We made it to the ladder I first spoke to Edwin and I went ahead without acknowledging anyone else’s presence. I was too trapped inside of my head to remember I was with people. I climbed the ladder and opened the manhole to peek out and see how many infected waited for us. There were none. It was a few minutes since the explosion went off. This brought to my mind some inconsistencies in the story that Misha and Lizbeth argued over. If all their things were stolen by looters, what did they use to cause the explosion? Not that I cared at the time. It wasn’t as much a concern as a curiosity.
“It’s clear,” I said when I made sure the ground outside of the manhole was safe. I proceeded to push the manhole cover out of the way and make my way to the fire escape, just a stroll to my impending doom as usual.
One by one we made our way to the top of the fire escape and walked over to the ladder that would bring us back down into the dead end, where the vents were. Once everyone gathered up behind me, I explained what we would have to do. “Once you see the entrance in front of you, go in and wait for the next person. Make sure no one falls to the bottom. I don’t know what’s down there, but it can’t be good. The fall alone will most likely kill whoever falls on impact.” At first they were confused about my explanation but I decided to take another approach.
I took the lantern from Strobe. “Just follow the light,” I said. This would be much easier. I would go ahead and they’d know where to go because of the lantern’s light. If anything went wrong, it wouldn’t be my fault. And even if it was, I’d deny it in court. What court? Zombie court!
I put the lantern’s handle in my mouth, this forced the warmth of the lantern under it to rise up and crawl all over my face. Once again, I became aware of how cold it was outside. I liked to not know that I was freezing half to death.
I sat on the edge of the vent’s entrance and pressed my legs to either sides of the vent and used enough force to barely keep me up. It would help me in the long run. Conservation of Energy; if only I ran our country.
I lowered little by little till my hands could come into play and assist with the support. I slowly slid down. At the bottom, I went inside the vent that connected and turned around. I put the lantern in front of me to shine its light outward to allow everyone overhead know how far they would have to slide down before they stopped.
Immediately after I set the lantern down Strobe popped up and swapped vents. He grabbed the lantern and moved it behind him and turned around to wait for the next person to come down. I moved back to allow him room to do the same. We repeated this a few times until everyone made it into the second vent, and we continued to move forward to the harder part.
After some twisting and turning we came to what could be considered ’the moment of truth’. Although no lies have been passed around, so I’m not exactly sure how that applies. Close by, runners waited for any sound or movement.
I was in the front and this left me no option. I went down first; that’s what she said. I kept my movements to a minimum and peeked around the corner. The lantern was behind me so that my body would stop the light from bringing attention to us.
At the end of the hallway there was the room where all of the runners were. How we would make it through all of the infected and up the wall was a mystery to us all. The light that helped me maneuver through the darkness when I first went through vanished behind the shine of the lantern. Strobe took the lantern back so the least amount of light made it to the front.
We took our time and moved silently and slowly down the hallway. The lantern kept getting past further back as we walked deeper in. It was too dark, blindness. But to the best of my knowledge, nothing could see me, I was invisible, and that made me happy.
The sporadic pattern the runners ran in, gasps for breath like they choked on the air they inhaled, they were close. I stopped moving and waited for everyone to gather up behind me.
“The lantern needs to go off now,” I whispered. Everyone else, reluctant to speak because they were too scared, simply turned it off. “We’ll stick to the left wall and walk along. Then we’ll turn the corner. Wherever I stop, there will be an entrance that could be reached only with a boost from another person. I’ll be that boost. Whoever makes it up first, reach over the edge and wait for the next person, to help them up.” No sound came from any of us. But the runners weren’t so generous with their silence.
I started to walk. The hungry darkness ate even the dimmest light. But the footsteps of the runners were enough information. Some would stop directly next to me or in front forcing me to stop until they ran away again. It felt like hours were going by while we walked along the wall.
I stopped where I thought our escape from the room would be and took a knee. Strobe bumped into me but didn’t make any noise. He reached forward and touched my back with his hands to know where to step. When he climbed on top of me, I slowly stood. He wasn’t light but I didn’t care at the time. It didn’t even cross my mind that I struggled to boost him up. Once I stood straight up he shifted his legs to stand over my shoulders. I stood there while Strobe touched around the wall for the entrance. It was further to the right than I thought it was so he let me know by shifting more weight to my right shoulder. My feet dragged along the ground while I positioned. I knew it wasn’t too loud but the fear made it one of the loudest things I’ve ever heard. I put all my focus entirely on a silent shift. He decreased the amount of weight he put on my shoulder and then there was no weight on my shoulders. He made it up. I relaxed for a moment but soon realized that all the sounds the runners were making when we entered the room stopped.
They knew we were in the room, they just didn’t know where in the room. They waited for the next sound to rush whichever direction it came from. The worst part was that I couldn’t speak or make any movements that would make noise to alert everyone else. I couldn’t tell them to not move.
The runners carefully listened, trying to track down the light footsteps that we made.
Mara reached me, I could tell by the weight. She was possibly the lightest one in the group based on height and body type. There was no option but to continue to move everyone up the wall. I boosted Mara up and Strobe grabbed her hand and pulled her up. Edwin was next in line. He got into position. Somewhere in the darkness Lizbeth was approached by a runner that followed the sound of her shoes against the floor. None of us were aware that it took place at the time. The infected came close enough for its heavy breathing to freeze Lizbeth in place. She knew that whatever was in front of her wasn’t one of the group members. The runner reached out for her and bent its wrist lightly as it missed and pressed against the wall. With the other hand it reached out again, this time it made contact with her stomach. She panicked but managed to stop herself from making any noise. She held her breath so the runner wouldn‘t know she was there. Just a few feet to her left, I boosted Edwin up the wall to be pulled up by Strobe on the top. The runner caught on to Edwin’s shoes sliding against the wall on his way up and diverted his attention to my direction. I still wasn’t aware that any of this was happening. The runner took his hand away from the wall and the other off of Lizbeth’s stomach. Lizbeth instantly thought the runner left and exhaled. The infected still stood directly in front of her and her breath reached him and brought his attention right back to her. He knew there was a person there and let out a high pitched scream in joy.
Lizbeth yelled out of fear and all of the runners in the room yelled too, along with the first one. We knew they were headed our way.
Up top, Strobe lit the lantern and placed it on the edge of the wall to increase the level of brightness from none to some. Lizbeth dashed right passed the runner in front of her and made a run for me. She was cut off by some of the other runners. I kept my movements to a minimum to avoid bringing attention my way.
The runners that cut Lizbeth off grabbed her and as she tried to squirm and avoid getting bitten or scratched, they dragged her to the ground where they were piling up on top of her. I entirely forgot Misha was with us until he leapt into action to save Lizbeth. I knew nothing of his past but the man was some sort of trained fighter who became a coward. He kicked and punched the infected with moves that made him look like he hopped right out of a martial arts movie. He snapped necks, broke spines and dug Lizbeth out before they managed to break through her clothes and do irreversible damage. Her blouse was partly ripped. But aside from that, she was bruised from the impact with the ground and nothing more. She ran my way and frantically climbed over me without giving me a chance to get ready to boost her. I was nothing more than a ladder to her, but I couldn’t blame her, under the same condition I would have done exactly the same thing.
As soon as Lizbeth made it up, I became completely aware that there was no one left to boost me up high enough to grab anyone’s hand and make it up the wall except Misha. Whichever one of us boosted the other would also be the one left behind. The runners were now focused on both Misha and me. The difference was that I could not defend myself as efficiently as Misha could. I waited in front of the wall until the runners came too close, ducked and ran right by a few of them. One slammed against the wall and the rest stopped short to turn around and run my direction again.
Misha would have been more successful against the runners if it wasn’t for their numbers. He was bitten and scratched all over his body as more infected focused on him. But he continued to fight. All of this so he could protect Lizbeth, which as far as I knew could have been his wife or sister as much as she could have been a complete stranger. “GET READY!” Misha yelled, his passive, worried tone hidden behind this sturdy assured man. He was a completely different person. He fought a few more of the runners and jumped out of the crowd. Covered in bite marks, scratches and missing a few bits of flesh on his arms, he ran over to the wall where the boost was needed and got on a knee a few feet away from the wall. He wanted me to make a run for it.
I didn’t question it or try to convince him otherwise. He was already a lost cause. Given enough time, he would have turned into one of them around us if he came along.
I made my run and dodged a few of the runners on my way back to the wall. When I got there I jumped and landed on Misha’s back. He stood up and the force that came from him standing allowed me to leap further than I would have otherwise. Once in the air, Misha was tackled by one of the runners while another one of them tried to cut me off but I was already over its head. At the wall I grabbed Strobe’s hand simultaneously when a runner grabbed my ankle.
The screams that came from Misha while being eaten alive flung me into a panic. I kicked the runner frantically. The goal was to kick its hand off of my ankle but it held a death grip. Edwin came into play and reached out for my other hand and between both him and Strobe I was being pulled up, but the runner was being dragged up with me. I continued to kick over and over and shook my leg during a deadly version of the hokey pokey until it let go. I flew up and fell over Edwin and Strobe.
The runner fell to the ground and forgot I was there once I left its field of view.
Misha’s last few gasps of breath and attempts to scream slowly faded into silence and nothingness.
Edwin, Strobe, and I looked over the edge at Misha. His lifeless body, trampled and covered with a sheet of infected. He stared back at us. More of the runners gathered around him and dove in to eat. Lizbeth and Mara kept their distance and hugged each other further down the path.
All of the infected were monsters; careless, heartless lunatics with the need to eat anything that wasn’t infected with their plague.
The amount of death any of us have seen in the last few days was more than most people experienced in a life time, but this new world was painted red. Death was nearly unavoidable, self preservation called for tough decisions, casualties of war.
Misha’s sacrifice was noble, I guess.
Those of us still alive needed to make our way back onto the tracks. We navigated through the tunnels and I led us back the way I first traveled.
The tunnels were as narrow as they felt in the dark the first time through, but we managed.
The orange flicker of the flame that danced inside of the lantern made odd shapes on all of the walls we walked by.
We came to a door held shut by the steel bar I placed there. Directly on the other side of the door were the railways where I was separated from Marcus.
“On the other side is where I last saw him. We know he was on this set of tracks and we know he planned to come back,” I said. I took the steel bar off of the hooks and opened the door. “I don’t know how many infected are on the other side; it’s a roll of the dice at this point.” Gambling with zombies.
Mara and Lizbeth were shaken up over Misha. Although I don’t think they had as much of a problem with his death as they did with the likelihood that any of us would be next.
There was nothing on the other side of the door. The dark was alive and all consuming, it left us with a small range of visibility which was possible thanks to the lantern, but it didn’t help, there was no Marcus. The bodies of infected were all over the rails. I took it as a sign that Marcus did in fact come back.
How far did he get?
Did we lose our chance and end up stranded? Did he still look for me? So many questions, all to be answered in the next exciting episode! Stay tuned in the next… few paragraphs.