Right turn; this led us back to the entrance that Marcus and I took onto the rails in the first place. If he wasn’t towards the entrance we could walk back and head straight down the tunnels until we reached another station in another part of town or in an entirely different town. Everything looked the same during the walk. More rails, more tunnels, more bodies and more of that eerie silence that loved to hang out with the dark.
We stepped around the bodies of the infected. Even if they did become murderous monsters, it was still wrong to walk over them. The number of bodies thinned out as we reached the station. The lantern’s light spread out when we made it to the waiting area. My first instinct was to check the security room Marcus and I first entered when we arrived.
Light shined out of the security room. We approached it. I thought Marcus was inside, but there was no such thing as being too careful. I did not plan to rush in and leave my guard down. I signaled everyone to keep quiet and move silently as we closed in on the security room. Strobe naturally turned the lantern off just in case we needed to suddenly vanish. The light coming from the room was enough to allow us a visible line of sight between our position and the inside of the security room. It wasn’t Marcus on the inside. That security room held nine strangers in it and Jason.
And Jason…
And Jason…
I was excited that Jason was there and prepared to storm the room and tell him I was fine and alive.
Marcus popped out of the darkness like a bat out of hell and startled me. I’d already trained to make as little noise as possible whenever I was scared or shocked so I managed to remain quiet.
Marcus snuck past the door to the security room and stood in front of me. Without a word, he pointed towards one of the guys in the room, to the gun they held. The rest of the group never saw Marcus before then and were confused by his appearance, but I believe it became clear to them that this stranger was who we searched for.
Marcus told us all to back away from the door as much as we could. I wondered how long he was hidden in the dark.
“DAMNIT! Nothing again. We can’t use these damn tunnels. We’ll be lost for days if we don’t know which direction to head. Let’s get out of here. We need to find another way,” one of the men said. He was calling the shots. Was this Richard?
Marcus shoved me back, and as a chain reaction everyone behind me was shove back by me and so on. We blended into the darkness well. The group Jason was with made their way out of the security room and the station. I noticed the look on Jason’s face. The misery that sat there told a story of its own. He didn’t want to be there, were they holding him hostage? It was Richard.
I remembered that Marcus told me Jason might have been taken hostage again. Those were the people. That explained their guns. Soon enough they vanished. Jason was so close, but we could do nothing without being outgunned.
Strobe turned the lantern on again. He must have been close to or already out of matches by that point.
Marcus put his finger to his mouth to keep us quiet. He pointed back to the railway and headed that way.
“We need to make it out of here before John gets too far. I cleared a large part of the path, but past a point it’s still a mystery to me,” Marcus whispered. He was already used to the random appearance of new survivors and was numb to it. “Those men… They are who I warned you about,” he told me.
“I gathered as much,” I replied.
“They would have dealt with us quickly if they knew we were here. But I know where they are headed now. After we meet up with John, we will have enough time to cut them off and get your brother before they reach their destination,” Marcus explained.
“Well, let’s get this over with,” I said. I trusted everything Marcus said. He was focused on his own survival and that of everyone around him too. I’m around him too.
“I’ll explain everything on the way to the next station,” Marcus said as he walked by everyone and led on the rails.
Day 5
The Family
T
he silence that took hold through half of the walk to the next town was unbearable. The walk itself was long enough, being in silence made it completely obvious that the walk was taking an extremely long time. After long enough went by I wasn’t the only one that couldn’t take the silence any longer and conversation began. At first it was whispers but soon enough it turned into louder conversations. The further we went, the more apparent it was the rest of the railways were safe. Marcus knew exactly where we were heading so for the most part we just followed his lead. At some point names were exchanged between Marcus and the other survivors. With each passing day people became more distant and less trusting of others. We’ve all seen the way the world turns out in movies and video games after chaos takes over, people backstabbing each other and using any bit of information as blackmail to get their way, the true cruelty of human nature.
No one was sure when we’d be turning on each other or even if it was going to happen, but being safer rather than sorry was the right way to go in everyone’s mind. The conversations were all for the sake of conversation, irrelevant topics of nothing. They tried to share as little as possible. Trust was definitely dead.
Somewhere down the line Marcus explained how he and John mapped out several intersecting points in case we couldn’t get through the first few. Like true soldiers, they made backup plans. We were on our way to the next meeting point. John and the caravan of survivors would wait at the next discussed location and attempt to find supplies for the rest of the trip. We were to cut them off at that time and join them. The downfall to the plan was the fact that John would leave at sunrise. We didn’t know how long it was until sunrise.
We made some progress and arrived at the station through which we’d leave the tracks. Conversation died out when we spotted the station. We made our way out of the tracks onto the waiting area and continued to the exit. “We’re here,” Marcus said after he read the welcome sign. ‘Welcome to Creed City’. A town I didn’t even know existed.
We left the station to a city that looked like it didn’t know of the infected. The City of Creed had no infected in sight, no screams of agony, and no chaos of any kind, no anything. It was dead, quiet and so serene that I could be convinced the whole population of the city managed to evacuate on time. Nothing was going on. It was a strange sight. That said, it was a good sight.
“Where’d everyone go?” I thought out loud.
“This city received an early warning of the infection; they put up a mandatory evacuation. They’ve been at the school since day one,” Marcus clarified. “That’s why it’s on the route.
Creed City
W
alking in such an abandoned place was unexplainably nicer than being chased down in hopes of not being turned into an early dinner by raging, hungry, lunatic, zombiefied cannibals.
We strolled down the middle of the street behind Marcus. Although we knew the plan, he didn’t want to risk someone going there alone so he kept the destinations to himself; it assured him that we’d all stick together. Time went by quicker than usual because we were enjoying the peaceful stroll through the city and before we knew it we were where Marcus wanted us to be.
The light of day still hid somewhere over the horizon but it was bright enough to tell where we were without the use of the lantern. We reached a retail intersection somewhere in the city. Large buildings and skyscrapers surrounded us. It was a difficult spot for anyone to miss. With all hopes John was still around with the rest of the survivors.
A familiar explosive sound filled the air. The sound of fully automatic gunshots pierced the silence for a consecutive twenty to thirty seconds before they cut off, it was faint, far. “Don’t mind that. It sounds distant,” Marcus said. His face crunched up while he thought it through.
“I’m hungry,” Mara whispered to Lizbeth. I could only imagine how long the girl went without food.
“We should search the nearby buildings for supplies. I’m sure a lot of them are still stocked,” Marcus said.
“You heard that?” Lizbeth began. “We’ll get you something to eat.”
“I’ll come along too,” Edwin volunteered himself to tag along.
“I’ll stay out here just in case John comes by, be quick,” Marcus urged us not to waste time. “We don’t know for sure if there are no infected in the city,” he cautioned us. It was important that we didn’t become so comfortable that we would underestimate our location. Things could go wrong in the split of a second.
“I guess it wouldn’t hurt to find some food,” I said. “Do you guys want anything?” I asked Strobe and Marcus.
Based on how Strobe imitated Marcus’ stance and posture, you could have been easily convinced that he was also formerly a soldier for the United States military. I thought little of it. He just wanted to feel safer.
“Anything you can find is fine with me,” Marcus said and turned to Strobe to await his answer. Marcus smiled when he realized what Strobe was doing. Something about Strobe’s posture made him happy for that moment. “Same goes for him.”
“Got it!” I said. I moved to catch up with Lizbeth and the others who began the search while I talked to Marcus. Before I managed to get too far, I remembered that although the sun made the buildings and streets visible, the inside of any building, if I assumed the city was consistent with other locations, wouldn’t have power and would in return be shrouded in darkness. The lantern was set between Marcus and Strobe and I went back for it. “I’ll need this,” I said and picked it off of the ground.
I turned around to Edwin walking inside of a restaurant with no one else around. He was the last one in.
On went the lantern before I reached the door, I entered and met up with Lizbeth, Mara and Edwin who were going into the kitchen of the restaurant. They weren’t bothered by the lack of light.
Mara didn’t notice I caught up with them so she was oblivious to the fact I too entered the restaurant and went to the kitchen in the back. When I came close enough for her to see movement, she jumped like a cat that reacted to a sudden sound but recomposed herself when once she saw that is was just me. The relief that it wasn’t one of the infected or someone else just trying to rob them was enough to give her a sense of joy after that initial sense of horror.
The place was cleaned out which would have been hard to deduct based on the condition of the city. We continued our search for food, after all, it kept us busy and because of that it would make time move faster. The reward of food was worth noting.
The restaurant had nothing. We made our way further in to head to the next location that shared the same back alley. The alley itself was as creepy as they could get. The walls were made of bricks that lost their color and been worn out and broken over time. The scent of rotted meat and vegetables lingered inside the trashcans and dumpsters, fried chicken and maggots.
With no one on the way from the sanitation department, all the trash everywhere was just going to decompose where it was and spread a sheet of nasty rotted stench throughout the streets of everywhere; the scent of the new world.
We stepped on a bunch of who knows what on our way to the next local business. The backdoor was open the same as the restaurant, but it was worth a look even if it was possibly emptied out. It was a bakery. The smell of freshly made bread and cakes was significantly more pleasant to inhale than that of the rotted food in the alleyway. As we searched through the bakery we came to the same conclusion, the place was cleaned out. We left through the front that time and crossed the street to another group of stores and restaurants with a new approach. If the restaurants were cleaned out, maybe the stores that kept snacks along with the things they mainly sold were still stocked with some food left to take.
The condition of the restaurants on the outside worked as a suitable comparison for the looting that must have taken place inside.
We entered a dollar store cleverly named “A Dollar Store”. The creativity of the name amazed me. How the store owner stumbled upon that was just another one of those mysteries that would find no answer in this life time.
The store was untouched. The value of half of the things that were in it went underestimated, but one person’s ignorance would be another’s luck and fortune. Their lack of awareness worked in our favor, because just as everything else was ignored, so were the snacks. Lizbeth found them on racks next to one of the cash registers towards the exit. Chocolate bars and potato chips of all sorts. A fridge next to the rack held water, soda and juices. We stocked up. Edwin vanished into the isles briefly and came back with a backpack in which to put all the food and drinks we could fit for later. Who knows how long was left to get to the school. A twenty four hour drive being forced into a walk was going to be no walk in the park. Those supplies were going to keep us alive for at least a little while longer.
It was over a day since I last slept. Fatigue began to build up but it wasn’t enough to slow me down… yet. I could manage for a few more hours without rest. I was pretty sure the rest of the group shared the feeling, especially Marcus. He was awake longer than I was and he cleared out the tunnels that we used to reach Creed City, and that’s without the addition of the fact that I passed out at some point and managed that bit of rest but he still ran around being his Rambo self.
After we packed in the supplies we made sure that everyone was present and that everyone took everything they wanted from the cleverly named store.
The front door was made of a steel frame to hold up the glass through which I looked outside while I reached for the handle. I noticed something strange in the distance. Marcus and Strobe were against one of the buildings. They peeked around the corner, Strobe on one knee and Marcus stood behind him to look over him. I paused before I opened the door and watched them watch something else. Their attention was tightly held, and like all other things lately, it couldn’t be anything good.
Marcus backed away from the corner and tapped Strobe on the shoulder twice to get him to look back, and they backed away together. A quick one eighty followed and they ran into the store nearest them. In the store, they both jumped over the counter and hid behind it to peek over the top, identical to how I did in the gas station before Jason came to the rescue.
“No one go out! Find cover and stay out of sight!” I said trying to rush the words out through my inconveniently slow vocal cords. I hid behind a container with random nothings for sale inside it. The lantern was safely stationed in the container so the light wouldn’t spill out.
Everyone else took cover too; Edwin flipped around the corner of one of the isles and both Lizbeth and Mara hid behind the register counter nearest to us. We all peeked around and over whatever we hid behind and waited to see what Marcus and Strobe were hiding from. The seconds passed and stretched out to make the wait an eternity. Everything was endless during an apocalypse, like my boring classes.
I waved my hand over the container so Marcus could see where we were from his position across the street. Once I grabbed a hold of his attention I spread my hands to the sides and shrugged as if to ask what was going on. His response was fake sign language for “stay back.”
Soon enough, a little girl around Mara’s age ran around the corner followed by a man around Marcus’ age. Directly behind them, a large group of runners followed, fifty or sixty of them. The man and the little girl tried to break their own speed limit but the infected kept up with them until the girl tripped and fell to the ground. The man ran right past her and stopped a few feet ahead. He ran back to get the little girl. None of us moved to help them. We knew what came next. We knew how this story went, and we would be part of it if we made a move to help them. They were too close for the girl to get up and regain the speed they needed to get away. The man did what he thought was right. He laid his body over the girl’s and used himself as a shield.
A whine came from behind me. I turned, Lizbeth looked away and held Mara’s face against her chest to keep her from seeing what was going to happen. Edwin knew what was to come and he looked away as well. I could no longer see the front of Marcus’s face but the top of his head still poked out from over the counter. Strobe didn’t look away.
The man was trampled by the infected. They ripped at his clothes with their hands and bites all over his body. His screams made it through the thick glass that separated us from him. Little after, the girl screamed. They managed to work their way through the man and get to the little girl. I couldn’t watch any longer. The girl’s piercing screams and the sounds of the man gasp and choke on his blood had me stuck, frozen in a state of shock. All of this took place right outside the store from us.
Soon all noises from the man stopped and the little girl reached the same point of the torture the man was just in. Her gasps became further apart until all we could hear was the faint sound of her choke on whatever blood didn’t seep out through the gashes on her neck, legs and arms. Eventually, everything became quiet. We could almost felt the silence. The infected continued to run and scream but it was blocked out by the shock of what we were force to let happen. Nothing but a ring was left in my ear drums.
Everyone in the dollar store was frozen in place along with me, terrified. The ease and relaxation was over. We all knew where we were and what waited for us. That denial of the horrors around us and the false sense of security we came up with all vanished just as fast as it came. Our much needed reality check came at the expense of two lives. I felt so cold, like the temperature dropped twenty degrees within those few minutes.