Of course, my desire to find the fellow who’d hugged me had transformed from being motivated by the desire to clear myself of any culpability, should the need arise, to the desire to express my gratitude, and probably try to find out how the case of the cure for the Biophage all began.
So, dressing myself with what I could find about, which fortunately didn’t require me pillaging corpses (there were a number in the hospital, unattended to), I made my way out of the building, which by now had more become a place of death than healing.
If the hospital was a mess, the streets were a disaster. It was like a tornado had passed through the area, a brick-throwing tornado which seemed quite adept at targeting glass windows and car windshields. Oh, and there were fires burning here and there, and people running from some unseen terror, and quite the usual sight you see in an apocalyptic movie.
For my part, I felt driven by a new desire, since I could not find my Fellow of the Free Hugs. I wanted to make my way home. I was sure I’d be safer there, although what I sought safety from, I could not yet say. Fortunately, no one was running after me, so I headed for my domicile area with a brisk pace.
I was halfway home, when I saw a bunch of people throwing things at someone else. I would love to stress at this point that these folks are the kind of people who you would want to invite over for a weekend yard barbecue, if you were into that sort of thing. Me, I liked my privacy, almost obsessively. Which was why I lived alone. Which was why I liked living alone. But I digress. The projectiles slung at the target of the human vitriol were the kind that, well-aimed, would easily kill a healthy adult. But whether it was fate or fortune, the man only got hit in not-so-critical areas.
Why I did what I did next, I will never know. Running towards the small crowd and waving my hands frantically, I called on them to stop. In order to prevent them from assailing him further, I interposed myself between the rabble and the man, and got a brick to my shoulder for all my pains.
“You animals or something?” I yelled, fear and anger getting the better of me. “Why can’t you leave him alone?”
“If we do, he’ll infect us,” came the reply.
“He’s more like trying to get away from the lot of you murderers,” I shot back.
“You don’t know what we’ve been through,” replied one of the crowd, a middle-aged man who looked more at place behind a bank counter than a lynch mob.
“I do,” I replied, turning to give the injured man a hug, like my crazy friend did to me back at the hospital.
To be continued...
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That little boy,
@pearlumie