One week later

The gun in my hand was heavier than I liked, but it was nothing compared to the heaviness in my heart. Lance was talking animatedly in front of a group of us, waving his hands around as though he couldn't stand still. I wasn't listening to what he was saying, my mind was too busy forcing itself to forget about the pain that seemed to consume me every second. I woke up every day expecting to see Niall facing me but all I saw was an empty bed.

"Let's kill some mutants!" Lance shouted which broke me out of my thoughts and I halfheartedly highfived the person next to me who was adorning a sickening grin.

The mission was simple- kill as many mutants as possible. Eliminate all danger. I didn't care, I really didn't care about the mutants who were only kept away from us by a metal door. They didn't scare me, the darkness at night scared me, the loneliness at night scared me, the thought of a life without Niall scared me.

All of a sudden we were running, finally emerging on the surface of the wasteland in a crowd of movement. My legs forced themselves to move and I sprinted at the back of the group, looking ahead at the mesh of people who were all excitedly shouting at each other about the prospect of killing a mutant.

In the week since Niall's departure, I had become a recluse. I barely left my room other than to eat, Zara was becoming annoyed at my sadness and nobody felt the need to comfort me. Suck it up, I had been told that phrase a thousand times by Lance but it never stuck in my mind. Then again, nothing Lance ever said stuck in my mind.

I ran off to the right with my small mission group and we were soon running through an abandoned side street. The buildings on either side of me were shattered, shards of glass sprawled out on the floor in front of me and brick walls that had collapsed a long time ago. I passed the faded sign that read 'Barney's Tavern' and I smiled softly at the reminder of the past. The blissful, unproblematic past- the one before the world's fall into the pits of doom.

Our group stopped as the familiar body of a mutant appeared in the near distance, facing away from us as it picked apart the debris. One of the woman lined up her rifle and the bullet left her her gun before I could even process what was happening. The creature let out a gurgle before dropping to the floor like a sack of potatoes and lay there, surrounded by rubble, not moving. The sight wasn't moving, or disturbing, but instead made me feel no emotion.

We continued to move, I played no role in my group's activities. They shot every mutant they saw whereas I was merely an onlooker who watched the carnage unravel. The whole process was simply uninteresting, no adrenaline rushed through my veins and I felt boredum creep up on me like an old friend.

But whilst we were meandering back to the agreed meeting point, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise. Everyone else was talking loudly, and didn't notice that I stopped to turn around. In fact they all walked straight ahead while I stared in sheer disbelief at what I was witnessing. Only 50 feet away from us was a mega- mutant, a creature that was almost as tall as some of the buildings and seemed to be made entirely of muscle.

I wanted to scream but no sound came out as the thing walked towards me menacingly, grinning in the same sick way all the mutants did. There was something about his eyes that paralyzed me, caused so much ice cold fear to run through my veins that I'm sure my blood froze.

The thing was 20 feet from me.

15 feet.

10 feet.

I could smell the revolting thing, it gave off a putrid odor which burned the back of my nose and I could almost taste it on my tongue. I wanted to move, I kept telling my body to move but nothing was responding.

"Dara!" A voice cried out and within a matter of seconds a bullet whizzed over my head and into the bulging brain of the mammoth creature. It grabbed its head before falling to the floor, its body making a few jolted movements till it lay perfectly still.

Lance jogged over to me, grabbing my wrist and forcing me to move my stiff legs that felt like they were made of metal. The whole way back to the base, I couldn't comprehend how close I was to dying.

***

"What on earth did you think you were doing?" Lance shouted at me, some of his saliva landed on my cheek and I wiped it away before looking down at the floor again. He had been yelling at me for the past twenty minutes.

"I was too scared to move Lance," I replied truthfully but I could tell that he didn't believe me, even though my account was true.

"It was a suicide attempt, you wanted that thing to kill you," I rolled my eyes at his over exaggeration, "This is all about Niall, isn't it? He's just a man Dara, there are plenty of them here."

"He wasn't 'just a man'. He was the man I loved," I muttered back coldly, feeling anger run through me like a race car. How dare he bring up Niall?

"Love can be replicated Dara, everyone loves. Your not special Dara, grow up and realise that adults face rejection every day. Niall rejected you, move on," he slapped his desk before shooing me away.

Was I really acting immaturely? Sighing I lay down on the bed, knowing that my dreams would be filled with 10 foot mutants chewing my head like it was gum.

Quite an action packed chapter? Dara almost died, that was some action I guess.

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