Chapter 3 – Run
''I'm not leaving her behind! If you want to go then do so, I'm staying here with Anne!'', Ray shouted desperately, still backing up from the hundreds of zombies showing up while trying to shoot some of them. His hands were sweaty and they were shaking from all the nervousity. His Poloshirt was filled with blood, so were his short brown cargo shorts.
''You have to go Ray, there's no hope for me, I've been bitten. I will die no matter what you do and you know it. Remember what happened.'', Anne hid her fear of her end and tried to talk sense into Ray.
''Ray, we have to go, there's no time, we will get overrun by these monsters.'' Paty said, approaching Ray and Anne, helping them shoot the zombies as good as she could. One headshot after another she came nearer but the zombies just kept coming like there was no end.
''I would never leave my friends behind and you're aware of that. It's not easy for me but I don't want to lose you both!'', this time Paty reached out and grabbed the back of Ray's poloshirt. Full of anger Ray swung around and threw Paty to the floor.
''We will all die, we can't do anything about it and there is no point to live on if I can't even protect the people I love. Now GO!'', Ray was out of ammo, he dropped his weapon, let go of Anne and run straight into the mass of walkers in front of him.
''Hurry! I can't keep going on like this forever.'', with that being said, Randi took Paty into her care and forced her to leave:
''Come on Paty, we can't stay here any longer.'', Paty, still focused on Anne and Ray, was dragged along by Randi. As they both were running down the staircase they could hear the screams of pain that Anne and Ray were letting out. The imagination of them being bitten and hurt was too much for her. A tear slipped out Paty's eye hearing it, she wiped it off immediately and ran even faster to ignore the suffering of Anne, Ray and even her own. She knew she needed to get the rest of them out of the mall, she couldn't lose anyone else anymore. She wouldn't forgive herself for letting her friends die. On the second level things were breaking out of order too. With all the hectic they crashed into a wrecked Anita. Out of reflection Paty and Randi both raised their guns but lowered them immediately as they realized that it was Anita. She was a complete mess.
''What happened to you ?'', Randi was worried. Anita's hands were full of blood, she was in a shockstate and Randi couldn't reach her. The growling kept getting louder, walkers kept appearing and now also from the second level.
''Wait, you're alone, where is Lian?'', Paty asked in a hurry, she grabbed Anita's shoulders with both her hands, the shotgun attached to her belt.
''Tell me what happened, we need to find her and run for it, there's no time left.'', she told Anita, as calm as Paty could but still trembling a little. She started to cry after Paty had asked her, she seemed to feel guilty. The atmosphere was filled with despair as the screaming from upstairs stopped. Randi hold all her emotions in to not seem weak and to not bother Anita. Taking out her shotgun violently Paty started to shoot the zombies around her. Randi took Anita's arm and headed to the lowest etage. With every shot she started to get more unstable, her emotions overwhelmed her but she coped them with hate for her own decision to leave Ray behind too. She tried to take out all her aggressions on the things that had done all this to her group.
After having shot enough of the creatures to have a good lead ahead of them, she ran for the lower etage. Where everything used to be in order and clean, now was blood and corpses. The mall was full of, once alive, people with fleshwounds, ripped clothes and fallen out hair. Still having Anita's arm in her hand Randi rushed through the hallways and once in a while she would look back to see if Paty was coming along.
''Try to hold on Nits as good as you can'', she told Anita and helped her get up on the backside of the black truck, which was filled with bloodspures from the many attacks before this trip. There was also rost and the tires didn't match anymore from the many changes. Before running to the car Paty stopped for a second outside of the mall.
What if Lian is still in there ? What am I supposed to do ? She thought to herself. For a moment she was thinking about closing the security grid for the mall to not let the zombies out. Randi, already in the car, made a 180° turn and drove right before Paty :
''Get in ! ''. Paty left the grids open and got into the car, never stopping looking back in hope Lian would still appear. Driving off further away the image of the walkers coming out of the mall faded. To not lose sight of it Paty leaned out of the window.
''This is bad, they're everywhere on the streets here, we need to take another way out'', Randi said, taking a quick right and then another quick left, almost swinging Anita off the car. Speeding up Randi grabbed the steering wheel with more pressure.
''Stop the car!'', Paty suddenly interrupted Randi's driving.
''We need to go back, we need to search for Lian!''.
''We can't the streets are full of them, we'll get ourselves killed.'', Randi was looking at the situation more straightforwarded, she only thought of surviving.
''She's still out there, alone. I have the responsebility for her, she's the youngest here, she doesn't even have a gun. How is she supposed to survive this all by herself? It's my fault if anything happens to her! We're supposed to stick together no matter what happens and this hasn't changed, turn the car, we really should go back.''. Randi stopped the car, still not turning back.
''You need to hear me out, we'll find her. But if we go back now, we'll have no chance of doing anything, we will drive right into our death. You're not seeing things clearly right now. First we need to find someplace safe and then we'll start our search for her.''.
''Hold on just a little longer Lian.'', Paty said out loud as she gave in, feeling bad about just everything at that moment.
''This is it, down there, it's him''. Omar put his hand on top of his eyebrowes to block the sun out and have a better view. From the hill he could see a house about 100 meters next to where seemingly Tommy lied. Before they could reach the spot they had to walk through a deep forest that seemed to be very thick.
''Are you sure we should go into a forest, I mean, there's wolves and shit'',
''Omar, we're in the middle of nowhere with zombies all around, there are no wolves, I promise you that''. Omar swallowed:
''Well not that I would've cared anyways. I'm not scared.'', Omar had his fear written all over his face.
''You don't need to act all tough, let's just get over with it so we can go on''. With that being said Ash took the lead.
''Ladies first!'', he uttered behind her, pointing out that he let her go first on purpose. The woods were calm, making the atmosphere almost scary.
''Where are the crickets when you need them'', Omar tried to cheer up the mood.
''Maybe zombies have apetite for insects'', Ash said without even looking back to Omar.
''Jesus, why do you always do that?'', Omar reacted to Ash with a disgusted face, even though she didn't notice, she smiled. Something cracked in the distant and Omar almost let a sound out that was similiar to a squeal. In his jumpscare he clinged to Ash.
''Did you hear that ?'', he was still looking around to see if he could locate anything out of the order.
''Probably just an animal, stop being such a sissy.'', she said looking down her figure, to see Omar's hand still holding her shirt tightly.
''I'm not a sissy, stop being so mean to me. Wasn't pointing your gun at me enough already?'', Ash ignored Omar and walked outside of the forest, already focused on what was in front of her. Omar let go of her shirt and stood beside her as she was looking forward.
''Ít's going to be okay.'', Omar noticed her angst and put his hand over her shoulder and gave her a mild smile. She nodded, satisfied with what he said. They both walked up to it, the location where it happened. They walked up to it just to come to the conclusion that there wasn't anyone on that spot anymore. Just leftovers of his bodyparts.
She was resting, cleaning the machete and honing it. Sitting on a roof of a building in the middle of a village. Zombies were under her, everywhere on the street. Walking around, with no sense to their being. She was observing them, trying to memorize their habits. She felt as she needed to know her enemy well to be able to fight them, kill them. There were a lot creatures that had lost their legs, their arms or even half of their bodyparts and guts. Their looks were empty, there was nothing in it to find. No thoughts, no will.
One of the walkers tripped and fell over his zombiecomrade. She couldn't help herself but laugh about it.
How dumb, she thought to herself. Her laughing got interrupted by a scream that came from the other direction. She ran to the other side of the roof and overlooked the streets to make out where, in all of those hordes of zombies, that scream could've come from. In the far distance she saw two creatures. No. She saw two actual people standing there.
Kao was looking at the little flowers peeking out of the cement that they were walking on. How wonderful it was for her to see them. She cherished every single living, every single healthy animal. A cat walked by and she stopped to pat it, it meowed at her. It seemed to be hungry. ''You seem to be starving, poor little kitty.''. She didn't have much food. She only had a piece of fish left from the other day that she wanted to keep for later. She hadn't eaten in days. In this world everyone was slowly starving. There was no helping it. She took the piece of fish out:
''You can have it, you seem to need it more than I do.'', as she fed it to the cat she got a sudden feel of happiness. Her smile went all over her face. She patted the cat one last time and walked on. Looking back the cat was already washing himself and laying down like a lazy sack. It seemed to be very satisfied with its meal. Kao walked on, still with a bright smile on her face.
''I found it!'', screamed Dominic from a distance while running towards Kao.
''Stop screaming Domi, you'll get us in trouble and the cat'',
''What cat? Have you been giving your food away again to animals? Anyways, I finally found a radio device, we can use it to find other people !''. Kao didn't believe it at first sight, but it was true, after searching for such a long time Domi finally found hope for them. Out of joy Kao gave Dominic a hug, it was like a reflect.
''That's great, I can't believe you finally found it.'',
''Does that mean you were doubting me ?'', Kao let go of the hug, put on a smirk and said :
''Me ? How would I ever doubt you ?'', putting on an innocent face she walked on.
''You're being sarcastic again aren't you ?'', a little dull to the situation Dominic scratched his head and walked along with her. All they needed now was a safe place to get the transmitter to work.
''Wait!'', Kao almost shouted. ''Did you see that?'',
''See what?'',
''There, up there on the roof!'', said Kao forcing Dominic to look closer. ''Is that a person?''.
Blood was covering a part of the ground and almost reaching Liz's beloved high heels.
''You could've hit us with that thing!'', Liz said, pissed. Sarah was still not sure what to think of the situation so she kept silent in front of the stranger.
''You shouldn't walk around here unarmed, it's dangerous and foolish.'', the girl with short darkbrown hair said.
''Who are you calling a fool here, watch your mouth'', Liz said, having enough of the stranger's talk. She approached the girl that was atleast a head shorter than her.
''You're just a little kid, don't mess with me. And by the way, I don't need any weapons. I can handle myself.''. With Liz saying that, the girl put her baseball bat back into the bag of it that she carried around on her back. She turned around and was about to walk away when Sarah interfered:
''We shouldn't let her go, she helped us.'', clearly too proud to call her back, Sarah took over that role.
''Hey, she didn't mean it-'',
''Yes I did!'',
''I don't want to be mean but please just be quiet Liz.''. Sarah didn't think about it twice and ran after the girl that both of them had just met. Liz, still surprised by Sarah's sudden moodchange, walked sluggishly after them. Still moody about the little kid.
''Wait!'', Sarah screamed after her, being already out of breath. The girl stopped and looked back with an arrogant look on her face. They were standing next to a road, surrounded by some bushes and trees.
''Thank you for your help, we really appreciate it.'',
''I'm not sure if we do'', interrupted Liz, finally catching up to them.
''LIZ!'', Sarah turned around, with a begging face.
''Alright, I'll shut up for once, but onlybecause we kinda both died together, twice.''
''Do you know what's going on here? We're kind of oblivious to this whole situation.'' The girl seemed to wonder a lot about those two so she leaned her head into the direction deeper into the trees and bushes.
''Let's go, I have a camp near here. I'm Vani in case you want to know.''
''Sarah, and her name is-''.
''My name is none of her business yet'',
''Well your friend already called you by your name, nice to meet you Liz.'', near to a little rage Liz threw a pissed look at Sarah which scared her so much that she decided to walk with Vani. When they arrived at the camp a fire was already lit. Vani told them to sit down while she was preparing them both a bottle of water. After that she sat down herself.
''You guys really don't know what happened here?'', Liz and Sarah looked at eachother, looked back at Vani and shook their heads simultaneously.
''I don't know much either, but I can try to explain everything I know up until now.'', she took a last sip of her water as she started to explain.
to be continued