“Mom, mom! What’s going on? Are you and dad all right?” Caroline screamed into her phone as she tried to catch her breath. Christa was standing a few feet away consoling a distraught Annie while Lauren Norris paced back and forth, fear in her eyes, trying to figure out what was happening.
“What were those things?!” She said turning to the group. “Those, those…looked like people…but they’re not.”
“I’m not sure but honestly guys I don’t think we’re in a safe area to be standing around. We need to move.” Christa responded.
“Where’s Sophia?!” Annie continued to cry. “I can’t go unless I know where she is.”
“We’ll find her, but right now we can’t be out in the open. They’ll spot us for sure.” Annie wiped her eyes and got up agreeing that an open parking lot was not the safest place to be.
“Mom, get out of the house!” Caroline pleaded over the phone. “Mom! Mom! Mom?!” Caroline looked up with a blank stare on her face.
“What’s wrong?” Christa asked.
“Those things got her…” Her cell phone dropped to her feet and she fell to her knees, covering her bawling face with her hands.
“They’re everywhere! We’re all going to die!” Lauren threw her hands in the air weeping.
Christa walked up to her and slapped her hard in the face. “Calm the fuck down. We’re definitely going to die if you think like that!” Lauren apologized and Annie went over to Caroline who needed the consoling now.
“So what do we do Christa?” Lauren asked. “What can we do? We don’t even know what those things are…they’re like…zombies.”
“We have to find the others. I know I saw a handful scatter towards Arlington Road. We’ll fare better in numbers.”
“C’mon, get up Caroline,” Annie whispered in her ear. “We’re going to find the others and figure this out together.” Caroline nodded and wiped her tears away as she got up. She quickly fumbled to grab her phone before they left.
Christa led the pack out of the parking lot picking up a broken sign post on the way. She turned around to the group, “Grab whatever you can. If there are more, we’re going to need to protect ourselves.”
“Can we even kill them? They look dead already.” Lauren asked. Christa just looked at her and said, “Just do it.” She turned around and whispered under her breath, “God help us.”
***
“Can you explain to me what’s going on?” Susie asked Lauren Hewins who wasstuck in the cold dark attic with her.
“Keep your voice down. I think they’re still downstairs.” A sliver of light breached the darkness that gave Lauren the idea to try and get a quick peek down below.
“Can you see anything?”
“There’s one down there…I wish we had enough time to cut the string off, but I don’t think it knows how to get at us.”
Lauren sat back up and even in the darkness she could see Susie’s concerned face. “I don’t know what’s going on. They broke the doors down and began to kill and eat people. I think most of us got away but some of us are dead down there. I…I don’t even know what our fate is right now.”
They sat in silence for a while as they could hear the deep hollowed growl of the zombie that paced the office enticed by the smell of living flesh that it could not locate. Cold sweat ran down the girl’s faces as they tried to stay still. Every creak made the zombie look up towards the closed attic door but not aware of what was making the noise. A few hours later from sheer exhaustion and shock of the experience, Susie fell asleep. Lauren kept waiting, too afraid to close her eyes, and continued to listen to the zombie.
“God, think Lauren, think…is there anything up here that can help us out?” She looked at the sleeping Susie. “You’re funny God, aren’t you?”
***
“We need to break into the store.”
“Dude we can’t do that! We’ll get in trouble.”
“I’m PRETTY sure that laws go out the window when zombies run the streets.”
“Those were zombies?”
“What else could they have been? I’ve seen enough movies to tell.”
“Jiko, Owen, have you guys figured out what to do yet?” A female voice called them from behind. “Eric’s hurt. We need something to stop the bleeding.”
“Yeah Adrienne, we’re going to break into Strosniders and find something in there.” Owen replied.
“Plus we can grab something to defend ourselves with. You have to hit a zombie through the brain to kill it.” Jiko said surely.
“How do you even know they’re zombies?!”
“It’s better we take the chance and whack them right side the head than not, don’t you think? C’mon help me find something to break the glass window.”
They broke the window using a large rock and Jiko slid his hand to unlock the door from the inside. Once opened, the two guys pulled Eric’s nearly unconscious body. He was bleeding profusely from his side when he fell on a large broken glass bottle in the parking lot behind the store when everyone ran away in a panic. Adrienne was able to pull him away to a bush with the help of Sean, who unfortunately suffered his own fate when he tried to pull another dying friend from the zombie’s line of sight.
“I barely made it out alive.” Adrienne said as they quickly walked up and down the aisles to find first aid.
“Found something!” Jiko yelled from a few rows down. He lifted up a pick axe in the air. “This will do nicely.”
Owen found the first aid kit and they quickly ran to Eric to help tend his wounds. Still barely awake, Eric sat in a back corner breathing heavily, clutching a ripped shirt to try and stop the bleeding.
“You’re going to be all right, Eric.”
“Where…where is everyone…where’s JC?”
Adrienne and Owen just looked at each other. “I think he’ll be fine.”
Jiko rounded the corner. “Yo yo! We gotta hurry. I think I heard something. Grab this!” He threw a sledge hammer towards Owen. “Be quiet and lay low. I think we’ve got company…”
No comments:
Post a Comment