Chapter 3: The Long Road Ahead
Silence.
Something that hasn't happened since the outbreak first occurred the day before. The sun rose showing a city that was now completely dead. Ghouls from beyond the grave stalked the ruined streets in search of living flesh to be eaten to sustain their ever raging hunger. One of them walked around a corner and saw a police car smashed into a lamppost. There was an undesecrated corpse inside, dead from the crash. Opening its slavering jaws, the rotting shambler moved towards the body, unaware of his comrades lying in pools of coagulated blood around the wreckage. Unflinching with holes in their heads, they provided no warning to the soul that was to be redeemed.
"There's another one."
A shot rang out while the vile creature dropped to the ground with a solid thud, causing contents from his decaying head to spill onto the asphalt of the road. That made 13 around the police cruiser.
"Man, we don't have to be out here anymore, our blockade was overrun and no ones coming to get us. We should move soon."
The marine sniper continued to watch the ground below the 5 story building while his spotter watched the entrance to the roof. They had been up there since the military was deployed to the cities. While they stayed up there and thinned out hordes for the army to make quick work of them. Turns out, the human critters made quick work of the army. As far as they knew, the sniper team were the only people left alive in the city.
"Where are we going to go Mike? We haven't gotten comms or seen anyone since the last blockade went out." Said the sniper as he took his eye out of the scope to look around and rest his eye, lest he get tunnel vision.
Mike turned to look at the sniper for a while. He stared at him with a confused face for about 3 seconds.
"Well Danny, we could start by leaving this fucking city!"
"And where do you suppose we'll go after that?" Danny looked at his spotter with a questioning look on his face. Now both of them were quite interested in what the other was thinking.
"Don't know, don't really care either! We can figure that out later." Mike looked back at the doorway onto the roof while Dan looked back at the road.
"Holy shit. Mike, you gotta see this."
Kyle was walking down the road, with Anna not far behind, both with their weapons ready to be used if needed. Kyle peeked around a corner and saw around 13 "dead" zombies lying near a wrecked police car. The body inside had not been disturbed since it had first hit the lamppost that the car was now embedded in.
"Looks clear." Kyle whispered back to Anna.
"What do you mean 'looks' clear?" Anna demanded.
"I mean its clear, with a bunch a dead zombies around." Kyle said back. He started walking over to the car when he heard a voice yell out at them.
"HEY! You two! Stay there, were comin down!" Anna and Kyle both looked up simultaneously too see a silhouette of a person waving their hand around above their head while holding a rifle with the other. About a minute later, two soldiers were running out the front door of the building scanning up and down the street with weapons raised looking for zombies. One had an M21 sniper rifle with a good quality scope mounted on top and folded bipods while his partner held an M4 assault rifle with red dot sight, laser sight, flashlight and a forward grip. The sniper was wearing a backwards service cap on his head and had a tattoo that read servo per veneratio,while the other was wearing a kevlar helmet. Both had their sleeves rolled up.
"Wow, you two are the only living people we've seen since last night." Kyle said to the soldiers. "I'm Kyle an-"
"-I'm Anna-Parker" Kyle looked at the girl for a moment that looked like was looking off into space. The one soldier with the M4 looked at Anna with curious eyes, that turned into ones of surprise.
"AP? Is that really you?" He said as he continued to look at her. Anna was knocked out of her trance and looked at the soldier for a full two seconds before the two approached each other and hugged each other.
"Oh my god." was all Anna could really say. It almost seemed as if she were crying. After a while she spoke up again, the other two just looked at the scene they were witnessing with shock and curiosity. "It's been too long Mike"
"Far too long" Mike replied with a smile on his face, and it seemed as if his eyes were getting watery too.
The sniper spoke up after ten seconds of silent bonding between the two.
"Yah, as you heard, my spotters name is Michael and my name is Daniel."
"Aren't we supposed to call you by rank or last name?" Kyle asked.
"Well normally yes. But, well, the situation doesn't really call for it does it?" Kyle just nodded his head in acknowledgement. "So what's your plan?"
"Our plan? Shouldn't you guys have a plan? You are the army after all." Kyle said with the shock of this news evident in his speech.
"Well, actually we're Marines. And our blockade and every other one in the city has fallen. As far as we know, we are the only living military presence in the city. So you got a plan?"
"We recently saw on the internet that there are still some pockets of land where there are no zombies. The mountains near the city are one of them. It's a long shot, but where else are we going to go?" Kyle said to Daniel. Mike and Anna seemed to be talking to each other, maybe catching up on a few things? Kyle was curious to know how she knew the soldier.
"Sounds good, mind if we tag along?" Daniel asked
"Of course, we need to stay together if we want to survive this thing." Kyle responded. Mike looked over at the other two, whom he was eavesdropping while speaking to Anna.
"We've been here too long, we should get moving, and it's going to be a long road ahead."
Kyle, Anna and their new found friends, whom he found out were elite scout snipers, were walking through the streets of the city, encountering little resistance as the zombie hordes thinned out due to the ghouls lack of interest in things, they spread around the city. There were at least some on every street though, getting by was easy, they were slow. Well, most of them.
A sprinter ran towards the entourage of survivors, only to be greeted by a 7.62mm round to the forehead, causing gray matter to spray out the back of its skull. The creature landed on his back with enough force to crack his skull even further. The humans stayed on their path towards the exit of the city.
"We should stop for supplies in that store over there. Keep your senses sharp, there is almost guaranteed to be one in there." Mike suggested.
"I'll keep watch out here, I'm not setting foot in that death trap" Whispered Dan to Mike. Mike entered the store first and gave the thumbs up for clear and continued to look around the building for more rots.
Seeing one, he pulled out his knife and snuck up on it. The zombie turned around and gave a gargled throat noise before lunging at Mike. Mike grabbed the ghoul's arm and twisted it, putting himself behind it and its fatal bite. He then plunged the blade through the lower jaw and up into the brain, killing the thing without the loud noises of firearms. He continued to search the building, there were no more zombies left inside.
"So what are we going to put the food in?" Kyle asked. Anna looked at him and pointed to a shelf that had a few backpacks on it. Mike just filled what little room there was left in his military pack. Daniel still waited outside, sitting on a bench just outside the door of the store and watched down the road.
"Mikey, got some jolly ranchers." Anna teased. Mike's eyes shot towards his friend with a hunger that looked much like the living dead's. Anna waved the package of hard candies around with a grin on her face.
"I love you hun." Mike replied with an outstretched hand, inviting Anna to throw the package of Mike's favorite candies.
"If any of you find some beef jerky, toss me some will yah?" Daniel said into the store. Kyle nodded and picked up some of the stuff from a rack near the front counter. His bag was now filled with some quick snacks and non perishable food items. He also made sure to include a can opener and some plastic utensils. Mike was shoving a bunch of jolly ranchers wherever he could on his kit until he had all that was left. Finally, they all grabbed an energy drink and left the store.
"Where close to another military blockade, it's just around…" Daniel reported as the party turned the next corner to a dreadful scene "…the corner. Mother Mary of Christ"
Like all the others, this one blockade was overrun, but the dead weren't finished yet. There were around 30 of them, feasting away at the once proud National Guardsmen. There were dismembered parts and entrails all over, all chewed up or have devoured. One of the zombies ripped away at a particularly stringy tendon that refused to give up its hold to the bone. It finally snapped and the ghoul brought its head back down to finish with the leg it had been gnawing on. The nostrils of its missing nose picked up the smell of living tissue. And it looked over at the team of survivors with dry eyes. It looked at them for a while and made a high pitched hissing noise that turned into a low growl. The other zombies stopped devouring the soldiers from the blockade and looked at the 4 humans with wide eyes of shock.
"Go, now." Mike said and the group turned and ran back the way they came, only to see a large group heading there way. They looked around frantically and saw a small alleyway. It was there only escape.
They traveled down a few alley ways and lost the horde behind them. All still had visions of what they just saw.
"Fuck, that's just great." Kyle said.
"We'll just have to go around." Daniel replied.
"Problem, there's a river outside the city that goes around 3 quarters of it. The blockade was trying to stop them from getting across the only bridge across the river." Kyle said, with a little anger in his voice.
"Where's the next closest one?" Anna asked.
"Don't you know? You live here." Mike said to her as he lightly punched her in the shoulder.
"Actually I don't, I'm from out of town. I came here... looking for someone" Anna said looking down at the ground. Then punched Mike back, a little harder then he did.
Kyle was the next one to speak. "The next closest bridge is in a town a few miles south of here. But, we could also take a boat from the marina. Unfortunately, it's halfway across the city."
"Beats a few miles south." Daniel said.
"I guess our decision is made then." Anna said turning and leaving down the alley the way they didn't come, away from the horde that was approaching.
As the group walked, Mike couldn't help but see that Daniel was feeling uneasy. It was the way his eyes were darting around, the white knuckle grip on his rifle, his quick breathing. Something wasn't right, besides the fact that the city is roaming with cannibalistic dead people, and only Daniel knew about it.
"Stay back for a moment, I have to talk to Danny." Mike said to Kyle and Anna. Mike jogged ahead and started a whispered conversation with Daniel. "Eh man, what's up?"
"Nothing, I'm fine." Daniel whispered back, with a slight tremble in his voice.
"Hey, I don't need to be a psychologist to know something's bothering you. Come on, we've beenworking together for 5 years. You can trust me."
"Just a bad feeling, I'm sure it'll be fine."
"Last time you had a bad feeling like this, we were in Iraq, and our convoy was ambushed." After he said 'ambushed', the loud sound of a trash can toppling over rang through the abandoned alleyways of the city slums. A single zombie looked over at the small band of the living. It started to make the same noise the nose less one did back at the blockade before being permanently silenced by a loud crack from Anna's pistol, causing a neat hole to form in the creature's forehead.
"Shit, we have to move faster!" Dan screamed as he ran out of the alley way. His mind finally cracked from the horrors. Blinded by terror, he turned down the street at the edge of the alleyway and ran straight at a horde of ghouls. They didn't even bother walking towards him, they just stood there and stretched out their bony decaying arms for the feast to come to them.
"DAN!" Mike futilely screamed out at his friend. He was doomed, he stopped right in front of them. Dan's face pale with fear, stared at the gazing orbs of death staring at him. And the jaws that opened into a dark oblivion.
Like a toppling wave, they fell upon him. Dan's screams of agony filled the air as the creatures tore into him like a little boy opening his first present on Christmas morning. The screams were silenced when one of the creatures ripped out his trachea and esophagus from an exposed throat. Another tore out his intestines while 3 others ripped them into fragments to satiate their hunger. Dan's arm was half chewed and half ripped off and carried away from his body. A ghoul bit into his femoral artery, causing a massive spray of blood to sprout out of his leg. Daniel's body was completely torn apart within 30 seconds.
Mike looked away and turned to see one of them quietly trotting towards Anna, how looked with wide eyes in the direction of Daniel ran. To her, her once old friend's eyes seemed to turn red for a moment as an expression of rage covered his face. He ran towards the zombie behind her and tackled it to the ground. Anna turned to see him beating the zombies face in with his bare hands and screaming. Eventually, the rotting things head seemed to crack at the immense strength of the adrenaline pumping pissed off Master Corporal Michael King. The zombie twitched once and moved no more. Mike rose from the battered corpse and looked towards the other two remaining survivors. The noises of the things feasting on Dan could still be heard as the chewed on bone and tore at flesh.
"Michael…" Anna said silently, and ran off in to where she shot the zombie in the head, it was the only way of escape from this alleyway. Kyle immediately followed after her. Mike stood there for 10 seconds and took of his pack, he rummaged through until he found his claymore mines and set up one to cover their trail. Afterwards, he looked at it, then at in the direction at which Daniel ran for the last time.
"Long road ahead bro." He then followed in the direction Anna and Kyle ran towards.