Miles felt like his airway was constricting. He couldn't breathe he couldn't see he couldn't stand.

He crumpled to his knees, a noise escaping him that was something between a sob and a whine.

It wasn't Eira, it wasn't Lia. It was somebody so much more important.

"Miles," Aaron warned, voice cracking. He too had noticed that the body wasn't Lia's or his sister's, but it was still a corpse - and the second they'd seen today.

Miles ignored Aaron, scrambling towards the fallen form. "Harvey," he said, and now he realised that he was crying. He didn't care. He grabbed his dead friend's arm and then reached for his face, shaking Harvey desperately like he might wake up.

"He's dead," said Aaron, appearing behind Miles to kneel by his side.

"Fuck off!" Miles snarled, using one hand to shove Aaron away and the other to pull Harvey's cooling body towards him. Blood smeared the ground as the body dragged, seeping from a fatal wound in the boy's stomach.

"He's my age," gasped Miles. "Our age. He's so - he's so -" young. Miles didn't know what he was trying to say. Aaron had decided to keep his distance, watching from a few feet away with round, terrified eyes as Miles pulled Harvey into his embrace, forgetting to care about the blood that was leaking onto him. "Fuck, Aaron." Miles looked at Aaron exasperatedly, vision fuzzy with tears. "Why is he dead? He can't be -"

Miles' speech was broken by a sob, and he didn't continue. Tightening his grip on Harvey's lifeless form, Miles tried desperately to think of something that could wake Harvey up.

But Harvey wasn't going to wake up.

"Miles -"

"Don't!" Miles spat before Aaron could finish.

Aaron fell silent.

Miles had seen death before. In movies and in books and even in his family. Grandparents. Not fifteen-year-olds.

But now, clutching Harvey's still form close to his chest, Miles felt so raw so torn so bleak.

Death had never felt this close before.

How was it possible for a person to exist one moment, and to not the next?

Miles held Harvey's body so close to his that he didn't even feel Harvey's blood seeping into his shirt. He rested his cheek against Harvey's tousled hair, a single tear slid down the bridge of his nose as he scrunched his eyes shut tight.

"What happened?"

That wasn't Aaron's voice. Miles' head snapped up and his grip protectively tightened on Harvey's dead body. Aaron jumped.

Lia was standing nearby, Eira by her side. And there was somebody new with them, too: a boy that looked hardly twelve years old. The boy was covered in grazes.

Aaron answered when he realised that Miles wasn't going to. "Miles found his friend, um..." he tipped his head in the direction of Miles, who was still clutching Harvey and frowning at the people who had just shown up at the scene. If he wasn't holding one of his closest friends, dead, in his arms, he might have been more relieved that Lia and Eira had shown up and more interested in who they'd brought along with them.

At first, Eira and Lia and the boy looked absolutely horrified, but some kind of understanding glinted in Lia's eyes for hardly a send before she and Eira shared a troubled glance.

Picking up on the fact that there was something else going on that didn't involve Miles' dead friend, Aaron asked warily, "What is it?"

The younger boy who was by Lia's side narrowed his eyes and shrank back. "They're here," he whispered.

Without context, that was terrifying.

"I don't know what he's talking about," Lia murmured, crouching by the boy and resting her hands on his shoulders. "His parents... they -"

"Attacked him," Eira finished.

All eyes were on the boy, but his eyes were darting about the alley. He seemed not to have heard what the girls had said. He said again, more forcefully this time, "Somebody's here."

"Who?" demanded Lia.

Aaron stood up and crossed the short distance to stand by the girls and stranger, but Miles stayed seated on the ground, legs folded beneath him and Harvey's cold body held close to his own.

"Your parents?" Eira suggested, worry lacing her tone.

"No," said the boy. "No, no, they're gone... I think..."

Lia gave his shoulders a shake. "Hey!" she snapped, but she didn't sound angry; more panicky. "Tell us what the hell you mean."

The boy's eyes had landed on the end of the alley, which opened up onto the street.

Without a response, he darted off into the shadows.

Lia chased after him, disappearing into the dark edges of the alley. "Tell us what you mean!"

He didn't have to.

Aaron said, "Shit," staring at something at the end of the alley.

Eira cowered by her brother's side. "That's what he was staring at."

Miles craned his neck in an attempt to see what they were looking at without having to move.

"Miles, leave the corpse."

That was Lia, emerging from the shadows with the boy in tow. "I know it's important to you -"

"Harvey isn't an it!" snarled Miles, upper lip curling.

Lia flinched. "Gosh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. You can't bring him with you."

"Where are we going?"

"We're running," she said, "as soon as you put the body down."

"I'm not leaving Harvey behind!"

"Miles, we have about five seconds before -"

But they didn't have five seconds. The person who had been crouching at the end of the alley abruptly stood.

"Crap, Miles, leave Harvey and get up!"

Sensing the urgency in her tone, Miles blinked, for the first time actually considering that maybe he had to leave Harvey behind. The prospect of doing such made him uncomfortable.

"What's happening?" Aaron pressed, but he already knew.

The person was running, now. An Altered, heading in the frightfully direct direction of the teens.

The Altered also had a gun.

Miles had never seen a gun before. Not in real life. In old television programs and movies, guns made frequent appearances; but not anymore. This world was not meant to use guns for evil.

Miles was suddenly torn from Harvey, and he let out a noise of protest before realising it was Aaron who had grabbed him.

"We have to go," Aaron breathed, close to Miles ear and voice brimming with fear.

Once Aaron had hauled Miles to his feet, he let the latter go, however the instant that Miles reached for Harvey's limp body, Aaron grabbed his hand again.

"Bloody hell, Miles, do you want to die?"

Then they were running. Rather, Aaron running, Miles staggering along after.

Gunshots split the air.

An impact; a soft sting; an unbearable, searing pain.

Miles stopped running.

_________________________

+1136 Words

((Banner credit to itsnothardtodreamx!))

I hope everybody is staying safe out there with the real virus that's going on right now. It's coincidental that I'm writing about a make-believe virus while the coronavirus and all that's happening,,, but I do have a lot of time to write with the whole self-isolation ordeal.

I hope everybody is doing what they can to stay entertained and healthy <3

- Reb <3