Chapter 5: Forest Gulp

Alright, so we have no car, limited ammunition, about two hours worth of flashlight power, and a fucking army of zombies coming to eat us. If that doesn't equal 'Screwed', then I don't know what does. Oh right, I forgot to mention that we're wandering around in a *** forest, in the middle of the *** night. This couldn't get any worse now, could it?

"Great." I say, as we trudge across the wet, muddy, forest floor. I look up and see only the canopy. Not a single star could be seen behind its leafy expanse. "How are we supposed to know which way is north?"

"We don't." replies Tallahassee, his voice as calm as ever. I swear, if the Grim Reaper walked up to him right now to reap his soul, he'd probably laugh before kicking its ***. No fear at all.

"Okay, then what do we do?"

"We just keep walkin' straight." He answers.

"Really? You're going to have us walk deeper into a forest we don't even know about?"

"Well, duh. If we're walking into the forest right now, once we get halfway through, we'd be walking out of it."

"Of course. And what if the forest is longer than you assume it is?"

"Well… I never really thought of that." He chuckled.

For several minutes, we kept this up. Talking, bickering about who's right and who isn't. It was all pointless, really. Because no matter how much I argued, I think I'd much rather prefer a long dark forest to whatever was chasing us. Call me a hypocrite, but it's better to go with what you can see, rather than what you cannot.

"Alright, let's stop here." Wichita breathes, dropping her bag. We were now standing on a much firmer section of the forest floor. It was a small clearing, barricaded in a circular pattern by trees.

"This seems like a nice spot to set up camp." Little Rock observes, looking up at the looming trunks of the trees that surround us.

"Yeah," I begin "That's if we had a camp to set up in the first place…"

Wichita turns to me, suddenly. "You didn't bring the tent?" she asks, her voice urgent.

"No… I was under the impression that we had to travel light. It's even in my rulebook. And I thought we agreed that if we were ever to go camping, it would be Tallahassee that would bring the tent. "

Tallahassee raises an eyebrow. "Me?" He asks a mask of confusion on his face. "But I brought the water and food." To prove his statement, he lifts up a satchel filled with snacks and canteens.

"W-what?" Little Rock sputters, revealing her own collection of food and drinks. "But I thought I was supposed to bring those."

Wichita rolls her eyes. "No, no, no. You were supposed to bring the supplies."

"Um, I brought the supplies." I point out, though I probably shouldn't have, considering how stressful this all seemed to be.

Little Rock groaned. "What did you bring?" She asks her sister.

"I brought the tinderbox and a few pots for cooking!" she replies, her tone frustrated.

Okay, this was getting out of hand. Things were becoming much worse than they were initially supposed to. Our predicament was bad enough, but now, we have no tent. We are stuck inside a scary forest, lost, and all we have is a tinderbox, pots for cooking, and twice as much food and water than we really need. Not that bad, huh? Wrong. We have no shelter at all to protect us from the elements or from the ravenous freaks that were still coming after us. We are now at the *** apogee of the wildlife survivalist's fail-meter.

"Alright," I begin, a little panicky, "We just need to calm down and start thinking straight." I pace back and forth, my chin cupped by my hand. "We have no shelter, right?"

"Yes, we know that," Wichita says bluntly "Get to the point."

Ouch. Someone's a little crabby. Not without reason though. If you were woken up in the middle of the night, forced on a long walk into a mean scary-looking forest, and told that you had nothing to sleep on, wouldn't you feel the same? I need to be sympathetic here. We are all feeling this way, I'm sure.

"So, just because we've got one bad thing going against us, doesn't mean we should just stand around complaining about it."

"Actually," Little Rock interrupts, "We've got about a hundred bad things going against us." She nudges her thumb down the path we came from, obviously talking about the zombies.

"Yeah, yeah, just hear me out." I say, forgetting about our zombie predicament for a split-second. "I think we should build a fire."

"And let the zombies know exactly where we are?" Tallahassee asks, sceptically. "No sir-ee."

"Well, it's either that or we die from the cold. If you ask me, I'll take my chances with the zombies. We could use a night-watch system. Two sleep while the other two stand—or sit, whichever you prefer—on guard. We could do—like, two hour shifts or something."

"Well now that you mention the dying from the cold part… that's not such a bad idea…" Tallahassee says, nodding, slightly impressed. "Not bad for a spit-fuck."

"Yeah, uh—"I say, "Thanks."

"No problem… "he replies," Just as long as I get to sleep first." He adds, quickly.

"I—uh, actually thought we should let the girls sleep first. You know… courtesy and all that."

"No, it's cool." Wichita says, intervening. "Florida and my sister can sleep first. You and I can take the first shift. I'm already wide awake."

Hm, giving up two hours of my sleep to stay awake with Wichita and watch out for zombies? I can live with that. "Sure, "I say. "Let's start up the fire."

It did not take long to get a flame started as dry sticks were abundant in the area around us. And while we started the fire, Tallahassee and Little Rock went to work setting up a makeshift shelter of branches and leaves. For pillows, they used the bags of Wonderbread that we had brought along with us, figuring that it was the food we were less likely to eat. In little over thirty minutes, we were all set.

"Alright, so-uh, you two just go to bed, and—"I start, but Tallahassee cuts me off.

"Yeah, yeah. G'night." He says irritably, before rolling over in his makeshift cot, draping his snakeskin jacket around himself like a blanket. Someone's definitely tired.

"Goodnight, then." I say. Turning to Little Rock, I bid her a good night's sleep as well.

Once the two of them were snoring soundly, I crawl over to the fire, sitting cross-legged in its warmth. My shotgun lay next to me in case I needed it. Wichita did the same, sitting on the other side, with the fire separating us from each other. I try to catch her eye, but she seems to be preoccupied with the trees around us.

"So Wichita…" I start, unsure of what approach I'm going to take.

She looks at me. "Hm?" she says. "Is there something wrong?"

"No—uh, I was just wondering…"

"Wondering about what?" she inquires, her attention now fully focused on me.

I gulped, a bead of sweat rolling down from my temple before dripping off of my chin. "Have you ever thought about that night a few days ago? You know, at the amusement park when we ki—"

Crack! The sound of a twig breaking from behind me wrenches me from my sentence. I yelp and quickly stand up, shotgun levelled at the expanse of trees before me. My finger was on the trigger, but my arm was shaking. I open the breach, verifying that the gun is loaded before quickly closing it. Crack! It sounds a lot like someone is walking towards us. Without taking my eyes off the source of the sounds, I hear Wichita walk to stand next to me, her pump-action shotgun at the ready. The cracking intensified, as whatever was within those dark depths got closer. Instinctively, my grip on the gun tightens as I prepare to pull the trigger. With my eyes trained on that section of the woods, I gasp as a figure walks out into the clearing, its arms raised in greeting. It was not a zombie.