Exodus Through Melancholy

When I arrived, the mall was yet to erupt into chaos, it was as calm as on any other day. Despite that, the dice had already been long cast, and not in humanity's favor.

It started with a scream, and then another as a chain of surprised yelps sang forth the coming of a great calamity. This chaotically harmonized mess for those who could heed its warnings unconsciously understood that everything had ended when it began.

As I was walking through the strangely empty hallways, devoid of any bloodstains or any concrete signs of struggle, I walked into a clothing store, where I saw a woman, a clerk, who was already far gone. She was "attacking" another woman, who was probably shopping beforehand. I tried helping her out, but I only needed to give but a nudge for her to fight the clerk off herself.

These people who have been compromised, so to speak, were not as you would imagine. They were not zombies, as you would think, but rather mindless bio machines, intact in body but taken in mind by the hive. Though I do not know exactly what the hive is, nor their intentions or how they "infect", I do know that they show no mercy, nor fear for that matter.

We walked through the hallways of this strangely empty mall for a while longer, searching for any who hadn't been taken or taken over. As we went from shop to shop, we gathered some supplies to take with us, as later we would have had to search for a safer place where, free from the wicked, we could rest.

Though I wouldn't say fighting off the compromised was a breeze, it wasn't much of a challenge either, as despite how populated such a place should be, there were barely any to encounter. Perhaps most wandered off to a specified location to assimilate into the mind, or perhaps they venture to places with higher concentrations of people. All I know is that most of them sort of just vanish into thin air shortly after being taken over, which is counter-intuitive, to say the least.

We figured, all 7 of us who've decided to stick together, to search for a safer place where we could collect our thoughts and prepare for "survival" in this new world. As our group was made up of two adult males, two adult women and an elder one, one teenager, and myself, we went rather slowly so as to accommodate everyone's pace. There were plenty of old, decrepit buildings throughout these flatlands, slowly being claimed by nature, where no soul has been for long years probably. We thought that we may be able to rest in such a place for a while.

And so began our slow trek in a duck-line, accompanied only by a light breeze, the sounds of our clothes wrinkling and our shoes being brushed by the short grass as we slowly walked, in silence, towards a safer place.

It felt as if everything yet nothing had changed, as the goal is still the same as it was beforehand. Survival.

I thought I may feel liberated if the world were to completely change, thriving bound only by my own abilities, yet the only feelings within us back then were hopelessness, for humanity, and melancholy, as we saw no promise of a tomorrow to come. Only the sights of the grassy flatlands, and then, a forest laid before us, coated in a warm color by the setting sun. All of it resting quietly, in peaceful melancholy.