4 Days - 5

Day 2 - Morning

 

                               Steadying himself, he took back a hold of the wheel and pressed gently on the gas pedal. Gradually navigating around the cars and bodies that clutter the streets. Some vehicles had looked as if the driver had floored it all of a sudden and went out of control, being smashed into light posts, mailboxes, into other people’s houses. While he swerved around the confusion, he was piecing together that whatever was in the air must have done this, that a virus or something suddenly stopped so many peoples lives. “Why did I live?” He thought over to himself, did the mere act of taking the pills save him from this event? The boy was educated enough to know how a virus would work, however, the idea a virus attack on such a large, sudden scale puzzled him. The sun was now rising glacially over the landscape; it looked like it was going to be another bright, sunny day. The boy came up to a large collection of toppled, and smashed cars. He knew he wouldn’t get the van through there; he punched the wheel out of frustration, causing a loud honk. He turned the car’s ignition off, opened the car door and stumbled out.

           

            He searched the car pile in front of him, seeing if there were any openings for him to simply walk through. There didn’t appear to be any, so he shrugged it off and gripped ahold of a car and vaulted himself on top. He looked down at the road, at the end, he noticed something familiar; his stepmother’s car. The shattering of his idealistic vision that his sister was waiting for him made his thoughts leave him, he rushed down and sprinted down the street to the car as fast as he could. When he reached the car, he came back, ignoring what was at hand, scared to see what he would see. The car had the front bent over a telephone pole and the trunk blown wide open, the driver had flown through the window and into said pole. In the back of the car were various foods, refuse, and grocery bags. This confused him a little bit, it seemed as if his stepmother lived out of her car, but he knew she lived in a small apartment on the other side of town. His sister was not present anywhere in the mess, so he approached the passenger side of the car. The passenger side was empty, the crushed in hood was pushing into it, but his little sister was not present in the car at all. He searched around the area to see if she may have been ejected from the car, but there were no such signs. The boy sat down on the curb, reexamining the wreckage again.

            “If she isn’t here, then where is she?” he thought. The idea that she may still be alive crossed his mind. With that, instead of searching for a corpse, he began searching for clues; something to justify his theory, give him hope. The car passenger side door was locked. “So she wasn’t in there?” he pondered. The back doors were also locked, “Where could she have been?” he asked again. Walking back around the car, and he spotted the open trunk, and it then it struck him. If she couldn’t have been in the passenger seat, and she couldn’t have been in the back of the car. The trunk is the only thing that has been opened since the crash. In that moment, it didn’t matter that he didn’t know anything about his stepmother. Year’s worth of information flowed into him with this revelation. This is why he was kept in the dark about his stepmother, his father knew how he would react, he wouldn’t care what redeeming qualities she may have, and it wouldn’t have held back his anger. He searched the trunk and found a tire iron. He grabbed it, held it tight till his fingers hurt. The boy swung himself around the car and looked at the corpse that was once his stepmother. Trying to hold in this new found contempt, but failing he raised the iron high and fell it down upon her skull. He closed his eyes, but he heard a crunch. He continued beating, screaming profanity at her. He didn't know what sort of things she could have done to her own daughter, but all he didn't care, the mere idea that she would have treated her own daughter as luggage was enough to set his rage aflame and he was unleashing all that rage into each swing into her still corpse. He dropped the bloody iron, panting. The boy walked away, not feeling satisfied, but feeling relieved, he continued on.