“Ok. This good enough.” Antonio was spinning his golden gun on his finger. “We see the store. Ain’t nobody staying here.”
“We can wait and watch the building. We can watch the building to see if anyone come out. We can watch it and wait.”
“We gon have to scout the area then and don’t get too close to the store. It’s still hella lurkers wandering around and shit.”
“C’mon.” Miles went jogging up the hill and away from the store.
Antonio followed and the brothers went running past two long-term infected goons that were too far gone to move fast enough after them. The boys found a clear opening with a straight sightline to the Costco store; they’d be able to see everything from this spot. Antonio pulled a fishing line from his pack and started wrapping it around the trees, making a ten by twelve-foot square perimeter. Miles took small bells from a side pocket on his pack, tied them to the lines, and plucked the taut strings to start a soft ringing. He plucked the string again and pulled his earbud out to hear the bell better.
There was a ringing behind him and when he turned, he saw the slow moving fiends from earlier, tangled up in the ringing wire. The creeps were practically falling apart with skin hanging from bones and teeth showing through rotted cheeks. One of the creatures was absentmindedly searching with vacant eyes, reaching out with black hands and black fingernails. The other creature had little left of what should’ve been its face. Someone or something had made a mess of the infected man’s face, turning it into what looked like kneaded dough. Miles drove his knife into the skull of the first infected man, but before he could take out the other, it lunged at him and he fell backwards, startled.
Antonio saw this and started laughing, uncontrollably, “Hahaha! You aite? He scared you? Almost got you?” He kept laughing and Miles scoffed at him.
“Shut up!” Miles shouted, then got up and brushed himself off. The man, tangled up in the wire, thrashed about and tried reaching for anything it could get its hands on. There were bite marks all over the thing’s shoulders and large chunks where flesh was teared away. Its veins were all black around the wounds and its skin was discolored from what the old man said was lack of healthy blood circulation.
The infected man slowly began dropping its hands and its thrashing was dying down. However long the virus had been in this man’s system, Miles couldn’t say, but this creature was reaching the final stages of the LRS-10 virus. The infection ravaged the body and mind until the host was worn down to what the boys and the old man called a lurker. Slow moving, blind, and dull monsters that were driven by the body’s hunger and need to feed. Though lurkers still attacked simply with the intent to kill, most would try to eat their victims; that’s where many bites came from.
These lurkers in front of Miles, including the dead one on the ground, had been infected long term and their bodies were breaking down. Miles took his knife and drove it into the sullen creature’s head and it slumped to the ground. Lurkers were the easiest infected types to deal with.
The boy wiped his knife against the dead man’s shirt to clean it. He looked over at Antonio, who was still laughing, and Miles stuck his bottom lip out. “Stop laughing. It’s not funny!”
“He almost got you!” Antonio climbed over the wire and went to sit down against one of the trees tied off inside the square, taking his pack off as he sat. “You good though? You ok? He didn’t scratch you or anything, did he?”
Miles groaned at Antonio’s continued laughter but still checked himself to make sure he hadn’t been wounded even a little bit. A scratch could transfer the virus just as easily as a bite if there was blood or saliva under the nails. It was always just best to try and not be touched at all by anyone infected. Protect your skin and not get any exchange of fluids. After a quick inspection, Miles was relieved to see he wasn’t at risk.
“Shut up. We gotta watch the Costco. We gotta be quiet so they don’t hear us. If there’s somebody in there we don’t want them to hear us.” Miles went into the square and sat at the tree with Antonio, putting his backpack down too.
“We ain’t stayin’ here and watchin’ for forever though.” Antonio said.
Miles pulled out his phone and tapped the screen. Nirvana’s Something in the Way, started in his head and he hummed the song to himself. Antonio rolled his eyes and pulled out his weapons to check the ammo count again. When Miles got to the hook of his song, he said the words out loud and Antonio found himself reciting the words with him. It was one of Miles’ favorite waiting songs and Antonio had heard him singing it enough times to both know every word and be annoyed by it. Today was one of the few occasions where he didn’t mind hearing it.
“Something, in the way… oooh.” Miles continued humming, “Something, in the way…”
“Yeah,” Antonio said and the brothers both laughed.
Hours slipped by and the two paced and sat and lounged about in the small quarter of a space they made to watch the store. Nothing happened while the brothers waited other than a few lurkers who stumbled into their trip wire. Antonio was more than eager to take out the infected creatures and keep his count higher than Miles’. He was at eleven when he went over the line to get a nearby lurker who hadn’t yet noticed the boys. Miles was upset that Antonio left the safety of the square but even more upset that he still only had nine kills and Antonio was on his twelfth.
The sun was dropping in the distance and the last of their travel rations were nearly finished. It would be time to start heading to the hideaway soon and still nothing happened while they watched the store. Miles had went through all his top waiting songs in his head—Maroon 5 Makes me Wonder, Gotye Somebody That I Used To Know, Drake Hotline Bling, and Kendrick Lamar DNA to name a few—half a dozen times now and even he was getting tired of waiting.
“Aite. It’s time to go Miles. We sat out here long enough. Ain’t nobody here.” Antonio was putting his knife away as he came strutting back to the wired-off square.
Miles sighed and looked down the scope of his rifle for the hundredth time, scanning the stores surroundings. Other than there being less lurkers in the parking lot than when the brothers first got here, there was little change of the exterior. “Maybe they all left. But there still might be something in the store. There might be something still in the store. We should go look. We still need more food.”
“Miles, the sun is going down. We can’t stay out after dark. You know that.”
Antonio was right and there was little arguing with that. Being out after dark was dangerous simply for the fact that there was no telling what could come jumping out at you. The infected never slept and constantly kept moving and searching for something to kill, something to eat. The old man made it a written in stone, unbreakable rule to never be out during the night. The boys abided by this rule without argument, usually.
“We… we can wait another five minutes,” Miles said.
“No.” Antonio picked up his pack and threw it over his shoulder.
“Just five more minutes.”
“No. No more minutes. We gotta get back to the hideaway before it gets any darker.”
“We got plenty of time. We have time. We can get back before it gets too dark. Look at that path down there. It goes somewhere. We gotta find out. We gotta go see if it goes into the store. The path. It goes into the… it goes into the store.”
“Miles…” Antonio trailed off as he saw a figure off in the distance. He smiled and started to head out of the square, looking to get his thirteenth kill for the day, but froze when he saw what looked like a normal woman wearing jean shorts and nothing else. “Oh shit,” he whispered.
Miles got to his feet and watched the woman stumble through the tall grass at the top of the hill with her back to them. He wondered for a moment if she was a survivor from an attack nearby. He thought to call out to her and ask if she was ok, but instead he grabbed Antonio’s sleeve.
Before the boys could make a move, the woman turned and they were both stuck, staring at
the woman’s large breasts. They were so absorbed by the woman’s ample bosom that it took them a full five seconds to notice her mangled face and missing right eye. There was an eerie silence in the woods while the boys stared at the woman and the woman stared back at them. Then, in the same fashion as the siren from earlier, the woman inhaled deeply and transformed into a howling monster, throwing her head back as she screamed bloody murder.
The small boy went to raise his rifle, but Antonio lifted his Berretta first and let one fly with a bang. The shot clipped the woman’s neck and she stumbled backwards. It was a good shot but the old man had taught him better than that. Antonio aimed this time and prepared to fire, but the siren went back to hollering at the top of her lungs and he missed his second shot. Miles fired now and took the infected creature out with one shot between the eyes. But it was too little too late. They felt the rumbling first and then they saw hordes of strikers flying through the grass and charging towards the origin of the gunfire.
Miles watched the waves and waves of running monsters and couldn’t believe how many infected were racing towards him and his brother. He had never seen so many strikers before and the numbers seemed to be increasing. Miles pulled out his phone and tapped the black screen to start Kendrick Lamar’s M.a.a.d. City for a pulse-pounding theme fitting the insane situation he was in. Then the brothers grabbed their bags and took off sprinting, jumping over the wires as they ran away from the approaching hoard.
“The wire!” Miles called out.
“Fuck that!” Antonio responded.
They kept running and although many of the infected fiends got caught up and tangled in the brother’s alarm line, dozens upon dozens of them kept moving through it like it was nothing. The boys reached the edge of the retaining wall, above the docking area, and decided they had to jump. The stampede behind them had swarmed the woods and they had nowhere else to go. They both hit the pavement below and turned around to start firing on the charging masses. Eight shots from Antonio’s Glock G19 and four from Miles’ slower rifle was enough to put down the closest strikers, but the crowd just trampled over the fallen and kept coming.
Antonio swung the assault rifle around from his back and hoisted the weapon to look down the sights, “We shouldn’t have come here! I fuckin’ told you!” He opened fire before Miles could respond.
Miles turned to look around for an escape route while his brother held off the approaching waves. To their left was the confusion of shopping carts, the truck, and a dead end. He tapped Antonio on the shoulder and started running to the right to go around the building but stopped when he saw a large group of slower moving lurkers starting to round the corner.
“Oh shit.” Miles lifted his Dragunov and started firing, “Man down, where you from!” He sang and fired again.
“Miles! Miles!” Antonio stopped firing. “We gotta get in the store! Follow the path! Follow the path, c’mon!” He went running down the lane of arranged pushcarts and up the dock stairs.
Miles went after his brother with dozens of fiends flying from the man-made cliff above, crashing into the asphalt. They splatted and smacked the ground, one after the other and those that didn’t break their legs or worse got back up and continued to chase the brothers. Antonio reached the steel door at the end of the dock and started kicking and banging on it. When Miles reached his brother, Antonio had already spun around to the growing multitudes of infected and had his AR-15 raised. Miles tried lifting the shutter door but quickly figured out that it wasn’t budging. A wall and a closed door was in front of him and at least two hives’ worth of strikers were seventy meters behind him. The brothers were trapped.
Miles got down beside Antonio, who was taking a knee and they both started shooting into the crowd of biting and screaming and clawing and bleeding and spitting and barking, infected freaks. For each that went down, two seemed to take its place as the hoard poured over the carts trying to muscle their way through. However, the creatures couldn’t help but run down the bottlenecking path of shopping carts in an almost ordered line of riotous maniacs and it made them somewhat manageable. Until they started crawling and climbing over each other as they smashed into each other. None had reached the top of the ramp to the dock yet but they were getting closer and closer with each passing second.
Antonio reloaded a clip in his assault rifle and pulled his gold Beretta free to empty the remaining bullets in the handgun. “I’m reloading!” He called out to Miles, even though his brother was right next to him and could see the action being done.
Miles was zipping from one runner to the next, taking out the closest freaks with headshots and slowing down others by clipping their legs and ankles. He toppled one and sent dozens falling with the creature from the way it dropped. With two bullets left, he fired them both to stall more fiends, then swung his pack around to reload.
“Miles reloading! I’m reloading!” Miles said, going through the motions of the task without looking because he couldn’t take his eyes off the waves of striders still on their way. The boy’s heart was pounding in his chest and he felt a chill run down his spine as the song in his head shouted “YAWK! YAWK! YAWK!”
“Fuck! Fuck!” Antonio sprayed his assault rifle indiscriminately into the masses and knew things were looking bad for them. He looked at Miles, who was looking at him and he shook his head. “I knew I shoulda brought them grenades today.” He flashed a quick smile, but it faded just as quickly. “To the last bullet.”
Miles swallowed hard and raised his rifle, “To the last bullet.”
In a worst-case scenario, like this one now, the old man always said use every bullet you got. Rather go down dying after I know I’ve spent everything I had to survive, he’d say. “To the last bullet” was almost a declaration for a suicide pact when faced against impossible odds. So Miles and Antonio were both unloading their guns into the carnage in front of them as the strikers were getting closer and closer.
“Miles switch to your pistols!” Antonio shouted over the gunfire and the growling hordes that were even louder than their weapons.
Miles continued using his rifle, counting off the shots as he picked off fiends left and right. The creatures were now on the dock and clambering over each other to continue towards the boys. Miles still had five more bullets in his Dragunov and wouldn’t change to any other weapon until he had used each one of them. After firing two and missing the next shot, he took a moment and inhaled deeply while he lined up his second to last shot. Antonio’s screaming made him miss that one too.
“Miles!” Antonio shouted. “Get your fuckin’ pistols out! That sniper rifle is too slow!” He then emptied what was left of his assault rifle. He slung the weapon over his shoulder and stood up as he pulled both handguns free from his waist. He began nailing the raving fiends with his aim focused on those closest to them.
Miles fired the last shot of his rifle and hit two infected who dropped at the ramp and caused a pile up. He smiled to himself and stood up, pulling out his Beretta firearm. His shots were like that of a skilled marksman as he found headshots and shots to the heart with ease. But it was all useless. Even Antonio—who was doing well with his two gun, fire-at-will-approach—was able to take down a lot of the infected, but the odds were still looking insurmountable. The brothers were only seconds from death and the clock was ticking faster and faster with each new kill that left a runner no more than six feet away. Now four feet. Now three.
Then the steel shutter doors behind them came up and three men came running out with machine guns. They opened fire and Miles watched them for a moment, stunned.
“Get inside, hurry!” One of the men said while spraying into the infected mobs.
Antonio didn’t hesitate and Miles went in soon after him. The men followed, providing cover, and slammed the door back down; but not before three infected muscled their way in. The creatures barked and howled as they snapped at the men and jumped them immediately. The lips and skin around their teeth seemed peeled back and torn off. Thei
r bodies were wrecked from heavy exposure. The men with guns fought back the frantic beast but were losing the fight. Why they weren’t using their weapons to shoot the monsters, Miles wasn’t sure, but he moved in and stabbed one of the infected in the back of the head. Antonio caught another in the ear. Miles prepared to take out the next freak, when a gunshot hit the creature twice between the eyes.
The brothers finally took a moment to look around the loading area they were standing in and saw ten more men with guns, aimed at them. One of the men was standing in front of the line with a smoking pistol in hand, sucking at his teeth.
“Well… you just killed us all.”
Chapter 2
Miles and Antonio were immediately dropped down to their knees by two of the men behind them. These guys were dressed up in true army fatigues and carried their weapons with military training as they instructed the boys to get down. All the other men in the room, in fact, were dressed in camouflage outfits and some even wore helmets. But the leader standing in front of the line of trained soldiers was wearing a blue V-neck sweater and dark denim jeans. He was some grizzled old guy with pale skin and a few scars along his jawline. A patch of gray beard covered most of his squared chin. He seemed like the no nonsense type judging by his exaggerated sigh and the way he was standing.
One of the soldiers behind Miles started to take his Dragunov from his back but the boy grabbed the straps and told the man “No.” The soldier pulled at the gun again, trying to convince the boy it was in his best interest to let it go, but Miles only reaffirmed his “no” and pulled tighter on the strap.
Antonio moved to help but the soldier behind him pressed the barrel of his gun against Antonio’s head and said something akin to “don’t even think about it.”
Two Alive Page 4