Introduction
"We have to get outta here, Chris. There's no way we can stay here for another few days."
"Mya, we've been over this time and time again. We'll get out of here as soon as we can, but right now there's no possible way to make it out of here alive." he explained to her. "Besides, this is a convenience store. We have plenty of food and drinks in here to last us until we can make a break for it."
"I don't know if you've noticed, but I really don't think I'll be running anywhere anytime soon" she told him matter-of-factly before motioning to her stomach.
The point she was trying to make was that she was (obviously) around seven months pregnant if they had their timing right. Another issue they had with trying to figure out just how far along she might be was because since they couldn't do much of anything she had taken to eating alot of the snacks over the past few months and had put on quite a bit of non-pregnancy weight to go with her pregnancy weight. All in all, she had put on roughly forty pounds onto her formerly 135 pound frame putting her at 175 lbs. as of this morning, according to the old scale in the back room. Aside from that though, her face had stayed relatively unchanged by the weight. Her jawline had only softened slightly. Her blonde hair cascaded on her shoulders as she looked down at herself, putting emphasis on her statement by patting her stomach lightly and tugging her ill-fitting shirt down for about the tenth time in the past hour.
"Well I'm pretty sure that if you have ravenous zombies chasing you, you'll find some speed somewhere in those legs of yours." he told her which got him a light punch on the arm and both of them laughing lightly.
While Mya had taken to the snack racks of the small convenient store, Chris had stayed away from that zone and had kept his slim, slightly muscular frame from being dealt any additional hardships aside from things he had no control over. His face had thinned out slightly though with a five o' clock shadow haloing it while his normally short hair had grown out as well, although not enough to cause him to have to brush it from his eyes occasionally when looking down at something.
"Well, at least we were able to find this place with these thick-ass walls and you were able to take the metal shelves in here and board them over the windows. So at least we're safe."
"Yeah, I don't want to even think about what would've happened if we hadn't had this kinda luck." he agreed before getting up and taking a peek out of the tiny peephole in the front door.
"See anything new?" she asked, not really paying attention to the question since it seemed like she had asked that question at least once a day for the past few months until it seemed almost like normal to ask and would feel a bit weird if she didn't.
"Nah, nothing outside of the usual. A few zombies here and there, gnawing on different things."
"You know, I just realized that by the time we get out of here I'm not going to have much of anything to wear at this rate." She pointed out.
"Yeah, you're right about that one. The few clothes in here don't go up very high in sizes and you're pretty close to the higher end."
"Plus the bigger clothes look really horrible, they look like small tents or bed sheets or… something."
"At this point, hun, I don't really think we can worry about style and looks." He commented before stepping away from the door and turning to face her. "You know, we haven't heard from Mason in two days." He brought up.
"You're right… Hope he's alright, maybe we should try and call him on the radio?" she suggested as she brushed a longs strand of blonde hair from in front of her eyes to behind her ear.
"It's worth a shot," he replied before making his way over to the counter where an old-looking CB radio sat.
They had discovered it about four months ago and found out that quite a few groups of people that were stranded used them to stay in touch. The problem was that over the next few months that followed, just about all of their radio friends had been picked off by the horde. Leaving only Chris, Mya and Mason as the only ones left standing… That is… if Mason is still standing himself.
Before giving either of them anymore time to think about what could possibly be happening in Mason's neck of the woods, Chris walked over to the counter , picked up the receiver and turned the radio on.
"Mason, you still there?" He asked which was met with roughly ten seconds of radio silence, giving Mya and Chris both just enough time to think the worse.
"Mason, is everything alright?" he asked again, this time with a shade of worry in his voice.
Once again his transmission was met with silence on the other end, causing Mya to sigh and put her head down. "Looks like we're the only ones left now as far as we know…"
"Yeah, seems that way now…" Chris agreed before walking back to the chair he was seated in next to her from earlier. "Guess we just… sit here or something, I don't know." He continued, clearly frustrated.
"If you two have enough time to sit there and make courtesy calls to everyone in the city then can I come over?" a familiar voice chimed in over the radio's speaker.
"What the hell?" Chris yelled out, a little louder than he meant to before jumping back to his feet and sprinting back to the radio. "Mason, is that you?" he shouted.
"Just who else would it be?" the voice answered, filled to the brim with sarcasm.
"We thought you were dead when you didn't answer, not to mention we haven't been able to hear from you in a few days now. We thought we were the only ones left."
"Well when you have a few Boomers and Smokers poking around the hatch of the basement you're in, trying to find a way in, you tend to want to stay a tad quieter than usual." He explained. "Lucky for me, the bastards aren't as smart as they used to be when they weren't infected."
On his end, Mason had been staying in the basement section of a gun store. Weeks ago he had closed off the hatch to the first floor the best that he could with his welding torch. He'd had a few close calls with Chargers and Tanks but other than that, safety wasn't a concern for him. Not to mention all the weaponry he had taken down into the basement with him.
Mason, himself, was a man in his late twenties but due to the current circumstances and the stress and lack of sleep he appeared to be in his thirties easily. By now his hair had become a stringy-looking mop of dirty blonde hair that had no clue where it wanted to go as well as having a jawline in need of a razor lately.
"Ever thought about coming over to where we are, Mason?" a female voice chimed in on the other end of the radio causing Mason to chuckle to himself. He knew who it was
"Mya, I think it'd love to do that. But I'd also love to continue living for at least a little while longer before committing suicide." He answered back sarcastically before hearing a barely audible "Boooo!" on the other end. "Sorry, hun."
"You know, while I don't think her way of putting it was that great. She does have a point, Mason." Chris spoke up, causing Mason to sigh on his end.
"Yeah, I know. We would be a lot better off if we were in the same location instead of possibly across town from each other having to rely on a radio for communications." He agreed. "But with me being down here in the middle of, what seems to be, Tank and Charger country and Mya not being the most agile thing in the world… No offense." He added quickly so he wouldn't incur her wrath over the radio. "Things just aren't in the cards at the moment for that."
"Yeah, but we have to think of something for the near future because this isn't going to last us forever." Chris explained to which they all agreed.
Suddenly, Chris and Mya heard gunfire outside their store along with groans and yells coming from all the infected that had gathered around apparently.
"Gunfire?" Mya asked no one in particular before getting up from her seat to look out the peephole while Chris stayed on the radio with Mason who heard the gunfire as well on his end.
"Is that someone outside your place?" he asked.
"Don't know just yet, Mya's going to check." Chris answered before turning to Mya. "See anything?"
"Looks like there's a ton of them running across the street and crowding around the middle of the road." She explained, "Like there's something on the ground over there or something."
"What the hell could be happening out there…"
"Get down!" Mason yelled over the radio, jerking Chris back to what was happening.
"For what?"
"If they're gathering at some place in the middle of the road like you say, then they're probably gathering around a bomb that's about to go off, get down!" he repeated.
Without a second thought, both Chris and Mya got down on the ground and shielded their heads from possible falling debris. Before long, the explosion happened and rattled the windows of their small hideout and also caused a few things inside to fall to the floor around them. After a few seconds passed by, everything went ominously quiet as if nothing had ever happened.
"You alright, angel?" Chris asked while he looked around to make sure everything was ok while getting back to his feet.
"Yeah, you?" she answered while doing the same.
"I'm alright, but damn that was a huge explosion…"
"Tell me about it, I was worried that it would blow out the windows or something."
"You two alright?" Mason voice chimed in over the radio. "I heard a rumble or something way off, I take it that was the bomb going off over there or something?" he continued while Chris picked up the mouthpiece on his end to answer.
"Yeah, didn't break anything in here but it shook things up a ton. Looks like it cleared out the infected around here too."
"And I still can't tell what or who started all that shooting off in the distance either." Mya complained after taking a long look out the hole again.
"If you think about it though, if whatever's out there is shooting infected then at least that means that he, she or it is on our side." Mason explained. After thinking for a bit they both realized that he had a point. Still though, they didn't like the idea of someone having position and superior firepower on them but they couldn't do anything about it at the moment except accept it.
"I guess that'll work for now, but since the infected were just cleared out then that means we have an opportunity to at least get closer to each other in hopes of meeting up eventually." Chris thought out loud.
"One problem with that is that all the dumbasses that were over here weren't bothered by that explosion, so I can't go anywhere still, just you two."
"Damn… he's right, guess that means just you and I can get up and go." He told Mya.
"Ok, say we go… Then what?" Mya asked sarcastically. "I'd rather stay here than go out there and end up trapped."
"Mya just a few minutes ago you were begging to get outta here and now you don't want to? What the hell?" Chris asked.
"I'm just saying, Chris! Who knows who's out there with those weapons and what they might do to us, not to mention who's to say that there aren't more infected lurking around the corners we can't see?"
"We just have to be willing to take chances, Mya, that's all." He explained, trying to calm her nerves. He knew that she was scared and she had every right to be considering her condition. She was carrying their baby and quite a few extra pounds lately, so her movements would be a bit slower and she'd be an easier target for them.
"Chris, I just don't think this is a great idea to chance this at this point." She responded, clearly shaken by the thought of being trapped by out there. "We could just as easily wait until Mason's able to come over here instead too!"
"That might take weeks, months or it might not happen at all."
"You two must be having quite the conversation…" Mason's voice commented over the radio out of the blue.
"Yeah, sorry… Mya's a tad skeptical about this traveling thing." Chris explained with an exasperated sigh.
"Better than wanting to rush into doing something stupidly risky like this." She chimed in before walking off towards the restroom presumably.
After being sure that she was out of hearing range, Chris gave another long sigh. "I know she's worried about the baby and the fact that she's put on weight since being trapped here, but the longer we wait the worse it's going to get."
"And I don't see myself being able to make a run for it just yet since all these bastards are still lurking around here, hell they've been scouring around this place for weeks now."
"That's what I told her, that we'd best try now while we have a great opportunity instead of letting it pass us by to hope for something better later on which probably won't even come." He agreed.
"I'll do it…" Mya spoke up softly while returning from the other side. "If you want to take a chance… I'll do it too." Upon hearing her, Chris walked over to her and grasped her shoulders in his hands.
"Are you sure? I don't want you to do this just to make me happy or anything."
"Part of me still doesn't want to… But I know you're right about things not getting any better around here." She explained while looking away, clearly scared of the thought of what could happen.
"I'll be with you the entire time, nothing's going to happen to you as long as I'm here. I promise." He told her, smiling warmly and trying to pick her spirits up.
"Doesn't make me want to do this much more than earlier, but we should probably gather all the things in put them in some duffel bags." She suggested, trying to change the subject.
A couple of hours later, they had packed two large duffel bags full of items that figured they would need along the way. Whether it was food, clothing, weapons or anything else they could think of they figured they had it somewhere in one of the two bags.
Mya had changed into a less loose-fitted attire so she would get snagged on anything in tight spaces while Chris had decided to stay in his normal shirt and jeans since it was comfortable to him and he preferred being in comfort rather than worry about getting caught on something since the chance that would happen, in his eyes, was remote. He had also decided that he'd carry the heavier bag of the two while wielding his weapon of choice, a magnum that he had found behind the counter of the convenience store. Finding it had surprised him since he figured the person that had worked there at one point would've taken it when they left instead of leaving it, but he knew better than to look a gift-horse in the mouth and hadn't looked back since. Mya's weapon of choice was a smaller 9mm handgun that she had stolen from a nearby gun store before they found their little convenience store to hide in.
"Ready?" Chris asked with his hand on the doorknob.
"Not really… but we might as well…" she responded, still afraid as to what could happen out in the open.
So with a deep breath, Chris opened the door and they stepped out, frightened but willing to take a chance on improving their survival hopes…