CHAPTER 4 - DANGER
Rashes, wandering zombies, and an unbearable stench of blood.
We hold crude spears made of rods and knives connected through duct tape, clothes, and hope. I have a turtle keychain on mine. Fantastic. It's the one with the plastic straw up its nose and it's adorable.
"Let's move," Lee whispers.
We open the backside door slightly, checking the alleyway for strays. A quick photo using Mark's phone reveals an empty alleyway save for a few plastic bags full of trash and a huge bin.
I sneak outside first and the rest follow.
We've turned our phones to silent, all volumes down, to avoid triggering a stupid scene. Main communication method is through messages, surprisingly, the internet is working.
Continuous browsing is enough to keep the others stable albeit the only thing on their feed is depression—it's no longer a wonder why the military can't suppress the disaster nor send rescue teams.
They're busy containing the endless horde.
"Hide, now!" the mom orders, her name's Joy, she crouches behind the trash bin and bites her fingernail. "We should've ran away at the beginning, holing up inside a building near that tear is just stupid!"
"No use crying over it now," Lee comments.
No no, she's got a point. But it happened so fast and I'm sure that plan seemed good at the time. I recall the lady who got eaten alive. At the very least, it's better than ending up like her.
I take a quick peek past the dozen trashbags and see a gelatinous ooze inching forward away from the rift. It's a slime. A pretty big one at that.
Apparently, the horde isn't the end and is in fact the first among many to come out. We've witnessed walking anomalies in the form of bones carrying a worn bow and arrow; now we have a slime and there's bound to be more.
"It's like Minecraft oh my god!" Mark exclaims, eyes shining and a streak of death written all over his face.
He's definitely going to die. Amen.
I can relate to getting excited over figuring out supernatural or even fantasy stuff existing, but calm down bro you're not the main character here.
If you die in real life, you die for real.
"Where are they? It's taking too long," I frown, checking my phone for messages—the others are doing the same.
The plan was to get in touch with Mark's friends from the building across. A restaurant. Lucky bastards. We can't cross the street to get to them as their place have glass walls or whatever it is. They've done their best to cover the view from the inside using napkins, newspapers, and table cloth.
If either side makes a run for it, both will sustain damage with them having the short end of the stick. Our place has concrete. Suck my big toe.
Anyway, they are planning to travel through the rooftops since they have a ladder that leads to the roof. We don't have such technology.
I notice a writing message at the bottom of the screen and a single thumbs up emoji is received. Glancing up the rooftops, we see a girl scanning the place before driving her attention to the phone in her hand.
The group chat updates.
["I found it,"] she says. ["Luck is on your side Marky~❤️ I see it lying just a few feet away from 7-eleven. There's a guy in a flowery Hawaiian shirt costume inside the store next to you guys and it looks like... wait a sec, let me zoom in."]
A few seconds pass, another message comes with an attached image. ["Oh no... he's been bit."]
I close the phone and sigh.
With the given confirmation that our quest objective is nearby, we each give a nod. The frontline belongs to me. I volunteered as tribute.
The walk forward is one of caution.
Careful not to step on plastic, we lower our center of gravity and inch closer to the street. There's an abandoned car shielding us from sight. We hide and sneak.
"I see it," I say, eyes on the huge speaker with an attached microphone and I smirk.
That's right, we're going to use that to lure them someplace else. With renewed enthusiasm, we move, but a zombie manages to walk from the shadows and block our path.
It hasn't noticed us yet.
I look back and signal with a hand gesture before peeking over the car. There's a lot of them. They're wandering aimlessly. I ready a shirt and it says "I love Clement" and it's green—I love green.
I wait, shirt in hand, eyes locked on the zombie, and inch closer. Sweat gathers. It tastes salty. The moment I cross and make it to the other store, I see an undead with a Hawaiian shirt.
Before I can do anything to execute an on-the-spot barely thought out plan on either of them, it lunges at me. Glass breaks as the door gives and a small debris scratches my face, to make matters worse, the world shakes as my vision and head gets forcibly pushed back.
"Shit!" I curse as the zombie knocks me against a car.
A loud thunk echoes as my body hit metal. The shirt proves useful in stopping the assault and covering the zombie's head, but not its hands as it tries to tear away at the duct tape armor but only manages to leave blood marks.
The group is in high alert.
The plan for stealth has disconnected the call.
The first zombie turns toward us and catches wind of our presence. Its lifeless eyes dart around before regaining its sinister gleam as it opens its torn maw and walks closer ever-groaning a guttural scream.
I panic and try to push back.
Lee vaults over and deals with the other one with a quick upwards smack to the head. A spray of red colors the immediate vicinity as the wooden bat takes care of the problem.
The freshly baked undead is relentless in making me its lunch until a spear goes right into its head, it immediately falls dead for a second time. Blood and brain matter staining my jeans and gray hoodie.
Mark helps me up.
The group gathers as we nervously watch several undead take notice.
"What do we do now!?" Joy exclaims, fear evident as she grips her spear shakily. "They're coming!"
"Run," I say, making a dash for the 7-eleven.
An arrow shoots past above my head as a skeleton aims from across the street, its teeth clanking in mockery. I ignore it and instead grab the speaker the moment it's in my reach.
Lee and Mark go straight for the store. The door is torn off the hinges and they instantly get to work dealing with the batch of undead inside.
Joy stabs an oncoming zombie in the chest and I turn on the speaker, dragging the quest item with me as I shout at Joy to switch places.
"Got it!" she leaves her spear inside a dead woman.
I grab hold of it and kicked its body. Spear in hand, I ready myself as I face the oncoming tide while the partners in the store are gathering as much supplies as they can within a designated time.
At such an opportune time, the speaker issues a connection sound and an upbeat music resounds in the rot-infested port.
[ Michael Jackson - Beat it ]
I smile as more heads turn toward us. Motivation. I bash and slash at heads to the beat. In the distance, I spot the place near Carlos' car gradually become vacant and the people on the roof have readied themselves to run down the fire exit stairs for a breakaway.
This is the plan.
"We're done, let's move!" Lee shouts as Mark hauls a backpack.
Joy and I nod and immediately proceed forward away from the souvenir shop. Going back in the same path is suicide so we'll circle around and by the time we get back, there'll be less zombies to deal with and we can get away.
Mark has a good head.
We run inside an alleyway to sprint out the other side. A wire fence blocks the path. Mark throws the backpack over and climbs together with Lee with little effort.
The fence rattles as they jump off and I immediately start climbing as did Joy, but I fail to notice a primordial ooze slither from the drainage and snatch Joy's leg.
I jump off the other side with a thud, stumble, and fall on my butt.
"Damn, pull!" the guys reach for Joy as she is inches from the top. More slime tethers to Joy and I get up to help, but at that moment, an arrow shoots through her shoulder and she grunts—a bit of air from her lungs leave.
Pain immediately transmits to her consciousness and we lose grip of her from that single moment of flinching.
"Agh!" Joy shouts as she falls and gets dragged away.
We are helpless as an eager cannibal falls on top of her and takes an enormous bite to her ear and face. Her legs kick at air as we grit our teeth, shock and denial painting our faces.
I watch as more come and they have started munching on her, taking turns biting and tearing and burrowing themselves as she wails loudly in pain. Tears stream down her pale bloody face as she is pinned down unable to move.
"Guys, let's go! There's nothing more we can do," Mark snaps out of it and gets to work.
I keep my eyes on her as Lee drags me away.