Chapter Twenty-Six: TMTH
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Clary ran all the way down the beach to the next grassy opening. Her face was burning and her legs were ready to give in. She glanced behind again and saw the zombies only a few yards away. She kept running and turned into the next village.
This one was even worse. Before, the plaza was deserted, empty. Here, it was swarmed with dead people. Clary cursed and ran as quietly as she could into the infected village. Some zombies were too busy gnawing on people to notice her.
Unfortunately, not all of them. The Walkers growled and ran for her. She stared at them, not even bothering to run. She had nothing to give. As the first corpse ran up to her, it fell back onto its back. There was a hole in its head. Clary looked up and saw someone firing from a window. "Get inside!" He shouted. She ran inside the little house and locked the door. Clary's head was pounding. She took a few seconds to breathe.
Slowly, she made her way up the stairs. There were gun shots ringing in the room in front of her. Clary swallowed and opened the door.
To her surprise, it was yanked open. A brown-haired boy who was exceptionally taller than her walked back over to the window. "Here." He threw her a small, but heavy gun. "Think you can handle that?" He had a long, brown gun in his left hand. She nodded and rushed over to the wide window. There were zombies roaming around in the streets scattered with sand. The boy crouched behind the window and aimed for the walking corpses. She returned her gaze to the window. As he pulled the trigger, blood squirted out of one of the zombie's head. Clary knelt down, putting a little distance between her and the stranger. She fired at the Walkers, killing each one she shot at. "Not bad." The guy said. Clary was snapped out of focus.
"Not bad, yourself." She said without looking at him, but she could tell he was smiling. She aimed again and triggered the bullet. She watched as the bullet zoomed through two heads. Clary frowned as she noticed that the corpses were trying to break through the door. "The door." She told him.
He looked down below and cursed. "Well, I did see that coming." There were too many to aim at. Clary searched around the room. She ran over to the wooden table.
"How about this?" He turned as she pointed to the table. He walked over and helped her pick it up. Clary was puffing as they walked to the window. She looked into the boy's eyes, making sure he knew what they were doing. "One…two…" She grunted as they slammed the table down to the ground. The table crushed about half of the zombies, but the rest scrambled on top of it. Clary made an impatient noise as she pointed her gun directly to the ground. She dug the bullets into the Walkers' heads and watched them all collapse to the ground. None of the other demons seemed to be heading towards the house. They sat back.
"That's some aim you've got there." He said to her. "You're not from here, are you?" He said it as a statement.
"No. I just arrived here on the island yesterday." But it felt like years ago. She wiped the sweat off of her face with her tank top.
"Ah, so you came on the ship that sank?" He rubbed his chin. "Only a few survived. You're a lucky one. But you do seem like the survivor type."
Clary sat up straight. "Not so much; I barely had time to swim out before one of those zombies got to me." They were quiet for a while. Clary heard screams of children outside.
"My uncle was on that ship. And so was I." He looked at the floor. Clary knew he was lying. Everyone there was either a Shadowhunter or a Downworlder. And he looked so…normal. Most of the people like Clary couldn't shoot a gun as well as he did. She looked up at him. "Yes, we were Shadowhunters." Clary mentally rolled her eyes. I'll never be right. "He called me and told me he was coming down to Hawaii. So I went with him. He was the co-captain of the ship." Clary's eyes widened.
"He was, was he?" Clary clenched her fists.
He raised his eyebrows. "Wha-"
"The people who worked there tried to kill me." His expression was shocked. "They threw me in a room full of zombies and left me there to die. And I surely would have if I wasn't saved." She didn't mention who saved her. Clary doubted she'd ever see them again.
"I think…I might know why they did that to you." He said. "When my uncle found out about this plague, he went crazy. He tried to find a cure for it." That explains why there were labels on a corpse in that room I was locked in. "He said he'd do anything to prevent people from finding out that he was testing on zombies in that very ship. Because if one found out, then everyone would freak out and try to kill them all.
"So that's why he had a room full of zombies? To test on them?" That guy's insane. He endangered us all and ended up killing almost everyone on that ship.
He nodded. "So when he found out you got out of there alive, I saw him and the captain abandon the ship, because things were gonna be out of hand."
She was furious. Clary knew she couldn't take her anger out on him, it wasn't his fault. "But he could've asked me not to-"
Clary was cut off by the sound of a door opening downstairs. Their eyes went wide. They grabbed their guns and ran downstairs. Clary heard noises coming from the door. She nodded at the brown haired boy. They spun as he held up his gun.
Her heart skipped a beat when she saw her friends in front of her. Her face was lit up with a smile. She ran down the stairs and hugged Jace. "Clary, you had me worried sick. Us worried sick!" He said as he stroked her hair. Simon, Izzy, Alec and Magnus piled in and greeted Clary.
She looked around for Maryse and Robert. "Where're you parents? And Riley and her dad?" She almost choked saying her name.
Alec's mouth thinned. "We split up…to look for you."
Clary's smile subsided. "Oh, it's all my fault. I shouldn't have gone without telling you guys."
Isabelle shook her shoulders. "Clary, you know that's not true." That's not true either.
"And it would've been for nothing if someone hadn't saved me." Clary looked up at the boy on the staircase.
He waved. "'Name's John." Clary forgot to ask for his name.
Jace's arm tightened around her. "He saw me getting surrounded by all of those monsters. I almost collapsed on the way here." She stifled a laugh. Then she had another thought. "How did you run around all of those zombies?" She asked them.
They all looked at each other. Magnus shook his pre-glittered hair. "We ran around them!" They didn't look very proud. They frowned at him.
The door was being pounded on. John went serious. "You have to exit the other way, there're too many coming from there!" The Walkers were screeching and moaning from outside. John tossed her his gun. "Think you can handle that?" He smiled. There was a little bit of sadness in his eyes.
Clary didn't nod, but shook her head. "What?"
"What about you?" Simon yelled over the noise. In response, John lifted up his shirt, revealing a red-soaked bandage around his stomach.
"It's too late for me." He pulled it back down. The wood was arching from where the zombies were breaking through. He jumped down from the staircase and guided them backwards. "Run out that door. Take the big bag under the boulder. I'll hold them off for as long as I can-"
"NO! We're not leaving you in here." Clary started her way up to John. Jace and Alec held her back. He gave her the saddest smile she'd ever seen. They started to move back as the Walkers broke through. John turned to the bloody monsters as they closed the exit door. Clary heard him scream as the rest of the group pulled over the boulder. She didn't help them. She just stared at the door with her mouth open. Alec and Magnus held the bag.
"Clary, let's go!" Jace pulled her by the wrist. They ran from the house in the same direction Clary was running to when John had found her. They ran far from the distracted flesh-eating creatures. As Simon ran beside her, she passed him the brown hunting gun.
"I hope you can handle that." Clary said as she sniffed.
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Hello peers! SHOUT OUT TO jackforce17 AND PokemonForever124 for reviewing! There goes another chapter of mine. I kinda wanted it more exciting, but…meh. This chapter also answers a question from jackforce17. I know it's been a LONG, long while. But I promised to answer every question, right?...yeah. So pleeeaasse do me an itty bitty favor by reviewing and letting me know watcha think. Is there too much blood? Too much drama? Too much dialogue? Too much of slutty Clary? (haha jk) Feel free to comment or ask me some questions and I'll PM you back ;) Trust me…especially in the summer…I get SUPER bored…
~Beanie Wayland
P.S. The title-TMTH- stands for Too Much To Handle (quote quote, Danny Noriega!)