Friendship is Survival
Chapter 1: And so it begins...
It's almost time to get off, the plane was about to leave and of course they were late. This little group of friends were in a lot more than just going to a convention of video games, no, it was about to get worse.
"Hurry! The plane may leave soon!"
"Shut it! I know that it's just that Tyler and Ryan won't hurry the hell up!"
"Well i'm sorry! Jeez, don't have to be an ass about it."
"I wouldn't have to be an ass about it if you would have hurried up in the first place!"
We barely made it in time and asked that we can board and we did. We all had to find seats and quick since the plane could start soon and we were tired and wanted to finally sit down. We were finally seated in our seats and had finally earned some rest. This was the first time that this whole group of online friends got together and went to Pax East. It was just a small band of moderators and admins from a video games server. The game was Garrys Mod and We had a server named Dubstep Mayhem. We all went and decided to put some money aside to go to Pax. It was going to go so well. There were only about ten people coming, so it wasn't hard to get there. We all were tired from running through the scanning area and luggage check and of course checking for missing items or making sure that we went to the bathroom. The admins and moderators names were unknown until we got off the plane of course. We got tired of calling each other their names from in-game, and it was rude to call someone by their in-game name in real life. Their names were Jackie the nice and random girl of the group who may act like a jerk, but still cares for you. Tyler the awkward and funny guy, he is the one that makes some people smile and mad. Nekie the quiet guy of the group, he would protect the ones he love over anything. Jordan is the one with a hidden anger problem but is nice from time to time. Nick doesn't care from time to time and is a jerk, he may call people things but he cares for you. Cody may seem nice and happy, but on the inside one thing could get him very pissed off. Michael is the youngest one at of all of them, but he also has anger problems, one thing can really make this kid explode into a big fit. Jackie is so nice and beautiful, she is so caring and she would protect who she loves too. Velia is the shy one, she doesn't talk much but she is really brave. Will is protective and cool, he always plans out everything and makes sure it happens. Ryan is a loner and he talks a lot but he doesn't trust some people just yet. The one was the one hosting this was Michael, the young one. He wanted all of us to come to Pax and have some fun, besides gaming. This was his life, and how it was going to stay.
" Tyler, Nekie, you guys awake?" I asked..
Nothing but Tyler's loud snoring and I was pretty sure that Nekie was asleep or talking to Jackie. I didn't like planes, I actually hated them. I was so afraid that it may crash or something may happen to his friends.
" Michael, why are you awake?"
" Why do you care Cody?"
" Because you're loud and won't me sleep you ass."
" Well want me to be louder!?"
I had forgotten that we weren't the only ones on the plane and of course I was shushed at, and I was embarrassed. I just finally decided to shut up and get some rest, we did have a big day ahead of us. What scared me was the rude awakening of Tyler.
"Michael wake the hell up! We're getting off!"
"Don't wake me up like that! I was gonna punch you in the face!"
"Oh sure you were."
As we got everything from our compartments, we were yelling at one another for touching eachothers crap and it finnaly made some one smile in a long time. I forgot about the plane and how it could crash, and made a smile. We got off the plane and we entered the lobby of the airport. We stopped and had some food from a Panda Express. Some didn't really like it but we dealed with what we had to eat. We had some laughs since Cody chocked on a orange chicken piece and we laughed. He called us assholes for laughing, he kept on saying, I was going to die damnit! We finished our lunch and we went outside to call two taxies and packed our stuff and went to Pax! It was a long ride there and we talked about how what new games there were and how we had a argument about what game would be better. And it was game after game and what not. It's what we do, We are gamers and of course we argue about games. We finnaly got there and got our luggage from the back. We took a good long look at the big building, and we all walked towards it, ready to have some fun all together.
"So where do you guys wanna go first?" asked Tyler
It was too loud for everyone to hear Tyler but we decided to go somewhere quiet to talk about how are we going to do this.
"Ok, we only have two hours to see everything today, how are we going to do this?"
We all thought to have five groups of two, since there were ten of us. Of course me, being the youngest one, I had to go with someone older. Tyler and I wanted to go to the PC area to go check any new games out to play. Of course Nekie and Jackie would be together, they wanted to go to somewhere, we wouldn't really tell the rest. Jackie and Chari were going to go to the beanbag corner and just go have a laugh. Cody and Will were going to go fight over at the console area, who was better at this new game. Nick and Ryan were going to go calm Cody and Will down because later instead of yelling at each other it may go to something else. Anyways that did end quickly, and when you are having fun, time goes by very fast. When we were told to leave the building, We had gone to the hotel we reserved and finally rested there. We stayed there the whole day even though it was noon, we just stayed there watching movies, ordering pizza and making jokes at each other. We had all brought our pc's or laptops and we played some games and bet money on who would win on League Of Legends or some other games. We just had fun. Later the girls went to their own room, and the guys had to decide who was sleeping on the beds, whos on the chair, and who's on the floor. We decided the best way to handle this, rocks, paper, and scissors. Nekie, Cody, Will, and I won the honor of sleeping on the beds. Nick, Ryan, Tyler, and Jordan were the only ones that had to win this for the couch. Tyler won to sleep on the chair, so Nick, Ryan, and Jordan slept on the said goodnight to each other and Tyler turned the light off. We later woke up by Jackie's kick to the stomach.
" Wake the fuck up! Look at the news! This shit is actually happening!"
We woke up, and of course Tyler was the one who was the first to turn on the news.
" Lucky, Tyler." said Ryan.
"Why?"
"You didn't get kicked in the stomach by her."
" Suckers.."
"What?"
"Nothing"
Tyler got up and got the controller and turned on the news, and he turned up the volume. The anchorman had said this,
" This is from Hollywood, live. Apparently some sort of virus got to a actress and she is foaming out of her mouth. This is crazy. We have no idea what is going on, it was a simple 911 call about her having a seizure.
We had heard screaming from the TV, but it came from somewhere we couldn't see on the TV since the camera man wasn't pointed in that direction
" What was that?"
The reporter ran towards the noise, we didn't get to see anything as for the cameraman was running and the camera was just moving everywhere. There was blood in the ambulance in wich the actress was lying in, and there was a bloody handprint on the small window. No one couldn't see what was happening. Tyler said something that at least lightened up the mood.
" Looks like it's that time of the month again."
We all had a small laugh, but Jackie took this serious and punched him in the arm.
"OW! What was that for!?"
"Shut up! Just listen."
" Why is there blood?" asked Nekie
The reporter opened the door slowly and saw the actress sitting there on top of one of the nurses. It looked like it was tearing something from her.
" Ma'am? Is everything ok?"
All we heard was a moan and then the actress jumped towards the reporter. We heard screaming and yelling. The camera man was running away so we couldn't see what was happening to the reporter.
Tyler yelled out "Ha, pussy."
"Shut it Tyler, or i'm going to punch you in the arm again"
"You don't have to do that! I'll stop.."
We thought that this was a small prank on the news, but we were wrong until Ryan said something that made us all think, this is really happening.
"Is this fucking real? Oh god..."
"What Ryan?" asked Tyler
"A fucking zombie"
"What? Are you crazy? No way thats a zombie. Only in games man, that shit is real.
"What did the actress have in her hand then?!"
"It looked like blood… but like I said, she was on her period"
"No dude really, If you saw carefully, you would have seen the nurses neck cut out."
"Reall? Wait, how did you see that?
"Once I saw the blood on the ambulance, I was afraid so I made sure to check everything. Yeah, this is happening. A freaking zombie apocalypse."
"Dude if thats a zombie, there is no way that a guard or something would shoot her. I would have, there is no way someone is going to let that shit happen.
"Yeah but remember, not a lot of people are that smart, they just say, oh are you okay ma'am? Then they get bitten, and pass it on. Just like in every horror movie, they are all like the blonde girls in the movie, run but they don't fight.
We all had thought for a second and pulled out our own cellphones and used the hotel phone, calling our family members to see if they were ok. It took about an hour to hang up the phones, and finally knew that they were safe, and noticed this is actually happening. We thought we should leave since we had all seen The Walking Dead, and we knew not to stay in one area, but it wasn't that easy. It's not like, oh get a car and leave, it's harder than that. We panicked and of course we all just sat there. Jackie and finally said something to all of us to man the hell up.
" Ok we have to man up, and take this serious. Now we will need a plan."
" You think it's that easy? Just think of a fucking plan and leave? It's not that easy, Jackie and I are freakin panicking, and you want us to be serious about this!?"
" Yes I want you to take this serious. Take a deep breath, and calm down. We need to be calm or else it will get to our heads and we are just going to be sitting here doing nothing."
Jackie didn't yell this time, but she said this calmly. We all understood now that she doesn't want them to panic, because if we do, we will just sit there and die.
"Ok anyone have a marker or a pen?"
Ryan replied, " I have this marker I kept from the scoreboard at the console area."
" Why do you still have this?
" I forgot to put it back...
Ryan had handed Jackie the red marker. Jackie had walked towards the bathroom, opened the door and started to write stuff on the mirror.
" Ok here are the things we need, and what we have to get done."
Rule one: Cars Someone has to go down to the parking lot and get us some cars that will fit all of us, well not really but two will do fine.
Rule two: Food get lots of it break the vending machine and steal as much as you can and stuff it into your backpacks DON'T EAT IT ALL TYLER
Rule three: Do not make contact with anyone that looks like a zombie this shit is real
Rule four: No one leaves we need everyone here and make sure that we all do fine
Rule five: Always have a weapon find something sharp or something heavy it will kill them possibly
Rule six: Always have someone with you no matter what
Last rule: Do not break these rules
" Get the picture?"
Somehow Tyler found a screw and he put it in the middle of the mirror and broke it.
"What the hell Tyler! Those were the rules how are we supposed to know what we do now!"
"Looks like the rules just got, screwed."
"Where did you get that screw in the first place?"
"It was on the ground."
"I swear to god, Tyler find another screw and do something bad with it, I'm going to shove that thing so far up your ass that-"
"Ok, OK! I get it, I won't do it again."
We all punched him in the arm and called him a asshole. So at least we rememberd some of it, and of course since we played zombie games we knew the rules. We took this somewhat normally, but on the inside all of us were afraid and so nervous. Some of us that we can survive zombie apocolypses and say we are the real surviviors, but it's not that easy. We all could break down and forget what we were doing, and of course die. We had to man up and fight back.
We back up as much as we could from our snacks. We took our computers and laptops, they were precious to us. When we went down stairs to leave the building, we were stopped by the security guards.
" Please get back in your rooms, a news report says that a virus is contam-"
Jackie yelled out "Yeah yeah! We know! We just forgot about our stuff in our car, let us bring it back ok?"
"Sorry we can't do that, until further notice, no one is leaving."
Well there goes our plan, but of course we couldn't be stopped that easily. There were ten of us and one of him.
"Better move dude, we are getting through."
Of course Ryan was the one who started this little fight with the guard, and it got to the fight. Ryan jumped at him making sure he didn't pull out any weapon and just kept on hitting him.
"Go! I'll meet you guys at the parking lot!"
When we were heading down, Jackie yelled at us to find something to break the vending machines. We found a fire extinguisher and Tyler used it to bust open the soda machines and the snack machine. We used our backpacks and packed as much food and water as we could. Once our backpacks were full, we still heard Ryan fighting that guard.
We ran towards the parking lot, and of course we found a truck, a bright red sports car, maybe a mustang, I couldn't tell, and a RV. There were so little vehicles, a lot of people at Pax may have just used taxi. The RV was the best thing there, it held all of us, but there were only two beds, and about three couches to fit only three people. The only one of us who was old enough to drive and also knew how was Jackie, Tyler, and Ryan. Age didn't matter anymore, we had to get out. Ryan finally caught up with us. Just bloodied up and bruised
"He's fine, just knocked out. And check this out!"
"You must have kicked his ass well, look at all that blood on you!"
"Shut up, Cody...
He pulls out what looks like a gun, but it was just a taser
"This could come in handy, I just hope it works."
Tyler yelled out, " Don't test it on me! Do it to Cody."
"Oh hell no, do it to Tyler"
"I wasnt going to test it on anybody!"
There was a small argument here but Jackie just yelled at us to shut up and get in the RV. The bad thing about the RV, it needed to be hooked to another car. The truck was the only one that looked like it could hook up to the RV.
Jackie yelled out, " Tyler, Ryan! Come help me tie this to the RV!.
They did as they were told and connected the hook from the RV into the truck.
Some of us noticed that Ryan was bruised up, had a bloody nose, and looked like crap. That security guard must have putten up a good fight.
"Good, we found these cars that their windows were a bit down, we need something to get the locks open. The sports car first. Thats the fastest one here."
"I got it! I know how to open them." Ryan blurted out.
He ran back into the hotel, came back out with a fire extinguisher.
"Move out of the way! Imma bust that bitch wide open!"
"Do it to the rest quick! We need these cars!"
He ran and hit the car window, cracking it and broken. Then he went to the truck and did the same with the RV as well. Jackie got in the sports car and hotwired it.
I asked Jackie "How do you know how to do that?"
"Michael, theres a lot of things you don't know about me. This is one of them. Now shut up and get in the RV! Ryan busted it open already."
So once that happened Ryan got into the truck with Jackie, and Jackie started to hot wire the truck.
Jackie was driving the truck, and Ryan was the one in the bright red sports car.
Ryan didn't want to ride in the RV, he just said
" Let's just have this car just in case, I'll drive it."
So we left the building along with supplies, but no weapons, which was very bad. These are zombies, we can't really punch them in the face and expect them to be knocked out.
"Man, we took this surprisingly easy. I don't know why but we didn't break down like in the tv shows and movies. They are usually be useless, and die at the end."
"Shut it Tyler, I'm taking this seriously! This is actually happening! How does Ryan know how to drive anyways? Isn't he sixteen or something?"
"I think so, maybe he played Nascar?"
"I swear to god Tyler.."
"Sorry, just trying to lighten up the mood."
As we went down the road,we headed towards the southwest because of Tyler's mentioning of large gun internship in Pennsylvania. Tyler knew his guns because apparently he said that his family being gun enthusiasts, or as he calls them "fucking rednecks", he knew a lot of gun locations. What some of us wanted to know is how Jackie hotwired those cars. We all had a impression that she was in the car robbing business, stealing radios, engines, or anything worth value in cars. We all were thinking so much bad things, it was of course the epidemic. Out of everyone in the car Tyler said the most outrageous claim,
"Well, we have a black tranny among us… I only know that they steal crap from cars."
This time there was no one to come back at Tyler, or say something bad at him. There was just an awkward silence. We all thought bad things about Jackie, how she could have been a murder, a thief or anything. She was bad news in our heads, and of course we didn't trust her. We all just tried to get it out of our heads, but of course from any video game with her she would betray us and lie. We didn't think that was her in reality, that was her gaming self. Jackie started to say,
"We should have something to eat, i'm getting hungry."
"Yeah we should, I just hope Tyler didn't start eating any of it yet." replied Neku
"Ok, I may eaten some Babe Ruth bars, and drank some green tea…"
" You fucker! I love Babe Ruths… But wait, they have green tea, in a vending machine."
"OK one, Jordan, don't fucking tell me, not to eat a Babe Ruth bar. Second, yes they do sell green tea in vending machines."
"Fucking wierd, thats just, wierd.."
That somewhat lightened up the mood, and we were hungry, we didn't even have breakfast. We all distributed the food, there were only chips, couple of candy bars and Jordan was very angry at Tyler for eating the Babe Ruths, some energy drinks, and water.
"I should try eating the Chex Mix" Tyler said, "I need to work on my figure."
"Yeah, about like one million bags of them."
"Shut up Jordan, you're just mad that I ate the Babe Ruths."
"Wanna test me?"
"No, just saying."
We all laughed, Tyler always knew what to say to lighten up the mood. We had a couple of laughs telling on how Jackie Tylers man boobs can be seen already I asked a question,
"So, Cody, Will, who won in that console thing?"
Will started first, "I won of course, because-"
Cody stopped him and yelled out, "Shut up slut! You only won because you cheated!"
"NO! I didn't cheat! How could I cheat in a new game, that I just played!?"
"I don't know how but you cheated! You are such a fucking liar!"
They had this argument for about ten minutes, there was something about him shooting through a wall, and how it wasn't possible. Nekie told them to shut up, and it just made it worse. Nekie now just got into this saying how it was possible, and now it was them. We just stood there trading eachothers snacks, and drinks. The argument ended once, Natalie decided to say,
"Im going to eat all of your snacks if you women won't stop arguing!"
They stopped, and we resumed our normal chatting on how these candy bars were shit, or talking about how much fun we had at Pax. Talking about how it was and what we had seen.
We all had forgotten about Jackie and her being a thief or murderer and we forgotten what we saw on the news , it was about Tyler and his one liners, or about how he was going to eat all of the food before we get any. Just little friend jokes, but then after a while Tyler said something that really killed the mood.
"If i'm gonna die, i'mma die thirty pounds lighter!"
That was funny, but now we remembered why we were in the RV, why were running away from everything, Tyler reminded us how fragile our existence had become. It didn't help, and I broke down into tears. I yelled out in agony,
"Oh god! My family! They could be dead..."
Natalie tried to calm him down, "Its fine, you called them remember? Maybe the ordered an evacuation. Everything is going to be fine."
I kept on yelling that over and over again, Natalie tried to calm him down, but it didn't work. I love my family, and they were the only people that cared for me. I just thought about them until we pulled over. Jackie told us to get out, we had to plan this out carefully. We listened, got out of the car and saw the sun going down. We all looked afraid, and we were. Jackie started to tell us something,
"Ok so we've traveled about an hour, and i'm pretty sure in a hour this can spread very quickly. We have to leave this populated area, we need to go to Allentown Pennsylvania, it's the only place I could think of that has guns, and I live near there. I have guns and cars there"
That made us get more on edge, how does she have guns? Are we trusting a killer? We had no sort of idea if she is one, or was one. We just had a feeling we couldn't trust her. All this time, she could have hidden everything from us, but all we knew now was we had to trust her until then.