Valentine sighed as he shrugged on his purple jacket, his shaggy black hair pulled back in a hair tie leaving only his bangs framing his face. His blue eyes scanned over an imaginary list before him, mentally listing off supplies he and his travel companion would need for the trip they were about to take.The boy turned his face to the dirty and cracked window, listening as the rain pitter-pattered against the roof. The sound was calming to him, reminding him of his home town before everything happened. Valentine's mouth twitched up into a ghost of a smile as he remembered his young brother, elder sister, and his loving mother. They had fallen ill not long before those...things took over their bodies. He shuddered, shaking his head to clear himself of the horrific images, though not before his companion walked through the tin door frame.

The person before him was Cleo, his best friend since he was a toddler. Her hair was cut shorter than Valentine's, thus she just let it be. She often got stern with her partner for leaving his hair down, the locks falling past his shoulders. Cleo often worried for her friend that one day she won't be at his side to remind him to pull his hair back, whether it goes into a messy bun or a simple ponytail was his choice. Or the odd occasion he asked her to twist the hair into a pair of dutch braids he would pin together. Speaking of those occasions..

"Cleo? Would you mind braiding my hair real quick before we hit the road?" Valentine's faint accented voice came to Cleo's ears, making the girl lift her head to look at the male before her. She still had yet to ask where his accent originates. She nodded a confirmation that she would and motioned for the taller of the two to sit down over on the old wooden bench. Cleo had to refrain herself from laughing as her best friend let out an exaggerated whine, his blue eyes lighting up with a childish joy as he saw her trying not to laugh. The boy sat on the bench, his back to his partner with a kid-like whoop. The shorter girl just shook her head as the ravenette wiggled childishly where he sat.

"We should stop near the river today, you need to wash your hair." Cleo spoke quietly, her voice nearly a whisper as she tugged the hair tie from the male's hair. She pulled a face at how greasy his hair was, but then again when there's twisted bodies who can't even be classified as human wandering about trying to drag your soul down to hell, one doesn't exactly get much time to shower. As if showers still worked anyway. When the husks first came about in a wave of plagues, most people turned to panic and irrationality. And those who didn't watched as the people around them began to disappear one by one.

Soon the survivors began to wear masks and oxygen tanks to filter out the disease ridden air. That hadn't worked for long, the illness simply adapted to the temporary solution. It was almost aware of what was going on. Soon the virus began to physically eat away at one's flesh, turning the muscle to mush and the skin scaly. Valentine and Cleo called them the Withered. Those husks were slower, stupider, though still very dangerous. The husks taken first were the strongest, smarter, and even still less dangerous than the withered being. It's unclear how they were taken, the believers in the supernatural would say demon possession. Scientists might say it was a brain worm. Nonetheless, the cause was unclear.

 All that was known of the illness was it came from a green fog, the fog was suffocatingly thick and smelled of rot. It engulfed the cities and the town one by one, day by day for two weeks before it dispersed mysteriously one night. Everyone had been glad at that time, they thought the worst had come to pass. They were...thoroughly incorrect. The illness rolled about exactly two weeks after the fog disappeared, starting with a simple cough. It spread into the throat, blocking the victim's airways. After being ill for two weeks, the infected would die at exactly two fifteen in the morning with blood pouring from their eyes and ears. They would scream for hours on end after the departure...wailing like banshees driven by hunger. Howling out to be freed from their rooms, always locked, or freed from any binds holding them down. Screaming to kill.

Valentine shuddered as one of those very screams echoed through the abandoned factory, the noise echoing off the metal walls. Cleo froze, her breath stopping for a second as she quickly finished braiding the dutch braids into the boy's hair and tying the locks together with his hair tie.

Valentine swore under his breath, quickly jumping to his feet and grabbing his backpack and rucksack from the floor, turning to the smaller figure before him. Her eyes were wide in fear as she scurried about to gather her backpack and sweater. Valentine quickly snatched a flashlight off an old tin table and tossed it to his friend, watching as she easily caught it before climbing through a hole in the roof. Cleo could be heard coughing from the dust, making her way through the metal rafters quickly before pushing open a skylight window with Valentine following quickly on her heels.

The two balanced perfectly across the roof as the howls of outrage echoed from the depths of the darkness in the abandoned factory. It was an eerie and unnerving sound. Cleo kept her gaze locked ahead of her, brown eyes drifting over the night sky and to the fallen pipes that were large enough for the two to slide down to the ground through.

"Val! The pipes!" Cleo whisper-yelled to the aforementioned boy just a few feet behind before she slipped her backpack off and slipped through the rusty opening with the bag in her hand. The air inside the pipe smelled of rot, rust, and dust. It made her throat close up in disgust, holding her breath to rid herself of the foul stench. Her feet hit the ground a moment later, the girl kneeling over and gasping for air. The rucksack hit the ground at her side not long after, Valentine just after. He was muttering swears at the inanimate object as he brushed himself off, picking up the bag on the ground.

"Time to go!" His focus was locked on something behind Cleo, his brows furrowing as his lips twitched downward into a scowl. "Now!" And with that, the two young adults took off running, leaping over debris and ducking below broken pipes. Valentine always stayed just a few steps ahead of Cleo, his longer legs allowing longer strides and his height providing a better view to look out, though by only a few inches.

 Cleo continued to gasp for air, her breaths shallow and painful. Her knees buckled beneath her with a painful crack as her body collided with the asphalt. She clawed her fingers at her throat as though it would alleviate her struggle, trying to gasp out the name of the boy long gone. He probably had no idea what happened, he was used to her being a bit behind him. Cleo shuddered as she felt her body begin to over heat, her gasping breaths faltering every so often. The rain continued to pour down, the coldness of the water plummeting to her doing nothing to lower her temperature. Her vision had tunneled as she lifted her watch to her line of sight.

The device read a number Cleo dreaded ever since she began to hide the cruel truth from Valentine. Ever since she had gotten her fall season allergies, or what she had presumed the issue to be. But as time passed she accepted that she would die, but she hadn't even gotten to say her final goodbye. A wail ripped its way from her throat as the rubbery hands of husks wrapped themselves around her, craving the warmth her diseased figure gave off. Cleo let her arm drop as she muttered two more words to the moon over her head, a tear slipping from her eyes.

Her apology was left on deaf ears as the clock hit two fifteen in the morning. She kept her eyes open as she felt a deadly coldness twist its way through her limbs, her tears turning red as her chest came to a slow stop. Cleo was now nothing more than an empty shell, her brown eyes lifeless and cold as her fingers began to twitch. The moment of peace had faded and now Cleo had become the very thing she feared, the very thing she had helped Valentine run from for two years. A husk.

On the other side of the factory Valentine had come to a stop, turning to where he had assumed his companion would be, only to be met with empty air, cold and rainy. His shoulders drooped in horror as the wails of the monster inside subsided for a single minute, almost as if to allow him to mourn the one person he had left in his life. As the seconds passed by Valentine knew what had come to be his best friend's fate. She had fallen ill. He knew something was wrong when her acclaimed 'allergies' didn't pass over in a week. He had hoped it wasn't true. He had prayed to a being he no longer believed in. He begged the world to let her live, he feared being alone. He let his head hang low, the icy chill of the rain on a cold fall night encompassing his tired and distraught frame. He shut his eyes, shutting out the world around him, shutting out the wails the had risen once more. Shutting out his grief. Valentine wasn't sad, he refused to let himself be. He didn't mourn, he couldn't. He had to survive, somehow.

And then a new wail joined in the chorus of dreadful sounds, a wail he knew all too well from the sleepless nights when Cleo had nightmares. He felt his strength leave his body and he fell to the ground, bringing his hands to his head and covering his ears, his fingers digging into his scalp as a sob wracked its way from his chest. His breathing sped up, a panic setting in as he came to the realization that after two years of sticking together, his best friend had fallen into the void of a false death, her body cursed to forever walk the barren terrain as the earth reclaimed the cities built.

 Valentine felt his hope slipping away, his breathing nothing more than sharp puffs of breath as he felt himself getting dizzier with each passing second. His body shook violently with loud sobs, not caring if the unnerving creatures the milled about could hear him. For all he could they could come and tear him apart, let his blood water the dry grass beneath his feet. To let him rest.

And they came, their howls of mindless anger shattering the boy's thoughts, making him press his palms further into his head. He didn't care about the pain that erupted in his ears from the pressure, not did he care for the shocks of pain in his scalp as he tugged his hair out. He could barely see through his blurry and tear filled eyes. He blinked, and he blinked, and he blinked but his vision never cleared. He allowed the husks to yank him to his feet, their lifeless fingers bruising his skin as they clamped shut around his wrists. He barely acknowledged when a voice spoke, distant and hard to understand, calling out his name. His only focus was the husk of the last person he cared for, her body a little paler than it should have been with death. He allowed himself to be pulled back into the rusted building, his eyes never leaving the silhouette of Cleo.

He was harshly dropped to the ground as a loud and rhythmic beeping filled his ears. The beeping was fast, almost as fast as his erratic heartbeat. He shut his eyes, accepting that the things would tear him apart. But he heard the voice calling again, more clearly. It spoke his name, the voice of a woman he hadn't seen in two years filling his ears. The wailing faded out of focus before ceasing completely, the voice of his mother sounding through his head as though she were just a few feet away. But that couldn't be possible, Valentine had watched as his mother was locked away in the cellar in his home, right along with his young brother.

The boy fought against his common sense and opened his eyes, closing them instantly at the blinking light that greeted him. He was dead. That's the only logical explanation that came to his mind, until he heard a gasp and felt the ground shake. The ground was oddly soft, and it was no longer raining. The male blinked his eyes open several more times, his vision focusing as he heard the sound of a heart monitor and saw the white ceiling of a hospital room.

"Mother! He's awake!" That voice. That was his little brother. Gregory. The sound of his brother's voice caused tears to well up into Valentine's blue eyes once more as he turned his head to the left, the tears falling as he saw three oh so familiar faces. The rushed sound of boots and tennis shoes sounded from the doorway behind the trio, the faces of his mother and father coming into view. The woman covered her mouth with her hands and rushed to his side muttering and gasping that he had finally woken up.

"What...happened?" The boy flinched at the sound of his own voice, rouch and crackly from lack of use. His gaze focused at his elder sister, Cassandra, and Cleo as they simultaneously opened to speak.

"You've been in a coma..." His sister spoke solemnly, her eyes downcast to the floor.

"For two years." Cleo looked straight at him, her eyes haunted with horrors that only Valentine would know of.. "But so was I."