Truth

"Fred? Come on! The poor guy is terrified enough. We shot it before it could even touch him,"

"Doesn't mean that another couldn't have bitten him. With how weak he is and how willingly he wanted to die, I have no idea why you bothered helping him in the first instance,"

Aran heard the two people that seemed to have rescued him talk over him almost as if he wasn't there without a care in the world.

"Thank you!" Aran said in a more confident voice than he felt, doing his best to ignore the feeling of the gun that was still pointed at the back of his neck as he spoke.

"It's fine we…"

"We should leave the streets. The guns were loud and the worst thing that could happen is for the smart ones to latch on to us," Fred with a gruff voice, interrupted taking back his gun from behind Aran's neck for which Aran visibly breathed a sigh of relief.

"Where are we going?" Aran curiously asked, quickly getting on his feet and dusting his jeans, thankful to have met powerful humans like them that seemed to know what was going on.

What he wasn't expecting was to see an expression of rage on the face of the man that had pointed the gun at his back, the second he turned around to face him.

His face scrunched up in clear anger, eyes glaring at him with undisguised fury, the huge beard and scar on his chin coupled with his big stature was enough for Aran to know not to get on his bad side but Aran still had no idea what he had done to piss him off.

"WE? There is no WE. I and Gary saved you and now you want to become a parasite. No weapons, no provisions…NOTHING. Nothing but dead weight!" He fired at Aran one after the other without holding back and Aran couldn't help but feel ashamed since every word he said was indeed true.

"FRED!" 

"Don't FRED me. This is the third guy we're saving today and I've gone along with it. The first two didn't survive us crossing the neighborhood and the third was hiding a bite on his bum and we almost got bit. The world has changed if he can't protect…"

"Fred please…" Gary suddenly begged in a tired tone, stopping him from finishing all that he had been intent on getting off his chest for a while.

"Please let's first move on, gather more supplies and find a safe place to stay first then we'll talk about it," he continued with pleading eyes, sighing with relief as he watched Fred nod his head, turning around to lead while expecting him to follow.

Aran on the other hand had every intention of becoming mute and not even making a sound almost like he wasn't even there.

The truth is, he understood every word of what the huge buffed-up man had told him.

He felt like he was a burden to himself so of course, how could he not be a burden to them, especially after they took time out to save him.

"Hey! Don't think too much about what Fred said to you. He's actually a very nice human. As a matter of fact, he saved me too. I had been screaming and crying with a face full of tears when he found me attracting Zombies to myself like a magnet,"

"Do you know when this whole stuff started?" Aran asked, seeing as how Gary spoke like he had been in the middle of it,

"You don't know? Have you been living under a rock?" Gary asked in shock, staring more intently at Aran, in a way that made it seem like he was trying to figure him out just from his appearance.

"About two days ago. It happened very early in the morning when people were just stepping out. The first day was the worst," Gary explained, looking like he was going to say more when the both of them heard Fred click his tongue before motioning Gary forward leaving Aran behind them.

For the short while that they had been moving forward, the three of them moved closely past the back of houses for cover, and even while Gary and Aran spoke in hushed tones, Aran noticed how both Gary and Fred walked as quietly as they could in a way that Aran could barely hear their footsteps which made him wonder if they had formal military training or something like that.

Aran walked behind them, watching them kill zombie after zombie with their knives the second they spotted one, or any that reacted to their presence.

It was fast and swift. Aran even watched Gary, who he thought would be a little freakish at killing them, stab a young Zombie girl straight in the eye, deep into her skull without flinching, after cutting off both her limbs.

This continued for a while with Aran doing his best to make, as little noise as possible as he stood about three feet behind them, allowing the both of them to take care of the zombies, staying as far away as he could since sometimes some seemed more troublesome to kill as they flayed anywhere and everywhere.

Just as everything seemed to be going on well with Aran focusing on the moves they made and trying to gleam some sought of knowledge from it, he unexpectedly heard soft footsteps coming from behind him.

It was a little strange since it sounded much closer to him than he would have liked.