I see Nikita's face light up when she hears the voice coming from under the bed. She dives to the floor and starts crying with joy, squealing something in Russian. The only word I can pick out of her sentence is the name 'Kirstie'. I smile when I guess that it's her sister, and my suspicion is confirmed when a small, bloodstained hand reaches out from under the bed and grabs onto Nikita's. The girls scrambles quickly out from under the bed and is caught by Nikita in a sisterly embrace.
I notice that the girl looks the same age as Pete and I start to worry. I don't want anyone to find out about Pete's bite, but I don't want to ignore it either. The more people that are oblivious to it, the more dangerous it becomes.
Kirstie looks at me, saying something in Russian that I don't understand.
Nikita responds with, "This is Aaron, he saved my life."
"And he doesn't speak Russian," I add.
Kirstie laughs and dives into my stomach, hugging me around the waist.
"Thankyou for saving Nikki," The young girl says, tears forming in her eyes too.
The girl is wearing a frilly pink dress, not something I'd recommend a girl wearing during a zombie apocalypse. I guess Nikita is trying to keep her pure, and not corrupt by a strict dress code of violence. I rest my hands on her shoulders and smile at her, getting down on my knee so I can look her in the eyes. Her face is covered with blood and it smells foul. I wipe some of the blood off her face and smell it.
"How did you get covered in blood?" I ask Kirstie.
"When Nikki left me, they broke in and attacked me," The young girl replies.
"Oh god," Nikita says, diving down beside Kirstie, "are you ok?"
"Yeah, I got them, just like you told me to," Kirstie said, smiling up at her older sister.
I couldn't help but smile, her courage reminds me of Pete's courage, making me feel even worse about neglecting him so much recently.
"Well…" I cough awkwardly, breaking the silence, "I'm off then, good day to you."
"Good day?" Nikita laughs.
"Come with us!" Kirstie says.
"No Kirstie, Aaron here has a group to get back to." Nikita tells her.
I see tears start to form in Kirstie's eyes, I doubt she understands why anyone would walk away alone.
"We'll come with you!" Kirstie cries.
I look at Nikita, she stares at me with a blank expression.
"There's no reason you can't," I say. Kirstie lights up like a christmas tree. "But my group is half an hour away, can you ride a bike for that long?"
Kirstie looks down and starts kicking the ground. "I don't know how to ride a bike," She says quietly.
"That's ok, Nikita can ride it, you can stand on the back," I respond cheerfully.
"I uh-," Nikita starts.
"Nikki can't ride a bike!" Kirstie wails childishly.
I try to surpress a smile, but I can't help one from breaking out on my face.
"Don't laugh," Nikita says, averting her eyes downwards, "our parents never taught either of us how to ride a bicycle."
"I could always teach you, it's not that hard you know, you just push your feet on the pedals," I respond casually.
"Sounds easier than it looks," Nikita responds, her mind drifting back to when she was riding on the back of the bike over here.
"Here, come on," I say, gesturing them to follow me and leading them out of the dark house into the daylight.
I pick up the skateboard and put it on the road, standing on it to get a feel for it's balance while I explain to Nikita how to ride a bike. The second I stand on the board, my years of skating, before all this happened, comes flooding back to me.
Nikita awkwardly climbs onto the bike, sitting down on the seat slowly.
"This seat is weird," Nikita complains.
"What do you mean?" I ask.
"It's uncomfortable," She says.
I laugh, "You'll get used to it."
I spend the next few minutes walking alongside Nikita, holding the left handlebar while she tried to keep her balance.
"It's easier when you're moving, trust me, much easier," I tell her, "but if you don't know what you're doing and I let you start off moving, you're going to fall off, and that wouldn't be fun."
"I'm going to stand on the back, with Nikki?" Kirstie complains.
"You'll be fine," I tell Kirstie, "Now I'm going to let go of the handlebars, give it a go," I say to Nikita.
"Are you sure?" Nikita asks, her voice shaking and her face looking terrified.
"It's just a bike, everyone learned how to ride one-," I start, but stop, "Well… almost everyone learned to ride one as a kid."
I let go of the handlebars, Nikita starts pedalling, her legs shaking as she meets the resistance of the pedals. Her speed slowly increases as I watch her taking off down the street. I smile and Kirstie laughs childishly, clapping for her sister. I see Nikita starting to wobble about and I panic, but she starts to turn and I realise that that's all she was trying to do.
When she comes past, She squeezes the hand brakes, skidding down to a stop.
"Woo!" Kirstie cheers.
"Well done, you did really well for your first time," I congratulate her.
"That was really fun!" Nikita says, smiling.
"Just remember," I warn her, "you're not riding it for fun, you're using it to get away."
"You're a buzzkill arent you?" Nikita laughs.
I see a few zombies starting to shuffle into the end of the street in the distance.
"Time to go," I warn the two, picking Kirstie up and putting her on the back of the bicycle, "just hold onto Nikita."
"What about you?" Kirstie asks, looking at me desperately.
"I brought this for a reason," I say triumphantly, crouching down and picking the skateboard up.
"Can you even ride one of those?" Nikita asks me.
"Now's not the time to tell me you can!" I complain.
"I can't, I was just wondering." Nikita says.
I throw the skateboard down and leap onto it quickly, pushing myself around for a few seconds. When I'm sure that I've got a good feel for the balance of the board, I stop and turn to Nikita and Kirstie.
"Follow me, keep up, don't get grabbed," I list.
"And don't fall off," Nikita adds.
"Right," I conclude, turning to take off down the street.
I take a good look while I'm skating downhill to gain a bit of speed. More and more zombies are passing by the end of the street. I can already tell that it's going to be difficult to get past them, but at least I can tell that it's the horde from before. If we can pass them, we might have a smooth trip back to the group.
I put my hands down by my knees to keep my center of balance closer to the ground, that's when I feel the hilt of something against my leg. I look down and my eyes widen when I see a cleaver tied to my leg. I completely forgot that I had brought it with me. I draw it out, gripping it in my right hand. If I have to fight any of them off, I can tell it'd be easier with this.
Nikita rides up alongside me, her hair flailing behind her flicking off flakes of dried blood. Kirstie's looks so similar, except the blood in hers is wet, which concerns me.
"Where'd you get that?" Nikita asks.
"I had it this whole time," I answer, still shocked that I hadn't noticed it.
"And you didn't notice?" Nikita presses.
"That's exactly what I'm surprised about.," I say.
We approach the end of the street, Nikita stays by my side, I dodge the occasional zombie by swerving to the side. When I look up from curving around a corpse, I see a wrecked car, it's frame completely rusted. Nikita has already moved to avoid it, but I wont have enough time.
I do something insane that I wouldn't have ever tried before. I don't even know why I do it, but I start to speed up, aiming myself directly for the car. When the car is right in front of me, Nikita shouts out. I jump, putting my hands on the roof of the car, throwing myself up onto the roof of the car. I slide along the top of the car, pushing myself upwards at the end of it and flicking my legs down underneath me.
When I slide down off the end of the car, the board comes out right underneath me, right where I assumed it would be. I fall the final distance, bending my knees and bracing myself for the landing. When I hit the board, I maintain my balance, only shaking a little bit in the first second.
My body keeps pushing the board as though nothing happened, but I'm completely shocked about how that even happened.
Nikita comes up alongside me again, completely shocked just like I am.
"How did you do that?" She asks.
"I have no idea…" I respond, "But you should probably stay behind me from here."
"Why's that?" Nikita asks, thinking that I'm doubting her ability.
"Because I have the cleaver," I say, "…and I can jump cars." I add slyly at the end.
When we reach the end of the street, I start wheeling my hand, preparing to cleave the head off any zombie that comes near me. Once again, I'm shocked at myself, I'm not scared of the zombies, but I'm actually taking charge of the situation.
When the first of the zombies begin to notice us, there are blood-curdling howls from the front few rows. I keep my head clear and duck quickly, narrowly avoiding a swiping zombie's arm. When it hits Nikita, she yells out, but luckily it didn't grab her. I remind myself that I should clear the way because it's harder for her to dodge things that I can avoid.
A few zombie's take similar swipes at me, but I cut their hands of, several at the wrist and one at the elbow. The rotting bodies make it incredibly easy to sever limbs thankfully.
As we continue to travel through the horde, I notice that the end is in sight, I assume that more than half of the zombies had cleared off, otherwise the road ahead would be a river of zombies. Nikita must have seen the end too as she races ahead of me.
"Nikita!" I shout out, "Come back!"
"I can see the end!" She calls back to me.
I devote all my attention to catching up to her, digging my leg hard down into the bitumen to thrust the board forward. I see a zombie dive at the bike and feel the blood drain from my face, she gets past it because of how fast she is travelling which relieves me. Then I realise that the zombie fell in my path. I dig my heel into the back of the board and leap off, flicking it up into the air under me. Landing back on the board after I clear the zombie.
Nikita has pushed her way out of the horde and is now waiting at the end for me. I sigh a breath of relief, but I remember to tell her not to do anything like that again, Kirstie was close to being grabbed off the back when that zombie leapt at the bike.
"That was really dangerous," I tell her, catching up and slowing down.
"I got out didn't I?" Nikita says.
"You nearly didn't…" I quietly say.
Kirstie yells and I turn to see what she is looking at. The zombie horde has turned to see where we went, and is starting an approach towards us.
"We'd better get going," Nikita says.
"Stay near me this time," I warn her, "don't ride off like that."
We quickly make off for the group, I point Nikita in the right direction. There are no more zombies for the entire trip, meaning Nikita never bolted off.
When I get back to the street where the group was, I see something that makes my legs no numb. The truck is gone.
"Shit…" I say
"Holy shit," Nikita echos.
I look at her and realise that she's talking about the wall of zombies. But I jump off the board, picking it up, and I start looking around for anyone, though everyone seems to be gone without a trace of warning.