As I slowly got up, I noticed my hands were shaking so violently I had managed to drop the axe on the ground at me at my feet. I stared at it as the fear coursed through my veins faster than the blood did, it ate up what little courage I had managed to gather to leave the bunker this morning.
I knew that I needed to run, to get around the wheel trail and out of the park as quickly as I could. While my brain screamed at my body to move, at my legs to run, they seemed unable to respond. I stood as if rooted to the ground like the trees around me. My eyes stayed glued to the ground for fear that I would look up and see what was left of the girl again.
My eyes grew wide and my head snapped up when I heard it, again, coming from the same path the young woman’s body lay torn apart down and suddenly my legs, shaking, found their life again.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Ding. Ding. Ding.
If death had its own theme music, to me, it would sound exactly like the noise made by the four who were coming back down the trail. I didn’t want to die, not the way the young woman had died - screaming as my body was torn apart, layer of flesh by layer of flesh.
Grabbing the axe off the ground I moved out of the bush onto the trail quickly and quietly, the four were still out of sight but would around the corner soon enough. I tried not to make any noise or make sudden movements that would draw their attention. On the trail I move as quickly as I could, while still being quiet, and did not look back. The further away I got, rounding the wheel trail, the lower the sounds became. When the sound of the drum and triangle were faint and far away, I let go of precaution and broke into a run, my feet pounding hard on the trail and kicking up dust.
Finally, I reached the trail that lead off the wheel and back out of the park towards the road. Slowly, slightly, I tried to conserve what energy I could, running was exhausting, and I feared I was going to be running on empty soon.
Besides Stenson, the only other mutated creatures I had seen were the four, but that could mean only one thing - there had to be other and more. How could I manage to fix what was going on in the world if I was going to be constantly running for my life?
As I started up the trail, I realized that the sun was moving more quickly across the sky than I was moving across the city and would soon begin its descent in the west. Judging by the suns position I would have pegged the time around mid to late afternoon which meant my choices were to turn back now and try to make it home; or, go forward and risk the darkness that would be upon me soon enough.
Of course, as it had been since the beginning of the crazy run across the city, my choice had already been made - there was no going back. Although I didn’t hear the steady sound of the dinner call the four had been putting out, they were still somewhere in the park and that meant no going back. I could not risk it for if I ran into them, I was as good as dead. The young woman losing her life painted me a clear picture of what that future looked like.
The only option, which wasn’t an option at all, was to continue forward and get out of the park. I needed to reach the hospital before night fell because when it did, I would be out of options completely. Hopefully Joanne would have some sort of answers to what was going on, being that she was in the medical field. Perhaps she would know if there was any way to cure what had afflicted the people of the city or at the very least, what would have caused it.
If the world was going to stay the hell hole it had become, perhaps having another living breathing person around would make it more bearable. Months of speaking out loud to myself had left me wondering what of my own sanity still remained.
Should the worst-case scenario play out and I was to become whatever it was Stenson was, or even worse whatever the four had become - the Collect and the Savages is what my brain had come to refer to them as - at least I would have another person, a sane person, there to put me out of my misery. To help me keep what little humanity I would have, letting me die without tearing apart another person.
Walking the trail that would take me back to the broken concrete sidewalks I wondered how many others could be hiding in the park, like the young woman had been. I prayed they would not give into the same fear that she had, no one should have to die that way. No one should be made into dinner.
How long had she been hiding in that bush? Had I just missed her when I sauntered by or had she been running from the four and they had managed to track her. It brought so many more questions to the forefront of my thoughts. The most pressing question was, how smart were these things?
Of all the uncertainty, one thing was certain, these things were definitely still human, at least in some ways. They were human but not human; they weren’t just mindless creatures wandering the wild. They were definitely something else.
The way Stenson had stared at me and grinned, he was telling me something simply with his facial expressions. And the four, the four had manage to draw the woman out of hiding using her fear. If she had felt safe knowing they would not find her, she would have stayed hidden; at least I feel she would have. Perhaps they had nearly found her before, or she had seen the find someone else. They used the drums and the triangle, the dinner calling, which mean they could plan and strategize and even execute what they planned.
Fear was a powerful motivator. I had used it all the time with investing, getting people afraid that they would lose their money - all of it - if they didn’t invest it with me. It made people act without thinking, without seeing what the outcome could possibly bring. The young woman had clearly given into the fear the four had created. She had likely been so terrified that they would find her that she didn’t stop to think if they even could have found her.
Given that I had not hear her or seen her when I passed by her, it was likely that the four never would have either.
Come to think of it, I wondered to myself, had she seen me when I passed. If she had seen me than perhaps, she had given up her own life, sacrificed herself, to give me a chance to run. Maybe her screams were not to get help for herself but to draw the four away from me.
A sudden heavy feeling in my gut caused me to draw to a stop and lurking forward I emptied the contents of my stomach onto the trail. Had the woman, a young teenager girl, given up her life so that I could live? Or perhaps she was hoping that I would be able to get them from behind, that the two of us could have taken on the four together.
Only it didn’t work out that way. I had not even attempted to help the young woman, I had simply cowered in the bushes staying as quiet as I could while her screams of pain and agony, her wail of dying, filled the forest.
Was that how it would happen to me as well, would I make the mistake of thinking a stranger might come to my aid when I was cornered? Would fear draw me into a situation that I could not handle on my own and all those around me would fail to help me?
Trying to push away those thoughts I continued up towards the edge of the park. Although seeing the sidewalk, the parks edge, should have brought me some relief; the sound of silence, of no drums or triangles, should have brought me some peace, I felt nothing but guilt.
If the four had gone back down around the wheel or even headed towards the other side of the park, if they had managed to coax someone else out into the open, I could not tell. There were no other sounds coming from the park which lay behind me.
Finally, I broke free from the park, leaving behind the trees and the bushes, the shadows and the wind, I stepped out onto the broken cement of the sidewalk. I had survived going off the beaten path, but at what cost to my own humanity.
I wondered as I stepped into the afternoon sun if the park, the time I saved, had been worth it now that I had experience another sort of monster and in some ways had become one in my own skin for leaving the young woman to die. Of course, if everything happened for a reason, as someone had once tried to convince me, maybe the experience was meant to strength me - or break me.
Removing a small bottle of filtered water, I had packed for the journey I placed the axe back into the backp
ack. Somewhere beyond the rubble and chaos in the street that laid before me was the hospital that Joanne was trapped in. Hopefully somewhere out there also laid salvation and freedom from what the world was becoming.
I hoped I would find it before I lost all my humanity and became something else.
.FOUR.
Confrontation
The park laid behind me, the four somewhere amongst the trees and shadows; and the body of a young girl, a victim of this new world, who would not get to grow up; who would never get a funeral surrounded by those who loved her.
As the afternoon would soon give way to the evening, I started towards the intersection was the crossroads to the street I was now walking down and the one that would lead up towards the hospital; to Joanne.
Given the events that took place in the park, what I had seen happen to the young girl, I hoped Joanne was save in the basement of the hospital. She had said, in her own words, ‘There is no one with me, not anymore at least.’ I couldn’t get those words out of my head. What had happened to the others who had been with her; or, was did she mean there was being the bombs fell and they were all dead now?
No, I thought to myself, that wouldn’t make any sense. If the people had simply died by the bombs that would not require telling in person. Something had happened at that hospital, something had to have. Perhaps Joanne had experienced something similar to what I had involving Stenson or the four.
The four, I shudder as if struck by a sudden cold wind. The behavior of the two men, the woman, and the young boy were off putting to say the least, but unlike Stenson who seemed reserved and collected, the sight of the young woman made them savage.
Stenson, another shudder but for a different reason. I could still see those eyes and that slight grin. He recognized me, I don’t know how I knew that, but he did and something in those eyes said he would stop at nothing to kill me when the time came. I would need to be ready, physically and mentally prepared, to kill him when the time came.
When that time came, I knew Stenson would prove a challenge. He was a trained police officer before he changed. Stenson had been trained to defend himself and kill if he had to, it was all part of working in a dangerous profession in an already violent city. Now, he added inhuman strength to the list of things he had over me, he had torn his dog in half. But I told myself, he had also killed his family and eaten pieces of their flesh, perhaps I would be able to out think him or slow him down before the face-to-face came.
The intersection where I would need to cross to turn up towards the hospital was packed with unmoving vehicles, a mountain of scrap metal and destruction. Clearly this was just another example of the chaos that had erupted the morning the air raid sirens had disrupted the silence of what should have been a normal quiet morning. Everyone would have gone into a panic trying to get out of the city, trying to get their loved ones out of the city, as fast as they could manage.
Once order is abandoned and panic sets in everyone in their confrontation with the reality of the situation thinks only of themselves and it leads to very few, or no one, surviving. Looking at the intersection in front of me, as I drew closer, it would seem that no one survived. The cars that laid either on their own, or up on one another all had the charred aging remains of their inhabitants. The mountain of scrap, a graveyard in its own sense, blocked anyone from getting around it, by car or by foot.
Approaching the carnage, I noticed that there were many more vehicles than I had first assumed, many pinned on their sides near the building around the corner. Bodies laid burnt, trapped inside the vehicles, while others, those who had attempted to escape littered the street in pieces. One of the bombs had clearly gone off either on this street or in close proximity to it.
Making my way towards one of the many vehicles, a minivan, with multiple bodies inside the charred remnants of the burnt-out shell, I began to wonder why it must have felt like knowing there was no escape. The very thought of being trapped inside a tight space while bombs fell around me, knowing that you and your children would never get out alive, scared me in ways that were hard to explain.
Slowly I began the careful climb across the twist metal graveyard that the intersection had become trying to safely get back to level ground on the other side, on the street that would lead me to the hospital in the not so far distance. The street, the one I needed to transverse, laid below me from where I stood, it was a mess. Large chunks of brick and mortar from the building that had once lined either side had fallen here and there while more than one building had full collapsed, spilling in pieces onto the street.
Staring at the destroyed street, the collapsed buildings, the dead bodies and twisted metal, I felt like I was looking down upon a maze of death. The street was literally a maze of stone and steel; part of me felt like a character straight out of the post-apocalyptic novels I had been reading to pass the time in the bunker. Of course, those character had been written to be heroes; I was no hero. I was a coward, a paranoid coward who was trying to desperately cross a wasteland of a city just for human companionship.
Like those characters however I was being confront with challenge after challenge on the path towards my goal. First it was overcoming my own fear, getting out of my bunker and into this world. Then it was Stenson, though I never overcame that challenge; I simply ran from it. The park had been a chance to prove my bravery in the face of uncertainty and I had clearly failed that one.
Now I was again confronted with a challenge.
Before me laid this maze that stood between me and whatever was left of the daylight was the timer, which was slowly running out. The street, which the sun had already passed over, was filled with shadows and places for things to hide.
I had considered retrieving the small axe from my backpack, but I didn’t, knowing it would be a challenge to cross the intersection safely with it in my hand. Then again what good would a small axe do against something like the Boomer I had seen pounding at the drum in the park.
As I continued to climb across the destruction, I wondered how many of these things would be like Stenson and how many would be like the four, or perhaps none of them were the same; perhaps they were all different in their own ways. And, would only some of them travel by themselves driven by some territorial need to kill those around them and the ones that did travel in groups, was there some hierarchy as to how they did things - was some leader of the pack so to speak.
So many new questions and every unanswered one threatened my survival.
One question I did know the answer, dead meant dead you didn’t rise back up and walk around. Stenson’s family, murdered, did not get back up and walk around craving flesh. The woman in the park, same thing, she stayed laid in the mass of bone and torn flesh. Even those who had died in the bombing, the charred remains and pieces of the inhabitants of my once major city; they stayed where they had died - this was not a zombie apocalypse.
As I climbed slowly climbed down the other side of the twisted wreck the intersection was, carefully, hand under hand, I knew that I would need more than just a simple hand axe to protect myself. Halfway to the ground I decided that maybe amongst this metal graveyard I might find something, anything that could be used as a more effective form of protection; if anything had survived or was salvageable.
The first few vehicles I had checked yielded nothing useful. Flesh that had been charred in intense heat cracked and fell from the bone as I tried to search around its dead passengers. Vehicles after vehicles, trunk after trunk that I managed to open or climb through the vehicle to get into, held nothing but garage or simply useless items like clothes.
No wonder so many people did not make it out of the city, I thought to myself. It was like an episode of Bugs Bunny and these people were all Will E. Coyote. Instead of simply sidestepping the tree that was falling upon them they tried to out run it. So many people must have assumed they had time to pack, like they were going on vacation and not running for their very lives.
After searching mor
e than eight vehicles I was slowly becoming discouraged. There was nothing of use in these cars, these were regular people; singles, couples, and families trying to escape the city as it was falling around them. I had decided one more car and I would call it a day and move on and tackle the maze.
The car was a Buick Oldsmobile, a large boat of a car, it looked as though it had been black before it was charred. I was forced to go in through where the windshield had once been, sliding in to sit in the empty passenger seat. The body of what I presumed was a heavy-set male laid slumped against the steering wheel. Upon examining the man more closely I realized he had to have died before the bombs had flash fried him to a crisp - there was a hole straight through the skull.
Sliding over slighting I looked for what could have made such a hole; following what was left of the right arm, which hung limply by the dead man’s side, I found what made the hole.
Reaching over, trying not to touch the dead man, I picked up a blackened .38 revolver. The man had obviously wanted to go out his own way and had the means to do it. I looked over the revolver, bringing it close to my eyes so I could inspect it. The chamber was empty, there were no live rounds in it, probably the only reason it had less damage than it could have.
Looking over the gun I held it up and looked down the barrel, it was slightly warped, likely from the heat of the blast, but it may still be of use; unless of course it misfired at the wrong time. Sliding the gun into the waistline of my pants I looked again at the man caught by sudden unspoken questions in my own head.
Could I do it? If I was confronted by something, someone, or a situation I could not survive? I wondered if I could do what this man had done and take my own life. It was these thoughts that scared me most. I had never had a suicidal thought in my life. When we were kids, we were taught to take your own like was to spit in God’s face and that was it was a mortal sin that could not be washed clean.
Survival Series (Book 1): Survival Page 4