"And why did you think it would be a good idea to leave the safety of Lichenbury's walls at night?" Raynor sternly asked me.

  Shortly after spotting me, the guards opened the gates to let me in. They were on high alert because, as I had somewhat expected, I'd been reported missing by my family. What was surprising, however, was that they didn't realise I'd left on my own. Nobody thought I would leave in the middle of the night, as such they suspected something must have breached our security. Hence the thinly veiled interrogation that they had dragged me off for.

  Whilst I technically hadn't broken any rules, they still dragged me aside and 'asked' me to sit down in the guard tower whilst they gave me a stern talking to. However, knowing that didn't make going through the motions any less easy.

  Soon I found myself sighing with a barely concealed look of disdain as I responded to the test in their string of questions "We ran out of painkillers a couple of days ago for Dad. Surely you know the arrangement made with Joshua?"

  Raynor rolled his eyes as he said "I'm more than aware of the... Arrangement, your family has." Before I could respond though a flicker of concern crossed his gaze, then was gone as quickly as it had appeared. With a now serious look on his face he continued: "Neither of those responses justify you leaving, in the middle of the night no less, without telling anyone. You didn't even tell that Dad you seemingly care so much about. You worried your entire family sick and for what? Probably a single box of paracetamol? If that?"

  With that, my lips curled into a smirk as I soon found myself ughing at him as I told him "Oh I found much more than a box of paracetamol."

  His scowled face turned into a brief look of surprise as I took my pack off my back and chucked it over to him. He deftly caught it before opening the bag up and looking inside at my haul, his mouth opening widely at what he saw. He looked it over, surprise clear on his face. "Painkillers, antibiotics, food and... Is that your usual bag? You found this big backpack? I thought you'd borrowed your Father's pack." He was left shaking his head in surprise, saying "A very lucky find you have right there. I take it that's all that was left in the house though?"

  I then leaned closer to him as I whispered to him conspiratorially "The house I found is still absolutely loaded with food, medicine, clothes. Everything. There is plenty more where this came from." His eyebrow raised as he looked towards me, thinking for a second as he looked back down at the pack and slowly began to say "I see... I assume you'll want any painkillers and antidepressants we find for your Father?"

  It irked me how he instantly assumed that I'd give them the house's location instead of keeping it for myself. My face scowled deeply at the realisation, but as much as it irked me, he was right.

  Lichenbury was a mostly communal group. Everything was distributed according to need and we shared almost everything. People were of course allowed personal belongings but in an emergency they would be required to share if they had something that was needed. It was something that being a small group allowed, there was after all, only about 50 of us who lived here.

  There was however, one issue with this sharing scheme.

  That was my Dad. He suffered from chronic pain and fatigue as a result of his fibromyalgia and as such needed constant medication to help him just get through the day. The medicine he needed though was more than they were willing to provide, so after some discussions, a compromise was reached.

  We'd be allowed to keep any pain medicine and certain types of antidepressants we gained ourselves, instead of it going into the doctor's office for safekeeping. This was as long as we shared them if others needed them and there was none in the main stockpile. However, any further medicine that Dad would get, had to come from us. It wasn't ideal but it was the best we could hope for.

  As such, Raynor's assumption that I would give him the location of the house wasn't unfounded, in fact, refusing to give the location to him and the rest of the group would have been more surprising. That didn't mean however that I wouldn't take advantage of this whilst I could. Slowly, I nodded to Raynor: "Yes, of course. However, I don't just want to point at where it is and you send a team there. We both know I've been wanting to join the longer distance scavenging teams for a while now rather than just going by myself. So I want to come along and use this as a chance to get my foot in the door."

  He seemed much more hesitant at that, sighing as he said "I'm not in charge of setting up the teams but I'll have a word with Sal about what you've found and that you want to join the team. I don't think there would be any issues with either letting you have the meds you need or join the scavenging team for the house. I do take it you'll give us the location regardless of if you are allowed to join though?" I swiftly nodded, keeping the location of such a pce secret was not only frowned upon but officially against the rules. Besides, since everything was shared, hiding the location served no purpose anyway.

  With my assent confirmed, he passed me back the bag and said "Alright, I trust you'll take your bag through to the Quartermaster before heading back home. That leaves us with the st thing we need to do and that is a bite check." I scowled instantly as he continued with another stern look on his face "Yeah, Yeah, I know. Not a fan? Next time don't go out alone. If you at least took your brother with you then this wouldn't be required. Then again, this whole discussion wouldn't be happening either." He sighed as he then told me "Look on the bright side, one of the on duty guards is female, so you won't need to wait here till someone wakes up to do the inspection."

  He then called out the name of one of the on duty female guards, her name was Jessica, I'd seen her around a bit but wasn't too close to her myself. She ending up taking me to one of the private rooms so she could do the quick but still embarrassing bite check. All throughout the process I could tell she was almost as embarassed me to be doing it but, as much as I hated to admit it right now, it was these kinds of measures that kept us safe.

  In the first week after the infection reached the UK, us and all the neighbours along our street began building up the walls around the street we lived on. It was positioned next to an already fenced off field with more houses around us. So our street made a good pce to hole up. Whilst at first we'd had no issues with building our fortifications, soon the first wave of infections started to flow through us.

  The disease originated in America and had two methods of transmission, airborne and bloodborne. Few people are immune to either variant, fewer still to both. Those of us still alive are those immune to the airborne variant. Anyone who was immune to the bloodborne variant likely sucuumbed to the airborne one as that was the variant that spread the infection around the world and killed off about 97% of the world's popution.

  We ended up kicking out well over 100 people, including the family and friends of many of us, some were delusional and and tried to hide that they were sick. Eventually, someone managed to succeed in hiding their sickness, we was lucky that she was the only one to succeed.

  Julia's infection was a lot less obvious than it was for others. She didn't sneeze, didn't feel nauseous, didn't have a temperature. The time till she was infected even took longer, with her having sted a whole week rather than the 3-4 days usually afforded to someone bitten. Some of us even believe to this day she genuinely didn't know herself she was infected. Nonetheless, when she finally turned; she bit four people before we managed to kill them. From then on we made sure that anyone new coming in was not bitten, not scratched and not sick. Anyone who went off alone got the same treatment.

  Anyway, once the search was complete I left the room and began to move towards our warehouse.

  Well, it's called a warehouse but like many things here, it was really just the biggest house we had. We'd spent the second week or so converting it into a makeshift warehouse. We stripped it of the kitchen, the beds, the toilets. Everything that made it a house was gone and repced with shelves and freezers for more storage space.

  As I approached I could see through the windows and amongst the various items on the shelves I could see the silhouette of the Quartermaster through the window. I walked inside as I began calling out his name "Hey Johnny!"

  Johnny looked up from the paper that he was filling out with a look of surprise on his face. "Jade? I had heard the guards looking around for you, said there might be a security breach of some kind. Did they find you?"

  I nodded with a slight smirk on my face as I expined the situation "Oh I snuck out to go scavenging by myself. Didn't tell anyone since I knew people would try to stop me. Came back here and the guards 'spoke' to me about it. To put it mildly, they weren't happy about me sneaking out." I then sighed as I leant closer and quietly said to him "Dad's been really bad these past few days. We ran out of meds for him a few days ago and he's in constant pain, he's not sleeping well and I just... I had to do something about it. I know he won't like it, I know mum won't like it either but ultimately, I feel like I had to."

  Johnny had always been a good listener so he just nodded along, humming in acknowledgement as I spoke to him, waiting till I finished before saying "I know it may not seem like it Jade but all of us, well at least those of us who lived here before the apocalypse, care for yourself and your family. Raynor himself came into here looking for you and honestly, I do think you took a big risk for no good reason."

  I gave him a smirk as I asked him "Is this a good reason?" I then pulled the backpack off my back, his eyes gnced at it he looked first confused, then surprised as he said "That's not your Dad's hiking bag is it? His is grey and red, that one is grey and blue."

  It was my turn to look surprised as I responded "I didn't know you paid such close attention to those things. Yes, it's not his. I found it at the pce I scavenged. It was a complete treasure trove. Raynor told me to bring the bag here to let you sort it out. Obviously I'm keeping the painkillers."

  Johnny quickly nodded as he merely said "Alright, leave it to me."

  I then waited for a few minutes as he emptied the backpack out, sorting through it and removing the food, antibiotics and other medicines that I wasn't keeping. We made idle chatter to pass the time whilst I waited.

  It was midway through this sorting when I felt suddenly nauseous, my hands quickly grabbing hold of the desk as my eyes swam around the room, the edge of my sight darkening as I felt my legs fall under me as I fell to the ground, my upper body held upright by my arms clinging onto the desk.

  The thud of my fall made Johnny jump. He quickly stood up and rushed around the desk to me "Jade? Are you okay?"

  I carefully put my right hand to my head as my nausea slowly began to pass, after a few seconds I slowly murmured out "Yeah... Just some Nausea. It'll pass." I noticed how he had held his hand out towards me and I moved my hand away from my head to grab it and use it to help me stand up. As I rose back to my feet, quickly murmuring to him my thanks, I asked him "Is my bag ready to go?"

  He then gave me a weird look as he said "You just fell to the floor in front of me, I'm pretty sure that's not just some nausea. Are you sure you're okay? Don't want to head down to the doctor or something?"

  I shook my head before reassuring him "I'm fine." I said to him, dragging out the st word. "I'm just gonna head home and get some rest. So is my bag ready?"

  He leant over the table and grabbed my bag and passed it to me as he began saying "Alright, you're fine. I was gonna do the cataloguing with the bag still here but you should head home, I've already got everything we need out of it anyway. Go get a good night's sleep okay?"

  I nodded despite knowing that a good night of sleep wasn't on the cards. No doubt my family wouldn't be happy about what had happened and wouldn't just let me go to sleep without a fuss.

  Regardless, I waved him goodbye as I put on the backpack and began to leave, walking slowly towards our home; thinking about what I would or could say when I arrived there. I sighed as I walked along the path towards our house's door. What would I say? I knew when I left looking for the house that I'd have to justify it when I came home, now that I was here though, I still didn't know what to say.

  Well, I knew I'd tell the truth, I just didn't know how to phrase things, how to justify things in a way my parents would understand, if that was even possible. What I did know though, was that deying it wouldn't help.

  I continued walking until I reached the front of the house. I felt nervous and each step as I walked slowly up and along the wn of our house on my way towards the door felt progressively heavier. Eventually though I reached the door and took a deep breath as I opened it.