Act 1
Chapter 2
The infection hitting was one thing, but the infection hitting while you are in the middle of church with your father was a completely different ball game. Or at least that's how Coleen felt. It struck like a mallet on a gong for her as she sat silently bouncing her knee up and down in one of the back pews, her father glancing over at her every now and again. She was counting the minutes before she could leave and return home to hopefully find an acceptance letter to one of the many colleges she had applied to.
As this metaphorical gong was struck, the huge wooden doors at the back of the sermon hall burst open with the maniacal screams of the just recently living. Coleen almost immediately ducked down in the shelter of the wooden pews and her father followed suit, keeping one arm on her back as if to show her that he was still there.
The hall was soon filled with screams of terror and the clawing sound that she would never forget. After what felt like hours of cowering Coleen's dad grabbed her shoulder and said that they needed to get out of there, and Coleen agreed. Her mind was so cluttered with emotions and thoughts that she couldn't even seem to question the situation.
She was led from behind the pew out the wooded, now broken, doors into the long carpeted hallway that leads either direction. Knowing the correct path to freedom, her father continued to guide her until they came out into the parking lot accompanied by several other children and adults trying to get out before getting infected. (Of course at that moment no one really knew anything about an infection).
Her father fished for the keys to the green mini-van as Coleen took in the surroundings. There was utter chaos in the most serene of manners. The view looked nice, it was a very well kept highway in a very well kept part of town, the part that held all of the upper-middle class people and the closest thing to a mansion she'd ever seen, but there were people screaming and cars abandoned and Coleen could swear she saw a fire off in the distance.
She witnessed a complete stranger get eaten by another complete stranger and then that stranger going off to eat another stranger's dog. It began to sink in and she began to feel hopeless. The sinking feeling in her stomach came way too fast and she curled over the car to vomit the breakfast she didn't eat onto the pavement. By that time her father was able to get the door unlocked and get the car started.
The van roared to life in a little burst of glory and Coleen hurriedly climbed into the passenger seat. Her dad was beginning to close his door as the stranger who ate the other stranger's dog came tearing across the parking lot and wedged himself in between the door and the van. The stranger wiggled and squirmed as it let out its hoarse scream and spat blood all over her dad and the interior of the van.
Coleen was screaming too as her dad tried to fight off the creature that this man had become. He smashed the vehicle into drive and slammed on the gas. The van hopped over the parking block and cut through a small patch of grass before connecting with pavement again. The creature would not let go.
Her father continued to push and shove as he tried to steer the wheel and Coleen continued to panic and scream. A trivial jerk of the wheel, due to a slight hiccup in Coleen's screaming, caused the creature to lose its grip and drop from the now moving van onto the pavement where it's skull splattered itself.
The screaming silenced itself and both Coleen and her father looked at each other and let out a sigh of relief. Upon turning back to the road though they both found that a car had been precariously parked and left right in their way. The van went from 60mph to 0mph in nothing flat as it collided with a ford pickup truck left in the road by the stranger who ate the other stranger's dog.
Coleen's father was killed on impact due to his lack of seatbelt, Coleen survived for several different reasons one of them being that she always put her seatbelt on whenever entering a motorized vehicle. Many might call her dad lucky because the blood that had been spat on him carried the infection and if he had been alive for exactly forty five more seconds Coleen would have had to watch her father kill her slowly and painfully with his bare hands. I guess that would make Coleen lucky, not her dad, but it's quite sick to call either of them lucky.
With the van rendered useless and her father's bloody body in the driver's seat Coleen fell from the van onto the pavement clutching her head with a sprung wrist. That was probably her only notable injury besides the large bruise that now stretches across her torso from where the seatbelt had set. She was crying unconsciously as she laid there unmoving for several moments before she finally tried to crawl.
She tried to muffle the scream of agony that made its way up her throat but to no avail; she had leaned right onto her sprung wrist. Dropping down onto her elbow she tried to catch her breath. For some reason the only thing going through her mind were the possible college acceptance letters, or it was until she heard a number of roars echo out from behind her.
Before even turning to see what had made the sounds she was forcing herself up through moans of pain and beginning to run. She was never a very athletic person, and her skinny legs wouldn't be able to carry her far but she didn't care. The pain and the fear was enough to keep the adrenaline pumping through her veins.
Her long brown hair bounced up and down as her uneven pace carried her down Route 1 back toward the center of Danville. She had to spit out the hair that kept flinging into her mouth and brushing away the sweat stained locks that got attached to her face and that seemed to annoy her more than the running did. Then she'd hear another scream and forget all about the hair and the pain and keep running.
Thoughts of her family and friends kept bursting into her vision, but she just kept shoving them off as she tried to concentrate on surviving long enough to see her family and friends again. Her train of thought began to focus on her breathing, trying to keep it even. She remembered a good friend of hers had told her something about the key to running was breathing. The information seemed useless at the time, now she felt grateful.
Her raggedy black and white converse made loud flopping noises as the connected with the concrete and she matched her breathing with each foot step making a sort of beat. It reminded her of the high school band, and how this year was her last year to be a part of it. She shoved the thoughts out again with a shake of her head.
The sinking feeling returned again when she approached the YMCA on Route 1, not that it was a completely bad place it was just that she had felt like she ran further than that. The YMCA was only a few blocks from her church but her legs, and her head, felt as if she had ran for miles and miles. That's when the exhaustion hit her like a tidal wave, almost making her collapse right there on the ground to be devoured by hoards of the undead.
It was their roars that kept her moving. She looked both ways before crossing the street, which was probably a smart idea with all the people panicking to get out of the city. It only took maybe thirty minutes for the entire city to get wind of the infection, and another thirty minutes for everyone to have witnessed it. There wasn't a single soul still in a twelve mile radius.
After hopping the curb on the other side of Route 1 she began to run toward the entrance to the YMCA hoping that maybe it was safe. It didn't hit her that there were plenty of people running out of it already, carrying their loved ones bloody bodies or being chased by some stranger with a hunger for blood and the insides of the living.
That's when she spotted it; the emerald green mustang that she had come to know for many years now. The owner of it was someone she knew all too well but hadn't spoken to for a while. Supposedly he had moved out of state, some even say that he had died and now that Coleen thought about it she wasn't even sure if it was his mustang. There are plenty of green mustangs in this city alone.
She had a gut feeling though, and those gut feelings always seemed to be correct, so she went with it. While rushing across the small patch of grass a few blood thirsty creatures from hell got whiff of her scent and began to chase after her, keeping their blood shot eyes aimed on her pale skin. She stumbled a bit and began to let out little shrieks as the zombies grew ever closer and the mustang seemed to stay the same distance.
Reaching the driver's side door she prayed to god that it was unlocked, and luckily for her it was (it had to his car, she thought). She instinctively lowered the seat and dove into the cramped back seat like she always used to, turning just in time to kick at the zombie that was trying to join her. After a few kicks from her already exhausted legs she reached forward and pulled the door shut, cutting off a finger or two from the decaying hand that tried to grope her.
She would have been able to relax then if the monsters outside would have left her alone, but they kept screaming and pounding on the window causing her to curl up in a U-shape in the back of this mustang. She silently prayed that the windows would hold under the pressure and tears began to stream down her face. Her life began to splay before her eyes but she was too tired to sit through it all and she fell asleep. She found her life boring anyways.