Smoke is rolling toward the heavens in several places in the city. Fire is boiling out of the five-star hotel. Screams can be heard. Different guns blasting and popping throughout the night. People calling out for help. Vehicles can be heard honking, tires screeching on pavement, crashes of metal, explosions from god only knows what.
I feel a wave of fear go through me. How in the hell are we going to get through this? It's a huge city of chaos!
Some of the other people who had turned around on the interstate and followed us, come up to stand beside us. One woman drops to her knees on the ground, sobbing. I search through the group for the young mother but can't find her. I walk back through the lines of cars, waving at a few members who have chosen to stay inside their vehicles. Finally, I see the little yellow Bug and walk up to it. Before I can reach it, she opens the door and gets out. Up close, I realize she's even younger than I first thought. I give her a weak smile and she gives me one in return. Then starts crying. Hard. She reaches out for me and I hold her, wondering just how old this girl really is.
"Hey, it's ok. You're not alone now. Ok?" I try to reassure her.
She releases me and steps back, swiping the back of her hand across her tear-stained cheeks and runny nose.
"I'm so scared. What am I supposed to do with these kids? I just left. No one knows where I went. What if their parents are looking for them? What if they turn me in for kidnapping?" She sobs even harder.
I just look at her. Is she serious? Ok. Yeah, I realize she's probably in shock. I get that. I totally get that.
"I really wouldn't be worried about kidnapping charges. And I'm sure the parents would be relieved the kids are alive and with you." I doubt that they are. If they are still alive, they are probably freaking out pretty bad right now. So I figure out she's the babysitter. Not the mother.
"How old are you, by the way?" I'm going to guess eighteen.
"I'm sixteen." She tells me in a shaky voice.
Damn! Even younger than I had guessed. Just a kid herself. Barely legal to drive.
"Where do you live?" I ask her.
"I live in Springfield. My mom and dad expected me home hours ago. They are probably so worried and upset with me."
I pray her parents are still alive to be upset and worried.
"I'm sure they understand. Do you have a cell," what teen doesn’t! "and have you tried calling them?"
"I left my cell back at the kids' house. It's in the last town. Should I go back and get it?" Is this girl serious? The town with mobs of dead and no living people in sight? Sure, kid. You run along and fetch your phone. Wow!
"Um, let's not! Here. Use mine." I pull my cell out of my back pocket and hand it to her. I watch her dial and put the phone to her ear. As it's ringing, I look over at the two little kids in her car. The toddler has blond hair and bright blue eyes. He's banging his carseat with joy and laughing. I smile at him when he waves his chubby little hands at me. The infant is so tiny. I would say it (Girl? Boy? Can't tell.) was less than a month old. My stomach clenches with fear for those gorgeous babies.
A hand with a cell phone appears in front of my face and I turn to look at the girl. Taking the phone, I give her a questioning look, although, I'm sure the news isn't good, considering I never heard her talk to anyone.
"No one answered." She stares at me with shining eyes.
I grab her hand and tell her, "that doesn’t mean anything. You left your cell. Maybe they did the same. Maybe they are ok."
She nods and breathes in deeply. I ask her what her name is and she tells me it's Lily. I tell her to get back in her car and when we decide what to do, we will let her know. I walk away feeling ill. Just a kid. Three kids all on their own. I reach the others who are talking together, trying to figure out if they should try to go through the city or go around. I notice Jake is standing off by himself. I walk over to his side and face the city just as he is.
I ask him what he's planning to do. He tells me he's going into Springfield, just as he'd planned.
"What's so important there?" I ask him.
"Weapons, ammo, food, supplies. My brother, " he finishes in almost a whisper. I look over at him. His features have softened. He looks dejected. I wonder if his brother is as tough as he is. I ask him.
He answers with a short, sharp laugh, "No. He's in the hospital. Cancer."
Oh, hell. How horrible! I now understand the hopelessness on his face and in his voice. I want to reassure him. Tell him he could be ok. But there's really no sense lying to him. He's not an innocent sixteen year old. He knows better. And really, what's the point, anyway. Not everyone is going to live through this just because we love them.
My husband walks up next to me and wraps his arm around me. I lean into him.
Giving me a tight squeeze he looks at Jake and asks, "So, what do you think?"
Jake stares into the night and tells him he's going.
Will nods his head once and says, "If you can really get us some guns, we'll go with you."
Jake nods and walks away, throwing back, "Let's get to it then."
Will looks down at me and kisses me, tells me he loves me. I tell him I love him, too, and we walk back to the van where our boys are already waiting inside. As Will is about to shut my door for me, we hear a blood-curdling scream.
Chapter 3
Will jerks his body toward the back of the line of vehicles and I push him out of the way so I can get out. I'm almost certain I know who that was. We run to the back of the van and over to the middle of the road. Able to see more, I look with horror at the little yellow Bug. Two zombies. A thin, short, undead teen male wearing a fast food uniform is banging on the back window where the two babies are sitting, totally oblivious to the danger. The other one, a female, is beating on the driver's window where Lily is screaming on the other side of the glass. The undead woman was maybe in her early fifties and wearing a pale green house dress. Her right hand is caught in the door, so I assume that it had been open for some reason. Why the hell did Lily open it after I told her to stay inside? The dead woman jerks her hand back, over and over, until finally her hand snaps apart with a series of cracks. That makes Lily scream even more.
I start running toward her, my only intention is to protect those three kids. No. I wasn't thinking. I vaguely hear my husband scream at me to stop but nothing really registers. I reach the car and fling myself on the woman's back. The force of my weight throws her against the car, pinning her arms between her body and the car. Lily is screaming and screaming and I briefly think, SHUT THE HELL UP! The male on the back realizes fresh food is right next to him and falls straight to the ground next to my feet. I think about his teeth sinking into my leg and I start stomping on his head over and over as hard as I can. His hands keep reaching for me. The woman is trying to push herself away from the vehicle and I know, if she gets loose, I'm definitely dead. But trying to keep one zombie from biting you by kicking them, making yourself off-balance, while at the same time being shoved and jerked all over the place by another desperately hungry zombie, is a pretty hard damn thing to do. In fact, it's impossible. They feel no pain. They don't get tired. But the living do. I do. And I am. The woman twists and jerks away from me and I forget about stomping the teens head in. Thick skull, that one! I back step as fast as I can as the woman turns to me. Her eyes have no light, no spark, no soul. The one on the ground crawls across the pavement, neither one takes their eyes off me.
Someone pushes me back then steps in front of me. Will lifts his sword and, full of rage, slices the woman's head off her shoulders. It hits the highway directly in front of the undead teen. He stops crawling and looks at the head. Realizing it's not the head he wants, he backhands it and the head bumps down the road. Will goes and stands over the undead kid. He raises the sword then brings the tip down and into the kid's head. He stops crawling instantly, and his body relaxes. Will looks around for more, then whips his head toward me, eyes flashing with the same rage he used on the zombies. Uh, oh. I'm
in deep shit now!
I tell him how sorry I am but...and then point to the car. He turns and for the first time see's what's inside. His eyes widen and his breath catches. He looks back at me with a look that says, 'Are you kidding me?'
I shake my head no. "Her name is Lily and she's sixteen. She's the babysitter. Those," I point to the babies," would be the babies." Lily has finally stopped screaming, though when, I don't know. But now, both babies are screaming. Probably because she scared the crap out of them. Or possibly because she pissed them off like she did me.
I look at Will, "We can't let them keep going alone. She's not even able to take care of herself, let alone two babies. At least, not now."
Will agrees with me and motions for her to roll her window down. When it's down enough she can hear him, he tells her that she and the babies should probably ride with one of us. She agrees and we help get the carseats and diaper bags out. I'm holding the baby, looking at its adorable tiny face, shocked that the baby weighs so little, even though I knew by looking at it that it would. I ask Lily if the baby is a boy or a girl and she tells me it's a girl, she's three weeks old, and her name is Grace. The boy is two and his name is Kaleb. Lily tells me their parents had gone on their first night out since Grace was born. I hold the baby tighter to me and breathe in her milky sweet, baby powder scent. I'm overwhelmed with pain when a vision of an undead feasting on her body comes into my mind. That's enough to frighten and sicken anyone, no matter how tough they think they are.
The baby is still crying in my arms while Lily and Will get the toddler's carseat belted inside my parent's van. I look around and what I see has me almost pissing my pants!
"Will. Will! We gotta go. NOW!" Coming up the hill from Springfield is hundreds of undead. The hill is less than a blocks distance from top to bottom so we didn't have much time. I grab the diaper bag, Will grabs the baby's carseat and we run like hell back to our van. Jake flies past us and motions for everyone to turn back. Will whips us around and the other vehicles follow.
They all seem to have made it ok. Thank God.
My husband's phone rings and he answers with a 'yeah'. I'm trying to change Grace's diaper on my lap in the front seat while the boys are trying to figure out the carseat. I finally get her changed and grab a bottle out of her diaper bag. I feed her while I listen to Will's side of the conversation. From what I hear, we are heading straight for the hospital first. I interrupt and tell him we need to get guns and ammo first. There is no way we can even hope to get in and out of the hospital alive without them. He relays what I said to the other person, says ok and alright a few times, then hangs up.
I ask him who that was and he tells me it was Jake. He had given Jake his number so we didn't have to stop every time we needed to talk to him. He said Jake had agreed that I was right (of course!) and that he would lead us to an armory. I ask Will how the hell he thinks he can get inside an armory? Will shrugs then reminds me that Jake is dressed like military. Oh, yeah. I forgot.
I have had something bothering me this whole time but couldn't figure out what, until just now. I realized none of the other people even tried to help when the two zombies attacked Lily's car. Nice. Real nice.
We enter a small suburb of Springfield and I look around at what used to be beautiful homes. The sight of bodies and blood takes away from that beauty, immensely.
I turn my head as far as I can without interfering with the baby and her bottle, and look at my boys in the backseat. They are passed out from exhaustion. I smile, and wish I could tuck them into a nice warm bed, brush their foreheads with a kiss, and tell them to have sweet dreams. The things we take for granted.
I burp the baby girl when she decides she's finished and turn to the back to place her in her seat. Securing her in, I cover her with a blanket, then do the same to Bo and Ash, running my hand over their cheeks and foreheads. I whisper that I love them and then turn back toward the front. I sigh and do my best to hold in my tears but a few leak out anyway. My husband puts his arm out to me and I lean against his side, not an easy thing to do in a van with bucket seats, but we manage...for about thirty seconds. Then my back screams at me to quit being so stupid, that I'm not that flexible. I sit up and settle back in my seat.
We are a few blocks away from where it turns from quiet outer-residential to busy inner-city chaos. The dead are already everywhere. I don't even want to imagine how packed with the undead the downtown area will be, which is where the hospital just happens to be located. Right now, I see the dead stumbling and shuffling around. Beating on doors, windows, outer walls of homes. Eating parts of what was once a living breathing human being like they themselves once were. I don't feel the same as I did even an hour ago. Sure it still sickens me. Still horrifies me. Still scares me. But now, it also pisses me off. I want to know what happened? Who did this? And WHY?
Up ahead I see so many zombies. So many of the damn things just everywhere. Fortunately, they don't seem to pay much attention to us. Maybe it's only when we are sitting still, and they can focus on the fact there are people in the vehicles, that they take an interest in us. I don't know. We are about a mile from the hospital and I have no idea where the armory is. Jake leads us down several more streets and, eventually, we pull up outside a large fenced gate with an even larger brick building on the other side. Jake jumps out of his vehicle and motions for everyone to wait. He runs to a little cement guard shack next to the gate, and with a set of keys he has in his hands, unlocks it, and disappears inside. Suddenly, the gate starts to open. Jake runs back out and jumps into his SUV. Driving it through and parking to the side, he motions the rest of us to follow.
Still three vehicles to go and a horde of zombies start to gather and come our way. We all yell at them to hurry up. The first two make it through in plenty of time but the single man in the very last car, does something none of us expect. He stops his car, gets out, takes a few steps toward the zombies, then throws his head back and spreads his arms wide. We are all standing with our mouths open in shock and horror.
Chapter 4
Finally, someone starts screaming for him to run and we all join in with our own screams. He doesn’t seem to even hear us. The first four walking dead reach him and take him to the ground. We watch as one pulls his right arm from it's socket and twists until it comes completely off. Another sinks it's teeth deep into the man's left leg, while still another stabs it's hands into the mans stomach, taking out chucks of meat each time it's hands go down and comes back up. The fourth bites into his left arm and once he gets a good chunk in his mouth, he peels the rest of the skin off. At that point, most of us remember that we can turn away, and we do. The most unnerving part was, that entire time, the man never screamed. Not once.
We all back up as the rest are still coming for us. Jake is over next to the gate on the inside, opening a black box he unlocked with his key. The gate starts to slowly close. There is no way it's going to shut in time!
Jake lifts his rifle and takes out the closer zombies. Will runs to the van and grabs a long sword. Standing on the inside of the gate, he takes down the ones Jake can't shoot in time. Finally, the gate closes with a bang. We all relax and sigh with relief. They can't get through that gate. It's way too strong.
"Alright. Let's move. That gate's not strong enough to stop them if too many start pushing on it at once," Jake informs us. Thanks for totally screwing up that relief I had going on, Asshole.
The armories doors are right in front of us but Jake gets back in his vehicle, so we all pile back in our own. We follow as he leads us on a road to the left which leads to the back of the building. I'm shocked to see all the smaller buildings and the much larger metal one. Why didn't any of us know this was here? It's huge!
He pulls up outside the large metal building and motions, once again, for us to stay. Rifle on a strap over one shoulder, he walks up and unlocks the huge metal door then slides it to the right, leaving an opening the size of a four car garage. As he's sliding it open, four undead
in military fatigues come shuffling toward him. Calmly, and seemingly unsurprised, he shoots each one. He just stands there and waits, watching the door. Eventually another comes out and he takes that one down, as well. Finally satisfied, he goes back to his vehicle and drives it inside the building. We all follow.
Inside, I see at least twelve Hummers along one wall of the building, parked at an angle. All shiny black and looking brand new. The opposite side is empty and Jake parks his vehicle there, so we do the same. We wait for him to tell us when it's safe. After he secures the door, he motions for us to get out.
Except for the baby and toddler who are both asleep, everyone gets out and walks over to Jake. He tells us this armory is where he's stationed and is in charge of. He and some of his men were ordered to Stephan to "contain" the situation when all hell broke loose. His men didn't make it out. But he got away and, realizing there was nothing more he could do, started back to Springfield to get his brother. He knows how many men are on each shift and knows how many of them should have been in this building, and how many should be inside the armory. Twenty-five guards are on shift at all times. Five were inside this building. He had fifteen men with him in Stephan. So that leaves five in the armory itself. He then tells us all to pick one of the Hummers because our vehicles aren't worth a damn. He hands each of us a key attached to a thick camo-colored tag that has a number on it. He tells us the number matches the number painted on the wall in front of each Hummer. We got number three. He also explains that these may look like the Hummers we see on the streets that civilians drive now, but other than that, there's no comparison. The entire outside is bullet-proof. The inside is full of gadgets that can help us, such as GPS, heat sensor and night vision displays, and several storage compartments, including a large storage space underneath and in the very back which are all accessible from inside and outside the vehicle. He says there are a lot more features but he doesn't have time for the full salesman pitch.
Dying To Live & Fighting To Live-Book One and Book Two (Zombie Overload Series) Page 5