Chapter VII: Escape
Axl had been following Rick, running slower than he knew he could. The decrease in pace proved a bit annoying, as Axl could feel the wasted minutes begin to compile. However, it wasn't too far to the boy's apartment building. He had taken his shotgun back in hand and kept on alert, scouting the area constantly as they ran. No matter what, he swore to himself this kid and his family were getting out alive.
Unfortunately, it was really Axl who had been taking too much time and moving too slowly. Rick was far enough now to be out of safety range. He turned left on the corner at the intersection ahead and out of Axl's sight.
"Hey, wait up!" Axl shouted as he sped up to catch him. Rick walked backward into view again, his face frozen.
"Rick!" Axl furrowed his brow; he didn't like the look of this, something was definitely wrong. Then the smell hit his nose, a foul, sickly odor that smelled of slime and blood. "Holy Rick, get back here!" He double-timed it over there and reached the corner, skidding to a halt behind Rick.
What crept forward was without a doubt one of the deadly Hunter Beta B.O.W.'s, its scales dripped slime onto the pavement as it took large but slow steps toward them, leaving its clawed hands dangling at its sides. It stopped just five feet from Rick and Axl and gave a screeching hiss, causing Rick to trip and fall backward.
Axl on the other hand was not impressed; He pointed his shotgun while it was still roaring and blasted it, ending the creature's screech prematurely. It stumbled a bit toward them and collapsed forward, falling onto Rick. He kicked the bloody mass off himself immediately.
"Yeech, that's just nasty." The boy got up and looked down at the blood on his pants. "Awww, Mom would kill me if this stained!"
Axl rested the shotgun over his right shoulder and laughed, "When you live to fight these things you get used to the mess." He shifted his view onto the Hunter Beta and his expression changed as the oddity came to his attention, "But it's strange, you usually don't run into these things in the field. They release them by important locations in desperate situations; they don't just let them roam. There's no way one of these things could have wandered this far on its own"
Rick also looked at the dead hunter, cringing at its putrid smell, "What do you mean? Should there be more of them?"
"No, no. It's just odd." Axl grabbed the kid's arm and helped him up. "How much further till we get to your place?"
Rick was still looking at gory heap as he began to speak, "It's just down the block, it's the tallest apartment" he turned his head upward, staring silently in a state of shock even worse than before. He gazed at his building with his mouth open wide.
Axl saw it too, gripping his shotgun tightly he witnessed the red-bricked, six-story apartment building ahead covered by dozens of zombies crawling up its walls. The horrible moaning of such a number of zombies was terrible, the true sound of the walking dead. Clumsily the monsters scaled the brick, some breaking off pieces and others slipping and falling, but all of them seemed to be headed toward the top floor. Some had reached the windows already and were trying to smash them with their arms.
Suddenly, the flash of shotgun fire erupted from the windows, sending shards of glass with the scatter shot into the virals. Two people appeared from the window and fired several shots at the infected humans scaling the wall, knocking only a fraction down as the resounding noises of their weapons broke through the moans and death-gasps. They went back inside, their silhouettes moving back and forth in the windows.
Axl growled, "What in the hell? How are they all attacking a large structure at once? They don't have the intelligence for an assault like this!"
Rick screamed, "Oh my God! My family is on the top floor! We have to save them!"
"Run to the car and get it ready to go, I'll save them!" Axl wasted no time and dashed toward the house while Rick ran to the safety of the car.
Axl could see in the other windows below that zombies had also begun climbing the stairwells in huge masses. He had to act fast, or the monsters would overrun the people trapped upstairs. He could not bear to face the death of Rick's family; Rick would lose his family to the virus and become an orphan just as Axl had. This, the Viral Hunter could not allow. It was this thought that drove him into that building.
Axl kicked down the decorative double doors in the front of the building, firing at the zombies at the base of the stairs at first sight. The muggy, humid air rushed past him as he ran up, firing away at the crowded zombies on the staircase and jumping over them as he passed. He hadn't reached the second floor when his Benelli ran out of shells.
"Damn it! No time to reload!" he yelled, tossing it into place on his back. The zombies further up the large, square stairwell had now realized the presence of the V-Hunter and walked down to attack. Axl gave a weak smile; he did not let this deter him in the least as he decided to go with another approach.
As they came into range, Axl gave a stout yell as drew his sword and began swinging it left and right in crude, powerful slashes, clearing the path of monsters as he moved forward with each swing.
"Now is not the time for finesse, so you're gonna have to excuse me!" Axl took a moment to look back down the path, and gritted his teeth in anger as a few drops of sweat fell from under the brim of his hat. The zombies below that had survived the shotgun blasts were now risen again and began their walk up the stairs once more.
He looked back up, a zombie too close for even him to like stood before him. He could see in the musty glow from the light of the windows the severe lacerations in the rotting flesh, caused by the nature of the virus. He swung his sword up, cutting the front of the zombie, causing it to stagger, and brought it back down.
"HA!" He cleaved the zombie in half, realizing it was the last of that segment of stairway, from the head down with a powerful slash, planting his sword into the wooden stairs. He placed his foot next to the blade and pulled it out with a grunt. "I'll hack my way through a hundred stories of these things before I let you freaks get to those people!"
Axl was about to run up again, his rage pushing him onward, until he heard the repeated sound of shotgun fire ringing through the upstairs. The sounds grew louder and louder, with Axl just standing still and listening, forced to breathe in the aroma of decayed blood and viral innards as he waited to see.
Then he heard a woman shriek, "Keep shooting, Gary! I've got Katie!"
Down the stairs came a well-built man in his late 30's with short, curly blond hair, wearing a dress shirt and pants, carrying a Remington 870 shotgun. Behind him followed a woman with long, chestnut hair in a simple yellow dress, carrying the same type rifle in one hand and a little three year old girl in the other. She frantically put a few shells into her rifle the best she could while holding the little girl as she ran with her husband.
The man yelled back to her, "Regina, we'll get out of here, and we'll get Rick too! Don't worry!" The man stopped when he saw Axl, who had put his sword back in its sheath.
Axl didn't need to say a word as they looked at each other for only a second. Axl then drew his .357 and smirked. Both nodded to affirm they knew they were fighting the same fight. Axl spun 180 degrees and fired at a rising zombie a few steps below, and led the way as they began to run down the now blood-soaked stairs, blasting away at the zombies Axl hadn't killed on the way up.
Axl yelled to the family as he wasted two zombies with the same round, "Are all of you all right?"
Gary, the father, yelled back, "Yeah! But we've never seen this many before!" He fired a shotgun blast over the railing at a zombie a floor below, "There's no way we can fight them all, so we need to escape! We have a Humvee around back, we'll head to it!"
Axl grumbled, "I know that already, sheesh! They always have to remind me I don't have a friggin' car!" He ejected the empty shells of his pistol as the four of them glided down the stairs and used a speed loader to reload in an instant.
They had reached the bottom of the stairs. The numbers of infected humans was now significantly less, but still a danger. Axl jumped down the last few steps onto a zombie, knocking it onto the floor, and blew its head off while it was still on the ground. The window broke and Axl heard another familiar hiss, and instinctively went into a firing stance, aiming his revolver toward the noise. Just as he thought, a licker stood in front of the broken window.
The licker saw him and launched its tongue from halfway across the main foyer. Axl aimed briefly and shot through the tip of the tongue and through the back of the licker's head, splattering the contents on the wall.
He lowered his pistol slightly from his eyesight, feeling the need for a glib remark. "You didn't like the taste of THAT, did ya?!"
Gary and Regina had also been busy, holding off the other zombies that were coming in from the sides with their spread-shot rifles. Their shotguns clicked as they, too, ran out of shells, but they had succeeded in clearing the way. All of them ran out the doors and into the sunlight.
-
As they ran into the open, the black Humvee drove out of the alleyway to the right of the building, swerving in front of them. Rick jumped out of the driver's seat and crawled into the back to make room for everyone.
The father saw his son, and shouted with an overjoyed look on his face, "Oh thank God! Ricky's in the car!"
The mother also saw him and sighed with relief, calming her fears that she might have lost him. Gary took the driver's seat while the mother placed Katie in Rick's arms before quickly slipping into the passenger side at the front, slamming the door behind her.
She leaned over the seat and pulled Rick up to her, kissing his cheek and hugged him tightly, "My baby! You're safe, I can't believe it!" She began to cry as the father reached back and ruffled his hair, smiling while holding back his own tears of joy.
She sniffed from her crying, "When all the monsters showed up I could only think of you still out there, looking for more supplies. We were so scared they had gotten you!"
Rick smiled, "Don't worry momma! Axl saved me from the dogs! He's really cool!"
The father laughed and shook his head, turning back to the steering wheel. They were going to get out as a family.
However, Axl was still outside. He had stopped next to the car and held his pistol out, shooting at several zombies who had not given up, with each shot finding its mark either at the head or upper body. As he fought them off and kept them from advancing, he waited for everyone to get settled as he constantly kept looking back, checking through the windows that everyone was secure.
He spoke so they could hear him from outside the car once he saw they were ready, "You get going! I'll be fine, just get out of the city as fast as you can!" He fired his last round in the magnum and used another speed loader to reload. He then holstered his sidearm.
"All right, Ax, just lead them away" Axl began to walk away at a brisk pace, keeping his sights on the main group of zombies. He wanted to draw the creatures' attention away from the vehicle and to keep his distance from the infected so he could blast them and make a break for it when it came time. He glanced at the car for a moment, "Good luck you guys, at least we know you'll make it." Turning his gaze back to the zombies, he began to think of a plan of escape for himself.
"Wait!" Gary had stepped out of the car and shouted from over the roof of the black vehicle, causing Axl to halt. "Just come with us, at least let us drive you out of this area! It's crawling with monsters!"
Axl looked back from under his hat, the breeze kicking his shirt up slightly. It would be better if he stayed with them until they were out of the area to follow through with his task of evacuating them safely. Also, fighting his way out seemed to be a waste of precious ammunition that might be vital against stronger enemies later on, and he had already spent almost all his shotgun ammo.
Axl muttered, "Oh, what the hell" He turned and ran to the car, sliding over its hood Dukes of Hazard style. He jumped into the left side back seat, shutting the door.
"Well, let's get out of here already!" The car's tires screeched as the father hit the gas pedal. Axl felt the rush as the vehicle sped from the zombies now entering the streets. Despite this, several things kept nagging him. How could those things have organized out of nowhere? How did that MA 121B hunter get so far on its own? Axl's stomach felt uneasy, and it sure as heck wasn't the candy bar.
