeper into the dark blue, the air escaping my lungs.

As though my body had sensed danger I looked up.

Directly in front of me, I saw a crazed man who had fallen to the ground, undoubtedly pushed down with all the chaos that was unfolding. He placed his hands on the ground in front of him, about to push himself back up. As his head tilted up, he locked eyes with me, both of us being at ground level.

Without even a fraction of a second passing, the man started towards me on all fours and fresh fear sprang up in me.

I let it dissipate to the back of my mind as I hesitated, feeling utterly defeated. I had no more fight left in me and I just wanted all the pain, all the hurt to stop, disappear.

The man was about three metres away from me.

I sat there looking at him barrelling towards me as my mind began to slow down time.

The wind blew swaying a wet strand of hair in my face. I felt this calmness wash over my body. I heard myself breathing as the soundless rain splattered on the already wet ground, the man was almost one metre away now.

My mind flickered to Nathan and my dad. I didn't know what had been their fate. They could still be out there somewhere.

I forced myself to cling to that sliver of hope despite my body rejecting it due the threat of disappointment.

I pulled together the last bit of strength in me. I looked down at the two unmoving bodies in front of me, tears slipping out my eyes.

As the moment returned to real time, I pulled my mother's pendant, a letter K, freeing the chain from around her neck. I quickly dashed off into the crowd.

I threw a glance over my shoulder and immediately regretted it. Beyond the man chasing me, I saw two of the animalistic like people hunched over Mom and Nylah, ferociously tearing into them with their teeth.

I tore my gaze away from the scene, rivers streaming down my face. I couldn't let myself see anymore.

I faltered as I felt my limbs go weak. The crowd went blurry and tears clouded my vision.