literature

GermanyxReader - Safe Haven (Chap. 13)

Deviation Actions

Published: Jan 13, 2014

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Literature Text

Spring

There were flowers blooming on the side of the road, and birds in nearby trees chirped to their hearts’ content. They seemed to come and go fleetingly without a single care. How odd for something like that to be in such a world.

My right arm gave off a dull ache, as it had for the past couple of weeks, and my throat and mouth were dry from the climbing temperature. The mid-morning sun glowed a rusty yellow, leaving one side of my body warmer than the other. A very thin layer of sweat had begun to form on my warmed skin, and I shed my filthy black jacket and tied it around my waist. I had noticed that the amount of snow was decreasing significantly, and the remaining slush collected on the ground in large puddles.

We had passed the Tennessee-Alabama border a few hours prior. We met a man two days after leaving Nashville who was running around screaming about Safe Haven, and after calming down, he told us that he had found it somewhere in northern Alabama. So, taking his word for it, we followed Interstate 65 down to Alabama in hopes of finding the place.

I watched Ludwig walk quickly in front of me. He held his back straight as he took lengthy strides down the road, his body language giving off a very directly focused mindset. He faced straight forward, not looking to his sides.

I took in a deep breath, then let it out as a sigh. “You know,” I said, looking up at the sky. The blue that draped itself over the atmosphere was the same hue as Ludwig’s eyes. “If all else fails, we could just go back to that little cabin.”

Ludwig grunted, replying curtly, “Ja.”

I quickened my steps to catch up to Ludwig, my legs aching a bit. I looked up at his hardened face, and I smiled. I’m not sure why I smiled; the worn, strained, mentally tortured expression on his face was nothing to take lightly. Nothing nowadays could justifiably be taken lightly.

I turned my face back to the road as we walked through a small town. Before he could protest, I laced my fingers between his and held his hand. Ludwig froze, stopping in his tracks, and looked down at me. “You still like me, right?” I said, grinning.

His brows furrowed slightly, a pink dusting his cheeks. He looked away from me and continued walking. “Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t like you.”

I felt his hand squeeze mine, and I chuckled.

“Alright. Let’s take a little breather.”

Ludwig grunted, filing through the ammunition and other goods stored in the abandoned diner-turned-bunker while I ransacked the cabinets for food. A rat fell from a cabinet shelf, and I drove my knife through its neck before it could make it off the counter. Something in the cabinet caught my eye as I sheathed the knife. “Hey, Ludwig,” I said, extracting the two objects and turning to face him.

The German looked at the unlabeled bottles in my hands, stepping over and taking one. He uncorked it and took a whiff. “It smells alcoholic,” he said.

“So it’s moonshine.” I swapped bottles with him and smelled the liquor. It had an incredibly strong scent that made me jerk my head back. “Miss Carol used to make moonshine, if you’d believe that.” I shrugged. “Gotta make a living somehow, right?”

“Have you ever tried it?” said Ludwig.

“Nope,” I replied. “She never let us have any. So. . .” I brought the bottle to my lips and took a large sip––which was a huge mistake. I coughed heavily, forcing the hard liquor down my throat, then groaned. “Ugh, son of a bitch. I thought this stuff was supposed to make you feel good.”

“Nein, _____,” said Ludwig, grabbing the bottle and taking a big gulp. He grunted slightly, as if he’d done it before. “It is supposed to make feel nothing.”

I looked down at the bottle, giving no response. Sighing inwardly, I took back the bottle. “Well, I’ve been needing a little nothing lately.”

“You have no tolerance for it,” chided Ludwig. “You can’t just decide to drink a whole bottle on a whim und expect not to get drunk.”

I pulled up a dusty old chair by a dusty old table and sat down. “And what if I want to get drunk?”

Ludwig sneered, sitting down in the chair beside mine with two shot glasses in his hand. “Then I expect you to share.”

I smirked, pouring us each a shot of moonshine. “A toast,” I said as I raised my glass up, “to the son of a bitch who found a ‘cure-all’ that turned everyone into mindless, fungal zombies. To the man who started this hell on earth that I call normalcy––to Doctor Ivan Braginski.”

Ludwig eyed my glass for a moment, then raised his and clanked it against mine. “To love, which we cling to through all the hate. Und to hate, which destroys every form of love in its path.”

We drank.

“To fear,” I said as I refilled our glasses. “For where would we be without that precious thing? That fifth element that’s company is felt long after it’s left. That thing that wraps us up at night in its chilling embrace.”

We toasted. We drank. We refilled our glasses.

“To blood,” said Ludwig. “That dark-colored fluid that covers the land und mixes with the ocean.”

Toast. Drink. Repeat.

“To nothing,” I said in a low voice. “For that is the only outcome.”

I awoke with a slight headache and the sun peering through the window. I stretched, my back as stiff as a board from sleeping in upright. I lifted my booted foot and nudged Ludwig’s leg. “Ludwig, wake up.”

The German stirred, opening his eyes. He grunted and rubbed his face. “Verdammt,” he growled in annoyance. “We only drank one bottle, didn’t we?”

“Yeah,” I answered, pushing myself to my feet. I squeezed my right arm, feeling only a tiny pain every now and again. “My arm’s been feeling better for a few days now,” I stated, untying the splints from my forearm and releasing my limb.

“Gut,” he said, standing up slowly. “We should get going.”

“Yeah.”

The midday sun beat down relentlessly, melting what little snow was left and causing the water to evaporate. Ludwig and I shared a loaf of canned bread we had found in the diner as we walked down the broken road. I kept the last bottle of moonshine in my backpack, just in case I wanted to feel nothing again.

A tall barbed-wire fence came into our sights as we approached a large city. A sign reading “WELCOME TO HUNTSVILLE, ALABAMA: ROCKETS CITY USA” was covered by the fence, and two men standing near an opening in the fence noticed us and held up their rifles.

“Don’t move!” shouted one of them, pointing his rifle at us. “Put your hands up!”

Ludwig and I stopped and did as told, holding up our hands above our heads and standing in place.

“What is your purpose here?!” yelled the other man.

I scanned the area behind the fence. “This is Safe Haven, isn’t it?”

The men looked astonished, then aimed at us. “Why have you come here?”

“My name is _____,” I called, relaxing my posture slightly. “And this is Ludwig. We came here because we heard you were looking for a cure!”

“We have no intention of harboring infected!”

“We’re not infected!” I refuted. I glanced at Ludwig before saying, “We’re immune!”