The four boys' bike's lights cut through the darkness of the night, faintly lighting the street in front of them. The air was thick with moisture and smelled of summer rain; beads of sweat formed on Reese's forehead as he peddled through the humidity.
All of them were perspiring, worn and sweaty from the ride across Eastfield. Two straight hours of endless biking really took a toll on their bodies, and minds, the latter weary and barely conscious. Their legs were aching and burning, the palms of
their hands on the handlebars filling with angry red blisters. Reese especially was tiring, and he knew his bike was visibly traveling slower than Roy, Beck, and even Andrew's, who was not known for his physical capabilities. His stringy auburn hair
fell into his eyes, and when he sloppily swiped it away, his bike swerved and almost collided with the curb. That would have been unfortunate, seeing as a sudden crash would probably officially ordain him the honor of being the lunch of the group
of zombies behind them.
The nighttime zombies were always worse than those that roamed in the daylight. There were faster and smarter: this was proven to Reese as the group of maybe twenty undead had kept up with them all through Eastwood, despite all the U-turns, alleyways,
and shortcuts the boys took. The zombies were always on their tail, drooling, snarling, and baring hideous, razor sharp teeth. It had been discovered early on that the night zombies were not any of the people that were bit. They were dropped into
Eastwood, one of the four experimentation zones for Project H-00708. And right now, they were making Reese wish he could have a simple, easy death instead of facing their voracious wrath.
Up ahead of Reese, Beck's shrill voice called back, "The gate, I see it! Maybe a block ahead! Keep going!" Reese looked up and also saw the gate, tall and gleaming-the boys' asylum from the zombies. It was in the backyard of a suburban house, pitched
up from the grass, rising into the air in a swirl of metal and electrical wire. But if they assumed correctly, the electric barrier would not be on at night.
That's what the walkie talkie had said.
Farther up, Beck and Roy started peddling their old, shitty bikes even faster, the gears groaning and ticking. When threatened to be left behind, Reese and Andrew also put in a last, final effort pumping their legs hard, determined to live through the
night. Wheels whirring and mouths gasping for air, the two caught up to Beck and Roy up front. They were about thirty yards from the house of which the gate laid behind, separating Eastwood from Levington. While Eastwood was part of the apocalyptic
experiment being executed by the government, Levington was not. Not at the same level, at least. Probably a few stages behind.
Probably. That's what the walkie talkie said.
And that advice was all the four boys, who were biking through the night full of nightmarish terror but invigorating abhorrence, had, so they followed it. They followed it right up to the oakwood-built house with the looming gate in the back. With a deafening
screech, the boys braked their bikes at the front of the dwelling, and dumped them unceremoniously on the sidewalk. They made a mad dash for the gate, trampling over a daisy-bed and leaping over a child's sand pit. Reese caught a glimpse of the zombies
behind them, surging forward with frightening animosity. He hissed to his friends, "We need to hurry the fuck up. We can't get over the fence one by one on our own, it'll be too slow." Nervousness was creeping into his voice, making it waver and grow
high. "What the hell are we going to do?"
By now they were all leaning on the talk gate's base, trying to catch their rapid, shallow breaths. Reese could feel whatever hope they carried waning. Chest still heaving, Roy spoke up, "I'll help everyone up, just fucking do it fast." He kneeled on
the ground besides the iron fence, his red hair bobbing. Roy held his arms out with his hands cupped, offering a step for the rest of them. He looked up expectantly up at Reese.
Reese gulped and started, "Roy, are you sure? How are-"
"We don't got a whole lotta fucking time. Just get over the fence," Roy responded, eyes pleading with Reese. Beck shoved Reese forward, and the latter reluctantly placed one Nike sneaker into the palms of Roy's hands. The ginger kid was well built-he
had muscled forearms, which matched the rest of his toned body, that didn't waver under Reese's weight. From behind, Beck grabbed Reese's waist, the shirt balled up in his hands. In unison, he and Roy heaved Reese up with a grunt, and Reese was propelled
hastily into the air. He held his breath. Before he could come back down, his hands clamped down on the top of the fence. He sighed in relief. Reese turned and sat on the thick top of the fence, and as Roy helped each boy up, he caught their hands
and assisted in tossing them over the fence into a unkempt basketball court in Levington.
Roy was the only boy still on the Eastwood side. Reese could see his friend was exalted from launching the others over the fence. More profusely now, sweat drenched his forehead, sticking his straight red hair to his head. The zombies were already in
the backyard, eyeing Roy. His only luck was they had trouble going over the sandbox. But a couple were quickly advancing on Roy, their decayed faces twisted in hungry snarls. From below, he screamed up, "Reese, get me the fuck out of here!"
Reese hurriedly stuck his hands out to his friend, stretching painfully over the metal mesh over the fence. He let out a yelp as he felt the wire jam into his side, shallowly scraping his hip. Roy tried to vertically leap into his Reese's grasp, but failed
once, twice, three times. He shouted in indignant frustration, kicking the fence, and Reese felt the wire in his side scrape even more. He cried out softly.
The zombies were right on Roy now. He unsheathed a small hunting knife, one of the only emergency supplies the boy's had retrieved from the last supply drop at Eastwood Highschool. It was about seven inches in length, gray metal, and had a small portion
of blue rubber grip at the bottom. Roy now held that grip firmly, and slashed at the zombies. He impaled one in the side of the head, a fat male teenager that toppled over, and managed to knock over others around him. Roy gutted two more, and kicked
the corpses, that were gushing blood like a waterfall from their abdomens, into the zombies behind. As Reese watched in tense fear, a zombified hand came out of the crowd and gripped Roy's T-shirt. "Shit, SHIT!" He yelled, and attempted to hack at
it weakly with his knife, the close range usurping it of any power. He chipped the zombies wrist, but the reanimated fingers clung on to the shirt of his blood-stained shirt stubbornly. Roy tossed the knife into the crowd of undead, and Reese saw
it clank loudly and harmlessly onto the driveway. Then, Roy charged forwardinto the mass of zombies, his body up against the rotting, greasy limbs, and quickly yanked back, slamming with a CLANG! into the fence. It shuddered, Reese wobbling
atop of it. But Roy's strategy worked, and the hand was no longer on his shirt. But the zombies were closing in more and more, now leaving only a sheer couple of feet between them and Roy.
Simultaneously on the other side, Andrew, a heavyset kid with matted black hair, latched onto Reese's right foot and pulled him down. Grimly, he said to a despairing Reese, "You're not going to help him from up there. Help me and Beck try to pull the
fence down. "
But to Reese, Andrew's words sounded slurred and as the once shallow scrape in his side from the fence, now a large, scary red gash, bled a crimson stain into the inside of his shirt. Reese swayed on his feet.
Unaware of Reese's injury, Andrew pulled him over to the Levington side of the fence, where Beck was already straddling it, try to shake it. It groaned and gave a little, but it was impossible to do on his own. On the other side, Roy was licking out and
swinging angry, relentless fists at the zombies, managing to club a few. But steadily, they were swarming him. As Beck, Andrew, and an disoriented Reese rattled the fence, they saw their ginger friend get shoved into the fence, screaming in terror.
An undead mother was on him, growling and lunging her jaw at his neck. Even against the wire and metal, Roy held his ground, leaning away from the mother's gaping mouth. Andrew shouted over the mass of
zombies to Beck and Reese, "Keep on the fence!" and unsheathed his own hunting knife. Through the diamond shaped holes in the metal fence, he began shanking any zombie that came close to Roy on the other side. Meanwhile, the dead mother was getting closer
to Roy's throat, snapping her jaw up and down, up and down, up and down, sounding like a knocker on a door as her teeth banged into each other.
Roy screamed in mindless fury, and drove his bare, open right hand into her mouth, shoving the mother away from his exposed throat and neck. While he did make space, the mother once again bit down. This time, with Roy's fingers in between. Blood spurted
and streamed off his wrist, as he yelled in agony. He was painting now, in incredible pain, as the mother continued to chomp on his fingers. Roy kept on pushing her away though, thrusting his arm deeper into her, pushing her away. Finally, Andrew
managed to stick his knife through a fence hole and into her forehead, and she slumped, once again lifeless, against Roy's rapidly breathing chest. But more zombies replaced her. Not just one, but two, three, then four. Five, six, seven, eight-
Suddenly, a loud splintering sound rung in the night, followed by a thundering SNAP! Beck, Andrew, and Reese looked up, and saw something that stirred both hope and fear in them, the fence began to fall. Flow at first, then began to swing down with alarming
speed. On the opposite side, Roy, and the other zombies up against the fence started to fall back. Reese heard Roy scream. Then him and the two other boys ran away from the collapsing wall of metal and steel, sprinting to the half court area of the
basketball court.
The fence landed with a booming crash, causing dust to rise fro the ground, like an ominous brown mist. The three boys on the basketball court watched in horror as Roy fell with it, undead bodies falling around him. Then they lost him in the rising dust.