“Where's Jeremy?” I shouted, while I reloaded my second of three magazines.
“He's here, how do you know him?” She asked. My anger flared as she asked it, and insisted I would know that worthless human being. I couldn't stop myself anymore. I got up and charged, gunning her down as she turned to flee. It was all too easy.
I then heard gunfire from above, it was Terrence, surely. I stepped over her body. She still alive, barley. I grabbed her by the neck and held her up. No mercy, I knew if I gave her any chance, she would take it and kill me.
“Where is he?” I asked her, while looking for signs of anyone else around.
“He's up in the security room of Wackos Grub, second floor, bastard,” she sputtered out. I threw her down violently, and continued my pursuit of justice, as she took her last breath. Terrence was already on the second floor, I could see flashes of light from above. I came to the inside of the shopping centre, and gazed upon all the empty stores, locked down. I went on, to finish my spree of revenge, and it ended with Jeremy. I ran up the escalators, seeing a man walk out from a clothes store behind a pillar, I took aim and shot. He dropped fast and I didn't look back, no one can survive five bullets to the chest. At the top of the stairs, he was there, the leopard jacket, holding a little girl hostage. It was Jess’s sister, Lily.
“You!” I said, pointing my gun at him, he halted and shook Lily up.
“Haven't you already taken enough from me?! I’m sorry!” He shouted.
“Not nearly enough, you killed my sister, you shot my brother!” I angrily announced, as my voice carried to all floors of the shopping mall.
“And what did you do, Peter?” He said. “You threw me out, killed my girlfriend, you're even worse!”
“I did what had to be done,” I said holding the trigger tight. I remembered the couple I had thrown out at the start of the outbreak. I left them for dead. But here he was, right in front of me, all I had to do was shoot, and end it.
“I loved her, and you signed her death warrant,” he said. He is saying he did it for his ugly girlfriend, ugly both inside and out. He remembered them, staying at the hotel on the onset of the outbreak, she was rude, violent and then she became infected, of course she had to go! My mind wandered across to the thought of pulling the trigger, killing the girl and him at the same time. Have it done with once and for all. Then I realised, this must have been the same dilemma he had been faced with, when he saw Abby and Terrence and Abby crossed his sights. He still shot, and he would have killed them both if not for Terrance’s mutation.
“She was dying, you wouldn't leave her, so you had to leave as well. Put the girl down,” I said, holding back my anger.
“No, kill me you kill her!” He shouted, holding Lily tight.
“You want to be the cause of another dead girl? I will shoot anyway,” I said, and I meant it. If he had the balls to kill a child and get his revenge, then why the hell wouldn't I? I was more of a man than him!
“Jess!” Called the girl. I bounced my eyes to my right, where Jess came running through a shop entrance.
“Stop!” Terrence shouted from my left. They had found me, and the mall was ours.
“Lily!” Jess yelled, her voice echoing on the glass domed roof of the mall. She cried desperately as she saw me holding, shaking my weapon, and losing control.
“Pete, no!” Terrence said again. I gripped my gun again and weighed up all the injustices that had faced me in my life.
“Terrence stay out of this,” I ordered my little brother.
“Peter, you don't know what you're doing!” He tried to warn me.
“Tell them to stop, please!” The girl in Jeremys arms cried.
“I’m sorry Lily, but this is how it has to be,” Jeremy said, as if he was at pains that it had come to this. It felt as if I was a bad guy, as if I had killed a child, but no! I hadn't, he had! I had lost my temper; I saw red flash in front of my eyes.
“You will pay!” I swore to him, holding onto my sanity barely. The confusion and conflict in me was too much to bear, I had to do something. I ever so slightly lowered the barrel of the gun, calming myself.
“No, don't do it,” Jess cried, then I saw Jeremy smile a sly smile as he stood behind the frightened girl, it pushed me over the edge and I knew in that moment what I had to do. I raised my gun to fire. To end it. Terrence shouted and called my name, but it was all in a haze, as the rage took control, my hearing muffled. Suddenly I felt a force knock my arm back, as I fell to the floor in a heap I gasped. It was just as I was about to shoot. I had been shot from my right, where Jess was standing. She had shot me?
“No!!!” Terrence screamed, raising his weapon. I closed my eyes as bullets rattled around the shopping mall. I heard the little girl cry as a thump vibrated on the ground. Then the entire mall shook, as fire engulfed the area in front of the restaurant where Jeremy had once stood. I opened my eyes to my left and saw a bullet puncture Terrence’s heart. But he kept standing, his flesh turned red and pulsed. His monstrous appearance calmed down as he came close to me, and shielded me. Then another explosion, bigger, and more violent, sent him flying backwards. A price of debris sliced my head, as I felt blood trickle down my forehead, and I blacked out. I woke, possibly minutes, or even seconds after, as the heat of a blazing fire cooked my flesh. I crawled away, down the escalators, and my brother soon followed.
“What the hell was that!?” I shouted, regaining my senses.
“Brother?” I said as he gasped for air. He nodded his head and coughed. I made sure he was alright, blood was everywhere on his shirt, but his wounds were not as bad as they should have been. It was as if he had healed half his wounds, mere seconds after they were inflicted.
“He left the gas on, then retreated to the shop and shot his pistol at Jess, fucking moron,” Terrence croaked. “And you!” He then grabbed me by the throat.
“What did you think was going to happen, holding a gun to a child!” He reprimanded me, and then ripped my pendant off, the one given to me by our father, the Bridgewater founder.
“That’s mine!” I yelled over the crackling of the fire.
“Dad would be ashamed of you, you don't deserve this, now move!” He shouted.
“Come on, we have to leave,” he said, while I crawled for a peak at the fires and saw the metal infrastructure of the restaurant was all that remained beside the burning body of Jeremy. I got him, he was dead, finally I felt relief, and then despair at how I had done it. I struggled to my feet and clutched my wound in my arm. The fire was spreading, we had to leave.
“Ok,” I responded, my temper and temperature rising and rising with every second. Jess was gone, and Mark too, and the girl, Jess’s sister, Lily, was gone too.
“She shot me? What a bitch,” I muttered as we passed the body of the man I had shot on my way up to the second floor.
“Shut up,” Terrence replied. We made it to the storage rooms where I had entered, to the exit closest to the car park where Romano waited.
“We can't stay here, keep moving,” said my brother. We made it to the depot and out into the street as the fire encompassed the roof of the mall and blazed out of control. All of a sudden the truck arrived back, swerving to a halt and stopping in the middle of the night street. The passengers in the back shot at us as we ran to the car park.
“They're armed,” said Terrence. We hid for cover behind one of the parked cars, then a voice called out.
“Who are you? What have you done?” They asked.
“Go, look for Jeremy, find the others,” another said. Then an explosion caught me off guard. A car near to us exploded.
“Peter, get to Romano,” said my brother.
“What, I can't leave you here?!” I told him.
“Just go,” he said, as his eyes flashed with purple and red hues. It was a warning, up until this point, I had not seen the extent of his rage. I looked out to the man holding a launcher in his hands, he ominously reloaded it with a fiery passion. I glanced back to Te
rrence, then to more people entering the car park, seven of them in total. This group was bigger and more heavily armed than we thought.
“Goodbye Terrence,” I said to him, before fleeing like a coward. He wanted me to run. I ran and ran as the bullets ricocheted off the car bonnets, before finally coming to a stop out on a back street, where two thugs in hoodies, one holding a bat, the other a taser, stood over a badly injured Romano. It was as if they were waiting for me.
“Look at this sprinter, tase him,” the one said flippantly to the other. If I still had my gun I would have blown them down, but I had lost it in the mall explosion. The thug holding the taser moved forward to me, but before he could, his knees burst with blood, and so did the other thugs' knees. Jess came out of the shadows, with Lily and Mark. I held my wound she had inflicted on me, and wondered if she would shoot me, or save me. After all I had done, I deserved it. Then I heard a grumble, a faint whirring and a stampede of feet. I looked up, to the end of the street, and found a horrifying sight.
It was the slumbering dead that we had forgotten existed, the real enemy, the nightmares of hell. I saw the end of times, hundreds, thousands of them, approaching, as my skin crawled and all our hope faded to nothing.
Escape - Day 19 - Jess
The burning buildings behind us lay in contrast to the moving shapes in the darkness, the endless dead. I was going to shoot Peter, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. A more pressing matter presented itself to us, the dead ones that rushed to us in their restless droves.
“Run!” I shouted to Lily. She was so frightened; I could see her shaking. I couldn't explain the happiness of holding her again. After losing Dad, Mum and Nan. To be reunited with my family again, it made me happy more than anything in the world.
“Go! All of you!” I yelled again, as they gawked and stared at the oncoming tide, instead of running for their lives.
“Jess, I’m so sorry,” pleaded Peter, still holding his wound, almost as if he was pleading for his life. I wouldn't hear a word of it.
“Mark, help Romano up!” I ordered the mute Mark. I gave Romano’s two attackers, the ones that whimpered and growled in pain, a less than swift death, putting holes in their legs to give us more time to escape.
“Come! Quickly!” I yelled, gesturing for Lily to go back up the street to the building, away from the onrushing wave. We made it to the end of the street, but found more of them coming from the end of the street.
“Inside!” I shouted, opening up the doors to the shopping mall once again.
“You!” I flashed an angry look at Peter, thrusting my gun forward at him. “If you go anywhere near her, I will shoot you!” I shouted threateningly, then let him in. Into the foray of the burning buildings we went, to escape the hell outside that descended on us in a relentless pursuit.
“My brother, he's in the car park,” Peter said as Mark passed me a crowbar to block the door. The hands of the dead clawed at the windows.
“I'm not going back for him, I care about Lily and myself,” I announced, slinging a rifle behind my back and pulling out my pistol. I had no time to think and wait, to rescue a man I barely knew.
“Jess,” spoke Mark, it was the first time I had heard him speak. I turned around to him, but he just stared at me. I had respect for him, as he had atoned for his error in letting the infected into the hotel days prior by saving my life when we infiltrated the mall.
“We came here to save her, it's not right leaving him!” Peter tried to persuade me.
“You came here for revenge, how dare you!?” I stated while gazing in disbelief at him.
“Come Lily,” I held my arm out to her. We marched through one of the shops into the centre of the marble mall, as the fiery blaze spread to the other shops on the roof. A triage of infected burst through the boarded up north entrance to the mall, they came running in while set alight to all our dismay and fear. Mark and I gunned them down, as Peter hid like a coward. I soon ran out of bullets and so did Mark as more and more of them dropped from the roof. Our situation was desperate, I thought this was the end as I held Lily’s hand one last time. Peter then came out of nowhere with a baseball bat and whacked our assailants, as blood spewed petered out across the marble wall.
“Nice hit!” I told him sarcastically. He threw me a tennis racket and struck another with all his strength to the floor.
“Fuck you! You piece of shit! Die!” He sang as he violated their bodies. It scared me, but then I saw the gnashing rows of teeth of a hundred snapping jaws behind us, and I braced for the end. They came for me, and Lily, but Mark threw himself into the fray in front of us, batting them away with the end of his rifle. He fought with all his might, before finally succumbing to their many attacks, sacrificing himself to save us, but it was all in vain.
“Mark!” I called, but it was too late, they overwhelmed him, and they overwhelmed us. Right then, as chaos hung in the air, an almighty kerfuffle sounded from my right, where I looked, and found a group of soldiers rushing to our rescue. They were wiping out the infected with precise precision the likes of which I hadn’t seen.
“Move! East entrance!” They called from behind their heavy masks.
“Stay low!” They ordered. The rattling of gunfire assaulted my ears, over the humming of the flames that grew under the domed roof. After the last of the dead were felled, they turned back to me and frantically assessed the situation.
“That’s all of them! Quick, we can't stay,” one of them said looking to the entrance that had been breached.
“Soldiers! You are soldiers!” Romano said in excitement as he held his stomach.
“Sir?” Another of them said as their leader looked over us with deadpan eyes.
“He's infected,” he added of Mark. I leant down to see how Mark was, he had bite marks and scratches, exposed flesh on his arms and legs. He was dying. The officer raised a gun to his head as I cried and pulled the trigger.
“What, no!” I screamed as the blood splattered to the floor.
“Oh shit!” Romano gasped.
“Why did you do that?” I demanded to know.
“We have orders,” another of them said, almost as if reminding the leader of his responsibilities.
“Thomas wants us back now,” another spoke.
“Thomas?” I spoke, I knew Thomas, they didn't mean Blakes friend Thomas, did they? Two of them turned to face us, as I shielded Lily behind me. They were going to shoot us!
“Whoa there!” Romano said, holding his hands up in surrender.
“No, you can't, we are innocent, we’re not infected! Please!” I begged, but they would not listen, if not the dead, it would be the humans that would be the end of us. Peter held his bat close, but he could do nothing as they prepared to shoot us. It was an execution. I thought of how far everything had fallen. All of a sudden, as my efforts to end their madness proved folly, a new hope glimmered in my eye, behind the burning fires, a figure launched itself from above, descending onto the marble floor like a fallen angel. I was immediately sure of the person under the black hood, it was a face I had been terrified of, a face I had seen caked with blood and gore just days prior. It was Terrence, Peter’s brother, kneeling, his eyes revealed themselves to be red and pulsing, his skin cracked and splintering into scales of armour. Red wounds lined his face, as if he had just been through a shredder, sinking into deep scars.
“What the hell?” The soldiers spoke. They unloaded a fresh round of bullets into him, piercing his hide, but still he stood, unfazed, unmoving, until he stood to all of our amazement. I fell to the floor holding Lily.
“What is this freakshow?” The leader said, walking up to Terrence and pointing his gun to his head to shoot him from point blank, Suddenly Terrence sprang into action, taking the gun and bending it backwards, breaking the leaders arm.
“The fuck?” He said in amazement, before the mutated man pulled the trigger, blowing his brains out. He then charged forward, beating the other soldiers down and expertly finishing them
off in horrific ways. It was precise, in order, a dance almost.
“Kill him! Kill him!” One yelled.
“Shoot him! Argh!” Another screamed as he was kicked into the fires.
“The hell is this thing!” Another shouted as he tried to run, but was then immediately impaled by a metal pole that Terrence had thrown with supernatural strength. He took the last soldier's head in his hands and slammed his fist onto the ground, cracking his head open, providing a shockwave that blew me back a slight bit, in surprise and shock more than anything. Terrence glanced back at me as I lay on the floor, Lily burrowed her head into my chest. She was petrified, so much so that she couldn't even look.
“Brother?” Peter said, dropping his bat. Lily raised her head up to me and I gazed into her eyes for a moment. I saw despair. I had to escape this place with her, to find Blake. He was alive, I know he is. I heard him on the radio. I took her hand and we got up carefully. Terrence just stared at the ground near the bodies. Around thirty people lay dead, some were rotting, others were fresh corpses. We made for the exit, passing the broken shards of glass and the whistling of the hot flames, coming to a bridge overlooking the car park and the mall, where below bayed thousands of the dead, slumbering in a sea of terror, calling out our names.
“You can't go alone,” said a voice from behind me. It was Peter, and I knew he was right. Terrence had saved Lily’s life twice. But he was too dangerous to be around. He had faced a gun to Lily, and was prepared to end her life for his revenge.
“Together we are safer, you know it. We need to go, I could never hurt her,” he said. Maybe I needed to trust more, maybe going with him was what we needed. I couldn't face this world alone. I needed Blake, and Peter would take me to him.
“I know, I’m tired,” I told him. Lily took my hand and tightened her grip, pulling me to look ahead. There were yellow eyes piercing in the night from the other end of the bridge, death came rising from the abyss of night. I turned around, took Peter’s hand.
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