Coroniam City

I remember how busy the subways of Coroniam used to be. Subway trains so full, people were being pushed up against the glass windows used to constantly be stopping and taking off in just a matter of a few minutes but that didn’t stop the overcrowding as people waited for their specific train to cram into. I used to hang out in the subways a lot as a teenager, tagging random walls deep within the tunnels with friends on Saturday nights.

I stood on the last step that descended into the Subway. A broken gateway lingered in front of me, the rusted bars hanging or missing from their place. It wasn’t anything like I expected; there were no rotting bodies just waiting to be devoured or blood stains all over the place. It looked just like it did back when it was running, dirty and with a bit more graffiti but still the same. I heard Logan – as the crazy woman who had thrown me off a building had called him – stomping down the steps behind me and I turned to face him.

“How do you have electricity?” I asked. The subway had lamps hanging from the walls that went all the way into the tunnels.

“It’s been a while since we were forced down here,” the man said as waved passively around him. “We’ve learned a thing or two. I’m Rowan.” He held out his large hand for me to shake.

“Piper,” I replied, taking his hand. I turned my attention back to the subway as he started to walk ahead of me. “So do you stay in one of those train cars?”

There were four in total, the windows had been either busted out completely or cracked, possibly from riots. The doors were spread open and there were more lights inside. Rowan headed behind the train instead and turned back towards me. Before, when I was on top of the building, I hadn’t focused on his face but now that we were only a few feet away I could make out every detail and boy did he look like he had a story to tell.

Rowan had dark skin and thick eyebrows. Wrinkles creased his forehead when he looked at me and bags hung low underneath his brown eyes. He had a scar on his upper lip that almost touched the bottom of his long nose and a gap in his mouth where a bottom tooth should have been. Amongst his rugged looks came wrinkles at the corners of his eyes which made me think that maybe before all of this, he had once been a very happy man.

“We don’t stay out here in the front,” Rowan said. His voice brought me back and I snapped my attention over towards the area behind him. “The guards around here like to get a little brave and come down sometimes and we don’t like their kind of trouble.”

“So you hide in there?” I asked, pointing towards the tunnel that led deep into the underground. “Do you know an Isaiah?”

Rowan suddenly had a big grin on his face. He stomped over to me and for a second, I thought he was going to kill me but he simply grabbed my hand and started to stomp back over to the entrance to the tunnel.

“So that’s why you’ve fallen into my lap!” Rowan said. “He said you’d be coming but I didn’t think you would. Not many new Scavie’s make it all the way out here. Let me just say, I’m impressed. Especially for someone your size.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, shaking my arm free. “You knew that I was coming?”

“Well, I knew that someone was coming,” Rowan replied. “Isaiah didn’t really give me a name, he just said to be on the lookout for a new one.”

Rowan hopped down off the cement and onto the track ridden gravel. He turned around and offered me his hand for help to get down. I took it graciously and followed him into the tunnel. The light was sparse as we drew further and further in. When I counted the steps between, it made me worry that soon, I’d be counting forever so I had to force myself to stop. Rowan was walking pretty fast, though, one step for him was almost three for me and I was starting to lose my breath from trying to keep up.

“I have to ask,” Rowan was saying. I glanced towards him, it was hard to make out his expression in the dark but I knew he was smiling. “How did you get infected?”

“Isaiah didn’t tell you?” I asked. I was surprised, if he had been so excited to brag about my coming to find him for answers, why wouldn’t he tell his friend what he had done.

“He’s not much of a talker, unless you want to talk about God,” Rowan explained with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders. “That man could have been a pastor if it weren’t for – well, you know.”

How odd. I never really thought about someone’s life before they became infected. That woman my father had run over, could she have been a teacher, or even someone’s mother? I couldn’t believe how hard it was for me to think of one of the ill as an actual human. That was the problem though, Coroniam didn’t see them as human anymore.

“Well,” I started. “This was actually my first day back in Coroniam since leaving for Thessia five years ago.”

“Bummer,” Rowan said. “You didn’t even get to tour the city and see how it’s changed.”

“I saw enough,” I assured him. I then began to unravel the exciting events leading up to the moment I bit Isaiah on the leg. It had seemed like it happened days ago when in reality, it was only a few short hours earlier that I had been a full human.

We had been walking for at least another fifteen minutes before I finally revealed to Rowan what had happened. He had been glued to my every word and I couldn’t help but admire his ability to listen so well. We had reached a cross in the tracks and Rowan stopped to take a piss in an area that I couldn’t see. I stood in the center of the crossing and waited patiently for him to return.

“Thought you might have stopped to take a shit,” I muttered when I finally heard footsteps. My cheeks heated up when two girls emerged from the shadows with frowns on their faces. “Oh, sorry, I thought you were Rowan.”

“Who the hell are you?” One of the girl’s asked. She was absolutely beautiful; tall and slim with big, curly hair and dark skin. Her lips were painted a dark red but I couldn’t be sure if it had been from lipstick or someone’s blood. She scrunched up her nose, waiting for my reply.

“I’m Piper,” I said, glancing at the other girl who seemed a lot happier to see me. “I’m looking for Isaiah and Rowan’s showing me around.”

“How come we’ve never seen you before?” The second girl asked. She was taller than the first and a lot less aggressive.

“Because she just moved back to Coroniam,” Rowan said. He was finally returning but his eyes were trained on his pants as he struggled to pull up his zipper. “Piper, this is Felicia,” he said, motioning towards the nicer girl. He nodded towards the more aggressive one, “and this is my sister, Edna.”

“It’s very nice to meet you,” Felicia said. She grabbed a strand of her red hair and twirled it around her fingers. “I hope you find Isaiah, sometimes he’ll go to this spot over that way,” she motions back towards the entrance to the subway. “And he’ll stay there all by himself for hours and hours just talking to his silly book.”

“He’s praying Felicia,” Edna grumbled. “It’s not silly.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean anything by it,” Felicia said passively. She turned away from Edna to look back at me with a cheerful smile. “You’ll get used to her attitude pretty quickly, it never changes.”

“Where are you two going anyway?” Rowan asked. He folded his arms across his chest and looked over at Edna, they were almost the same height. “You better not be going up without any protection.”

“Actually,” Edna said, crossing her arms just like her brother. “We’re hungry, we came looking for some donations. See anyone stupid enough to come down here while you were out?”

I tried not to scrunch up my nose in disgust at the thought of them looking for humans. I looked back towards the entrance when the sound of metal hitting the floor echoed around us. When I turned back towards Rowan and the girls, I saw that I wasn’t the only one who heard it.

“Seems like someone just answered your prayers,” Rowan said. He pulled a gun out from behind him and handed it to Edna. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he warned.

“I’ll be right back,” she said. She was looking at Felicia. “Stay with Rowan and I’ll bring you something back,” she said as she shook a flask.

“You’re going to just drain someone?” I asked. My eyes were wide with shock but Edna just gave me a dirty look before jogging back towards the entrance. I turned to look at Rowan but he was watching his sister. All the excitement was causing me to get a headache right behind my eyes. I squeezed them shut for a moment to try and fix the problem.

“Felicia, I don’t like the thought of her being over there all alone, would you mind helping Piper find Isaiah?”

“Of course,” Felicia said. She grabbed hold of my hand and Rowan took off after his sister.

Felicia didn’t hesitate to practically drag me down the tunnel. She walked faster than Rowan and I was starting to feel weak. She didn’t say much as we walked, but she started to hum a happy tune to herself and bob her head. If my father could have seen this girl, he would have been reminded of my mother for sure. She used to hum all the time. But my father wouldn’t have waited for Felicia to hum, he would have just shot her the moment he saw her.

“You seem pretty happy for someone who’s –“ I stopped when she turned to look at me. Her black eyes were small slits for a moment before returning to normal.

“Sorry, I was just thinking,” she said. “So you got bit your first day back in the city huh?” She didn’t wait for me to answer. “That’s how it happened to me too. I didn’t even know people were still attacking each other here when I came to visit.”

“You’re not from Coroniam?” I asked. I thought everyone who had been infected had always been here. “Where did you live before?”

“Thessia,” Felicia replied. We were following a curve in the tracks and I could hear the sound of music in the near distance. “I used to be a therapist, can you believe it”

“You don’t look that old,” I commented. Felicia laughed.

“Well, I’m actually thirty-five now,” she explained. “I was thirty when I was bit but I got my mother’s timeless skin.”

The pain behind my eyes seemed to be growing as we neared the music an Ed my vision was starting to blur. I grabbed on to Felicia’s arm with a tight enough grasp to make her look at me. She stopped walking and put her hand on my forehead, her eyebrows came together in a look of worry.

“You don’t look so good,” she said.

“I think I need to sit down,” I told her. My words were slow and slurred an d I was fighting to keep my eyes open. My knees buckled underneath me and I collapsed on the floor.

Felicia was kneeling in front of me, I could see her lips moving but her voice was lost amongst the music I had heard earlier. I slumped my head forward and wondered if what I had been hearing was even real at this point. I almost fell asleep but I was shaken fiercely and when I looked up, I saw Edna glaring at me. She shook me real hard.

“What did you eat?” Her voice was barely audible. “Did you attack anyone, or anything?”

I thought back to my altercation with the two guards. It had seemed like so long ago, just like my biting Isaiah did. I licked my lips, my tongue was dry and felt thick within my mouth. I held up my hand and pointed one finger above my head. “I attacked a guard,” I slurred.

“You stupid, stupid girl,” Edna said.

I couldn’t respond, I had to try and shove Edna out of the way because I could feel the stomach bile rising into my throat. I threw up on the gravel and had to steady myself by putting my hands on either side of my growing puddle of vomit. Felicia grabbed hold of my hair and swept it away from any splash regions which I was extremely grateful for.

“What are we supposed to do?” She asked Edna.

“We have to let her get it out of her system,” Edna answered. She rubbed my back and sighed. “The girl went and attacked a guard.”

“Oh Piper,” Felicia said sympathetically. I couldn’t speak because I was still throwing up. “The guard’s get injected with something that makes us very sick when we bite them. You’ll be fine once you get it all out of you.”

“I’m gonna go on ahead,” Rowan piped up. He was covering his mouth with his hand when he looked at me and looked like he might get sick himself.

The girls nodded and he started to stomp away in the direction of the music. My arms were shaking and my stomach felt almost empty but I continued to heave up bile. Edna stood up and took a couple steps back, pinching her nose shut to block out the smell. She kicked some gravel over the large puddle of vomit as if it would help to cover the smell, or maybe she just didn’t want to see it anymore.

“I’m sorry,” I managed to get out before throwing up more. Each time it was becoming less and less and I was starting to feel a little better.

“Just get it all out,” Felicia said. “Edna had the same thing happen when they first started injecting themselves.”

I didn’t feel like anything else would be coming up so I sat back and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. I looked up at Edna, surprised that someone so strong could have gotten anywhere close to the state that I was in. She shrugged and kicked up some gravel with her shoe.

“It happens,” she said. I didn’t want to press it any further. “Do you think you can walk? It’s starting to really stink.”

“Yeah,” I said. I stood up and wiped my hands on my pants. “Thank you all for staying with me. That was pretty gross.”

“I’m sure worse will come,” Edna grumbled. She started to walk in the direction that Rowan had and Felicia and I followed her.

“What does that mean?” I asked. Felicia shrugged her shoulders.

“Edna’s just mean to new people,” she explained. “She’ll get over I soon enough and treat you slightly better.” I couldn’t wait for that day.