And then she heard the gunshot.
It was far away, like it happened in another apartment. Sarah reached down for her gun and was met with only an empty patch of carpet. Her hands patted around frantically for it, but then she realized it was gone and she knew exactly what had happened.
As the people around her were roused from their sleep, groggy and confused, she immediately sprang up to her feet and went for the door, which was closed this time, but unlocked. She ran back to the other apartment, turning on the flashlight as the cold hallway blurred past her. She threw open the door and ran for the bedroom, ready to pull the gun away from Barry and drag him back to the apartment.
But when she rounded the corner, she found Barry lying on the floor with the sooty beige carpet around him stained red. He clutched the gun in his hand that was splayed out to the side, and as Sarah dragged her gaze across his body in an almost drugged manner, she saw the bullet wound in the side of his head.
As she approached him in horror, she heard a soft groaning next to her.
Selma still struggled under the rubble, reaching out for her and hoping against hope that she could finally have a meal.
And then came the other groans from behind Sarah—the ones from the hallway as all the other zombies that had been tucked away in various apartments, creeping around in the darkness, were now starting to stir from the noise.
7
Firefight
The hallway stretched in front of her like a prisoner on death row walking to the electric chair. She could see the apartment from where she was, very faintly at the other end of the hall, but the space in the middle seemed to stretch endlessly. Her legs churned and she sailed through the darkness as all the empty doorways seemed to reach out for her on either side. Her arms swung at her sides, and her finger was tight on the trigger of the pistol, almost tight enough to fire a shot. She prayed that she would get back to the apartment without running into anything, but as the first gray and disheveled corpse sauntered out of a room to her right up ahead, her prayer was left unanswered.
Her heels dug into the carpeted floor and she skidded to a stop. The zombie blocked her and turned toward her, its eyes mad and shining in the bright beam of the flashlight. A torrent of spit dribbled down its chin as its mouth fell open.
Sarah raised her arms and aimed carefully in the two-second window she had before it started coming for her. She squeezed the trigger the rest of the way and the gun went off. The bang nearly deafened her in the tight quarters as the zombie's head rocked backward and it fell over like a mighty old tree being cut down. The thump as it hit the floor was almost inaudible through the ringing in her ears. But she didn't stop to think about it as her legs started up again and she covered the rest of the distance back to the apartment. She threw a glance over her shoulder and the undead began to appear from out of the other apartments behind her. She knew it was over for her and the other survivors; they couldn't stay. Her mind raced a mile a minute and she didn't know what to do, but she knew she had to do something and do it fast.
She threw open the door to the apartment with a crash and slammed it behind her. "Everyone get up!" she yelled.
If the other survivors hadn't been awoken by either of the gunshots or the slamming of the door, her bellow certainly did the trick. All of them were confused, like she was trying to play a joke on them that they didn't understand, but Wayne knew she wasn't kidding and was the first one up on his feet, doing a quick personal inventory to make sure he had his knife and pistol.
Carly looked at Sarah and that one single glance that they shared communicated everything that she wanted to know. She had heard the initial gunshot and she knew that the old man was dead. Sarah looked at her with an almost painful expression as she paused just long enough to share her sorrow and uncertainty with someone. And then she was fully back into the role of leader, barking orders at everyone.
"We have to leave!" she yelled. "Everyone, grab the guns in the kitchen and get to the front door! They'll be here any second!"
The uncertainty of what she was talking about lit the fire under everyone's ass as the fear they thought they shirked for the night wrapped its icy fingers around them again. Some of the survivors followed her orders and went for the kitchen, scooping up all the ammo, rifles and pistols, and some of the others tried to gather up the food, water, and even other unnecessary supplies like the blankets they'd been sleeping in.
Sarah was furious when she saw this. "No!" she bellowed. "Leave the food! Get the guns! We're leaving, now!"
"That's an order!" Wayne barked as he directed everyone in the kitchen, yelling at them like a drill sergeant. He practically shoved everyone toward the door of the apartment and Sarah pulled it open and came out into the hallway.
She shone the flashlight down toward the apartment where Barry had killed himself and saw three of them coming, already in a half-run. She lined up the shot and killed the closest one to them as the survivors piled into the hallway.
"I'll take point!" Wayne yelled as he started in the other direction for the stairwell, his gun drawn.
"Go!" Sarah cried as she fired at the other two zombies.
When Wayne reached the door to the stairwell, another zombie came from around the bend in the hallway just past it. Wayne lurched forward and stabbed it in the face with his knife, pulling it out of its sheath and returning it in one smooth motion. He opened the door and everyone followed him through.
As Sarah started to back away from the approaching zombies she noticed in the corner of her eye that someone was still standing in the doorway of the apartment. She turned her head and saw that it was Ron, who stood there with the most terrified look she had ever seen on his face. "What the hell are you doing?" she cried.
"I can't go back out there!" he said, shaking his head. "I can't be around those things again!"
An anger far greater than she had ever felt bubbled up in her and she reached forward and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, pulling him out of the apartment with one hand like he was a paper doll.
"Get the fuck to the stairwell or I'll shoot you myself!" she yelled. She gave him a good shove and he stumbled wide-eyed toward the door. She followed behind him and nearly plowed him through it, but he opened it and followed the others as Wayne twisted them down the winding steps.
The group moved as a fairly cohesive unit with Wayne in the front and Sarah in the rear. When they got to the second floor, the door opened and a zombie poked his head through, but Wayne quickly grabbed hold of the door with both hands and slammed it on the zombie's neck. The creature uttered a terrible gasp as its windpipe was crushed and its eyes rolled sideways. Wayne slammed the door over and over until blood started splashing out of its torn neck and the zombie slumped down to the ground, falling back into the hallway of the second floor. Wayne slammed the door shut and continued down to the ground floor as the survivors behind him were momentarily frozen by the gruesome horror of what they witnessed. But Sarah shoved the crowd forward from the back and they stirred into motion again.
They poured out into the first floor hallway and Wayne crouched down to cover them from the zombies approaching from the end of the hallway that Sarah had spotted on their way up. He fired well-placed shots, dropping them one by one as the survivors carried on toward the entrance of the building. Like a well-oiled machine, Sarah saw Wayne covering them and she hurried to the front of the group, taking point.
When they were out in the street, Sarah expected to see a congregation of the undead waiting for them, but the street was empty. It was still dark out and the creeping undead would still be difficult to discern from the shadows. She didn't want to go left and run into the same group of zombies filling the street that they ran into before. That only left the other direction where the roving pack of zombies had passed through, cornering them and forcing them into the building in the first place.
"This way!" Sarah said. They followed her as she rounded the corner into the next street and they made
their way in a direction that she suspected was deeper into the core of the city. But she was unsure of where she was going. She hadn't planned for any of this, and the pressure of being leader and steward of all the lives following her, scared out of their minds, pressed on her like a heavy weight. Her breathing was labored, but she pushed through it, sharpening her eyes and looking for a safe area.
"We've got company behind us!" Wayne called out.
Sarah glanced over her shoulder and saw a pack of zombies that had followed them. The group uttered a varied series of cries but she pushed on, her heart doing double-time in her chest. They came to another side street and Sarah started to round the corner when she came face-to-face with another group of zombies, more than a dozen of them. Their eyes all lit up in the moonlight and then they came. Sarah hurriedly changed direction and continued down the road they were on as the two groups of the undead tagged behind them.
All the shops around them had glass storefronts, most of which were smashed, and none of them would be safe to hole up in against the undead. Their options dwindled in front of her eyes, and then they disappeared completely as she watched another group of zombies come out of the darkness in front of them. They were just as numerous as the ones behind, and suddenly they were penned in with stores on either side of the road endlessly butted up against each other, leaving no alleyway through which to escape.
But just up ahead on the left was a bakery that was constructed entirely in brick that wrapped around the front of the store with a solitary glass-paned metal door in the middle that had been boarded up. It didn't look like the safest option, but it was their only choice.
"In here!" Sarah cried to the terrified group as they quickly shuffled up behind her. She went for the door and pulled on it, praying that they could get inside.
But it didn't budge.
She tried shoving the door inward but was met with the same result. She alternated yanking on the handle and then shoving her weight against it, but nothing happened. As the zombies closed in on either side of them she tried kicking at the boards that had replaced the panes of glass. The boards stood resolute against her force just as much as the door itself did, and it was apparent that there was something very heavy bracing the door from the inside.
The horrible reality set in that they were trapped on the street as the dozens of zombies ran after them in a mad dash. Their only cover was the row of buildings next to them and a rusted out sedan on the other side of them, parked up by the curb.
"Everyone with a weapon, fire!" Wayne barked as he crouched down and shot at the zombies closing in from behind.
Sarah leapt into action and began firing at the ones approaching from the other end of the street. Half a dozen or so other survivors either came into the fray and supported Sarah and Wayne or timidly pawned off the weapons they were holding to other survivors who were better able to handle them. Some of the more cowardly ones handled the ammo with shaky hands, distributing it to anyone who needed it as their rounds dwindled.
The zombies in front of each wave began to drop like flies, with each one that slipped through the barrage of bullets inevitably being taken out before they could get to the group. It seemed to be going better than Sarah expected and they managed to gun down half of the zombies with a fair bit of ammo to spare. It almost seemed like they could do this—they could make it out alive.
And as if the devil himself reared his ugly head to foil her, she watched as another zombie came from the darkness, this one much faster than the others.
Her heart sank. "Oh God," she muttered almost inaudibly. She watched as the new zombie began to sink its teeth into each of the others, working through them with lightning speed. When it finished with the group of zombies on Sarah's side, she watched with a mixture of horror and intrigue as it completely passed by the group of survivors on the street, instead making its way for the other zombies on Wayne's side. As it worked its way through the rest of them, the first wave of the undead it had bitten began to turn. The survivors were able to make head shots on some of them before they fully transformed, but as their bodies began to jerk and twist in the familiar motions of the strange new zombies, it became harder to land their shots.
"I'm out of ammo!" one of the survivors cried. He turned his head toward one of the others who was holding a box of ammo, but the other survivor just stared in horror from the empty box in his hands to the expectant survivor. Cries of terror rang out from the group and some of them began to sob. Ron huddled in the very center of the group, looking utterly miserable as he wet his pants.
The survivors continued to fire, fighting for their very lives as they ran out of ammo one by one. They managed to kill half of the transformed zombies before Sarah pulled the trigger and heard nothing but a click. She glanced over the crowd at Wayne and he gave her the same dejected look.
Sarah frantically looked around in one last effort to try to find someplace to flee, but there was nowhere to go. They were trapped and they would die.
The super zombies closed in, running unbelievably fast, their fingers curled into claws, ready to slash, peel and gore the survivors' flesh. And just as the closest one came at Sarah and she backed up on all fours, a gunshot rang out in the distance and its brains exploded, showering the people in the group closest to it with its viscera. The corpse fell down to the ground, lifeless.
More shots rang out from Sarah's direction and all she could see were muzzle flashes in the darkness. There had to be at least a dozen sources firing toward them, and for the first few moments Sarah thought that the shot on the zombie had been a mistake and whoever was firing was aiming for the survivors. The others thought so too and they all lowered themselves to the ground, trying to duck the shots.
But the bullets sailed clear over their heads and riddled the zombies approaching them. When all the corpses on Sarah's side were torn down, the mysterious gunfire quickly went to work on the ones coming from behind. One of the zombies had gotten ahead of the rest and was setting in upon Wayne who was crouched down with his knife drawn and ready. A gunshot echoed louder than the rest, like it came from a large-caliber sniper rifle, and the zombie's torso disintegrated, leaving a huge hole in it as it fell to the ground and writhed. Wayne crawled forward and shoved the sharp blade of his knife through its forehead and its wiggling arms slowly turned upward at its sides like dead fish.
The rest of the super zombies were picked off one by one until only one more remained. Sarah had hurried over to Wayne when it looked like he was in trouble and she didn't even see it coming. The final zombie made a beeline for her as the rest of the group saw it and scattered out into the street. It dove at her and pinned her to the ground, snapping its teeth at her face with such force that tiny splinters of decayed tooth were flung through the air.
Wayne held his knife aloft and lunged behind it, swinging his arm down to strike it. But the zombie, with an incredible display of speed, twisted its body and swiped its arm out, knocking the knife out of Wayne's hand. It sailed several yards and came to rest on the street out of reach. The voracious zombie turned its attention back to Sarah and forced itself down on her. Wayne grabbed it from behind in a headlock as Sarah reached out and tried to keep its wrists controlled. The zombie was incredibly strong and they nearly lost their grips on it, but Wayne planted a foot down hard and wrenched himself backward, throwing the zombie toward the car as he fell to the ground. The corpse staggered backward and slammed into the side of the car, its head bouncing off the roof. As it bobbed back forward, one final shot rang out in the night from the sniper rifle and its head disappeared, leaving the inanimate body momentarily standing with wide strips of flesh and bone peeled to either side atop its neck. Then it sank to the ground and the night was still.
Footsteps echoed in the distance and a group of thirteen came out of the darkness toward Sarah's group. One man in front was a little on the short side and very thin, wearing a tarnished black baseball cap. He looked unassuming and almost calm, like what had just
happened was an everyday occurrence to him. As Wayne helped Sarah up off the ground the man in front of the pack came up to them and stopped, scanning over all the survivors before speaking.
"Come with me if you want to live."
8
Mutiny
Sarah's group regarded their saviors with not much more than puzzlement. They had all expected to die, and seeing this group of armed men and women in front of them instead of whatever afterlife or crushing blackness awaited them was baffling.
The thin man in the baseball cap stepped forward. "Sorry, I always wanted to say that," he said. "So this your crew?"
When Sarah's stunned silence finally ended, she cleared her throat and answered. "Yeah, this is my group."
The man looked around. "We better get out of the streets before we run into any more of them." He turned back toward his own group. "Come on," he said over his shoulder, "my camp's this way. We got lots of room and food for you folks if you want it."
Carly stood next to Sarah already knowing that she was going to turn him down, just like she promised.
"We would be so grateful," Sarah replied.
As her group of survivors started to follow the man, Carly stood rooted to the spot. She felt a multitude of emotions all jockeying for position as the strongest one, creating a ball of indescribable misery. Tears welled up in her eyes and she wiped them away bitterly, almost defiantly. She was beyond angry, but at the same time she felt scared as they started to leave her behind, and she grudgingly caught up with them.
"I'm Curt, by the way," the man said.
"Sarah," she said, extending her hand.
Curt shook it firmly then lifted his head up toward the sky, letting the first hint of dawn fill his squinting eyes. The air was still chilly, but the sunshine imparted a warmness that calmed their nerves.
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