Chapter eleven: Paradise Lost
Day eleven since the world ended was a pretty shitty day for Mark and Alec. Waking up around noon hung over like hell on the floor and on the sofa. The days since they arrived at the mall had been a blur of boredom, drunkenness and sleeping. With nothing special to do the two boys tended to spend most of their awake time drinking and destroying things. Gerald, Brandon, Ryan and Terry moved out of the shop and into a record store on the opposite side of the mall. It turned into the new hangout place of everyone ranging from fifteen to thirty, a place to spend time drunk hitting on people of the opposite sex and listen to music. Almost like a night-club open twenty four seven. Michael hadn't been seen for a few days, he moved to some place on the second floor and didn't speak to anyone anymore. The amount of zombies finding their way to the mall grew over the days into fifteen to twenty a day instead of five. A guard schedule had to be set up and now five guards were on watch all the time. Another issue was that ammunition was running low and if the zombies kept coming like this they would be completely dry in a few days. But that was nothing Mark and Alec cared about right now.
"Where's the aspirin?" Alec asked his friend as he noticed that he was awake too.
"Don't know. Bad hangover?" Mark said.
"Mighty bad. How about you?" Alec said and sat up on the floor, as he sat up the headache got ten times more intense.
"Not to good. I tried not to drink too much last night. Don't really know if it worked out." Mark said and stood up and looked around. He couldn't see anyone else in the shop. He guessed they had went up to the roof or something to enjoy the day.
While Mark searched the mini cooler by his bed for something to eat Alec searched for aspirin. After a while both of them found what they searched for and sat down in the sofa in front of the TV playing a couple of episodes of Simpsons.
"So, what are we gonna do today?" Mark asked his friend.
"Don't know. The usual?" Alec answered.
"Maybe. There should be something else to do, shouldn't it?" Mark said.
"Like what?" Was the answer he got.
"Dunno. Wash up? At least that's what I'm going to do." Mark said. "I kinda feel it's what I'm going to do as soon as this episode ends."
They watched the rest of the episode and then Mark grabbed some new clothes and went to wash up. The clothes this time was a pair of jeans of the same brand as usual and a white T-shirt instead of standard black. On his way to the staff room he ran into Jessica looking as good as usual.
"Hello, where were you last night?" Mark asked.
"I went home early. I was tired and didn't want to be to hung over today. What happened after I left?"
"Oh, the usual stuff. Alec getting way to drunk and hitting on Maria, Ryan and Brandon fighting for fun and Travis the punk rocker trying to talk politics with everyone. You didn't miss anything." He said.
"Ok. I was going back to our place to tell you guys that Skip has called for a meeting later this afternoon and that everyone should be there. What are you going to do today?" She said.
"Right now the only thing I've got planned is taking a shower. What about you?" He answered.
"Nothing really. I was sitting at the roof reading when Jay, the soldier guy, came up and told everyone that Skip was going to have a meeting of some kind at four. He didn't say what it was about. I think dad is involved in it for some reason." Jessica said.
"He's been hanging with Skip a lot hasn't he?" Mark stated.
"Yeah, he's taking the whole leader role kinda serious. A leftover from the glorious days on the road." She said and chuckled a little. Mark joined in.
"He's a good guy and a good leader. He brought us here didn't he?" Mark said.
"I guess so." Jessica said.
"What are you gonna do now?" Mark asked.
"I'm gonna go back home and just slack for a while. Then I guess there's the meeting to go to at four." She told him.
"Okay, see you around." Mark said and continued to the staff room. This time he was alone and could walk straight into the shower.
He returned to the store after stopping by talking to some newly found friends and grabbing something to eat. Alec wasn't there, he'd probably left for an early start of drinking at Bran's place. Jessica sat in one of the three couches in the store reading and listening to music as usual and Mark didn't feel for disturbing her. He sat down in his own sofa and started the DVD. He changed the disc with Simpsons on it to one with some B-movie on it. Then he just sat back and enjoyed the cheesy plot and bad acting. After a while he stopped trying to figure out what the hell the movie was about and only check for mistakes in it. and that wasn't too hard. A little later he didn't care about the movie at all and just thought about things, life before the Change and life after the Change. What he missed in the old days and how strange life was now. He sat there brooding until the movies end credits entered the TV-screen. He sat there while all the credits, from the "stars" of the movie to the directors assistants, travelled over the screen. He switched movie to another one, one with a bigger budget. It was one of those long movies that played for almost three hours. He didn't finish watching since Jessica told him that the time was 15.55 and that it would be wise to go to the meeting. The two of them walked to the so called town square of the mall where most people had gathered around a podium someone had built out of boarding together a couple of tables. At the same time that Mark and Jessica got there Skip stepped up on the podium and started talking. He looked like last time Mark had seen him but had dark rings around his eyes that told everyone that he hadn't slept much the last days. When he talked he sounded like a president talking to his party during election time.
"As everyone who's been up on the roof for the last days has noticed there's a lot more infected milling around down there. This far we have been successful in putting them down as soon as we see them, but there's a problem. We're running out of ammo. If it keeps on like this we wont have any bullets left and that would eliminate any way to get out of here as soon as we get contact with the rest of the world which we are trying to with the radios we brought when we came here." He stopped for a while and let the words sink into the crowd.
"The only 'plan' me and Steve could come up with was that we simply would head into town and raid a gun shop..." He was interrupted by someone in the crowd.
"That's suicide and you know it!" A man in the crowd shouted. Skip nodded.
"I know it's damn risky to do something like that. The town is probably crowded with the infected ones. But we can either do that and maybe die or sit in here and not be able to get out when we finally make contact with someone else. I'm not ordering anyone to come with me, simply asking anyone who feels that he or she has got balls enough to go out there. With me, Malcolm (national guardsman in bad looking shirt), Eric (national guardsman two), Steve and Carl we've got five people. We need a lot more than that. Some to act bait and draw most of the infected away, some to load up the stuff in cars and some others to hold the infected away. You who feel brave enough to do this can stay, the rest of you can leave and do whatever you want." He didn't say anything else and most of the people walked away. Mark stayed while Skip went through the plan.
The next day Mark and Alec sat in the pickup once again, but with the addition of Travis the Punk-rocker between them. Travis had become a very good friend with Mark and Alec and had volunteered as soon as he saw that his two friends were staying, his fellow punk rocker friend had stayed behind, not really seeing the point in doing something dangerous someone else could do instead. Jessica had wanted to come with them but Steve had forbidden her. Almost thirty people had volunteered to what might be a suicide mission. The first thing to do was to have the 'bate' car, who as usual was driven by Brandon, Ryan and Gerald, drive past the gun shop and attract the attention of all the zombies in the neighbourhood. Then the rest of the group was going to drive up to the store, park in a half circle around the shop and get out. While there the people with guns were going to cover the rest who were going inside and take whatever they could find. A simple plan that probably would work. Alec drove the car as usual and Mark simply tried to relax. Actually he wondered why he had volunteered on such a dangerous thing like this. Standing there in the crowd while Skip had gone through the situation it had felt like one of those "what the hell, at least I'll get good karma" times. But this wasn't giving some change to a hobo, it was life and death. Out of the thirty people that had volunteered to the mission twenty seven was armed, including Mark and Alec. Travis only had a kitchen knife he had taken from a shop for protection, which probably wouldn't do any good if he got close and personal with one of the zombies. They drove in a big caravan now, with Skip, Eric and Malcolm in the first car and the school bus with Steve, Cassidy, Carl and two other men. Then there was two other cars and then Alec and Mark. Then there was a lot of other cars in shifting size and brand. The baits had drove of fifteen minutes before the others and hopefully they would have lured away the undead inhabitants around the gun shop. When they drove into town they saw the exact same thing as they had seen while going into Harrisburg. Destruction. Crashed and bloodstained windows, doors open to houses, overturned cars, burned out remains of houses, decomposing bodies with holes in their heads lying in the middle of the street. It wasn't a pretty sight. Travis looked at it with sheer horror in his eyes, he hadn't realised it would be like this when he got out of the mall. The caravan drove on and got closer to their destination. Mark looked out the window and hadn't seen a single zombie during the whole trip. Gerald and the guys had done a good job.
"Travis, take this. It beats the knife if you get in trouble." Alec said and handled Travis the glock. "Do you know how it works?"
"Not really. Just aim and pull the trigger?" The uncertain punk said.
"Sort of. There's the safety." He pointed at it with one hand while keeping the other hand on the steering wheel. "It's a full magazine but I don't have a spare clip, so aim your shots."
"I'll try to do that. You guys are going to cover us who load the stuff in aren't you?" Travis said.
"Yeah, we are." Mark said. "You're from this town aren't you?"
"Yeah, lived here all my life." Travis answered.
"Then you know how close we are to the gun shop don't you?" Mark asked.
"It's only a few blocks now." Was the answer.
Travis was right. After a few blocks a brick house with letters saying "Chris' Guns" told them that they had reached their destination. The cars did as Skip had planned and parked around the entrance. The school bus, the humvee and the pickup and two other cars formed the first half circle and the rest of the cars a second one around the first. As soon as the engines stopped everyone rushed out of their vehicles, some up on their cars to cover for any incoming zombies and the rest into the store which luckily was unlocked. For a few minutes everything was quiet while the people in the store loaded up bags with ammunition, handguns and several other of the things they found in there. Then the first victim of infection showed itself. It had been a big trucker guy with a beer gut. Now the beer gut was ripped open and his real guts were exposed. Malcolm was first to see him and fired of a three round burst hitting in the neck and head. The loud gunshot seemed to attract all of the zombies that for some reason hadn't heard the bait car driving past fifteen minutes ago. A few came the way the caravan had been coming, some from the houses on the opposite side of the street and a few from the houses on the side of the gun shop. The people standing on the cars aimed and fired as soon as they saw the zombies, but since most of them had handguns they didn't hit the running targets, and even fewer hit the creatures in the head. And when they got closer to the wall of cars a lot of people were in the middle of reloading. One man, someone Mark luckily didn't know, was dragged down from his car by the ghouls as they reached his car. He was dragged out of Mark's line of sight and only his tormented screams were heard. But on close range as this the men from the mall could hold the ghouls away. Mark threw away a couple of shots at the running zombies but mostly missed. He hit one at least, a middle aged woman covered in blood and wounds. As she took the hit and a crimson flower appeared on her chest the zombie staggered back only to start running again. Someone else put the poor thing out of its misery before Mark got time to shoot again. Mark fired a last time and emptied the shotgun. He got down from the car and reloaded with the spare shells he had brought. He only had eight spare shells, Carl had the rest. While the battle raged on the cars and beyond the people ran from the store to the cars loading them full with boxes of all kinds of ammo, guns of all kinds and the other cool things they found in the shelves. Skip stood on the hood of his humvee and picked his target, disposing them off one by one. But the more bullets they fired, the more zombies seemed to appear. He jumped down from the hood, turned around.
"Skip, we almost cleaned the store completely. We've got all we need and a lot more!" Someone shouted over the gunfire.
Skip turned around, saw that only a few zombies were approaching and shouted to the whole group.
"Get in the cars, we're leaving!" He ordered them.
After taking down the three zombies that were charging them at the moment everyone got in their cars. The whole mission had worked like well oiled machine. They drove back the way they came and they journey back was uneventful. As they reached the underground carpark Mark's adrenaline was still pumping. They hadn't spoken a word since they got in the cars and drove away from the gun shop. As they got out from the cars Mark looked behind them and saw the rest of the caravan roll into the carpark safe and sound. Everyone got out of their cars and started checking how many men they had lost. Luckily enough the only casualty seemed to be the man who had been dragged down from his car. It was a hard price to pay but thinking of how they had secured their future in the post apocalyptical world it was worth it. Mark noted that Gerald and the boys were nowhere to be seen, neither was their car. Mark really hoped that nothing had happened to them. He turned to Travis and Alec.
"We did good. You guys wanna go home and take beer or something to cool down?" He asked them.
"You don't know how mature you sounded there, but yes. Are you coming Travis?" Alec said.
"Sure." And the three boys headed home. Unloading the weapons had to wait.
Steve and the men in the bus didn't wait for unloading their things, something that they were the only ones that did. Most people simply left the stuff there until it was going to be used.
As soon as they got home and saw that everyone was alright they started unloading. Cassidy said he was too tired to unload a bunch of guns and walked away from the others after picking out what he concluded to be "the meanest shooter on god's green earth". Steve didn't care much if Cassidy was lazy or not, he was a good man one could trust his back with. He looked at all the things they had loaded into the bus under that short period of time they had been there. Rifles, pistols, camo suits and everything else that one could think of. Before Steve could start unloading the things a last car drove into the underground car park. The headlights blinded Steve so that he couldn't see which car it was, but when they turned them off he saw that it was the lost bait that had returned. Out jumped three ragged looking young men screaming so loud that nothing they said was hearable. After a moment they calmed down enough to let one talk at a time. Brandon started.
"We need to get the fuck out of here NOW!" He almost shouted. "There's a couple of thousand fucking zombies only minutes away if as much as that! We just saw them turn around and run back as soon as they heard you guys shooting!"
"What are you talking about?" Steve asked calmly.
"They must have followed you here. We just saw a fucking horde of them covering the way so we had to drive around them!" Ryan shouted.
"We have to warn the others." Steve concluded.
"No time for that. We're just gonna bail and you should too if you wanna live." Brandon told him and got into the car. Ryan and Gerald followed him and they simply drove off. As cold hearted as it seemed Steve could understand it. He had to hurry now. He got into the bus and grabbed a rifle and ran out. The others in the carpark had left. He ran upstairs and behind him the dead flooded inside the carpark.
The SUV drove out of the carpark and met a horde of the living dead face to face. Hundreds, possibly thousands of the living dead were running straight at them and the mall. A thousand decomposing faces stained with blood looked at them with milky white eyes. Brandon, who was driving the car, made a U-turn and started driving around the mall, knowing that there was another way out, another way to get away. He tried to not think of the fact that he had left the friends that had saved him and been as close to him as a family for the last few days. At least he warned them. Either they could lock themselves up and stay there until they got help, if they ever would get help, or they could try to escape. Brandon chose the latter. It was easier to survive this way, maybe find another little community with survivors. But right now it was up to him to get them away from the zombies. He wondered how it was going for Terry, he had stayed behind being all mature and not taking any unnecessary risks.
"We just left them there." Gerald said sadly.
"At least we gave them a chance by warning them." Ryan told him. "I hope they're going to make it. And if they don't get out they're at least safe if they block up the mall until they get help."
"They're going to be fine, we're probably gonna meet them tomorrow. There's a limited amount of roads leading out of here." Brandon told his two friends while losing the undead behind him.
"Yeah, I hope so." Gerald said.
The three boys was just about to reach their clothes store when the screams started. The mall used to be quiet except for when someone put the mall muzak on. This day there were no music and everything was quiet as Mark and the two others strode down the mall. Then a high pitched scream was heard echoing through the mall. It was followed by other screams. And the shuffling of feet, lots of feet. All three of them turned around simultaneously just to see people running with pure horror painted on their faces and more people running behind them. After a second glance Mark saw that the people running behind the terrified ones he recognised wore tattered rags, deadly wounds and white eyes. They froze in their tracks as they realised what had happened. Somehow the zombies were inside and now the only thing that mattered was to get the hell away from them. Just as the three boys regained movement Cassidy and Jessica rushed out of the store. Jessica wore the dress opposite of a hawaii shirt and her .38 while Cassidy was packing some sort of Kalashnikov assault rifle. Quite an odd couple. But no one had time to think about that. Cassidy was first to really do something.
"Get in the fucking shop!" He shouted and ran inside himself. The four others followed him inside.
They ran past Cassidy who stood by the entrance and when the last one, which happened to be Mark, had passed he slammed the double doors shut and jammed a lamp between them, not having time to look for a key. A few moments later a single person ran past, someone that none of them knew, and only a second or two later the horde of undead. While many of them ran past the shop some of them turned their heads and stared straight at the prey inside through the glass windows that served as a portal between the living and the dead. The creatures started beating on the glass. Cassidy didn't look at the creatures a second time and was already halfway towards the emergency exit. The others stood paralyzed for a second looking at the decaying faces and grim determination in the creatures until one of them hit the glass so hard that a hole about a feet wide appeared in the glass. The rest of the glass broke a moment later. They ran after the Irishman who had kicked the emergency door open and started sprinting upwards. Again Mark was the last to get inside the storehouse and glanced down towards the stairs that lead to the carpark. He saw figures running down there, and they weren't alive. In the shop the assaulting undead were halfway, slipping on the broken glass had given the humans a little head start. Mark sprinted upwards, but since the floors of the mall were a lot bigger than the usual ones Mark was exhausted as he reached the third floor. He glanced down again and saw that the zombies behind him were like a swarm of ants, so thick that he couldn't see the floor under them. He turned around and fired the shotgun at the closest zombie and blasted it backwards and stopping the horde for a second. The time it took him to stop, aim and turn around he didn't get any further away from them. As he reached the third floor he saw Travis disappearing up to the space between the third floor and the roof. Mustering a little new strength Mark ran the last part of the stairs. Mark reached the space between the roof and the third floor Cassidy stood there with his rifle and as soon as Mark got through the door he stepped out and fired into the mob in front of him. Mark couldn't see if he hit or not but as soon as the intense automatic fire stopped Cassidy was sprinting up the stairs. Mark followed and when he got up he met the three others carrying chairs.
"Throw them down there, it will stop them for a while at least!" Cassidy shouted.
The three kids did as the Irishman told them and lunged the chairs down to block the door which the creatures had started banging on. They seemed to be too dumb to open a simple door and Mark was thankful for that, but in time they would brake it down. Mark ran over to the chairs, grabbed one and ran back and lunged it down into the stairs. The five survivors worked like that until they were out of chairs and then Cassidy ordered the four kids to take down the volleyball net and bring him the two metal poles to block the door with. While they did that Cassidy reached into his pocket and picked out a set of lockpicks, something that none of the kids had seen him carrying. Using the lockpicks he locked the door from the outside and awaited that the others would bring the two metal poles. When that came they worked together to jam one of the poles in the space between the handle and the door so that it would connect with the wall over the roof and block anyone who tried to break the door down. The second pole they used to block the door in another way, to lean it towards the door so that any attempts to break the door down would become a lot harder. When that was done all five of them just sat down and breathed out, letting the adrenaline flush out of their systems. Somehow Mark calmed down enough to try to think out how this might have happened. The creatures must have followed them back, but how could there be so many of them and fast? He didn't know the answer to that question and before he could start thinking about it Cassidy started speaking.
"We need to get out of here now." He spoke fast and with a very Irish accent.
"How the fuck are we gonna do that?" Alec said and stood up and looked at Cassidy. "There's no fucking way to get down from here except for those stairs."
"I don't fucking know how. But I know we have to." Cassidy said and sounded a lot calmer than Alec. Truth was that he was just as freaked as the kid.
Mark looked around on the roof to see if there was any possible way to get down from the roof. The roof was barren with only a few things lying around. A volleyball, a few chairs that had been to far away when they blocked the stairs and some other scattered items that people hadn't cared about to take with them down from the roof. Everyone was too shocked to really try to think anything and after a short while Mark just sat down. Alec followed Marks example and sat down besides him. Travis looked down over the edge of the roof and saw scattered dead stumble around down in the parking lot. Jessica just stood where she had stopped and looked up into the sky thinking about if Steve and Carl were alright or not. A tear formed in her eye. Cassidy on the other hand wasn't idle. He walked around on the roof and looked down over the edge, at the things left on the roof and everything else. It looked like if he was looking for something. What it was Mark didn't know. It didn't take long before the Irishman told him. It was a crazy idea, but it was an idea and right now it seemed to be the only idea.
Only a few minutes later, somewhere between five and fifteen, the group was into Cassidy's crazed plan. When the Irishman had walked around the roof and tried to think about a plan to get away from the roof he saw the part of the first floor and second that stuck out from the main building, it was almost as if it had been built onto the mall after the initial construction. And it probably was like that too, the place belonged to the malls own two story supermarket. On the roof of the exterior building however, there was a great window covering most of the roof. As Cassidy remembered no one had lived there and it had been closed, so most likely there weren't any zombies in there. There might be some kind of way out down there. It was a good six meter drop, too long to just jump down and land on your feet excepting to have both legs intact but the clever and motivated Irishman came up with the idea of using the volleyball net as a ladder to climb down. The idea was the only one they had at that moment and versus staying on the roof until they starved to death it was worth a try. Jessica, being the lightest one climbed down first and made it easy. Having tied the net to the roof another meter was missing. But the two meter drop wasn't a problem for Jessica. Or Alec or Travis. But when Cassidy was climbing down the net it creaked as if it was about to break any second. But it didn't and Cass made his way down. Mark was last to make his way down and having been a little scared of heights his whole life climbing six meters down something that wasn't made for climbing and could break any minute wasn't something he looked forward too. Not at all. But at least he tried. It worked out fine, until he only had a single step to take and then to drop two meters. The net finally broke and poor Mark dropped down without being prepared for it. Mark didn't know what happened until he hit cement ground and his left foot hurt like hell. He lost balance as he hit the ground and fell down and scraped his face as a perfect finish on the whole thing. Before he had time to get up the others had rushed to his side. He had broken an arm once in a accident on a bike. It had hurt worse than this, not that his foot was good by any means. It was like in the movies when a guy is knocked down for some reason and all his friends/enemies gather around him looking down on him. But that view soon turned into the opening credits of a James Bond movies as blood poured down over his left eye. Travis and Alec got down and lifted him up so that he could stand leaned against the two of them.
"Did you break anything?" Cassidy asked while Jessica handed him something as absurd as a couple of dollar bills to wipe the blood out of his face. Mark did so but the blood kept coming.
"The left foot hurts like hell but I don't think it's broken." Mark answered as the dollar bill got drenched in blood. Cassidy got down on his knees and felt the leg, something that hurt a whole lot.
"Fucking stop it!" Mark shouted. Cassidy stopped.
"It doesn't seem to be broken. Hurt but not broken. And you look like scarface in a week." Cassidy said. "Can you walk on your own?"
"I think so, not fast though." Mark said and took a step forward to test his limits. It hurt to walk, but he could make it.
"We should stay here for a while and fix up Mark and then we continue down. I can't see any dead fucks down there so we've got a chance at least." Cassidy said and it sounded more like an order than a idea.
They stayed for twenty minutes waiting for Mark's bleeding to stop and for the group to check their guns and ammo. Cassidy only had a five bullets left, Jessica had her .38 fully loaded, Travis had Alec's glock with a full clip and Mark had his shotgun with a few spare shells. Alec had left his rifle in the car, something he regretted now. While they waited they heard a few scattered gunshots, but when ten minutes had passed everything was quiet.
The window was shatterproof but not bullet-proof. A single bullet from Cassidy's rifle shattered it and Cassidy ordered Mark to give him his shotgun. Mark did so and alone Cassidy jumped down into the store. It was quiet until he returned with a rope he threw up to the four on the roof and told them that the store was safe for them to climb down. They climbed down and when they got down Mark got his shotgun back. The group slowly sneaked through the shelves of everything anyone could need in an everyday life. Muzak poured from unseen speakers and for a while it felt as a normal day in a normal mall. As they got down to the first floor Cassidy who was in front of the others stopped and held up a closed fist as a signal to the others to do so as well.
"There's someone here." He whispered and looked around.
The whole room went quiet as the group stopped. After a few seconds of complete silence steps were heard from behind a shelf containing a drained amount of chips. It was more than one "person" moving, that was for sure. Behind him Mark heard the click as Jessica cocked her gun. As that sound echoed through the room the steps stopped.
"Anyone here?" Cassidy called out after a few seconds.
"Yeah." Another voice called out. It was familiar to Mark but he couldn't place it.
A group exited from behind the chips shelf. Mark recognised them as Chris, Maria, Matt, the girl with the tits and last of all Tim getting help to walk from Chris and Matt. The only one who was armed was Chris with a aluminium baseball bat.
"We were on our way out from the shop when we saw them. We got inside as soon as we could and found the keys to lock the place." Matt told them.
"What's his deal?" Travis asked and nodded at Tim.
"Bitten, but just grazed. Nothing serious. One of them managed get inside before we could lock up. I killed it." Chris said.
Four guns were aimed at the wounded boy. Everyone froze in their tracks.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Tim asked and looked scared.
"It's said to say it but you're already dead." Cassidy said not lowering his gun.
"But you can't be sure!" Chris stated. "How many times have you seen this happen?"
"Enough times to be sure. Soon you'll get a fever and then it's just gonna get worse. If I were you I would put someone's gun to my head and fire before..." Cassidy trailed off.
"But I'm not fucking you!" Tim screamed. "I don't want to fucking die! I've got a chance and I'm sticking to it."
"You don't." Mark told his friend Tim. "I've seen it happen too many times to doubt it."
"Fuck!" Alec screamed after a moment of silence. "This can't get any better can it?"
"To change subject for a moment, is there a lot of them out there?" Cassidy asked.
"I don't think so. Maybe a dozen close enough to the shop to be a problem." Chris said. "I think most of them are upstairs now, most people where there when it started."
"So if we run fast enough we can actually get to the garage?" Alec asked Chris.
"Yeah, but with so many of them out there it's kinda risky isn't it?" Asked Chris.
"We can make it. We doesn't have much of a choice do we?" Cassidy said. "I actually have an idea how we can do it a lot easier."
"How?" Matt asked.
So this was the end. This was the place that was going to be his final resting place. A blood soaked toilet filled with bullet casings and bodies. Not so bad after all, at least it could be worse. It could have been fading away senile and old in a piss soaked apartment. At a place like that it could take days before someone noticed the smell and went to look. In here no one would find him at all, if it wasn't one of those flesh eating beast that were banging on the door. He mustered strength enough to look around one last time. His blood poured out of him from all the bite wounds he had got. The one located on his chin felt like the Niagara but he guessed the one on his neck was the worst one. The looked more like a warzone than a mall toilet. He was sitting leaned against the wall farthest away from the door and between the door and him at least five stinking, rotting and permanently dead corpses lay. Blood had splattered on the walls and painted the originally white walls red. Bullet casings and a spent clip was strewn over the floor. It wasn't the best way to die but far from the worst. The banging on the door got more intense and the door creaked a last time before bursting inwards. In the doorframe a figure stood, a pale figure who's skin had fallen of at places showing bone and a almost skeletal face. It looked like the grim reaper himself. The pistol made it's way against his forehead as the zombie rushed and as Terry's finger tightened on the trigger the gun gave away a "click" sound of disappointment. The last thing Terry remembered was the grim reaper.
Cassidy's plan was once again neither safe or good at all. While two people, Chris and Maria, tended to the wounded Tim who's fever had started the others searched the shop for things that Cassidy ordered them to get. While some of it was food that they were going to need during the trip a few other items were paint thinner in plastic bottles and coca cola glass bottles. Molotov cocktails. After fifteen minutes enough primitive bombs had been assembled to overthrow a small nation. Or at least it looked like that. Everyone except the ones carrying guns or Tim either carried the food or a load of cocktails. Cassidy once again ordered the rest to stay as he sneaked forward to see how the situation looked outside. As a positive surprise only five of the zombies could be seen. The Irishman returned.
"I want you with the guns to take the point, shoot everything in your way. You with the cocktails go last and cover our escape. It's not too far to the stairs leading to the garage. The thing is that we don't know how many of them there is in the garage. My guess would be that most of them ran past and upstairs to get to us. And in the open space down there we can handle them. I think. Anyone not coming?" He said.
Everyone followed him to the entrance. The ghouls outside hadn't seen Cassidy when had peaked out for a look but as a group as big as this didn't go unnoticed. The five creatures outside ran up to the window and door and started banging. Mark gripped his shotgun tighter. As Cassidy yelled "Go" and fired at the two creatures blocking the door a chaotic moment erupted. The glass shattered and one of the two creatures dropped dead. The other one was hit in the shoulder and throat and a splatter of slimy blood flew through the air. Mark aimed his shotgun at another one and fired. The buckshot hit from the neck and upwards killing the beast. Jessica and Travis fired too and soon only the zombie that had been knocked to the ground remained. A three shot burst from Cassidy's rifle killed it. The whole group sprinted out of the shop and two Molotov cocktails were thrown to cover their escape as a group of flesh eaters charged. Between the stairs leading to the garage and the group there were three zombies now charging and flailing with their arms. Mark stopped for a second and fired at the closest. He didn't have time to aim at all but lucky as he was the shot impacted and shredded the zombies torso. It lost it's balance and started to twitch as some of the buckshot destroyed some useful bone inside the undead. Another burst from Cassidy's rifle and the last bullets in the clip stitched a pattern of big red holes from the zombies stomach to it's forehead. The last was taken care of by Jessica who also spent her last bullets taking the threat down. The group ran over to the stairs and down the stairs and entered the dark garage. No humanoid shapes could be seen at all, only big shapes of cars and a school bus. But it was a long way to them. Everyone sprinted towards the safety of the vehicles and Chris and Matt who carried Tim couldn't keep up. After them came the ghouls. At least a dozen of the ravenous flesh eaters were on their way down their stairs. Some of them burned a little and some had slightly charred features. Mark's leg was better now, but it still hurt as hell to run but somehow he managed to reach his and Alec's pickup and as Alec and Travis got in Mark dropped to his knees and aimed the shotgun towards the horde behind his friends. As he fired this time he had a little space left between his shoulder and the shotgun and as the recoil slammed back it was as if a professional boxer just jabbed him in the shoulder. A loud "Fuck" exited his lips. And the shot missed too. The next shot wasn't really a shot at all, the shotgun went click and after another loud "Fuck" he cursed himself for not reloading before they made their escape. He fumbled in his pocket for more shells but as he got them out of his pocket and into his hands the adrenaline was pumping so hard that he dropped them. He heard how the bus roared to life behind him. The trio only had a short way left to the cars but the zombies were closing in on them. Mark had to do something.
"Drop Tim or all three of you are dead!" He shouted to them and sadly he saw the look on Tim's face as he heard Mark's order.
Matt followed Mark's advice and just let go of Tim's arm and sprinted towards his own car. Chris on the other hand struggled even harder as he dragged Tim towards the cars. Mark could see how a zombie, appropriate enough wearing a tracksuit, closed in on them and who any second would reach them. He couldn't shoot it, the two boys were in his way. It reached them and grabbed Chris who swung it over his back in a move only reserved for wrestling. Unfortunately he tumbled to the ground with. The zombie and Chris got up equally fast and as it charged Chris swung his baseball bat with all his might. It was a glancing hit and the tracksuit zombies left eye and face caved inwards. But a new ghoul had reached Tim and taken another bite out of him. Mark fired and hit the creature in the shoulder. Finally Chris realised that there were no hope left for Tim and he ran with amazing speed towards Matt's car. Mark got in his own. As Alec was going to start it another equally loud curse was heard. Then he shouted:
"The keys!"
"Fuck!" Mark roared again even louder than before.
The zombies reached the closest car which happened to be the car Mark and the others were in. They started banging on the windows and broke the one at the drivers seat. This time it was Travis who saved the day. He leaned down towards the ignition and grunted "move over" to Alec who tried to not get dragged out of the car by the zombies. While Travis tried to hotwire the car and Alec tried to fight of a zombie that had a good grip of his hair Mark got up his shotgun and pumped it and put it against the forehead of the fiend that were holding Alec and pressed the trigger. The gunshot echoed even louder inside the car and the three people inside it, especially Alec was showered with gore. Cold, slimy and brownish blood and grey brain matter. This was too much to take for Alec and he did what any sane person would have done a long time ago. He threw up all over his friend Travis who just managed to hotwire the car. The pickup roared to life and Travis screamed as he realised what just happened. Alec recovered quickly and pressed the gas pedal and mowed down two or three undead on his way out of the carpark. Once again they were on the road, smelling of rotten gore and puke and with ears ringing.