Chapter XII: Chaos

AN:

Hey there, Fan-fic-folks!

Part two of today's update. Hope you enjoy.

Thanks for reading and, as always, please review.

They kept going along the bridge, hurrying just a little. Even though the creature had gone into the water, there was still some worry about the thing. The screams were back, off in the distance. More people dying, more of the infected roaming. For a moment, Chloe actually agreed with the decision to bomb the place to the ground.

Then they hit the off-ramp to Yamhill Street, and her thoughts came rushing back to the here and now. There was a crashing, smashing sound ahead. David gestured for their little group to slow, and all of them readied weapons. They could feel that familiar rising anticipation.

A window ahead shattered, and Chloe looked at the sign over the shop that was in the middle of being looted. "Who the fuck loots a party store? There's literally a brewery right over there, loot that, you morons."

And Chloe was, as always, just a little too loud. She always had been. A little too much, too much noise, too much enthusiasm. She'd never played well with others because of it. Or more accurately, they'd never played too well with her.

As they walked past the shattered window, voices called, and figures rushed out. "This is our spot, damnit!"

"Keep your spot! We're heading east!" David called back.

"Fuck you, old man!" One of them slurred again - they were all youngish men, and all of them were very, very drunk, swaying gently as they grimaced and growled with drunken exaggeration. "We know you want our spot!"

Oh, Chloe thought. They'd had the same idea already.

"They're going to bomb the city!" David continued, "We're trying to get out of here."

"Bomb the-?" One of them asked, "Are they insane? They- they'd destroy the Coffin Club, the Revolution, the Expatriate! And the Speakeasy!"

The lot of them began yelling at each other in grief and anger. Chloe couldn't understand a word. David gestured to them all and the group began to quietly walk away, leaving the looters to their… whatever that was.

As they got away, Chloe couldn't hold in a laugh.

—

But their journey quickly descended into horror. Through the industrial units, warehouses, and storage yards, dozens of running fights between the dead and the living played out around them as they ran. Hordes battered through glass to the terrified office drones within. A team of mechanics fought off a group of their own, covering several working on cars. Chloe wasn't sure why, most of the roads were chocked with traffic.

They continued to run forward, a stop and start series of dashes and ducks for cover through the chaos. This was the centre of the epidemic - they were starting to run low on ammo.

As they turned onto another crossroad, a car came rattling down one of the alleyways, scraping and screeching along the walls until it freed itself out into the street - the driver quickly lost control and rammed into a building,

The noise seemed to have been far worse than the conflict itself. Zombies drew in from the side streets, seeking the source of the sounds of… exploding cars and screams. Maybe they preferred grilled people?

And then the monster showed up. The Tyrant. It was still tall, bulging with muscle. It dripped, bone-wet, clearly escaped from the river. And long claws scraped along the tarmac. They ran. The creature gave chase - the claws scraping on the ground an eerie death knell through the noise and tremor around them. Chloe spotted a clear way out, "There!"

As they came out into a new street, bypassing the hordes, they found the space clearer than before - these side roads were less packed and cramped, and there was space to maneouvre. And manouvre they did, as the Tyrant came at them again. They dodged around it, blasting it with their guns if it got too close to someone else, trying to wear it down and bide their time until there was an opening to flee.

They heard the noise before they saw it - a massive truck lumbering into view, carrying a tank full of some sensitive gas or liquid. They all split off in different directions, just in time to avoid the thing slamming into the monster and knocking everything aside. The bundle of metal and brutality rolled to a stop, then exploded.

"Well." Chloe said, watching it. "That was… weirdly helpful."

"Yeah." Dana nodded.

They all stared at it for a moment, wondering what deity had decided to lend a hand, before the noise once more drew in the infected, forcing them to run on again. They were deep into the city now, but they were close to a way out.

—

There was another horde ahead, and scattered remnants of the cross-roads group were still shambling after them. David grabbed at Chloe's shoulder. "We need to get off the street."

Frankly, she agreed. It was starting to get crowded out there. She glanced ahead, finding the first open door. "There!"

They charged for it, a sliding warehouse door, and slid it closed behind them. Inside was an open factory-floor space full of machinery that Chloe didn't recognise. She did, however, recognise the large cases and racks of tools along the wall beneath an upstairs office. The row of handled sharp implements drew her attention immediately. Because of course it did.

"Fuck yes!" She celebrated, just a little too loud - a dull thunking sound started up as the zombies outside started pressing up against the door. "Fuck that."

She charged over and began sorting through the axes. As she did, the others spread out to investigate other exits. "At least now we know why it kept attacking us."'

"Huh?" Juliet called back, digging through a small footlocker.

"The Tyrant. It knows - or knew, I guess - we know the secret and it was tryin' to kill us to make sure we don't tell anyone else."

"How would it even know?"

"The thing had ears, y'know." Chloe shrugged. "Shit, maybe it was just guessing and didn't wanna take the chance." She grinned and picked up a couple of axes - a hefty full breaching axe that she slung over her back and a shorter chopper that she tucked into her belt. David gave her a concerned look, but honestly, they weren't guns so he just figured it could be worse.

And then the door finally burst. Whatever had been securing it to the rolling rails had broken and it hit the floor with an echoing boom. The first few zombies stumbled in, hitting the ground immediately. But the next simply shambled over their fallen comrades and made for the living.

"Move!" David barked.

They did, darting over for the back offices - the only visible exit from the room. The rest of them made it through, but David was grabbed halfway up and fell onto it hard. "Fuck!"

He kicked back, trying to dislodge his new hitchhikers. One of the dead was crawling up him, trying to hold his legs still long enough to get a bite in. But David had been a soldier. He kicked back, hard enough to break the thing's jaw and force it off - just in time for another two to join the attack. Nails dug sharply into his flesh, scraping his arms.

"Hey, fucker!"

The zombies looked up just in time to see Chloe's axe go through the first one's neck and into the second one's face. She left it there, grabbing David and dragging him out from beneath them. She wordlessly handed him his gun - he hadn't noticed he'd dropped it - then planted her foot in the zombie's chest and used it as leverage to pull out her axe with a meaty slurp.

With another kick to the next one, the two dashed back to the office door. The others closed it behind them and shoved a desk up against it. The office was not large, and David could survey it in its entirety in a single glance. There was one door on the opposite wall. "Any leads?"

Dana shook her head.

"What's through there?" He nodded at the other door.

"Bathrooms." She shrugged. "No back door is probably a fire code violation, right?"

"There any windows?"

She shook her head again. "Well, one, but none of us have any hope of fitting through it."

Chloe nodded simply. "Great." She hefted her breaching axe and drove it into the wall. It splintered, cheap material breaking apart easily. After baffled looks from everyone else in the room, she swung again. "If there's no way out, I'll make us one. Keep an eye on the door - and that window."

The group ran to do so, weapons out to defend. David and Dana kept the desk at the door secure, him shooting and her swinging her pole at any hands or heads that poked clearly through the shattered glass of the door. Rose and Juliet took the rest of the room - the windows were higher up, so there wasn't much to cover, but they managed.

As they all swung for the dead, Chloe swung into the wall, her axe taking out more and more of it until the hole was big enough to fit through.

"It's open, lets fucking go!" Chloe shoved her way through the gap, holding a couple of planks open to let Rose follow her, then Juliet, then Dana, and then David holding up the rear. He'd taken a moment to jam something in the desk to help hold it in place awhile.

They were… in a bar? And had quite literally come out behind the bar, smashing some picture hanging on the wall into shreds. If Chloe had hit a foot to the left or right, she would've hit bottles. Rose had stayed to help with David, but Juliet and Dana had both made for the door in the opposite wall. "It's locked!"

"Break it down!"

"There's a rolling shutter on the outside!"

She tossed her breaching axe over and pulled out the handaxe. "Then try the walls! I'll keep the fuckers back over here, Rose, David, you two see if you can find any better ways out."

Surprisingly, she'd apparently found the easiest job in the room. It took a while for the zombies to push their way into the office, and another while for them to find the hole. When they did, the crush of them did most of her job for her. She had to de-limb a couple, but she could mostly just keep watch.

She stepped back, leaning a little bit against the bar. She was starting to feel all the chaos of the day, aches and pains across her body.

As the zombies grasped and groped at the newly growing hole in the wall, Chloe looked between them and her colleagues smashing windows and doors and trying to break their way out. Then she looked down at the bar, sighed. She picked up a bottle of something dark and expensive, cracked it open, and took a long swig. After a pause, she took another.

Then the wall cracked, buckling under the axe - Juliet and Dana quickly opened the hole more until they could get out. When they called back, Chloe sighed. She put down her bottle and ran along to join the others.

They dashed out onto the street and- their gambit hadn't worked. They'd strode out onto a t-junction. To the left was the road they'd be walking down. The horde was there, and it had spotted them. To the right, a smaller group of infected - still enough to block them in. The alleyways across the road were all blocked.

"Fuck!"