1-Invaded

We took our sacks, threw on our coats, grabbed our weapons, and bid our ‘parents’ goodbye, Dell tugged my arm and we began our ‘run’. Often, even the dead didn’t turn up in this kind of rain, my brother used to tell me jokingly, ‘you wanna know why the dead don’t come out in these storms?’ I’d always ask why, even though I knew the answer, then he’d finish saying, ‘cause if they lose a limb and it floats away, they can’t chase it down!’ it used to make me laugh all the time when I was younger, and to me, it was a perfectly legitimate reason why we never saw the dead in the rain. Even now, that excuse kind of works, I mean, we still don’t see their ugly faces when it rains; sometimes, it makes me feel like we’re the only things alive on this earth, and it actually makes me feel lonely; But, I never feel lonely when I’m with my brother.

                So here we were, running on a main road trying to get to the super market about three blocks down, soaking wet, and cold all the way down to my bones, while praying that there are no zombies waiting to kill us; I have my collection of knives on me, in case they attack, and my brother has his gun, I don’t carry guns, I’m not good with them at all, I do knives and bows much better, I guess it’s the whole, silence thing, but I can throw a knife into a zombies forehead at over 50 yards. That’s sort of impressive, my brother’s far better at killing than I am, he kills zombies just for fun; sometimes he’ll go into the back yard and make a lot of noise just to attract them so he can target practice, he hasn’t done that lately, and I’m glad for it. The rain began to get a little harder and the water running in streams around my shoes now became rivers. I can feel the wet all the way to my socks, converse aren’t exactly the best shoes for running in the rain, but, it’s all we can find; like hell I’m going to turn down anything we find of use.

                “Creed, stay close to me, something feels wrong tonight.” Dell said silently, as we approached the market store. I almost said something back, but he notioned for me to keep quiet, his fingers over his lips, what am I? Four? He then notioned for me to stay still, and led me carefully over to the corner of a building. He always does this, a safety precaution, that’s what he calls it at least, when I was young, and he knew the cost was clear, he’d make Mission Impossible music with odd noises; whatever Mission Impossible is. Dell was the first to go, and even scout, his fixated his green and blue eyes onto the mart, looking for any movement, he loaded his gun, and took light fast steps to the mart, placing his back to a wall, and turning fast with his gun out in front of him, his small flashlight clicked on, and he placed it in his mouth, holding it in the direction of his head and gun. He checked every isle, and I watched him from afar, watching his light dart back and forth, bouncing off the walls and isles; hoping nothing would attack, he finally came back to the front of the store, and waved his hand at me, letting me know it was safe. I stepped fast toward him, and darted to the isles, looking imminently for food and other items of use; bandages, gas, medicine, bottled water. The usual drill, I found come good medicine this run, Ibprophin, Alka-Seltzer, Midol, and some Advil. I began cramming supplies of them in my bag, three bottles of each; I also got a first aid kit, and some sanitizer, great for surgery level procedures.

                “Dell, do we need anything, medicine wise?” I yelled across the mart, Dell was standing at the front, looking for anything that might threaten us, like he always did. He walked to me, and squatted next to me, I looked into his eye, his left side, which meant his blue eye; the green was on the other side. He sighed and messed his already messy black hair. Reading the medications quickly, he picked up a bottle of something, and put it into my bag,

                “Its muscle cream, it’ll help down the road, I’m sure. Now, keep look-” CRASH! We heard the sound of glass hitting the floor. We whipped around with our weapons, my brother his gun, and me a throwing knife. We aimed out to a dark, shadow covered figure near the entrance,

                “Oh, I’m so sorry, I, I didn’t mean to scare you, and I just heard others nearby.” The figure said, it sounded male, about our age; and frightened out of his mind.   It defiantly wasn’t the undead if it could talk.

                “Who the hell are you?” Dell said, his gun still focused on his target, Dell took a few steps forward and raised his gun. “Step into the light where we can see you…now!” my brother yelled out harshly as we heard footsteps coming into the light. He had his hands raised, giving up to us, showing us he meant no harm. His hair was a chocolate brown, long and draping over his left shoulder, not very brushed. He had these dark green eyes, so dark they looked black or something in the moonlight; his skin was pale, and he was fairly tall, probably the same height as my tall-a*s brother; and very lanky, defiantly not a fighter. He had such a smooth face, and was actually kind of cute. “Where’s your weapon?” Dell asked lightly, the boy reach behind him slowly, one hand still raised in surrender, and pulled out a knife no bigger than mine. “Drop it to the ground.” My brother demanded, the boy dropped the knife and my brother began to slowly go forward to retrieve it, his gun still pointed at the strangers head; Dell slid the knife to me, and I picked it up, a sort of, drill with Dell; and I had enough of it.

                “Dell! Stop it! He’s human, and he’s already surrendered to us. It’s over; let him come back with us.”

                “Creed, don’t give me that, I kind of figured out he was human, what I wanna know, is where the rest of his group is hiding.”

                “He’s not going to call an ambush on us!” I yelled out at Dell, who stood motionless, staring the poor guy down with all his might. “What ever happened to what we say?”

                “What are you talking about Creed?”

                “Never harm the living. Or did you forget that?”  Dell lowered his gun slowly, and sighed.

                “I’m the one who taught you that…” He frowned lightly, I almost wish I hadn’t interrupted; I hate to see my brother sad, even if he is an a*s, he’s all I have left. The boy we cornered seemed to relax a little and dropped his hand to his side.

                “I never meant to frighten you both… I apologize.” He began, he was shaky and very nervous as he extended his right hand to Dell. “My name is Scott, and, despite what happened, I’m happy to see some other people about, I thought I was the only one left…hehe” He laughed very dryly and awaited my brother to respond, but he only stared at his hand and smacked it away.

                “Don’t get so friendly, Scott, I still think you’re a liar.” My brother retorted coldly and bluntly, guess it was up to me to make our new member feel welcome.

                “Don’t worry about him Scott, he just… doesn’t trust you yet, he’ll warm up soon enough; my name is Creed, case you didn’t just catch it from our conversation.” Scott smiled at me,

                “I understand, you have to protect each other. He was just looking out for you. After all, you can’t be too careful in these times.”

                “Guess that’s the truth of it, since you’re one of us now, you have a job.”

                “What’s my job?” he said looking at me as if he had no idea what I meant.

                “You have to help me collect supplies of use. Bandages, food, bottled water, gasoline, and cigarettes. When you find them, load them into this burlap, and then we’ll be on our way to the house we stay at.” It was like a light bulb turned on over his head as he understood what I meant, soon, he had picked up his knife and put it away and was gathering food off the shelves for us to bring home. Within an hour, we had filled the sacks up, a lot faster a time that when it’s just Dell and I, I had to explain to Scott the drill for leaving the marts during a rain, which is, shut up, suit up, stay quiet and follow Dell; I wasn’t even paying attention to Dell, who was posted at the entrance. Before I could say anymore, I felt a hand around my mouth, I started to squirm, till I realized it was Dell, who was finding a way to shut me up. He leaned into my ear and whispered in such a low tone, Scott would never be able to hear it.

                “The rain stopped, and it’s been stopped without our notice, we have to leave, now.”  I glanced outside and he was right, the awning outside the building was dripping, not the fast drip you get as soon as the rain stops, the painfully slow dripping, where we know we’re in trouble. Hell, was about to break loose, so I gathered the sack, tied it tight for silence and led Scott by his wrist out the mart and onto the street; where Dell was armed and moving fast, making a beeline for the house before any undead saw us and could follow us home. We encountered no undead, which to most people would be a great thing, but to us, it meant something was wrong. Horribly wrong. We all stopped at a building near the house, all we had to do was cross the intersection and we were home, Dell looked at me with dismay and horror as he looked back from the direction of the house to me.

                “Creed… I… I’m so sorry…” My brother was so sad, and all he could do was sigh and hang his head low, then follow by wiping his face. I let go of Scott’s wrist and turned the corner to look… It was just as bad as Dell tried to convey, the undead, several of them, so many of them they were all shuffling uneasily to get inside the house that wouldn’t contain them all. Our home, the only one we had for years, was given away, invaded, and gone; that house had seen invasion before, but Dell and I were always there… and never this large… I had never in my life seen so many undead. So many gathered to feast on those inside, to eat the very last few surviving humans on earth, and to them, probably the last bit of food they’d ever see. I didn’t want to, I’d never done it before, but I could feel it happen, my knees gave way, and I clumsily fell onto them, crying my eyes out.