“We kill them.” I reached behind me and pulled out the gun I let Sandra borrow. I removed the safety and aimed it at Sandra’s head.
“Oh my g..”
TAHH
The sound of the gunshot echoed off of the walls as Sandra’s body hit the floor next to Robert. Everyone in the room entered the same shock Jason was in, like they’ve been sucked into some twilight zone horror scene. Their faces pale and surprised, their bodies’ cold and stiff. No one did a thing but watch me take her life in an awe of terror.
“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,” Robert continued to panic. His eyes became teary and he shook frantically, like all good cowards.
I came in close to Jason who went into a deeper state of shock. If I hadn’t personally killed John I would have asked him what went wrong in Jason’s head, but that ship set sail long before this moment ever arrived. “If we leave them outside, they will suffer and die slowly or become one of those infected monsters we have to deal with. We can’t have them add to the numbers of the infected or suffer such a slow death out there, but the guys here have worked for their food and their safety. Two strangers can’t come in and take what doesn’t belong to them, especially when the only reason they are still alive is because they sacrificed their own group. If not for my heroics; they’d be dead anyway. You have to understand what needs to be done.”
“I understand,” Jason, thought out loud with tears in his eyes, still stiff and pale.
“I couldn’t have left them there to die either. With the ability to shorten their suffering, it was my job to do so, to prevent them from underground unimaginable misery and pain, which would still happen if they are sent out again. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” Jason’s tone was quiet and dead. More tears gathered around his eyes while they focused on the body of Sandra. I broke him, his will.
I took the gun I shot Sandra with and put it on Jason’s hand, helping him aim it at Robert. “Oh my god, please don’t kill me,” Robert pleaded with us and begged for his life like some pathetic animal or the parasite he was.
I released the grip I held on the gun. Jason now held it up to Robert’s head without help before I whispered, “Show me you understand.”
Their purpose was served…
Day 7
The Conversation
“
I
woke up again today. I’m no longer sure where I stand with the unmentionable horror that I’ve come to know as my life. I’m confused and scared at all times. I can no longer tolerate the solitude, the fear, the anger or myself. I am taking the coward’s way out. I don’t deserve this opportunity to continue living when everything around me has died.
This is my apology to the universe for wasting a life. I’m sorry.”
It was sometime in the late morning when I found this note. I sat down on the bed inside of the apartment in which I found it and read it repeatedly. We searched the neighboring buildings for other survivors and supplies of any sort we could bring back. Marcus, Strobe and I on the job, searched the neighborhood. Lizbeth, Edwin, Mara and Trevor were in charge of the organization of two apartments inside Trevor’s building and turning them into useful apartments, one with many beds to bring future survivors to and the other would be turned into a storage room.
Strobe and Marcus searched different floors of the same building I was in. Once I finished reading over the note several times, I folded it and gave it a home in my back pocket. I left the apartment when I finished the search and continued to the one left of it. The door was unlocked like most of the other apartment doors. Some were locked, but I’d cut through the doors of those apartments with an axe I found the day earlier. This hunt for supplies was meant to happen the prior day but we were forced to return to Trevor’s building when a blizzard decided to roll by and become too strong for even short distance travels to be safe.
The next apartment I searched was similarly laid out as the others. I began in the kitchen; the cabinets were filled with different seasonings and condiments as well as several cans of tuna, corned beef, canned vegetables, canned fruits, and canned soup. Whoever lived in this home wasn’t too big on fresh food. Maybe it was a businessman’s home and he kept canned foods because it would allow him to go out of the state or country on business meetings without his food going bad. I threw everything unopened I found in the cabinets into laundry bags I brought along. This apartment was the fullest I personally came across all morning. I took the laundry bags to the roof and set them next to the bags Marcus and Strobe brought up. Crackling and crunching sounds filled the otherwise silent air while the snow cried for mercy under our boots. When I returned to the apartment I checked the bathroom to see if there were any medical or hygienic supplies. I found a pack of toothbrushes, two tubes of toothpaste, and mouthwash: all unopened. The bedrooms came next. There was nothing of importance anywhere but in the closet and the end tables used as nightstands. I found two guns with a box of ammo by the nightstands in apartments from the early morning so I checked every other nightstand and end table I found for something as useful.
All the closets were filled with great winter clothes, some of which I changed into. It was a matter of time before we all wore clothes appropriate for the weather. We hurried every other day while we scavenged or searched the places we visited which meant we missed a lot of the useful clothes, and managed only a random coat here or a sweater there. This time around, our pace was slower and more relaxed. I took anything warm I could find. We took all the clothes back to Trevor’s building in order to turn one apartment into clothes storage so water would not be wasted to clean any. The old clothes could then be used to keep fires burning in the case of the future continued with no cure for the infection and no energy for heat or light. All of these ideas came from Marcus’s head. He was building a survival plan and used Trevor’s building as the center point.
Time went by; I cleared out the last apartment on my floor and took the rest of my findings up to the roof to meet up with Marcus and Strobe. Every building we fully cleared, we would take what we found back to Trevor’s before we set off to the next one on schedule. The building we finished was the last one we planned to search for the rest of the morning. All the buildings we searched connected roof to roof. We built bridges out of long two-by-fours and ladders to get across when they weren’t directly connected but weren’t too far apart either. The buildings, which gave us most trouble, were the ones across the street. We left those for another day. It was time to deliver our final trip’s loot back to Trevor’s place and plan the next part of the day.
Everything on top of buildings, in the alleyways, and even over whole streets was covered in snow left over from the blizzard. We initially wanted to clear the buildings out then, but the blizzard prevented movement too far and forced us to stay indoors most of the day and night. It took less time than we expected and as a result we still had enough of the morning left to return all the things we found and move on to phase two.
Once we emptied the buildings we scavenged, we’d build barriers and blockades inside and outside so infected couldn’t make their way in. Around our plank bridges we’d leave massive amounts of junk to block the path so that they’d have to be moved in order for anyone to cross. This was going to be the screening process for anyone who tried to get into Trevor’s building over the bridges. This would also help with the infected. The idea came from the assumption that the infected were not rational enough to move anything before they tried to cross. They’d plunge to their death in the alleys below wherever said bridge was located.
Marcus, Strobe and I took the things we collected back to Trevor’s building two bags at a time. We left all of the barriers opened to return and get more things. There were about twenty or so laundry bags filled with goods we looted from the last building. We would have asked for help from the others but going over our makeshift bridges while we carried anything was a dangerous act of balance we were unwilling to let them take. If they tried and failed, a sudden drop to halt their hearts would follow.
Soon enough we managed to get everything to the roof on Trevor’s building and that is when we recruited the rest of the group to help us bring the things in. I barely said a word the whole morning because of the massive amount of solitude that came with the search. No one else was in the mood to speak either. It was a rather silent morning but our productivity was unaffected by our lack of communication.
Everyone was given a task and everyone executed their task with no questions asked and no flaws attached. Marcus led in a way that made sense to us. We shared faith in his plans.
We sorted out the loot through the apartments on Trevor’s floor the way Marcus suggested, all the food in one apartment, all the tools in another, and all the clothes in yet another. The morning was overall productive. There was enough food to last a few weeks if rationed properly, and enough clothes to change into every few days, and even more materials to build virtually any kind of barrier or larger tool that could prove useful.
An hour or so after we finished up what we needed to do assortment wise, we were once again sitting in Trevor’s living room prepared to figure out our next move. I still needed to find my family in The Hills high school.
Trevor did not want to leave his home because he believed there would be nothing good to come from it. He believed his age would slow us down. He said if he was going to die he would rather it be somewhere he was comfortable and familiar with. He wanted to die at home.
Lizbeth felt safer with Mara and Edwin at Trevor’s place. Edwin wanted to leave after Marcus and I said we needed to head to The Hills, but the rest of us agreed he should stay with Lizbeth and Mara so Marcus and I wouldn’t have to keep a third person alive while we tried to keep ourselves alive.
Strobe like everyone else decided to stay with the group and help build a home because he didn’t believe a rescue team would come.
“I’ll escort you to the border of the city and use the trip as a way to recon any potential places that might support survivors,” Marcus said, “Then I’ll return with the details and you’ll know where to start your search through the city when things improve here.” He spoke now to the group that would stay behind. “If survivors are located, by the time a rescue team arrives, the number of lives saved could be much greater.”
I understood his “need” to save everyone, but that plan involved me alone at some point. I considered turning back with Marcus but that would be more time wasted. “So then I’ll continue to travel alone from the border?” I asked. I knew the answer.
“Yes, but we need to look at the bigger picture. More people could be out there which means more people could be saved. That’s my first priority.”
We talked it out for a while, jumped from one concern to the next until everyone understood the pros which outweighed the cons. Once in agreement, we began to plan our route out of the city and what I’d do once I made it out. The conversation was similar to one that would take place while planning a skate session. Our main method of transportation was the city streets, they allow us to move in the straightest paths possible to shorten our travel time, but we needed escape routes everywhere we went in case we came across more infected, walkers and runners alike. They took place in alleyways and through narrow passages to thin down the number of infected behind us or serve as cover if violent survivors were encountered.
Trevor helped Marcus sketch up a map of small details he remembered about the city on the back of a napkin. They talked out depictions of the streets and buildings and they imagined it in their heads and added anything helpful to the map. Fire escapes, alleyways, large dumpsters and sharp turns, anything even relatively relevant to our survival was added to the map. Safety came with elevation, more roofs and fire escapes to come. (Yay!)
“It’s time to go,” Marcus said when they finished the map an hour later.
I sat at the kitchen table to watch the gathered snow on the corners of the window get blown away by the gusts left behind by the blizzard. There was a backpack on the floor by my chair. Earlier that morning I packed it with some supplies, food and water. The weight of the bag was also considered. It needed to be light enough to allow fast pace movements and keep me fed at the same time, bread and water.
I took the bag and walked passed everyone to the door where I set it on the floor before I said my goodbyes to everyone.
Lizbeth, Mara and Edwin were on the verge of tears.
Lizbeth wrapped her arms around me and tightly squeezed. “Be careful,” she whispered. Her voice quivered. Once she released the death grip on me, she turned to Marcus who stood next to me and readied a backpack similar to mine. Mara took her turn hugging me while Lizbeth put her death grip on Marcus. “Come back in one piece,” she said. Based on the soft extra loving tone she said it with, I figured there was a crush for him hidden somewhere in there.
Mara said nothing while she hugged me. When she let go, she went for Marcus, Lizbeth still attached. They both held him tightly.
Eventually they retreated so Edwin and Strobe could get their goodbyes in too.
Edwin, like the child he was, remained angry with us since we wouldn’t let him come along. But it was not worth the risk. He ignored us and played with some toy Lizbeth found for him in the apartments.
Strobe walked over and shook my hand followed by Marcus’s.
Trevor didn’t agree with the plan, but he understood I had a family to get to. He shook my hand and patted me on the shoulder with the other. “Don’t get cocky out there, anything could happen.”
Silence lingered around us and waited for its opportunity to take over the moment, and the time was perfect. No one wanted to speak and make things any more real than they were.
My feelings remained indifferent. I didn’t realize it yet, but regardless of how worried I could have been about any of them, I was distant. My family was my only worry, my only sadness, my only focus.
“Be careful,” Lizbeth’s voice scared off the silence up the stairwell to where Marcus and I were, now at the door to the roof.
Creed City: The Winter Wonderland
“
L
et’s go!” I told myself.
Marcus grabbed the doorknob and turned it gently. Light came from behind the door. I might have even gone blind for a few seconds after from how bright it was. On the roof, Marcus walked ahead. His mind was on the task.
My mind was elsewhere; worried about my own safety and the time I would spend alone.
The boot prints we made in the morning were still crushed into the snow; the crackle and crush sounds returned with our exit off the building and continued with every additional step we took. There was more ease moving over the snow this time around, but the streets below told an entirely different story.
We used the same roofs and bridges we build during our scavenger hunt to return to the dollar store we came up through.
The fire escape collected some snow but not enough to slow us down. The alley was empty; the walls that surrounded it prevented the push of any snow gathered on the building down to the alley.
We made our way down the fire escape, walked the alley, and came back out the store. The sidewalks collected more snow than the streets. An upside down arch formed with most of the height on the sidewalks and the lower sides towards the streets. The arch followed the entire street. The corners of the buildings trapped the snow unlike the streets where wind continued to blow the snow freely to smooth it out. Three feet nearest the buildings and one foot in the center of the street, it wouldn’t be a walk in the park, unless said part was frozen over.