The inside of your tent was the cleanest place you knew. And even that had mud and dirt stains from the time of use. You eyed to thin walls that hid the near deserted outside from you. You knew that if you were to peek out of your sleep space you would see five other tents belonging to the rest of your group. A single tent to each member of your traveling group. You had had one tent-mate for a couple months or so, at least that was the time you estimated it to be. Her name had been Rosa. She got bit while looking for wood last fall. You blinked the memory of her warm face away.

    You sat on top of your worn sleeping bag. It was warm enough to sleep without it and it was easier to get out of the tent quickly if you weren’t cocooned like a moth, should there be an emergency. Running a hand over your head to smooth back your hair you sighed heavily before ducking your way through your tent. It was just turning to be dawn outside. The sky filled with lavender and grey. The sight was a reprieve from your less than stellar reality. In the moment, the diseased didn’t exist. You were alone with the open expanse of heaven. Head tilted fully towards the sky, you closed your eyes to absorb the small bit of peace. You stood there for a few moments wanting to be nothing. Wanting everything to go back to two years ago, before the pandemic. You knew you couldn’t dwell in absent minded daydreaming for long; you pulled out of your thoughts to a more pressing matter: Where to next?

    Currently your group resided somewhere in Colorado Springs, the weather had been good, with still some resources for food walking around. You all were lucky you had as good of a shooter as Wonwoo. He was the only one with experience prior to the outbreak. The rest of you learned somewhere along the way to where you are now. Colorado had treated you well but the summer would be too intense if you couldn’t find a better source of water. At the moment the cleanest you could find was a small fast moving stream about ¾ of a mile away. Your first instinct was to follow the stream and hope it lead to a river or even a lake. There you could add fish to your diet and have a place to cool off from overheating. The problem was how popular the idea was. Wonwoo pointed out how obvious that solution was and if it were that easy, how many people would you suppose would also be there? You’d all seen first hand how ruthless scavengers could be and no one knew better than Wonwoo how violent even normal people became when desperate. He was the most wary of newcomers, though he had good reason to be.

    If you couldn’t follow the stream, where else could you go? Did you want to risk losing your water source because you were worried about a bit of heat? Maybe you could follow the stream, how likely was it that there were enough people left around here to have a gang of scavengers. Not to mention the biters that still roamed about. The last group you had run into was when Rosa…

    At this point no one knew exactly how intelligent the biters were but they did manage to find enough prey to survive. It was almost laughable how good they were at finding food despite their impaired senses. From what anyone could tell, the disease affected their body in muscle tension. Most had some locked joints making their movements jerky and swinging. You could always tell how long someone had been diseased by how stiff they were. They couldn’t see in dim light, Joshua had hypothesized that their pupils remained constricted like the other muscles in their body. So far it was the best explanation any of you could find. They’re sense of smell remained the same to a normal human, it was their hearing that made them difficult. It was the fastest sense to develop in absence of regular eyesight. Unfortunately you couldn’t tell how far along a diseased was until they started coming for you. And sometimes by then it was too late. Your mind went back to that place six months ago, when it had been too late.

    It was the afternoon when Rosa left to get firewood. She said she wouldn’t go far off had come across a biter only a half mile from camp. She had told you tried her hardest to hide without a noise. But fallen autumn leaves were not on her side. She ran. She might have made it safely to camp if not for a newer biter that still had full use of their limbs. He caught up to her right as she broke through the tree line into camp. You had been out hunting with Wonwoo. It was Joshua, Mingyu, and Jeonghan that saw the attack and shot the biter latched to her shoulder. It was Jeonghan’s shot that brought you and Wonwoo back to camp.

    You knew as soon as you saw Rosa crying on the ground. The look Joshua gave you only confirmed it. Rosa was as good as dead. She wasn’t the first in in your traveling group to become infected there had been two before her. The first had been another classmate of Joshua’s. When he couldn’t pull the trigger, you did. You cried all night in your tent that night, the boy’s face right beside Leena’s in your mind’s eye. If anyone heard your sobs that night, they said nothing. Since then, the job of execution and leader had been passed to you. Seeing Rosa’s crying face face hurt you just as much as anyone, but it was your job to take care of the group. With a shaking hand you reached to touch her head, a last comforting gesture given in farewell. She only looked at you knowing she had no other option. You raised the gun from beside her and let a bullet fly through the chamber. She dropped down lifelessly. Smattered blood around her. Looking around you saw everyone looking down in grief.

    “Pack up. We don’t know if there are any others close.” You moved to pack your own tent up.

    “But Y/N, the body-”

    “I know, but we don’t have time. Besides, the blood…” you trailed off. No one knew if just coming into contact with the blood of the diseased would in fact turn you into one of them as well. But no one wanted to take that chance.

     You all left that campsite in silence giving each other gentle hands on the shoulders, trying to console your friends while trying to not break apart yourselves. Mingyu passed his hand across his eyes trying to not let anyone see his tears.

    “It’s okay Gyu…” you whispered to him, passing him up to take lead.

    “How long have you been up this time?” Joshua’s voice came from your right breaking you out of your reverie.

    “You alright?” he asked after a moment passed.

    “Yeah” you sighed out, “Just thinking”

    “About moving?”

    “Yeah… about” you paused “moving” you falsely confirmed. Joshua probably knew how much the you dwelled in your memories, but you didn’t feel the need to make him revel in them with you.

    “We’ll all discuss it when Gyu finishes breakfast. They all should be waking up soon.”

    “The way I see it, we don’t have much to discuss. We have to move on, and the water is too precious to leave completely. We have enough ammo to deal with any stray groups we come across, and we’ll just have to be careful of biters. There’s no way around it.” You reasoned to him unhappily but firm.

    “Wonwoo won’t like that.” Joshua thought aloud looking up at the brushed white clouds.

    “No one will, but it’s the best option for survival at this point. We can’t stay here.”

    A loud yawn broke your and Joshua’s companionable silence.

    “Well, look who’s up.” you teased as Wonwoo’s bedhead emerged from his tent.

    He grunted sleepily at you. Not half a second later Mingyu emerged from his own tent with a considerably more tamed head of hair.

    “I swear, they’re linked” Joshua leaned over to whisper at you. You laughed at his dry joke. The two really did seem attached at the hip. The only time they were apart was some times when Wonwoo went hunting and Mingyu was preparing food.

    “Good morning” Mingyu yawned out loudly. He had a sleepy smile on his face. The oversized puppy made you smile.

    Wonwoo went over to start the fire while Mingyu searched through the camp’s supplies to find some food to make breakfast.

    “I guess I’ll go wake up Jeonghan and Minghao then.” Joshua sighed theatrically

    “Good luck, brave soldier.” you saluted him teasingly.

    Not that Jeonghan was particularly hard to wake up, just that he didn’t like it. Whoever had the job of getting him up had to deal an unpleasant amount of sass way too early in the morning. Minghao wouldn’t even talk to you in the morning, just glare. Not that he talked much anyways. English was still somewhat new and foreign to him, He had gotten stuck in the continental U.S. when they finally shut down international modes of transportation due to outbreaks. He was isolated from his home country and had practically zero chance of meeting any of his friends or family again.

    You had picked him up shortly after Rosa’s death. He was taken in rather easily. He had been laying in your path on the way to your current camp. As you had approached him you couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead. WHen you were close enough to examine him, he had noticed you.

    “Water” he said.

    “Have you been bitten?” you asked.

    “Water” was the only answer you got.

    You’re not sure why you agreed so easily to give a possibly diseased stranger some of your resources. Maybe it was because he was cute. Maybe it was because you were feeling generous. Maybe it was the fear of causing another death. You from a few feet away rolled your water bottle to him. Holding the metal bottle with both hands, he slouched into a tired sitting position, drinking at least half of the bottle. After he seemed finished quenching his thirst you interrogated him. Or at least tried. It was when he started babbling in some other language that you realized it was quite possible the only reason he had been repeating water over and over was because it was one of the only words he knew. You were able to piece together that he came from China from his broken English once he realized no one could understand his breathless foreign raving.

    “Are you alone?” you asked after discerning that he was in fact not diseased. No bite marks and no visible signs of a fever.

    “Just me.” he slowly confirmed.

    Turning to the rest of your group, you told them your thoughts.

    “He won’t last long by himself.” you hedged.

    “Do we really have the resources to take in anyone else?” Jeonghan questioned.

    “We haven’t come across a town for a while, maybe we’ll find one and some supplies. If we leave him he dies. If we bring him and it doesn’t work out, he dies. In the end us trying to help couldn’t be worse than leaving him.” you argued your point. It was harsh, but it was true.

    “Y/N’s right. We should help him. As long as he’s with us, he’s not biter bait. And one more person in our group is one less biter to worry about.” reasoned Wonwoo.

    You quickly glanced back at the potential newcomer. He looked confused, and almost scared. Like he was trying to not show how frightened he actually was.

    “Sounds like a good idea to me. There’s gotta be a town coming up soon that we can find at least a sleeping bag and water bottle for him. I don’t mind sharing a tent.” said Mingyu.

    “Yeah but he might, no one wants to share a tent with you, you giant. You snore.” teased Wonwoo.

    You looked to Joshua. You could see hesitation in his eyes. You knew he was thinking about the last addition to your team, and what had happened to her. He sighed.

    “Well, the even number would help us stay in teams I guess.”

    You smiled, turning to the boy.

    “My name is Y/N. This is Joshua, Jeonghan, Wonwoo, and Mingyu.” You tried not to talk in too much of a rush as you gestured to each respective person. You didn’t want to overwhelm him with too many names.

    “My name is Minghao” he said in a practiced manner, “nice to meet you?” he finished unsurely.

    “It’s nice to meet you too.” Jeonghan piped in.

    “Minghao, would you like to join our group?” you asked hoping he understood at least the general question.

    “Join group? I will go with you?” he asked trying to clarify.

    “Yes!” You happily exclaimed, glad that communication wasn’t entirely impossible.

    You all were in charge of helping Minghao learn more English and took whatever time you could to teach him more vocabulary or try to explain what you had said earlier with words he was more familiar with. Unfortunately, none of you knew any language spoken in China but you all tried your best to help him. To give him some credit, Minghao wasn’t entirely hopeless at English to begin with, but he was also a fast learner. He was rather shy but the more English he learned the more personality he showed you all, and you hoped he would cont