AN: I'm kinda sorry for not updating lately but as I've said before I've been busy. Here's the first part in a new chapter. The next will hopefully be up soon.
Chapter 12 (first part):
The evening four days after the destruction of the mall two cars and a school bus rolled into a small town in one of the northern states. No one in the caravan cared which since states weren't as important as they had been once. The town looked like any other, a ghost town. Before the whole caravan entered town the standard tactic to lure the hordes of undead in the streets. Just before nightfall a pickup truck with three young men in it roared through the main streets of the town making as much noise as they could. It worked like a well oiled machine. Soon they had a horde containing hundreds or maybe even thousands of undead dressed in tattered rags on their tail. Ten miles out of town Alec pressed the pedal and left the legion of dead jogging after them and finally stopping as they couldn't see or hear the flesh in the pickup. By the time the three of them got back the sun was just about to dive down behind the horizon. It had been a nice day and without a cloud in the sky and now it turned into a star covered night sky.
The bus stopped in front of a building that once had served as a pawn shop with an apartment, probably the owners, above. It had all a safehouse needed, the windows and door on the first floor was barred shut with heavy steel bars. The bus dodged a stranded car and drove up on the sidewalk and the two other cars followed and stopped. The pickup was last in line. As soon as Alec killed the engine Alec, Mark and Travis, all dressed in military uniforms and with bandanas over their faces like robbers of the wild west. Cassidy, Chris and Jessica got out and sprinted towards the pawn shop. The door was luckily open and the three of them charged inside to secure the shop. Mark and Alec took position with their guns aimed at whatever the shadows could conceal. Travis got started with dragging two objects that looked like six feet cocoons wrapped in big black plastic bags out from the bed of the truck to the middle of the streets. A humanoid figure materialized itself from one of the shadows and with a hissing that only a rotting throat could make it charged towards Travis and the plastic cocoons. Two short metallic bangs coming from an M-16 were heard at the same time as a loud bark of a shotgun. The undead man almost fell down as at least one of the bullets hit him but kept sprinting towards Travis. Travis had noticed what was going on and raised his own shotgun, a small and stubby pump action one, and fired. The creatures was twenty feet away from him when he fired and buckshot impacted and crushed most of the creatures head.
"Get inside now, it's clear!" Cassidy shouted and broke the silence.
Without arguing and knowing that more zombies were sure to show up the three boys rushed inside. On their way in they joined up with the rest of the group who had been safely tucked away in their car until Cassidy had announced everything to be okay. Together they got inside the pawn shop. The walls were covered in so many things that Mark couldn't tell what color the walls actually had. Paintings, furniture in variated quality as well as clothes and old VHS movies. Mark was thrown back to reality as someone shut the door behind him with a loud bang and barred it. He turned around and saw that Matt for the first time in a long while was doing something useful. His first impression of the guy had lasted for this long and was in no way changing. No one said anything for almost a minute and during that time Mark's heart slowed down to an almost normal speed.
"Did you manage to get the bags?" Jessica asked Matt in an ice cold tone. It was obvious that she shared Mark's opinion on the guy. He nodded and put down a bag containing the little food they had been able to get with them when they left their last safehouse.
"Of course. What do you think of me?" Matt said with a self idolizing grin. Alec mumbled something that no one could hear and had been best if no one had.
"What did you just say?" Matt snapped at Alec.
"I said: You don't want to know that." Was the answer he got. Matt's facial expression changed.
"You should be glad that the mick took my gun away." He said and the tension in the room grew.
"Are you threatening me or did you just realize that you'd hurt yourself more than anyone else if you got a gun?"
"Fuck you. I can shoot."
"Yeah, a little at least. The thing is that you don't know when too. Last night you should have left that thing alone and we would have taken care of it when we were going to leave. But you didn't, you shot it and you attracted too much attention. If we had stayed a few minutes more we would have been swarmed." The Irishman interrupted. "If you two start this shit again I will kick you out and take your guns away." It was an order.
Matt grunted something and stormed upstairs flanked by his masculine girlfriend. A door slammed shut loud and the rest of the group started talking again.
"One more day and I'll kick that guy's ass. I swear." Alec said. A few of the others grunted agreeing to the statement.
"At least we know that your idea worked. The smell of their own really masks our own. As soon as they couldn't see us they simply stopped. Not like they did back at the mall."
"At least that's one good thing." Chris said. "Don't like the tone of Matt at all. We ought to keep an eye on him and two on the guns. All of them."
"Luckily for us most of them are down in the cars. Not even that dude is stupid enough to go down there." Alec said.
"We need food and water. This wont be enough for one meal to all of us." Maria said.
"Then I can go without dinner today. But that's not all we're low at. We need fuel too." Cassidy stated. "Who takes watch today? The stair leads past the apartment so there's probably entrance to the roof there. From there we could get pretty good overview and see anything that goes on around here."
"What are you afraid of? The zombies can't get in here, no way." Chris said.
"Yeah, but there might be other people here and they might want our cars and the stuff in them. That's what I'm most afraid of. If anyone spot someone who tries to get our cars you fire a warning shot, if he doesn't stop of fire back you shot to kill, understood?" Cassidy said in a cold calculating way that scared Mark.
"I can do that." Mark said and looked for someone else to join him.
"I'll sit with you. But dont' count on me shooting normal persons." Alec said after a moment of silence. Cassidy nodded.
"And the second watch?" Cassidy asked the rest of the group.
Deciding watch took a while. Not everyone was eager to be woken up in the middle of the night to sit on a cold roof and check for anything suspicious. Then they ate the little food they had. Before everything happened bottled water and canned goods like these wouldn't have been classed as food by anyone in the group. Matt didn't join them but his girl came down and fetched two rations. No one said a word to her. No one talked much while they ate anyway. The loss of everyone in the mall still clinged on as much as an hour after it had happened. The one who it had hit hardest was Jessica since she had lost both cousin and father, people who had been with her before and after the end of the world. When the eating was done the ones who weren't up for watch found a place to sleep in. Mark and Alec made their way up to the roof with the equipment they would need for their two hour long watch. Two chairs and four rifles. They sat down without saying anything to each other. Mark looked at himself and then at Alec. Both of them wore combat boots and camo pants. Mark had a his leather jacked and Alec wore an olive green bomber jacket he had found in the bus after the raid on the gun store. Mark had a holster in his belt with an Colt 1911 in it and Alec's shoulder holster carried one of the glocks. He put his shotgun down over his lap and leaned his second rifle, a standard AK-47 assault rifle on the back of his chair. Alec had both his rifles leaned to the chair. Mark felt as if he had to break the silence.
"Look at us. We're sitting here like two real fucking soldiers." He told his friend.
"Yeah. How did we get here?" Alec answered.
"I honestly don't know. It doesn't feel like we had much of a choice, we just followed and whoever told us to follow."
"Yeah. First Morgan and Jimmy and then Steve and now Cassidy. I wonder what we will be like in five years."
"Either we're dead, everything has sorted itself out and is back to normal or we're gonna be two Mad Max dudes road tripping through the continent. Without the leather of course."
"You'll have leather, I'll bet. You'll be the big S/M overlord badguy."
"Maybe, if so I'm gonna make you my bitch." Mark snapped back before laughing with his friend.
"First of, this conversation is getting way to gay and second, the whole bitch post would be taken by Jessica wouldn't it?"
"You know what. If we weren't on this very important guard duty I would kick your ass like back in the days. And yes, the conversation is getting a little fruity."
"Just don't say I didn't know what was gonna happen." Alec ended the joking session. They sat quiet in the darkness of the dead town for a few minutes before Mark broke the silence again.
"Do you think about Stan and Kyle a lot?" He asked.
"Every day. Do you?"
"I haven't the last few days and that scares me. Now when I do think about them I really miss them. But when I think about them I also remember that we put them down like animals."
For a few moments Alec didn't know what to say since Mark's statement killed the good way of remembering their dead friends and replaced it with a sort of cruel cynical coldness of what they did once their friends got infected. After a while Alec came up with an answer.
"Yeah we did." He said slowly. "But isn't that better than to have them walk around as rotten zombies?"
"Yeah it is. I wouldn't want to turn out like that."
They didn't say much more for the rest of the shift. After two hours they went downstairs to get two others without nothing strange to report. It didn't take long before Mark entered a much better world from which he didn't remember anything of the next morning. Alec on the other hand didn't sleep at all.
The first thing Mark realized as he woke up was that it was raining heavy. Everyone else was getting up as well except for Cassidy and Travis who had been on the last watch. After a few minutes when everyone was awake Cassidy started speaking.
"Sadly there's no breakfast today. No food at all today. Only two bottles of water if you're thirsty. I think the town is pretty deserted since yesterday. It should be pretty easy to go out but the problem is that we'll have to cary it all. And for that we need everyone. This time I'm not asking for volunteers, everyone goes. Another problem is that we don't know where there's any shops."
"That's not a problem, I saw a Wall mart when we drove through the town last night. I don't think it's too far." Alec said.
"Good." Cassidy said. "Get your stuff ready. We're going out."