“NO!” Marcus yelled out after he ran through the gap we left for him.
We did not know why he said it, but it looked to us like he told us to not move the container. We both stopped and continued to the fence further down the alley with Marcus. Screams and stomping was all around us. The walls bounced off of each other the sound of every dropped pin. The infected sounded like they were on top of us.
I wasn’t particularly fond of the idea of dying so I kept my eyes on the path and Marcus both of which were ahead of me. This meant I wouldn’t get to see how close the infected came to us but it also meant I wouldn’t get devoured because I tripped over something I couldn’t see while I stared back.
At the fence, Marcus gave Edwin a boost to go up faster and Marcus hopped on it too. I followed and began to climb.
Marcus made it over before Edwin and I went ahead of Edwin too. Marcus and I waited for him to climb over but it turned out he was going to slow us down after all. He moved too slowly to make it over before the infected would catch him. And then it got bad. (Yes, that was in fact the ‘good’ part of the program. Prepare for the part that isn’t.)
Marcus wasn’t chased by a thing; instead, there were people. A group of survivors tried to escape the infected behind them and the screams of the infected blended with the voices of the survivors. They simply tried to find a safe way out and saw us take a route they didn’t know of themselves. We weren’t going to have enough time to save them all, or any of them. We would only have the time to save one person on the other side and Edwin was already on the fence.
Save our own.
The last thoughts in my mind before it all turned to crap.
Marcus shared the same idea; he went into position to give me a boost to the top of the fence so I could pull Edwin over.
Edwin, not turned back to see the chaos behind him, didn’t know what was about to happen back there. I thought to tell him to not look back but knowing the mind of a child, having been one myself, I figured if I said anything of the nature it would give him the curiosity to want to look. He didn’t need to see a large group of survivors get massacred right in front of him.
Edwin grabbed the hand I reached out with. I tried to pull him up but his leg was grabbed by one of the survivors. The screams were so loud if I tried to yell my voice would get lost in the mix and never make it out. It was difficult to tell how many total survivors were across the fence. They blended in too perfectly with their hysteria that the only survivors I was able to identify were the ones picked off by the infected.
A woman held Edwin’s leg, she said something which was swallowed up by the screams, her lips moved and her hand let go of the leg.
In front of me and Marcus, behind Edwin, she was trampled. The other survivors tried to climb up over her and use Edwin as a ladder to get over the fence faster. As they made it to the fence they were also picked off by the infected. The sounds were worse than how horror movies depicted hell would sound. Screams, and more screams followed by more screams, with a side of screams and some desert in the flavor of screams. They were bitten and scratched. It was hopeless.
I wasn’t making any progress with bringing Edwin over the fence either. If a solution didn’t arrive soon it would be hopeless for him too.
One of the infected now held onto his leg. I didn’t realize he was grabbed again. Edwin was in some sort of shocked state caused by fear, he wouldn’t move or react. He held onto the fence tightly but wouldn’t climb anymore. I wasn’t strong enough to lift him up while he clung onto the fence. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to save him at all.
The boost which kept me up vanished and I now hung on with nothing but the strength of my arms which made it much harder to keep a grip on Edwin until I saw the reason for this.
Marcus stopped boosting me to climb the fence himself and help me bring Edwin over it before the infected could focus on him.
All the survivors were buried under the horde of infected which filled the alley. Multiple infected reached to grab at Edwin and a few more managed to successfully catch a hold of the same leg the first infected held onto.
Marcus made it to the top of the fence and reached out to grab Edwin’s other hand. Edwin wouldn’t let go of the fence so Marcus used force and pulled his hand off of it.
There was a small window before more infected would grab on and make pulling Edwin over impossible.
Marcus and I used nearly all our strength to pull Edwin up and over the fence. We fell to the concrete behind us to lighten Edwin’s fall from being too severe.
I could feel bruises on my body but this was the extent of the damage done to me. This was also the least of our worries.
Marcus stood up and with his right hand he forced Edwin’s face into his chest to keep him from the scene behind us. There, Marcus and I watched a group of survivors who came from nowhere get devoured by the monstrous infected.
Every day became a little worse, and every time I thought I was adjusting to the morphed world around me something new would happen and assure me I only deluded myself. I was ready for nothing.
The screams from the survivors faded and the gasps, chewing, and shaking fence at the grip of the infected were all that remained.
Although tragic, the death of the survivors made Marcus’s recon mission much more relevant. To see actual survivors still struggling for a safe place to go made the difference. He had to return and help every survivor he could.
“Let’s move. We can’t waste more time,” Marcus said.
He kept us focused on the mission at hand, priority number one; getting me out of the city. “We can’t be too far from the border of the city.” He let Edwin go and turned around.
“Right!” I agreed with Marcus and we continued our walk away from the fence.
I didn’t trust the reliability of the fence as it was. I pictured the horde of infected overwhelming the fence and bringing it down with them. Then the chase would be on again. Leaving the alley with some haste was a great idea.
Edwin was still in shock. It left him speechless and confused, a zombie not hungry. Nothing was active inside his head. The little hamster which spun in its wheel inside Edwin’s head became tired and took a rest. He was only active enough to follow commands from Marcus and me. As horrible as it is to say, it was the most ideal way for him to be. Primal survival would help us in the long run, more so than a scared kid could ever.
The air was thick. All I could picture were the survivors and their failure to survive. They were torn to pieces by the infected, ganged up on, off guard and overpowered, overwhelmed, over… everything.
The words to Empty Walls by SerjTakian played in my head. They fit the situation so beautifully you’d think Serj wrote the song while he expected the zombie apocalypse to sweep the streets of the world. My stomach turned at the thought of there being not enough people left to come up with a serum or antibody to the infection. The odds of someone intelligent enough to come up with these solutions and being alive both at once felt impossible. No one knew what was going on. This was really the end of life on earth as it once was. This was a new, more broken, more horrifying world. It would be run by the merciless infected. The uninfected that haven’t died out would live in a fearful state for the entirety of their lives.
Back at Trevor’s place, Marcus explained, if the situation was not global militaries from around the world would have swarmed the streets of the Divided States of America, but the fact that we were seven days in and still waiting was a sign, a global scale outbreak must of occurred. Every country used whatever resources they possessed to protect themselves and whatever people were left. This meant the virus would likely go on forever while all resources wasted in attempts to stay alive instead of coming up with the antivirus or a solution.
It was short of astonishing at how ritualized our actions became. Run; survive; back on track – Repeat. We expected this pattern to be the occurrence for the rest of the trip, but of course we were wrong.
An hour went by since we left the alley, but being out of danger didn’t mean we were okay. Edwin collapsed behind us. The fluffy snow broke his fall. Marcus and I rushed over to see what happened. My original conclusion was he succumbed to dehydration or exhaustion from the energy he wasted trying to run and get over the fence.
Marcus took a knee and lifted Edwin up to find dark circles around his eyes and Edwin barely able to keep them open.
“Where is it?” Marcus asked.
Well played Sir
.
I acknowledged his successful endeavor of further confusing me. Where was what?
“My leg,” Edwin replied with a worried weak voice.
It finally made sense, I pieced it together. The lady that grabbed Edwin’s leg when he tried to make it over the fence, kept him low enough for one of the infected to grab on and leave scratches and bite marks on his leg. He was infected.
Marcus rolled up the legs on Edwin’s jeans and there they were. Scratches and bites deep enough to draw blood rested all over his leg. Chances were we heard Edwin scream in pain but didn’t notice because of all the other screams around us. He was infected and going to turn. His mistake was to follow us; our mistake was not turning back.
Marcus took a deep breath and sighed. He picked Edwin up and walked him over to a building and rested Edwin’s back again the building’s wall. “I’ll be back in a moment. You’ll be able to see us,” Marcus told Edwin and waved at me to follow him back onto the street to speak away from Edwin. “He can’t come with us.”
My heart stopped. Leave the kid out there to turn or die. “This isn’t right. We can’t just leave a child out here to die or become one of those things. He needs help!” I began to raise my voice, furious with Marcus’s suggestion.
“It’s either we leave him here or have him turn while he is with us and most likely catch us off guard. This is it,” Marcus paused and thought about something. His face flushed with depression. I knew exactly what was coming next. “He doesn’t have to turn...” Marcus didn’t want to finish the statement. He hoped I’d understand what he meant without having to say it out loud and make things real.
There was no logical response to something like this. I felt sick, twisted. Like all the other junk we went through was simply to lead up to this. Every day, some kind of death or horrible act was involved. It wasn’t even the fact we now planned to kill a person. I would do it in the blink of an eye to defend myself from one of the infected or even a hostile survivor if I it was called for, but we dealt with something different, we planned to take the life of a child. This was going to be premeditated, thought out and planned out. We were in the very discussion which would decide his fate. In the course of seven days I went from average Joe college student to a child murderer. This was the last bright day I would ever have. From that point forward, life was real and dark.
I took a deep breath and swallowed the saliva gathered in my mouth from tension. “Okay.” The moment was so long.
Marcus looked shocked like he wanted to be stopped from going through with this. He reached around to his back and placed his hand somewhere on his lower back. “I have a gun.”
My body trembled.
“I managed to save it from a few days ago but I didn’t use it because there are only two rounds left,” Marcus lowered his voice.
I became cold. My fingertips were frozen. I knew what the two rounds were for. He was telling me they were to kill ourselves, in other words. If we came into a situation in which there was no other option, it would become the last resort.
“He’ll feel nothing this way,” Marcus continued. He looked over to check on Edwin and I did the same. “We’ll only have one left.”
I’ve never felt sicker in my life. There was only one thing left to decide. “Who’s going to do it?”
The silence that followed went on forever.
Everything was loud in nature. The wind blew like a hurricane squeezing in though a peep hole, the few winter birds sang louder than ever the saddest songs they knew, my clothes rubbed against each other and made percussion for those birds.
I looked for a reason to take some of the weight off of Marcus, but it didn’t matter the reason, Marcus needed a break. This was my cross to bear to avoid giving him another.
“I’ll do it,” the words slipped out of my mouth. I didn’t even think I would make it as far as speaking. Now I needed to challenge myself to not cower out of it. I wasn’t sure if I could manage to control the nausea. I kept a straight face.
Marcus tried to hide the terror he felt, but his worried face, dropped shoulders and overall ‘I want to kill myself’ look gave away it was an act. He wanted to do it himself. He didn’t want me to do it, but he also knew I needed to learn how to do things like this and it would ease his mind if he wasn’t the one to go through with it. Our sanity was forever going to be left behind with this moment.
Marcus looked away embarrassed, he was near his breaking point. He took his hand away from his back after messing around in one of the back pockets. Just as he said, there was a gun. He held it to his side so Edwin wouldn’t see it. I reached over, grabbed the gun, and held the same way. I turned around and used my body movements to mask the switch of the gun from my left hand to my right. I took one last deep breath and walked over to Edwin. Marcus paced behind me slowly. My heartbeat was so loud, my every breath tried to rip my ear drums out.