Always Running

We were running, always running. Maybe running wasn't the right word. Travel on foot was dangerous. Maybe the correct term would be fleeing, Or maybe we were simply just being nomadic. Either way, we didn't have a home anymore. Seven of us were traveling on the armored bus laden with supplies and armed to the teeth. Five more survivors were in the SUV with mounted turret rifle. The last one of us was Sally, she was on the motorcycle about five miles up the road scouting. So far she hadn't reported any of the ghouls on the road, but I still held my carbine ready to pick off any of the rotted out b******s if the showed their faces.

There had been more of us up at the old sanctuary that used to be called Cedar Point, an amusement park island turned into almost impenetrable fortress. We called it The Point. I only say almost because after almost half a year of safety, one of the refugees managed to get past the gate without getting an examination. She was infected through a small rat bite on her ankle. We hadn’t even known that animals could pass on the virus. She turned in the middle of the night and silently infected three whole bunkers through her saliva. It was a disturbing to imagine a little girl ghoul sneaking around delivering the kiss of living death to unknowing survivors who thought the were completely safe. 

By morning all of her victims had turned into mindless flesh gnawers hell bent on picking the meat off our bones. The thirteen of us were lucky to have survived. But the scary part wasn’t that a colony of over 400 survivors had been taken out by a single zombie, no, it was much worse than that. It was the first time we’d seen one of her kind. The little girl had been fast, smart and stealthy. She wasn’t a shuffler. She wasn’t a runner. She wasn’t a tank or squelcher. She was something new. Sally had dubbed her an infector. Even worse than that, the part that will haunt me for the rest of my life (however short that may be), was the sight of her giggling as she sat on the shoulder of one of my best friends who’d just been turned into a Tank.

Ever since that night, we all lived in fear that the next survivor we met would be an infector trying to add us to their numbers. The poor starved people locked up in their bunkers, they could be infectors waiting to be picked up by a band of travelers like us. A lone person on the side of the road fighting off a group of fiends with a baseball bat. They could just be an infector using their pack as a ploy to expand. Even more than before, nowhere was safe now that there were smart zombies...

The caravan turned south after getting an update from Sally through the radio on the bus. She’d seen signs for a rest stop and wanted us to scavenge any food, supplies or spare parts we could find there. The highway we were on was littered with old burnt out cars and blood stains, but the bus bowled them out of the way like they were nothing at all. The crew in the SUV followed closely behind, scanning the area with its turret. It was their job to cover the rear while we blasted obstacles out of the forward path.

I flinched at the sudden sound of gunfire from the rear. The turret on top of the SUV was swiveled off to the right and unloading rounds into the tree. I double checked that my lifeline was connected to the railing on the bus roof, then swiveled towards the shadows concealing our targets. Through the scope on my gun, I could see them in the  forest, mostly shufflers, but as soon as I squeezed out a few rounds I saw runners break away from the horde and begin sprinting towards us.

Before they got very far, bullets erupted from the various holes in the window armor of the bus and mowed them down, but one took a bullet to the chest while still running. This one seemed faster than the usual, but wasn’t any smarter. It stopped in front of the bus and made to try and jump at it when it got splattered into red jelly by the front grill.

After another few miles of travel, we saw the giant dome that was the rest stop. The parking lot was relatively devoid of cars besides a few junked skeletons that had been family sedans once upon a time, so long ago. Before anyone anyone disembarked from their conveyance, Charlie (the driver) pressed a button that started playing a deep bass rhythm that had been proven through experimentation at The Point to disorient all the zombies in the area. The group from the SUV deployed  and began to case the parking lot and surroundings, while those of us who’d been in the bus moved into the interior of the building.

Leaning up against the wall was Sally’s motorcycle, jacket, and the long sword she had been given back at The Point before fleeing. It had once belonged to our leader, James, but he didn’t survive the catastrophe. He was the one who activated “The Final Defense System”, a bomb that obliterated the zombies that had swarmed The Point that had allowed us to escape, but at the same time destroyed the whole island. The sword he had passed to her before the escape was the de facto symbol that she was our leader, and we respected her authority at all times.

We found Sally in the food court rummaging through the ruins of an old Cinnebon, licking icing off of her fingers. Splattered on the wall next to the wreckage was a zombie who’d clearly met the business end of Sally’s shot gun. We spent the next our or two searching every nook and cranny of the place for anything that could could be used during our travels. We made a pile of scavenge that included novelty t-shirts that could be used as patchwork, snack foods that were still fresh, and spare parts from old fast food machines that would help keep the bus running when we heard the silence. 

The music on the bus had stopped completely. The quiet weighed heavily on us all before the air was rent by shotgun blasts from outside. Then we heard the awkward stomps of a horde of runners converging on the building. More shotgun blasts tore the air asunder but the footfalls never stopped. After we heard the sound of several squelchers explode and stopped hearing the shotguns, we knew the only way we’d see the others again was as flesh hungry zombies.

A scaffolding in the corner ferried us up to the lip of the dome where the illuminating lights were when the front door shattered and thirty or so zombies swarmed in. A few runners sprinted over to the scaffolding and quickly began to climb, but were dispatched just as fast with a rain of lead from shotgun barrels. While the dealt with the imminent threat, I shouldered my carbine and began to squeeze off shots at the few squelchers that remained. They exploded as they were hit, burying bone shrapnel into the others around them. Eventually we dispatched all of them and climbed down from our perch.

We loaded the supplies, then stopped to have a moment of silence to honor the memory of the other squad. Sally grasped my hand tightly and bit her lip, choking back tears. We would all miss them, they were soldiers back at The Point. They’d guarded the perimeter and taken it as a blow to their personal pride that the fortress had fallen. Around their bodies was a gruesome pile of splattered and mutilated ghouls. The five of them had managed to destroy well over half the group with a combination of bullets and physical weapons.They had really been the best warrior we could’ve ever hoped to travel with. 

Charlie prepared a molotov cocktail, while the rest of us boarded the bus. Sally came in after strapping her motorcycle to a harness on the back. We heard the flames engulf the bodies outside and then Charlie climbed into his seat. None of us felt much like talking, having just lost almost half of our family.

The engine growled to life and the bus began to roll, but we were stopped before we could pull onto the ramp. Standing in the middle of the road was the eight foot abomination of muscle and open seeping sores that James had long ago dubbed a Tank back when they’d first been encountered. It let out a bellow that shook the bus as Charlie threw it into full reverse. The Tank charged. The bus made a sickening crunch. The whole world went black.

...

I awoke to the sight of fire and and a huddled figure leaning against an upturned table. I sat up and looked around. Everything was dark except for the fire in the middle of the rest stop food court and two fires blazing outside. One was the pyre for the guard team, the other was the exploded remains of the bus. I could hear the figure crying, until they noticed I was sitting up and crawled over.

“Oh my god Darren,” Sally sobbed, “Everyone’s dead...”

I held her close as we watched the fire burn away ruins from the old world. We sat next to each other and took our turns crying over the loss of everything, all our supplies, our cars, and our friends and family. They were gone, withering away in the fire. Neither of us slept a wink until the latest hours of the night. At some point, we had both drifted off in each other’s arms. I awoke to her eyes starring straight into mine. For a moment, we were both silent. And then our lips collided.

We held each other passionately and kissed like there was no tomorrow, because for all we knew, there wouldn’t be. It was a moment of pure bliss in a long line of sorrow and woe. We remained like this for what felt like an eternity. I began to slide my hands down her sides and then under her shirt, when I felt something sticky. I pulled my hand away and noticed it was covered in blood, her blood, from a bite wound on her side. 

For a moment I realized what she had become. In the night, she’d succumbed to the change and become an infector. The zombie I’d seen splattered on the wall had bitten her, but she had too much pride to let it be known. I saw a noose tied to the scaffolding. She’d tried to kill herself after I’d fallen asleep but before her change. Sadly, she’d been too late. Her change had happened as she was ready to jump. Suddenly all that mattered was converting everyone she could find... Starting with the sleeping boy across the room. She crawled into his arms and waited for him to wake.

And now I was infected, but nothing mattered anymore. I could only think about my hunger. I was starving. I wanted to eat. And I could feel the massive weight of all the others like me in my head. All of us thinking in tandem. I could feel the almost blank minds of the shufflers in the woods miles away. The city was their goal. They could hear the distant sounds of life. Succulent, rich lifeblood. I could feel the presence of runners, like me, gathering outside waiting for us to join them. I could feel the tremendous presence of the Tank outside, feeding on the burned corpses of zombie and human alike. And I could feel Sally. Her mind was still there, like mine, but we both had bigger things on our minds. 

That gnawing hunger, it was our lives now. It didn’t matter that we could finally see the love we had for each other buried deep in our subconscious. We just had to feed, so we both stood and walked out the door of the rest stop dome. I ran out to the rest of the ones like me and the Tank scooped up Sally. We could feel her in our minds. She directed us down the road towards the the town we’d been heading for back when we were one of the live ones.

Sally knew there was food there so we knew there was food there. We started to move, the runners setting out in front and the Tank followed behind us with Sally on his shoulder. And again, we were running, always running. Maybe running wasn’t the right word. We were hunting. We were hunting because we were hungry. Always hungry.

Author's Note

Hungry, always hungry

Reviews

[(☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞Emmett..]

Whoa, this is amazing! And Sally becoming an infector was a nice twist I totally didn't expect it even though you mentioned it in the beginning and all, and they lived in fear of infectors since then! Foreshadowing. xDD BTW, I love Cedar Point, best amusement park eva! It would be awesome if this was turned into a book.

[Madalyn Brightman]

Jeff i'm not really sure what to say besides that was completely awesome! It was nicely done(:

[Chelsea]

That was awesome, completely awesome. I especially liked the twist at the end with Sally and the way you combined different types of zombies into one story, even creating some of your own (the Tanks etc). Fantastic job, I really hope a novel comes of this(:

[Daniel Contreras IV]

Wowzers, that would make an awesome opening to something (Novel, Movie, etc.). Then spend the rest of the story line character developing and what not as they find CP and try to survive until the first infector joins the party.

[E.M.Oglesbee]

Jeffbro that was utterly fantastic, thank you for texting me and telling me to read it. im hoping your planning to write a novel to precede this? if so send me a copy because that was beyond entertaining, bravo my friend

[guiltyascharged]

Niceeee!