Chapter 2: Opening Pandora's Box
The desert was as still, the sky was still dark and stars were scattered across the sky, they shone brighter than anything Virgil had seen before, but living in the city his old time that really wasn't saying much. While Virgil was asleep he started to have a nightmare, it was about what Sonic had been afraid of coming true.
Virgil was staring at Sonic, an animalistic growl escaped from Virgil's mouth and he started to run forward, with the intention of killing and eating his brother. Sonic slowly raised a gun and whispered, "I told you…" before Sonic shot Virgil realized what he was doing, he tried to scream, "Sonic!" BANG! Virgil watched in slow motion as the bullet flew towards his chest, but he couldn't move, it was seconds before it hit him then…
CRASH! Virgil jumped up from his spot, pulled out his knife and looked around for the source of the noise. He found the source of the reason, his motorcycle was destroyed, and it more resembled a crumpled piece of paper rather then the motorcycle it once was. "You have GOT to be shitting me." He rubbed his eyes, no it really happened, and he was out of a vehicle.
Virgil sighed angrily and mumbled, 'just fucking great' and put away his knife. He holstered his knife, lay down and went back to sleep. The next morning he quickly got up and walked over to his old bike. He wanted to check if his radio was still working, luckily for him it was. He quickly flipped the switch and waited…
"Hello this is Sonic's convoy is anybody in there?" Virgil sighed angrily and grudgingly responded,
"I'm here, do you guys know where you are?" there was a pause, apparently the voice hadn't expected anyone to respond, Virgil grew impatient,
"Hello? If you don't want me to meet up with ya just say so." The voice obviously found his voice again,
"Sorry, I just didn't expect for anyone to respond." Virgil could understand that,
"Where are you?" Virgil inquired,
"We're a couple of miles south of Vegas." Virgil nodded his head; he was probably three miles away from Vegas, which helped a little bit.
"Okay, I know where that is, when you get there just wait and I'll be there soon." The voice grew happy to know there were people still alive,
"Gotcha see ya soon." The radio clicked and grew silent, Virgil turned it off, put it in his pocked, grabbed his katana, put it on his back and walked north towards the only chance he had to survival.
A mile north of Virgil was Sonic and his convoy was listening to Rotor's excited voice,
"I heard a person that sounded like a teenager, he said he was close to Vegas and we're going to meet up there!" Rotor wasn't even trying to hide the glee in his voice, Sonic and everyone else was glad there was a survivor out there, that added a little bit of hope. Sonic then said,
"Well when we get there we'll find supplies and gas, then we'll wait there for this mystery person." The others nodded but Shadow wasn't so sure,
"But Vegas is a huge fucking city! And there's BOUND to be zombies there!" Sonic nodded, but he had a comeback to that,
"I know but we've drained every small town for months, Vegas is the only sure place we'll find gas." Shadow was about to retort but Knuckles interrupted,
"Remember, when there isn't anyone to eat, zombies always leave quickly. And my guess is Vegas has been empty for a year at least, so there should only be a few left, and we could take 'em easily." Shadow nodded but he didn't feel so good about going to Vegas, he had a gut instinct that something was going to happen, whether good or bad he didn't know. The others got into their vehicles and so did Shadow, they made their way to Vegas.
When they got there they were in store for a terrible surprise, Vegas was practically a desert. Sand covered everything, Buildings were destroyed and there wasn't a gas station in sight.
"Desert must have stolen it back." Shadow mumbled, "where are we going to get gas now?" Shadow asked out loud, Knuckles, who was driving the truck, looked around and then smiled,
"That tunnel leads to valet parking, valet parking has gas stations, and since it was underground there shouldn't be any sand down there." Shadow looked at the red smirking guy,
"How the hell do you know that?" Shadow asked shocked, Knuckles sighed,
"I came here about four years ago, fifty bucks in and drove off with a cool ten g's." Shadow just stared; he couldn't say anything to that. Knuckles smiled and picked up a walkie-talkie each vehicle held, "Those tunnels are valet parking and they always have gas pumps."
"Gotcha buddy." Sonic responded, the vehicles slowly made their way into the tunnels, one person was riding on each vehicle with a gun, Shadow was on the truck, Silver was on the SUV, Bunnie was on the school bus, while Sally was inside, Rotor was on the radio station van while Amy drove, and Rouge was on the Ambulance vehicle. They carefully watched for anything dangerous, it didn't take long for them to reach the gas pumps.
While they were refueling the cars, they didn't know that the noise of the cars woke up something a couple of levels down in the tunnels. After they got filled up and got back in the cars, Shadow commented,
"Something doesn't feel right…" but he did the only thing he could do, hold his gun up and watch for anything dangerous. After a few minutes they made it out of the tunnels. The people on top of the vehicles jumped off, and the crowd of people started to get out of the bus. Then Shadow heard something…he looked towards the tunnel and strained his eyes, and saw something he didn't want to see, a zombie. And if there was one then that meant…
"EVERYONE GET BACK IN THE BUS NOW!" he yelled, they all looked towards the tunnel and did as they were told, but unfortunately they were waiting for someone and one thing they weren't going to do was run off and leave the zombies to that someone. So they did what they could, they pulled out guns and started to fire.
A small horde of zombies started to run out of the tunnel, all wanting to eat the group of people in front of them, the zombies started to get closer and closer to the group of people. Blood was spraying all over the place from the multiple gunshots to the multiple zombies. After only a few minutes of zombies littered the ground, and the sand was painted with blood.
Everyone lowered their guns Sonic slowly walked forward to the group of zombies, Sonic looked at them for a moment and then exhaled, he turned around and started to walk away with a happy smile on his face. But what he didn't notice was one of the zombies getting up; everyone was too shocked to say anything but Sonic heard the footsteps.
He turned around to see a zombie about a foot away from him but then, SLICE!The zombie's head went flying into the air, spinning like a football, and blood erupted from the neck like a fountain. Sonic looked at his savior, a person in a leather jacket, a red t-shirt, jeans and black boots, Sonic saw what had sliced off the zombie's head. It was a katana, whose blade was about three and half feet long, but that wasn't what was strange, there was a three foot chain attached to the end of the handle. That along with the estimated three foot long arm gave quite amount of distance for sword.
The figure yanked on the chain and the blade flew back towards his outreached hand, he caught it and with a quite slice made the blood fly off the blade. He then returned it to the sheath that was strapped to his back, he walked forward and lowered his hood to show a teenage fox, he had sky blue eyes, sand colored fur and his face was half covered by spikes of hair that laid from the top of his head. He didn't say anything he just walked forward and stared at Sonic, obviously letting him speak first,
"Wow, interesting choice of weapon ya got there!" Sonic said trying to sound nice Virgil shrugged,
"Makes killing zombies fun." Sonic was shocked at the answer,
"Killing is fun to you?" Virgil just sighed,
"Well if we've got to survive by killing zombies might as well make it somewhat entertaining." The gang walked up to Sonic and Shadow grinned,
"I like this kid." Virgil looked at him and smirked also,
"Glad I'm likeable." Shadow extended his hand,
"Shadow." Virgil shook it,
"Virgil." They continued to walk back to the cars, Sonic looked at Virgil,
"Thanks for saving me." Virgil looked at him and shrugged, but didn't say anything. When they got everyone else saw Virgil and crowded around him, each asking questions about why he was alone, how young he was, if he would teach them that sword trick, and others.
Virgil didn't say anything, but luckily Sonic said,
"Okay you guys, get back in the vehicles and we can go find another place to crash for the night ok?" they all nodded and went back to the school bus, Sonic turned to Virgil, "Who you wanna ride with?" Virgil thought about it for a moment, he looked at Rotor,
"Well I don't know about you…so can I ride with ya?" Rotor nodded enthusiastically,
"Yeah! I don't have anyone to ride with. And I'm Rotor." Virgil nodded,
"Thanks." And with that he got into the van with Rotor. When they got back on the road, Virgil said, "you're the guy I talked to on the radio." Rotor looked at him and nodded.
"Yup! And to be honest I'm kinda glad you responded, I was starting to think there weren't any survivors." Virgil nodded at that,
"Yeah I can see that." He responded, Rotor than asked,
"You're definitely a skilled fighter for your age. How old are you?"
"I'm sixteen, and what can I say? I die hard." Virgil responded, but he couldn't help but flash back to when Sonic shot him,
"Yeah takes a lot to kill me." He mumbled, Rotor just laughed. After about an hour of driving Rotor finally asked,
"So what were you using to get around? Surely you weren't walking?" Virgil shook his head,
"No I had a motorcycle but I…wrecked it, damn zombies got to it." Virgil hoped Rotor would buy the lie, Rotor looked at the fox suspiciously, he could tell when people were lying but he dropped it…for now. The two didn't speak until they got to where they were going to stay for the night. Virgil watched as Rotor got something out from the back of the van and hand them to Sonic, they looked like spikes with cameras attached to them.
"Cameras and alarms." Rotor explained, Virgil nodded his head in agreement, Rotor got up and said, "I'll be right back." and walked away for a moment. When he came back he had two cans, he asked Virgil,
"You want beans, or soup?" Virgil thought about it for a moment,
"What kind of soup?" he inquired, Rotor looked at it,
"Silver said it was some kind of chicken soup." He responded,
"Soup." Virgil instantly said, Rotor handed him the can, Virgil opened it and quickly sucked down the soup. Rotor stared,
"You must have been pretty damn hungry." He observed Virgil just shrugged,
"I haven't eaten for the past couple of days." Virgil said as if it was no big deal, Rotor's eyes widened.
"We have extra if you need it!" Virgil just started to laugh, he tried to stop but couldn't, before too long he was rolling on the floor laughing, tears were coming out of his eyes. He slowly got up and was fighting to stop the giggles that were occasionally escaping from him, and other people were staring at him, along with Rotor.
"What?" he asked, Virgil just fought to get his breath back, and when he could speak he said,
"It's just been a long time since I met anyone who cared about me. Last group of people I met they chained me up and tried to steal myself and kill me." Rotor stared,
"What did ya do?" he inquired, not really wanting to hear the answer but wanting to at the same time,
"I shot 'em." was the reply, Rotor didn't say anything, just the way Virgil said it kind of scared him, a sixteen year old shouldn't be able to say 'I shot them' in a calm and matter of fact tone.
"What? They tried to kill me, so I killed them." Virgil said, Rotor didn't say anything, so Virgil just climbed into the front seat,
"I'm going to go to sleep I guess. Night Rotor." Virgil told Rotor,
"Yeah…good night…" Rotor mumbled, who climbed into his own bed and fell asleep.
Little did they know of what they did by letting Virgil into the group?
