2: Down By the River

        We put my suggested plan into action after that. First, we had to get out of the nature trail. Lori and I led the way down the gravel path, our flashlights lighting the way except for the occasional times they drifted off to the trees to check for any infected that may be around.

        “Where are we anyway?” asked David.

        “We're in the nature trail of Camp Dennison,” I replied.

        “And how long is it going to take for us to get out of here?” he questioned.

        “It should only take a couple minutes,” answered Lori.

        “We should be at the state route in ten minutes at the most,” I added.

        The sound of coughing came. It was faint, suggesting it came from a small distance away.

        “Was that one of you?” I asked. I was doubtful, but it was a way for me to hope that trouble wasn't coming.

        “It was me,” confessed Jake.

        “No it wasn't,” said David. “I didn't see you cough. I would've if you did.”

        “Maybe it was another survivor?” asked Lori.

        There was another hacking cough followed by a wheezing sound. All of us stopped for a brief moment, listening, but it was quiet again.

        “Doesn't sound like it,” I said. “Let's keep going.”

        We continued walking. The coughing came again and there was more wheezing. I felt myself picking up the pace, my sweaty hand gripping onto my handgun. Then came a throaty kind of scream. I jumped in my skin and wheeled around.

        “Look out!”

        But it was too late. Something shot out of the tree line and wrapped around David. He gave a scream of surprise and he was pulled towards the trees. I aimed my pistol, about to shoot, when I heard the garbled cry of the more common infected. There were multiple of them. The cracking of twigs and the crunching of leaves could be heard from the surroundings.

        “Behind us!” I shouted, spinning around to see some of them charging out from the flora, arms outstretched. I shot a couple of them in the head and they fell to the ground. Other shots came from behind me followed by a few thuds.

        “We need to help David!” shouted Lori.

        His shouting could be heard. Its volume had noticeably died down. He must have been pulled quite a distance. But helping him was a bit easier said than done. More infected came running out at us. We took them out before making our way in the direction from which the shouts came.

        It took several seconds for us to reach our comrade—after taking out more infected along the way. It seemed like he had just finished being dragged by the infected that had snared him. It stood behind the teenager. It was tall and lean. A massive tumor was on its throat and chest. One of the few tongues it appeared to have hung out of its mouth and entangled David. Jake reacted fast and unloaded a couple bullets in the infected's head. It erupted in a haze of dark green smoke, sending all of us in a coughing fit. Our vision had been blocked, but I managed to find David's arm and I grabbed onto it, pulling him up onto his feet before we walked out of the smoke so that we could breathe again.

        “Thanks,” muttered David. “But you could've come sooner.”

        “Hey, we had our own infected to deal with,” I said.

        “It could've been worse,” Jake chimed in. “Next time we'll leave you with the Smoker.” It was clear he wasn't being serious when he said this.

        “Smoker?” Lori asked.

        “Yeah,” replied Jake. “Didn't you see the smoke come out of it, and hear the coughing and the wheezing? It's a Smoker.”

        Lori shrugged, seeing the logic in it.

        “But that's enough of that,” said Jake. “Why don't we keep going before anything else shows up?”

        “Right,” I replied.

        We made our way back to the trail and resumed from where we had been interrupted. A couple minutes later, another sound came in earshot: growling.

        “Let's keep going,” insisted Lori, fear—along with an inkling of anger—in her voice.

        We continued, but, like with the Smoker, this proved to be futile. There was a scream a couple seconds later, almost sounding similar to that of a pterodactyl. I glanced behind me and past David and Jake to see something lunging out from the trees. A couple gunshots came from Jake and David, but they missed and the airborne infected pounced on my cousin. She screamed as she was tackled to the ground. The thing swung a clawed hand before David fired a bullet from his shotgun. It was enough to knock the infected off of Lori and to end its life. Jake was already at her side.

        “Are you alright?” he asked.

        “Yeah,” she said. She took the hand that was offered to her and Jake helped her to her feet. She winced afterward, her armed hand moving to the minor claw wound near her left shoulder.

        “Oh snap,” said Jake. “That looks pretty bad. Does anyone have a first aid kit?”

        David and I shook our heads.

        “You'll have to deal with it for a while until we get some bandages,” Jake told her. “You think you can manage until then?”

        “Yeah, I'll be fine,” Lori replied, giving a small, reassuring smile. She removed her hand from her wound, a little blood trickling out of it. She grimaced again and mumbled, “Stupid Hunter.”

        “You can't get infected, right?” Jake inquired.

        “I don't think so. I was scratched a few days ago and nothing has happened yet.”

        “Okay, you should be fine then.” There was a brief pause before he looked at David and I. “What about you two?”

        “I can't,” replied David.

        “How do you know if you can or not?” I asked.

        “Have you been bitten or scratched by an infected before?” Jake inquired.

        I shook my head.

        “Uh-oh, that's not good,” he replied. “That means we don't know if you're immune or not.”

        All of them were looking at me. Concerned looks were on Lori's and David's faces. Lori's was directed towards my possibility of being able to be turned into a zombie while David's was directed towards his own wellbeing. This unanswered question could cause a problem for the three of them, something that was confirmed when Jake continued speaking.

        “Keeping you around could be risky. We might have to kill you if we don't want to take a chance of you becoming infected and trying to kill us.”

        My heart skipped a beat. The natural instinct of wanting to stay alive kicked in, increasing my fear of my possible soon-to-be death even more. I didn't want to die yet. No, I didn't come so far just to have my own friends kill me.

        “Y-you're kidding, right?” I asked.

        “I'm afraid not, Christopher,” Jake replied. “We can't have you screwing all of us over by turning into a zombie.”

        My jaw slackened. I tried to say something, but I was at a loss for words. I wanted to turn around and go, run far away from here before they had the chance of killing me. There was strength in numbers, but that wouldn't be any good if the others wanted to end my life right here and now. If this was going to be the case, I would be better off alone. But I couldn't move, frozen in fear from the cold, harsh fact that my friends might just kill me.

        Then Lori spoke.

        “He's joking.”

        I paused for a moment, first looking at my cousin, and then at Jake, who laughed. Now that I thought about it, he didn't seem all that serious when he said it.

        “Christopher, I'm disappointed,” said Jake. “You should know me by now. I would never kill you like that. At least not until you turn into a zombie.”

        “Yeah, yeah, whatever,” I replied. Still, I couldn't help but to feel a little relieved after hearing it. At least I knew they wouldn't kill me—yet. So long as I didn't get hurt by an infected, I would be okay, and, if I did get scratched or bitten, then I would have to hope that I was immune to the virus. Of course, if I did become infected, then that meant I would be killed, but I figured that was better than living the rest of my life as a mindless zombie, especially if I ended up killing my friends.

        “But it would be better to kill him now instead of taking the chance,” argued David seriously.

        “Whoa, that's cold,” Jake laughed.

        “Shut up, Oinkle!” I shouted.

        “Oi, don't call me that!” yelled David. “You know I hate it when you do that!”

        “Guys, shut up!” Lori snapped. “Let's keep going. I want to get out of here before anything else decides to attack us.”

        David and I became silent after that and we nodded in response. We resumed walking. There were more infected down this way. We took them out when needed, but we snuck around the ones that could be passed without confrontation. After all, we had a limited amount of ammo and it was hard to say when we would come across more. It was a few minutes later when we reached the exit of the nature trail.

        “It would only take a couple minutes, huh?” said David.

        “It would have if we didn't have to deal with the zombies,” Lori replied.

        “But that doesn't matter,” I interjected. “We're almost to the state route.”

        There were infected on the street, but they weren't in our direct path to the field on the other side. We ran across, but abruptly stopped when we reached the wooden stakes that marked the beginning of the large field. A man in a straitjacket was standing about seven yards away. The infected looked at us before spinning around and dashing away.

        “S**t, shoot it, shoot it!” David said, being sure to try to be quiet to refrain from alerting the zombies on the street.

        Lori tried shooting at it, but missed. I attempted a shot, but the infected was out of my pistol's range, and it was quickly getting further and further away. It reached a grove of trees in seconds and hid behind a wide trunk. A sharp, high-pitched screamed came from that area.

        “S**t, s**t, not good, not good!” shouted David.

        The infected from the street and the field came rushing at us along with the ones darting out from the trees that lined parts of the field. We started shooting at them, but it didn't seem to be having much of an affect on their numbers.

        “This isn't good,” I said. “We'll run out of ammo before they even let up. Let's keep going and try to make a path through them.”

        We started to run towards the street that could be seen on the spacious field, shooting at the ones that were in our way and the ones that got too close. One of them came advancing towards me from straight ahead and I froze in my tracks for a brief moment. It was my infected mom. I hesitated, unable to shoot.

        “Chris, what the hell are you doing?!” David called out from somewhere off to my left.

        I didn't move. She closed in on me and I quickly shoved her away right before she had a chance to scratch me with her claws. She stumbled backwards and fell onto her back, laying there for a moment before slowly getting up. The infection had reduced her to nothing more than an animal that was built on nothing more than the purpose to kill anything that was not infected. After a little more hesitation, I finally decided what to do. I aimed my pistol and shot her, the blood splattering out from her neck as she fell back down onto the ground, but it wasn't quite enough to kill her. I shot her again, this time hitting her in the head, to put her out of her misery.

        “Chris, come on, let's go!” shouted Lori.

        I looked down at my now dead infected mom for a moment before looking at the others to see them running towards the direction of the road. I ran to catch up, shooting a couple more zombies. A few minutes later, though, we all stopped.

        A roar came from ahead. Vibrations could be felt in the ground. A large infected was just off in the distance. It was the roughly the same size as the Charger—the one that had charged at us earlier in the nature trail—but the makeup of its body was different. This one had two large arms while its legs were slightly smaller, forcing it to use its fists to aid it as it charged at us—much like how a gorilla might walk. And it was closing the distance between us fast.

        I aimed my pistol and pulled the trigger, but only to hear a click instead of the expected bang. My eyes widened. I tried again, but still nothing.

        “Damn it, I ran out of ammo!” I shouted.

        “Me too,” said David.

        “It would be pointless to try to fight it,” said Jake. “The Tank won't fall as easily as the rest.”

        “You've been around one before?” asked Lori.

        “Yeah,” replied Jake, taking a couple steps back. “We need to either try to run around it—which will be dangerous—or try to go somewhere else.”

        Another possible route came to me.

        “We might be able to get to the next town if we follow the river,” I said.

        “Are you sure?” asked Lori. “I don't remember it being an easy path.”

        “It's either that or trying to get around this infected, or take Lincoln Road and follow it.”

        Regardless, it wasn't a good idea to be standing around. We turned around, beginning to run from the large infected. We glanced towards the road that we had just came from, seeing that there were a lot of infected coming from that direction due to the scream that had been made by the one infected we encountered upon coming to the field. The direction the river was in, however, was clear for the most part.

        “Let's take the river,” said Jake. “It might be a harder path, but it might not have as many infected.”

        None of us protested and we made our way in that direction. But the large infected behind was gaining on us. The vibrations in the ground worsened and its roars were loud. It was much faster than what we were, and the smaller infected that were also chasing us didn't make it any better.

        “Dang it!” Lori cursed before spinning around, a grenade in her hand. She pulled the pin from it and tossed it towards the Tank. Some of the Common Infected caught sight of it and ran after it, completely forgetting about their original targets. Lori spun around and continued running with us. A few seconds later, an explosion could be heard followed by a deep grunt of pain—probably from the Tank. It definitely didn't kill it, though. We could still hear it running behind us. But we didn't look back. All we had to do was hope that it stopped it enough to where it wouldn't be able to catch up to us.

        It was a few seconds later when we reached the fringes of the trees that lined the left side of the field—that is, left if someone was looking from the road from which we had came earlier. A small break in it could be seen, permitting entrance down to the river, which both Lori and I knew was located there due to us going there several times when we were a few years younger. We entered, following the path down, hoping we would soon be able to get out of sight of the large infected and get it off of our tails.

        But it was no good. We reached the sandy path that followed the river downstream just a few feet up from the river, but we could hear the Tank at the entrance. I looked back long enough to see it striking a couple trees with its large hands, causing them to fall over, both of them crashing into other trees and causing a sort of domino effect.

        “We aren't going to be able to escape it like this,” said Jake. “It's too fast, and it won't be any good if we're taking a difficult path. It'll just clear the way and get right to us.”

        I mentally cursed at this and quickly looked around before my gaze lingered on the river, watching its strong, fast current. It was a couple seconds before it hit me.

        “Let's take the river!” I shouted.

        “What?” David said as if I was crazy.

        “We'll let the current take us away. We'll be able to escape from this—thing.”

        “But wouldn't that be dangerous?” asked Lori.

        “Maybe,” I replied. “But it's either that or take a chance of getting killed by the Tank.”

        We all looked towards the large infected, which was now beginning to advance on us once again.

        “We'll have to go with it,” said Jake.

        Without anymore hesitation, we ran to the river's bank and out into the swift current. The water went up to Jake's waist in the middle and it was just enough to sweep all of us off of our feet and safely carry us away from the area. As I struggled to keep my head above water, I saw the Tank standing at the bank, roaring and throwing its fists in the air as if swearing its vengeance. Then it disappeared as we went down a bend in the river.

Reviews

[Eidolon Michael]

Nice inclusion of the non-used Screamer zombie ^_^ I enjoyed that