“Already Dead” Ch. 10

The drive was like a blur in her vision, the familiar streets rendered alien under the state of emergency that had left the streets devoid on human life. Strollers sat on lawns, untouched for what seemed like much longer than the quarantine had been in place. All manner of garbage and overwhelming growths of grass littered the lawns of people who's name she had failed to remember after first meeting them as a kid.

There were house with x's on them, rows upon rows of them, but they were not the only one that seemed to have fallen into disrepair. It seemed that all the people had given up on trying to give off the impression that life still occupied the homes, leaving the spaces feeling abandoned by all life.

In the driveway of one of the house was a old black 1948 Buick. The back window had been smashed in, though by who it was hard to say. There was a x on the door, and in the back of her head, Harriet could recall the old owner of the vehicle bringing it to the car show that went on every week at the local Dogs and Suds. They served burgers with olives as a special, and would play music from back in the day.

She loved when “Beyond the Sea” would come on, and she had had her first dance with a boy at one of those functions though she had forgotten which song had been playing.

There was almost a peace to all of it all, the strange disconnect that existed there seeming almost comforting. Her brain was activated in a way it hadn't been in some time, her eyes wandering over the rows and rows of houses with an almost childlike glee as she observed these places for what felt like the first time.

Back in high school she had joined up with some of her friends to make a production for their photography class. She was an actor at first, but soon was helping with large swaths of the production. They were told the film wouldn't count for their assignment, but that photos they took for research would be usable. The movie eventually had fallen apart, but she had enjoyed greatly the feeling of exploration that she was experiencing out in those abandoned fields and desolate buildings. It was kinda like the acting bug, as she had often had it explained to her.

Once you got it, you got it.

So it was probably not too surprising that she found the act of observing the homes under these conditions interesting in what was really a sort of morbid curiosity. She considered taking pictures with her phone, but had no idea of how people would react, or more specifically how their relatives would react to seeing a home belonging to their family being made into a blog post or something like that.

There she was now, in a car driving away from what had been her home for fifteen of the last twenty years of her life, and yet all she could manage to do was to try and fill her head with plans and ideas, projects that she would surely involve herself in once it was all over.

Even the idea of going door to door to distribute medicine held a sort of joy for her, if in a more distracting sort of way. She understood that she was likely just distracting herself instead of looking solidly at how stupid this plan was.

She could be heading off to some far flung relative, hurt but enduring in the care of someone else, letting them help her pick up the pictures and the pieces of what had come before, or at worse inspire her to do that herself.

Instead she was in the car of someone she didn't know save for the fact he had been coming to their house to deliver medicine.

She thought his name was Paul, but then she remembered it was Peter, but soon corrected herself again. The man who was at most a few years older than her was named Daniel, like Daniel and the lions den.

Peter was the name of her estranged step sibling, named after Peter Cottontail.

She thought of her mother, but pushed it away.

They passed another house, and she started taking pictures.