The walk took forever. In reality it was only about an hour of our lives, but the lack of adrenaline made it so much longer than it really was. Even with what happened to Edwin I still wanted danger to surround me to kill the boredom, as terrible as it is to say. I couldn’t wait to get to the school because of the likelihood I would encounter some horrible life changing circumstances which would give me chills and an adrenaline rush to take my mind off of the death itself.
I was obsessed.
We were bored, right up until the tension arrived.
“…And that’s how I got the bruise,” I answered Jack’s question of how I attained the bruise on my head back at the base.
“Do you hear that?” Jack asked and stopped in his tracks.
“Hear what?” I couldn’t hear a thing aside from the moans of the few infected around us.
“Listen closely.” Jack’s shoulders tensed and I swore I could see the hairs on his body rise.
The universal sign for upcoming havoc arrived; a chill went up and down my spine. I drew the handgun, Jack drew the rifle.
I started to hear something faint and far but present.
“Holy crap… Is that… is that screaming?” Jack asked.
Just as he asked the sound became clear to me, hundreds of screams. “Oh man, it is…”
“You think its runners?” His eyes opened widely while he waited for me to confirm what he suspected.
“I don’t know. Should we hide somewhere?” I didn’t know what to tell him. I didn’t even know what was about to happen myself.
“Yeah, good call. Let’s get the hell out of the sight before they reach us.” Immediately after he agreed we ran out of the way and in through the nearest door we could find; a clothing store. We both hid behind a counter which overlooked the entrance and carefully peeked over the edge to see outside.
Déjà vu, I pictured the man who tried to protect the little girl with his body as a shield against the group of infected. I remembered the screams of the survivors, the screams of the infected which attacked them, and the sudden silence that followed both instances.
My heart raced with anticipation.
From one second to another the screams became louder and louder till it was nearly on us. Screams pierced the store’s walls from the outside and bounced around inside.
Oh god… They aren’t infected…
My stomach churned. They were survivors running from something. Another faint sound became louder until it was no longer faint. A consistent rumbling came closer and closer, it echoed around with the screams of the survivors. The number of people who ran past the window thinned out till there were barely any left.
An old fashioned crank car, a pickup, similar to the car I drove out of my neighbor’s garage, drove right by the window and caught up to the survivors who ran trying to escape.
I left cover and ran back to the store’sfront door to see what the people in the pickup planned to do. Jack followed and we watched the events unfold.
The pickup slammed into two of the survivors and knocked over a few more. The men came out, guns drawn and opened fire on the survivors that remained.
I was stunned, stuck staring out at monsters that performed horrible acts, murder in the name of nothing.
The gunshots roared over the screams of the living.
I pulled back into the store. Jack tried to get my attention.
“Those are some of the guys Richard picked up along the way. We need to get out of here before they find us.” The wide eyed surprise paired with the speed of his words made it difficult to mask his obvious fear. I didn’t judge, I was horrified too.
We were close to the school, very close. A few more blocks and we’d be face to face with the hill that’ll lead us to it. Jack and I went out of the store through the back. Boxes leaned against the wall while they waited for the garbage truck which would never come for them.
Richard’s men were on one side of the block, we were on the other, virtually invisible to them. “Keep moving,” I told Jack.
Now it was fact, Richard beat us to the school.
I imagined different scenarios in which my family could be made to suffer. A strong disgust and an unsettling twist occupied my stomach.
I have to keep it together. I can’t lose what is left of my mind yet. Not until Jason is safe, not until mom is safe, not until Daviel is safe…
Jack stopped. He stared blankly ahead. For a second I didn’t catch on to the fact he stared at something instead of dazed out like me. I wondered what was wrong. The thought maybe he was infected crossed my mind but I remembered we were not pinned or cornered anywhere by the infected. There was no way he contracted the infection. So I instead looked in the direction he looked.
An Army; Richard managed to gather an army of men in a ten day time span. In front of us stood a large area clear of structures, nature dominated the view. A hill the size of a small mountain sat in front of us. Not a spot of green ahead. Stones so bright they looked yellow made up the mountain around an unpaved road winding all the way up to a massive building at the top. On the road, hundreds of infected killed off by hundreds of people, presumably more of Richard’s men on a mission to secure the outside of the school so they could take it for themselves with more ease.
“There is no way we are going to live for much longer if we have to work our way through so many of Richard’s men,” I said to Jack while both of us stared like idiots in awe at the mountain.
“How did he even gather so many followers in such a short time?” Jack asked in return, his eyebrow rose while he pondered his own question, “Wait… Look closer.”
I did as he said and tried to see more details up the road. I saw what was really going on. “Are those… Are those children?” Women and children were the ones we saw fight off the infected instead of Richard’s men. What we imagined paled in comparison to the truth of the matter.
We watched innocent people get slaughtered and murdered by the infected Richard most likely led to the school to do his dirty work. He gathered no army, he used the infected to do his dirty work.
“What do we do?” Jack’s voice strained and quivered.
“We have to get inside of the school!” I tried to keep a level head (which was incredibly hard at the time).
“We can’t leave these people out here to die either!” Jack began to raise his voice after we managed to avoid so many of the infected through silence. This wasn’t the time to get us caught. Not with so many infected this close.
“We can’t take them on either. We have no other moves here Jack! We have to go inside and fix this from the inside out!” I tried to persuade the guy to think my way. We were going to lose our lives if we tried to confront so much at once. It wasn’t worth it. “If we stop Richard inside, we get rid of whoever is left working for him, whoever survives out here can get back into the school! But if we take on the infected now we risk Richard taking control of the school assuming he hasn’t already. There is no option. We have to go inside!” I couldn’t understand why he was so bent on saving those people first. It made more sense to stop Richard first. Then they would have somewhere to stay safe after they were rescued. Instead he wanted to rescue them immediately which would only force them to roam the infected world all over again. There was safety in the school at some point; we needed to return the school to that state.
“Are you coming or are you going? Either way I am heading in. You do what you have to. I’ll do what I have to.” I couldn’t stand there to debate what the next plan of action was going to be. I was going to get inside the school, kill Richard, save Jason, and get to my mother and Daviel; end of story.
“Alright, better plan; we can help each other,” Jack’s words left his mouth so fluently in confidence there was no option but to listen.
“What do you have in mind?” I asked.
Curiosity: Responsible for the premeditated assassination of many cats.
“Okay, here we go!” he began, “I can’t take on many of the infected with just six rounds in the rifle. You can’t get through the school without someone to clear a path through this whole mess. You help me get rifle ammo or another gun, and in exchange I clear a path for you with the rifle. In addition, on the way up you can take some of the infected out. You successfully get in, and I successfully help some of these people.” Time was short but this explanation was important. This was a safe and assured way to advance. The question was, where would we find another gun or ammo for the rifle?
As time wasted I became more desperate. Still, there we stood, watching people die up the road while we planned some kind of overhaul, one which would likely fail and result in both our deaths regardless.
“We can check the area and hope for the best. Maybe one of his guys is along the mountain side. It’s unlikely he will leave himself unprotected, and it’s even more unlikely he will allow his protection to proceed unarmed,” Jack explained.
“Under that logic it’s almost a sure thing Richard left someone else down here. Let’s hope you are right,” I had no choice but to agree. In order for me to make it inside the school under the safest conditions backup would be a must.
Infected collected all around the school, few in our area, none aware of us. To spot a single soldier amongst the chaos would be impossible, but to redirect the chaos with some noise made it easier to spot anyone less reactive.
“I can run out there and attempt to attract as many of the infected as I can. I’ll find cover somewhere and come back afterwards,” I was coming up with the plan as the words came out of my mouth.
“Go on, you’ve got my attention.” The palm of Jack’s right hand opened to the sky, he welcomed me to continue.
“Well…” I wasn’t ready to tell him what the plan asked for, but the time being wasted was extensive to say the least. It was a now or never moment, “Then you’ll have to use the rifle on the first soldier who sticks out.” I knew it wasn’t fair to ask anyone to do this, but someone had to do it. Survival called for extreme measures.
“Alright, let’s get this started!” Jack agreed with ease, no second thought given to it.
His reaction made me uneasy. I wondered what the source of his willingness to take life was. Had he experienced worse than I in the last few days? I struggled more to tell him the plan than he did to agree. Maybe he was better adjusted than I was to the new world.
I raced out into the middle of the street and jumped up and down, screamed at the top of my lungs and swung my arms over my head to be as obvious and visible as possible. Any infected not busy would get attracted. I convinced myself before I ran out there that some of the infected who attacked the people up the road were going to forget about the people they attacked and focus their attention on me, but they couldn’t have cared any less about my presence while they already had a meal in front of them. And I couldn’t race up the hill myself to save them either. There were too many infected. While my body was distracted on staying alive, my mind focused on the fact that Richard made it through this thick cluster of infected, maybe he did in fact lure them to the school.
The walkers who saw me paced after me, while the runners started with their soft screams which intensified as they became more aware of my presence. Soon enough, the runners chased me too and it was time for me to run.
My plan was to gather more infected with the use of the ones already after me. The bigger the group became, the more infected that would feel compelled to join the chase. The focus: To not get killed.
One advantage that came from being a skateboarder for so long was the agility and stamina it afforded me. Mobility was always on my mind.
The math went as follows: My energy needed to be wasted in three parts to make this work. The first part involved the chase to gather a large amount of infected. The second part involved the creation of a gap between them and me, and the third and final involved my race up the hill afterwards. All of which were to happen back to back.
I raced past the road and through the nearby streets around the hill. I couldn’t see Jack but I was definitely going to hear him when the time was right.
Focus on surviving
I caught myself more interested in the sound of the gunshot from Jack’s rifle, but it didn’t show up.
I ran a block and slowed down while the infected caught up, I didn’t have long before the runners would be on me but I needed a sure way to lose them and not get caught in between the runners and walkers on my way back. No fences, locked front doors, no reachable fire escapes, no open manholes, no anything! This was different. Every other time I had to run for my life and reach a safe spot, the location would present itself effortlessly. This town didn’t have such a convenient luxury.
To outrun those infected freaks without the use of the environment to my advantage was to struggle. This was precisely how most of the deaths I witnessed after the spread of the infection took place. There wasn’t a way to outrun a person who felt no fear or loss of energy. There was no way to outrun the appropriately dubbed ‘Runners’.
Tension - I panicked in my frantic search for environmental assistance. I ran out of breath and the infected persisted. Around one building, around the other, down every street that stood next to each other, mental images of rescuing my brother, a second one of Marcus and Richard fighting one another, my mind went haywire. I was being smothered by the infected collected behind me. I didn’t even bother to look back and see how many gathered trying to turn me into supper.