CHAPTER 7
Within the hour they ran out of gas. Sonic offered to jump out of the car and get the extra gas tank. He went back to the trunk and grabbed the tank. As he was making his way to the other side of the car he tripped, fell, and the gas dripped down a sewer.
"Dammit you clumsy idiot!" Shadow yelled, grabbing Sonic by his neck. "What the hell? Are you STILL drunk?"
"I….tripped…" Sonic gasped. "Kindly remove your hands from my neck so that I may run far away from you, you crazed psychopath."
"Just as long as you run that way." Shadow motioned to the street behind them. "So that Sinister may eat you too."
"Ok, anywhere is better than right here." Sonic's face began to turn purple. "I can't breathe…"
"Well, if the car's useless, then we'd better start walking pretty darn fast, right?" Amy shouted angrily from the car's front seat.
They all exited the car and began walking as fast as they could down the street.
"So what do we do now?" Knuckles said glumly. "If we die I'm blaming Sonic."
"We need to find a safe place to stay for the night." Tails suggested. "Like…a rooftop? Zombies can't climb, can they?"
"I don't know. But if anyone can climb it'd be Sinister." Amy muttered. "I'd rather face an entire squad of zombies than him."
"Me too." Shadow agreed.
They walked past an abandoned library. There was a faint glow of a computer inside.
"Hey, Tails, want to figure out what's on the flash drive?" Amy asked.
"More than ever." Tails headed into the library.
The computer's screen was showing a rather long YouTube movie thing. Strangely, it had only begun five minuets ago.
"Weird…." Shadow muttered, glancing around. "Is there someone here?"
"Well, if there is anyone here, I have to pause your movie for a few seconds." Tails plugged the flash drive in the computer and a notice popped up saying that it was fully installed. Tails clicked on the icon and the flash drive's files popped up. This is what they said:
"Do the T-virus one first." Amy suggested.
Tails clicked on it and the document opened. He read, " 'Tails, if you read this, then it's pretty much hopeless for your father and I. Umbrella's unleashing the T-virus; or a member of it is. Dr. Sinister had killed mostly everyone that was useless to him in the organization, sparing your father and I because we had important information on how to develop the virus. Sinister plans to unleash the virus…and only give the cure when people are desperate enough. He's a madman.'" Tails' eyes filled with tears. "My mom wrote this."
"There's more." Sonic said.
" 'The cure is simple.'" Tails wiped his nose on the back of his hand. " 'It's….'"
"What?" Knuckles asked.
"There's nothing else." Tails whispered.
Everyone sat in silence for a few seconds. "Maybe the Umbrella one will tell us something else." Sonic suggested.
Tails exited the document and clicked on the one before it. The opened.
"It's empty." Tails said. "I don't get it."
"Then why are there two pages?" Amy asked.
Tails scrolled down until a few lines of words filled the screen. "Wow, I almost overlooked that."
Everyone quickly read in silence. It explained who Sinister was and what he was hoping to accomplish. Apparently he wanted revenge on the people that had killed his family. At that time he had been working on a cure to some terrible disease, but something had gone 'wrong' and the people that had killed his family had been infected with the first bout of the T-virus. They began to spread it around. Within 24 hours the entire city had been contaminated.
"They think no one survived." Shadow said. "Not one person was spared from the spreading virus."
"Except me."
Everyone spun around, guns at the ready, to see a tall purple cat holding a rather long sword. She glared at everyone. "Who are you? Are you from Umbrella?"
"Hell, no." Knuckles exclaimed. "We were just running from them."
The cat lowered the sword. "You're the only survivors I've seen for days…"
"We came from another city." Sonic said. "The virus has spread that far already."
"I know." The cat sighed. "And we can't think of anything to stop it. I'm Blaze."
"Wait, 'we'?" Shadow asked. "I thought you said you were the only survivor."
"I lied, just in case you really were working for Umbrella." Blaze said. "Come on, I'll let you meet the other survivor."
They followed Blaze back through lots of bookshelves and to a heavy steel door. Why a steel door was in a library, they'll never know. Blaze opened it and they stepped into a small room that had a lot of comfy looking chairs and blankets. In the middle of a small pile of cushions someone was curled, asleep.
"Hey, Silver, we got company." Blaze said.
"More survivors?" Silver asked, suddenly awake. He had rather thick bandages covering his eyes. Shadow wondered what had happened, but his injuries didn't stop there. Silver's left leg was also heavily bandaged along with his side.
"I'm Sonic." Sonic said. Silver tracked his voice rather well, even though he couldn't see.
"I'm Amy." Amy said.
Everyone began to introduce themselves.
"We didn't know what was happening when the apocalypse started." Blaze explained. "We were in this library when someone ran in screaming about zombies. We rushed out onto the streets, where people were panicking. I was lucky I wasn't hurt more than this." Blaze pointed to her left wrist, which was covered in a bandage soaked with dry blood. "However, Silver wasn't that lucky."
"Obviously." Silver muttered. "Have any of you ever gotten whacked in the face with a metal bar? One that had a rusty nail on it?"
Amy cringed. "Really?"
"Well, I don't think the nail was rusty…" Silver said. "But it hit me between the eyes and Blaze made me wear this anyway. Then I broke my leg and got stampeded by a hysterical crowd."
"Ouch." Knuckles muttered.
"But I'm still happy to not be a victim of the T-virus!" Silver said happily.
"Wait, you know about that?" Shadow asked.
"Well, yeah. You know what the symptoms are, right?" Silver asked.
"Not really. What are they?"
"If you get a wound from the zombies or anything else, then the effects will hit you. 10 percent, you'll feel a little itchy. 20 percent, smallpox appears on your fur and skin. 30 percent, your eyesight gets a little blurry. 40 percent, sudden skin or fur paleness. 50 percent, short cases of vomiting. 60 percent, you can smell blood from miles away, like a vampire for example. 70 percent, loss of concentration. 80, continuous collapsing. 90 percent, the zombie fever/flu. And at 100…you die. Minutes later, you'll become one of them."
"That doesn't sound good," Sonic said with a gulp.
"It's bad." Silver replied. "See, once you get the virus from a zombie, the virus cells will rapidly take over your body; your blood cells, and other cells until you die. When you wake up again as a zombie, you're indeed infected."
"How do you know this?" Tails asked.
"Someone told me to tell you." Silver turned towards Tails. "She said to tell Tails so he can be warned."
"My mom!" Tails jumped up and down. "She was here?"
"Well, not exacally here." Blaze said. "But we met her shortly before the outbreak."
"Where was she?" Tails demanded.
"Just outside of Emerald Town." Blaze said. "Then she…vanished."
"She's alive! She's alive!" Tails cheered, dancing around the room. "I can't believe it!"
"But we don't know where she went or if anything happened to her after the virus." Silver muttered. "She could be safe…or dead."
"We've got to look for her, then." Tails said this like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "We can find her! She's a great cook too, so if we find her she can make us food."
Sonic's stomach rumbled loudly. "Um…speaking of food, I haven't had any in a while."
"Neither have we." Blaze sighed. "I can't leave the library because Silver can't defend himself."
"I can too!" Silver protested. "See? Watch!"
A chair next to Knuckles rose into the air. Knuckles jumped and aimed his gun at it. "What's going on?"
"Silver's psychic." Blaze said. "But he's still not strong enough to heal himself or take out zombies."
The chair fell to the ground with a loud THUNK. "Wow, that's a heavy chair." Silver muttered. "I thought it would be lighter."
"Ok, Silver, just rest. I'll be back." Blaze headed to the door. "Come on, everyone."
She shut the steel door thing behind her. "As far as I know there's a store up the road there. Can I ask you a favor and get some food?"
"Sure. We all need something to eat." Amy said. "I think some of us should stay back here, though. Just as an extra protection."
"I'll go. Knuckles, Amy, want to come?" Shadow asked.
"Sure." Knuckles and Amy said at the same time.
"What about me?" Sonic asked. "I want to pick out stuff to eat too!"
"Tell us what you want and we'll get it." Knuckles said, making sure his gun was in top zombie killing condition.
Sonic got a dreamy look on his face. "Chili dogs…."
"Ok."
The three of them headed out of the library.
"Wow, I can't believe it. Survivors here, out of all places." Shadow muttered as they walked along deserted streets. It was eerily quiet, like a ghost town. "And there still may be more somewhere."
"Something tells me if we find Tails' mom, we can stop this virus from being spread." Amy said. "I think if anyone could stop it, it'd be her. She used to work for Umbrella, after all."
"Sinister still has me worried, though." Knuckles muttered. "The G-virus. What if it spreads as easily as the T-virus? What if Mephiles was as mutated as his mentor?"
"Then we've got a huge probablem on our hands." Amy muttered. "Two viruses to stop…I almost forgot about the G one."
"There's the market place." Shadow said, pointing to a small sign that declared that it was indeed a market. They entered the shattered glass door carefully, guns at the ready in case a few zombies decided to show themselves.
"I don't know about you, but I want chocolate." Amy said as they searched the shelves.
"Me too." Shadow agreed. "We'll get that, and whatever other things come in a can and doesn't perish."
They grabbed a bunch of plastic bags at the cashier's desk and began to load them up.
"That's all I can carry." Amy said after both bags she held were overflowing with canned goods and chocolate. "I think we should head back."
It was hard to carry two grocery bags and guns at the same time, but they managed…up to a point.
"Over here!" Shadow hissed, ducking behind a dumpster in an alley. He dropped the bags and grabbed his gun.
Everyone else joined him and did the same. "What?" Knuckles whispered.
"Listen."
There were hurried footsteps and heavy breathing. Shadow peeked out around the dumpster to see Sinister run down an opposite alley and attack a zombie. He tore into it, and then stepped away and ran off.
"Don't move." Shadow said. "That was Sinister. He may come back."
They waited a few minuets. Then something unexpected happened.
The zombie that Sinister had torn apart was slowly getting up. It had lost its right arm, but as Shadow watched, it grew back. Its wounds healed. The sores on its skin and fur disappeared. Its eyes changed from black to red and it grew fangs and claws. It scampered off where Sinister had run.
"You're not going to believe this…" Shadow muttered, still in shock. "I think I figured out a cure to the T-virus."