Level 2.0

Jim gets his taste of a real apocalyptic scenario.

Looking down at the road, Jim had almost had to squint to see what was going on. There was one person running through between all the stalled cars. The person stumbled every now and again, tripping over all the junk that had been discarded. 

Jim began to back up a bit from the cliff face. If that thing had heard the phone, he was in trouble. He didn’t know if those madmen could climb, but he wasn’t about to find out. He cast another look down at the highway and saw the person fall flat. Then, there was another scream, but it didn’t come from the fallen.

“Just what the hell...?” Jim muttered, nearing the edge of the cliff once more. 

The figure pushed themselves back up and started running again, this time casting a look behind them. He hadn’t seen them do that before. Then again, he really didn’t have much knowledge about them, but they hadn’t seen to care about anything besides the hunt.

There was another scream as three men appeared from the river bank and began running towards the first. The first turned at the sound and almost fell again. The person screamed themselves, a scream much too high for a man. Squinting, Jim saw that the person was a girl, only a few years younger than him. And then it hit him. Her scream wasn’t the primal one of those madmen.

It was one of pure fear.

His gaze darted around the cliff quickly. There had to be a way down. There had to be a path. This couldn’t be a sheer cliff face. Looking down, he swallowed. There was no way he could jump down and survive. 

Looking back at the highway, he heard the three scream again, nearing the girl. She was scrambling away, but the cars scattered randomly across the highway were slowing her down. The three madmen just jumped over top of them while she was forced to scramble around.

There wasn’t a way down. But, maybe he could draw them up here. After all, it was a steep cliff face. They’d have to climb up it. He should be able to take care of them that way.

He took a deep breath so that he could scream himself, or at least yell loud enough to get their attention. Before he could shout though, one of the madmen leapt at the girl. She screamed as it pinned her. The other two ran towards them as more screams came from the river bank. More of those madmen stormed up the banks and swarmed towards the fallen girl.

Not able to take his eyes away from it, he slowly backed up into the woods as the girl’s screams slowly faded away.

Author's Note

Same as usual. Constructive criticism, or even just what you thought of the chapter would be nice.