You used to love sleeping in. Lazing in bed knowing you didn’t have to do anything that day before finally getting too warm and having to get out of bed. The soft comfortable feeling you basked in while the morning sun streamed in through the blinds of your room. The feeling you could identify as safety now. You didn’t have it anymore. Another small yet huge thing lost to the pandemic. You hated it. Why did the world have to change? Why did you have to change?

    Everyone had. That’s what happens in a lawless world you supposed. You did what you had to, to survive. You who was a normal student who could barely survive on a college campus; now you were in charge of keeping five other people alive. You who had never stood out; now you stood shooting innocents.

     ‘Wouldn’t Leena be disgusted.’ the accosting thought slammed through your mind. ‘Leena’s dead.’

    You weren’t the only one who had changed. You witnessed Joshua’s own transformation, starting that day. Your sweet Joshua. He was still there but he had a stone wall behind his eyes now. You saw it every time he looked at you. His soft eyes from when you had met him could no longer be when this new world began.

    You both had tried to find others in the dorm who were okay, but they either wouldn’t open the door or the dorm was deserted. You waited in an unoccupied dorm for two days before leaving in hunger, hoping things had calmed down. They had and also had not. People left the streets by your school deserted, trying to hide in homes and stores. The only ones littering the roads were diseased. You and Joshua made a hasty retreat with still empty stomachs. It took another two days before the two of you gathered enough courage to go out in search for food. You passed the next week or so going back and forth between your claimed dorm and places that had food on campus.

    “Y/N.” Joshua said from behind his face mask, “We need to check on our families. We can’t live in the dorms for much longer. There’s not enough food, and there’s too many people. Things are going to start getting desperate.”

    The two of you sat on the floor next to each other, leaning against a bed waiting around once again. You sighed at his comment. You knew you would have to leave eventually, but it scared you-- anything outside your world confined to Joshua and a small part of the campus was terrifying.

    “You’re right. What are we going to do?” you turned your head to look at him.

    “My cellphone stopped working a couple days ago and I couldn’t get in contact with them before then.”

    You had left your own cellphone in your dorm when you and Joshua left the first night. You hadn’t gone back for it.

    “You have a car on campus right?” Joshua asked.

    “Hopefully.”

    Who knew if anyone had hotwired your car yet.

    “How far is your house?”

    “Forty minutes southeast. You?”

    “Scottsdale. Twenty minutes.” Joshua hesitated.

    “We’ll stop there first.” It was only fair to go to the closest family first.

    Joshua looked at you unsurely.

    “Are you sure?”

    “It makes sense.” you work to convince yourself out loud, “When do we leave?”

     “Dusk. Everyone healthy is too wary to be out at that time, and from what I’ve seen, biters become at least slower.”

    “Alright. Now what if my car isn’t there? We need a backup plan.”

    “Book it back to the dorms?”

    “It’s the best we got isn’t it.” you sigh, looking at the ceiling.

    Joshua rested a hand on your knee.

    “It’ll be okay.”

    The two of you drifted into silence most likely both thinking about the same thing. What would you find once you got home?

    After eating squished lunchables that the two of you had smuggled from a broken into food mart on campus, the two of you packed the little food you had. After finishing stuffing a metal water bottle you found last week into your bag you straightened up to look at Joshua who was waiting by the door, a hat and face mask cover most of his face from you, but you could tell from his eyes that he was nervous.

    “You ready?” you asked.

    He nodded.

    “Let’s go.”

    Joshua only opened the door enough to peek out to check the hallway. Once he thought it looked clear he slipped out, you following closely behind him. The trip to the parking garage was hurried and full of nervous glances over your shoulders and around corners; occasional stops waiting for other students to pass by. Some seemed on their way to being a biter by the looks of their gait and mumbling. By the time you two made it to the garage, the sun had nearly fully set. The lack of lighting due to power outages was both advantageous and worrisome. If you couldn’t get to your car soon, you would be completely blind in the darkness of the covered garage. Finding your car then would become an impossibly hard task.

    “What floor?”

    “Second? Maybe?” you said, knowing it wasn’t the best answer.

    Joshua sighed slightly before nodding. You both headed for the stairs, quickly climbing them to the second floor. When you reached the second floor you stood still for a moment.

    “Right or left, do you remember?”

    You stood still for a moment trying to recall as silence echoed around the two of you.

    “Right I think.”

    “Okay.”

    Both of you headed in the direction you thought your car was, trying to scan for the back of your car.

    “There.” you pointed, starting to jog over.

    You pulled out your car key to unlock it, barely noticing with a hint of sadness all the keychains you had to take off of it. The sound would have alerted anyone within a half mile of you that you were coming. With a click you unlocked the front door stepping in and unlocking the rest of the doors for Joshua to get in. You started up your car without a problem as Joshua shut his door. You almost felt like crying with relief having made it to your functional car. Joshua leaned his head back against the headrest and let out his own huff of a laugh, releasing some tension.

    “Let’s get out of here” he looked towards you, a weary smile on his face, his hand gripping his face mask lightly.

    You smiled back before pulling out of your space and heading in the general direction of Scottsdale. About fifteen minutes full of deserted cars and people lying on the streets later, you pulled up to Joshua’s home. The lights were on.

    Joshua started scrambling to unbuckle himself and reached for the door before you stopped him.

    “Joshua.” he halted his haste, “ Be careful,” you hesitated, not knowing quite how to put your next few words together, “It might not be… them…” you trailed.

    He looked down at his hands still holding onto his face mask.

    “I know.” he paused before looking at you, “But it has to be them.” he said sincerely.

    He opened the door to exit the car. You hoped for his sake that his family was in there. You turned off the car and locked it, coming to stand beside Joshua outside the door to the house. You glanced at him silently, waiting for him to open the door. He had put his face mask back on. He was scared. Maybe he was afraid of what the reality could be. You could understand his fear.

    “I’m here with you.” You grabbed his sleeve lightly.

    He only looked to you for a small moment before quietly opening the door. It took less than a second for both of you to realize that something wasn’t right

    Now you may not have ever met Joshua’s family but judging by the way Joshua kept his dorm, you would figure that they wouldn’t leave wardrobes worth of clothes on the floor in the living room and entry way. Joshua took off at a jog around the corner without a word to you. You followed suit. The kitchen was ransacked. Drawers pulled out, cabinets left open, dishes broken on the ground. Joshua ran off again. While you took in the damage, stunned. Across from the kitchen you saw a broken sliding glass door.

    ‘They must have been broken into.’ You grimly hypothesized.

    You stared at the jagged bits of glass clinging to the frame of the door. That’s when you heard Joshua scream.

    Quickly grabbing a kitchen knife left lying on the floor, you ran upstairs. Following the sounds of distress, you raced to an open room. You scanned the room in a panic, looking for a threat. You found something else instead. Joshua was kneeling by the side of the bed. The bed was… not empty. Though you had wished it was. For Joshua’s sake at the very least. The bed would have looked clean, the bodies looked relaxed; it looked off, but only just enough to set off