by Jack Parker
"At least I look good doing it!" John protested, his arms still firmly locked across his chest. This was practically all the confirmation that I needed; John truly did enjoy what he did, and how he did it.
I pretty much knew this already.
"Right, to the roof!" Shaun cut in, taking the lead with his assault rifle in hand. Dashing up the final flight of stairs, we burst through the fire door that lead to the rooftop, the slowly setting sun coming into view on the horizon to cast a warm-looking orange glow that spread across the sky.
There was no threat to be seen on the rooftop itself as we spread out across the expanse of concrete. Vincent quickly took out the pair of binoculars from the inside of his bag, putting them to his eyes and gazing towards the city. He grunted incomprehensible words to himself as he examined the streets.
"Bollocks..." he grumbled, finally uttering a word I could understand. He lowered the binoculars from his eyes and handed them over to Shaun, who took a quick look at the streets before showing a similar reaction.
"They're everywhere.." John said as he scanned the streets with the binoculars after they had been offered to him by Shaun. In the distance, I could see little black figures moving around the streets nearby, even without the binoculars I could tell that they were infected.
"Here, man." John said to me, placing the binoculars in my hands. Raising them to my eyes, I took a good, long look at the streets beyond us, noticing infected after infected; they were merely wandering aimlessly through the streets, bumping into one another, throwing a quick swipe at one another before resuming their previous action.
The infected were a strange existence, completely detached from who or what they used to be. In essence, they all acted the same now, pursuing the same actions of wandering and chasing down those unfortunate enough to draw their attention.
"We'll stay in this building for the night, then make our way through that in the morning, no point trying to make it now." Shaun said, shouldering his rifle as we made his way back towards the stairs.
"We'll need to barricade the front door." John suggested, still standing beside me as I continued to look through the binoculars.
"I saw a bookshelf and a couple of sofas, that should do it!" Shaun exclaimed, judging by the sound of his footsteps, I assumed he was making his way down the staircase.
"We'll have to get up pretty early, just in case." Vincent grumbled, the sound of footsteps filling the rooftop once more as he trudged across the ground in his heavy boots.
Scanning the distance, I tried to locate the port we were trying to reach, but found what I assumed was the place obscured by a few tall buildings, and all I could see was a couple of cranes and several storage containers; there wasn't a ship in sight from where I was standing.
That troubled me.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Day Seventeen (6th January – 7:30AM)
Breakfast is served, another course of beans and spaghetti hoops. Dessert was a can of tinned peaches that tasted way too sweet. Wolfing all of this down as quickly as I could, I took a look at the rest of my group.
"We've only got one shot at this." John said to the rest of the group, finishing off his portion of food.
"Got about six hours to get through this mess." Shaun lamented, the seriousness in his tone was unmissable.
"I hope that'll be enough, Shaun." John sighed, clearly starting to doubt that we'd make it in time.
"It's gonna have to be!" Shaun exclaimed, jumping to his feet in a single motion before striding over to his bag, which he promptly swung over his shoulder.
I'd had another one of those dreams last night; one of the ones that haunted my sleep lately. Again, I'd been ridiculed by the people I had to 'outlive'. Though towards the end, I had found some comfort in the form of Dave, who tried to assure me that I had done the right thing. I'd woken up in a sort of daze that morning.
We were on the fourth floor of the office building, deciding to take higher ground while we rested up for the trip today. Vincent and Shaun had taken it in turns to guard the group over the night, the latter of which looked a little tired.
I walked over to the windows on the far side of the room, taking a good look through the grimy glass towards the streets beyond. From where I was standing, I could almost make out little figures in the streets, aimlessly wandering to some unknown destination.
"You alright, Ethan?" Shaun called over to me. Casting a glance over my shoulder in his direction, I nodded slowly, not uttering a single word more than I had to.
"Probably just got the jitters." Vincent put forward in a slightly mocking tone of voice.
"Haven't we all? This is some serious shit." John put in, finishing his breakfast before he too jumped up to his feet.
After we had all finished eating, we packed away all of our supplies into our bags and shouldered them as we made our way towards the stairs. We'd decided to take the bus as far as we could into the city, that we'd keep on driving until we couldn't any more.
I lent a hand to Shaun and John, who were busy removing the barricade we had place in front of the main doors on the ground floor. Sliding a sofa out of the way while John and Shaun dragged a large bookcase towards the wall it had come from, I let out a quiet sigh as the light beamed in through the doors.
This was our last hope.
Ten minutes or so later, we were all in the bus, navigating our way through a maze of little roads and an obstacle course of abandoned cars. Gazing out of the window, I saw a flock of birds circling around one of the many tall buildings in this city.
"I wish I could just fly away." I found myself saying to Claire, who as usual was sat beside me. I wondered why she always chose the seat next to me.
"It'd be nice, wouldn't it?" she remarked, busying herself with examining her weapons. After making sure that everything was correct with them, she put them away and looked towards me.
"Yeah.." I mumbled, tearing my gaze away from the window to look down the aisle as I often did these last couple of days.
We were travelling quite slowly, the reason was simple; there were too many obstacles in our way to travel quickly. We had already found ourselves having to take a slight detour as we'd found one of the streets blocked up with cars, turned over on their sides or simply just sitting in the way with no room to move them.
"I wonder how much farther we can go." I heard John question from the front of the bus. He had a worried expression playing across his face as he brushed his hair out of his face, adjusting his ponytail before donning his hat.
"Probably won't be much further. But if we get stuck, it's a longer walk to the docks than it was before." Vincent said, gritting his teeth. Vincent was a strange person who always seemed bitter for some reason, like he was simply tired of everything.
It made sense to me.
"We're going to have to walk sooner or later." Shaun said, his tone of voice suggesting irritation as he turned the bus around another corner.
"Well, there it is." Vincent remarked as the bus turned the corner and a maze of vehicles faced us, blocking the path ahead.
"Ah, shit." Shaun said, sighing heavily as he stopped the bus a little behind the blockade of cars and trucks. It seemed we would be going no further on our set of wheels and I promptly picked up my bag and weapons and made my way towards the front of the bus as the doors opened.
"Steady, Ethan. We don't know what's out there." John said, holding me back for a few seconds as everyone else got themselves ready to get off of the bus.
"I do. It's several thousand infected." I coldly remarked as I climbed down the stairs of the bus onto the road below.
"Several thousand infected that I'd rather avoid.." John began, following me off of the bus after everyone else had disembarked.
The wind was blowing every so slightly, a chilly breeze that made me shiver slightly where I stood on the tarmac. Around me were tall buildings and little shops with flats above them, which was pretty common in cities like this.
One at a time, we climbed over the little blockade of cars, sliding over the bonnets onto the road ahead. From around a corner at the end of the street, I noticed a couple of infected wander onto our road. At the same time, they both turned their heads to face us and began their relentless sprint across the tarmac.
Unsheathing my sword, I stepped forwards at the same time as John, and we both kicked out with our legs, knocking the two infected back as we plunged our blades into their heads. It was over in a matter of seconds, and they moved no more.
"There'll be more, I guarantee it." John said beside me as we wiped the blood off of our blades onto the clothing of the infected. In the distance, I could hear what sounded like gunshots and screams, echoing through the streets and alleyways from them to us.
Airborne nightmares.
We walked through the streets for an hour or two, fighting off the endless litter of infected that seemingly patrolled the streets, until we found our path blocked by an overturned truck, it's charred white container taking up most of the space.
"We'll have to take the side-alleys. Man, this is not going to be good." Shaun lamented, raising his rifle as he started to walk to a nearby alleyway between an office building and a four-floor shop. The ground was littered with bits of paper, torn pieces of clothing and a splash of blood here and there.
"What's that sound?" Vincent asked, looking up at the building to our right as we walked through the alleyway.
Stopping for a moment, I listened intently to the sound of someone hammering on a window a couple of floors up until there was a loud smash as a body fell out from the window, landing a few feet ahead of us.
The infected slammed into the ground, not moving for a few seconds before it tried to pick itself up from the ground, but found itself unable to move its legs properly. Stepping forward, I took its head clean off as it looked up at me.
"Hide!" Shaun hissed as the alleyway was filled with the sounds of rambling and unsteady footsteps. It seemed that the infected in the area had heard the loud noise of the window shattering and were moving towards us to investigate.
Glancing around the corner, I spotted at least five infected moving along the road in unison, they moved past the alleyway without noticing us, so we decided to keep moving.
The alleyway stunk of something rotten, the smell permeating the air around us until I could smell nothing else but this foul stench. There was a trail of blood running along the wall and as we turned the corner, we found the source of the smell; a rotting corpse lay across the ground, its blood lay all around us as if it had been spraying out, though it had all dried up at this point.
"That is NASTY. Poor basta-" John began to say, before cutting himself off as the sounds of infected filled the alleyways again.
Instead of being unsteady, the footsteps were quick and grew louder with every second. Little shadows flitted into view from the corner we had come from as several infected appeared.
Shaun raised his assault rifle and took aim as one of the infected leaped onto Annie, taking her down to the ground with tremendous force. Forced to fire his gun, Shaun pummelled the infected with several rounds of burning hate, the noise echoing throughout the streets.
Taking a quick look at Annie, who had seemingly hit her head on the corner of a stair, he grimaced briefly as he pointed out the trail of fresh blood oozing out of her head.
"Fuck.. FUCK!" Steve roared. But there wasn't time to mourn as more shadows appeared from both sides of the alleyway.
"Run, RUN!" Shaun and John bellowed, the former of which raising his rifle again as we moved through the alleyway. He shot off a few more rounds into a couple of infected that came from the direction we were heading. We started to sprint as quickly as we could out of the alleyway and onto the road as the infected behind us came into view as I glanced over my shoulder.
The street we had ran onto was littered with infected, who were already dashing towards us, drawn in by the sound of gunfire. Taking up our weapons, we began to beat down and fire upon the infected, whose forces seemed endless as they streamed out from around the corners and out of the windows.
Covering Shaun as he reloaded, I decapitated two infected that had tried to dash at him, their heads rolling across the ground as I took out my handgun and fired upon another infected who had jumped out of a window.
"There's no end to them!" John shouted in a state of panic, ripping his kukri out of the head of a fallen infected.
"Keep moving!" Shaun demanded, opening fire once more on the approaching horde, taking down at least half of it in one burst as the bullets tore through the bodies of the infected, stopping them dead in their tracks.
Claire sunk her kitchen knife into the chest of an infected woman, letting out a little cry of panic as another one came up behind her, only to be cut up by John, who was behind her.
Turning to my left, I was greeted with the face of an infected, middle aged man who had sneaked up on me. Letting out a panicked gasp, I punched him in the face and proceeded to impale him on my sword, which I had trouble getting out of the man.
As I tried to free my sword from the chest of the infected, I heard a shrieking sound followed by a dull sensation of being violently moved. I felt my body hit the ground below me as an infected leapt onto me. Trying to push it off with my hands, it grabbed my wrist and sunk its teeth firmly in, drawing blood in a matter of moments.
"Ethan!" Shaun roared. He dashed over to me and kicked the infected in the face, sending it back a bit as he raised his rifle, firing hell into its body.
Everything tuned out at that moment as I gazed around the street and observed everyone wielding their weapons and taking down what remained of the infected horde, which had seemingly ended, with only a few infected left. Time seemed to pass by at an incredibly slow rate as the last infected fell to the ground. I looked down at my wrist, failing to take in what had just happened as my eyes looked over the bite.
This isn't real, right?
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Day Seventeen (6th January – 11:12AM)
Tiny drops of blood began to ooze from my wound, trickling across the skin as I raised my arm to the light in order to examine, everything felt hazy and far-away as I stared at the bite mark the infected had given me. The area around the wound was red and delicate as I ran my finger across it, feeling every indentation that the teeth had left.
So this is how it ends?
Assuming a sitting position, I continued to gaze at the bite; in the corner of my eye, I could make out the rest of the group observing me in near silence.
One bite to the wrist and I'm fucked?
"Five.." I heard Shaun mutter to himself, counting up to ten. Ten seconds; that's usually how long it took for the infection to take over a host. Once you got bitten, you had ten seconds to say goodbye before you turned into a livid monstrosity
I took a second to look at my comrades, all of them displaying a similar expression that I could only describe as deep concern. John was counting to ten with his fingers alongside Shaun, who was vocally counting.
"That's ten. How do you feel?" Shaun said finally, after finishing his counting. He waited for another ten seconds or so as I thought of something to say, still observing me before he extended his hand into my reach. Taking it, I was pulled to my feet and began to speak.
"My arm hurts like hell, but I'm fine." I grimaced, wincing slightly at the pain in my wrist as my clothing covered the wound.
I heard a little clicking sound and turned my head just at the right moment to see Vincent pointing his rifle at me with a deadly serious look painted across his face.
"Woah, woah! Put it down!" Shaun roared at the man, pushing the rifle down to point at the ground in a display of desperate dominance.
"But he's been bitten! He's gonna turn!" Vincent choked, lowering his rifle to point at me.
"Listen! It takes ten seconds normally, sometimes you don't even turn, like John!" Shaun explained.
Was I going to be fine?
&nb
sp; I felt okay for now, my wrist was throbbing but I wasn't feeling any strange symptoms that might indicate that I was properly infected. I couldn't drag my attention away from the pain the pulsed across the wound.
"At this point, he's either immune or resistant." John put in, shooting a look of concern in my general direction. I kept my distance from the rest of the group as we began walking very slowly down the street.
"Resistant? That's possible?" Shaun asked, having clearly never seen what happens to those who are resistant.
"Yeah, we met a girl who was what I assume resistant to all of this, back at the start." John explained, mentioning the girl in the supermarket that we had encountered all those days ago.
"What happened?" Vincent asked, intently curious.