Dear
Diary,
We
left the jewellery store at dawn, me with my BOB in one hand, and my gun
and Thomas' hand in the other. I wore April like a backpack,
Deathbringer stuffed behind her and through one of the leg holes she
was too small to use. We grouped the kids the best we could between
us, taking an equal share of the under 5s and over 5s. Joe's bright
idea of painting our HAZMAT suits black seemed pretty
redundant, at least from were I was relegated to the back of Joe's Disney
parade. The shopping mall was empty and blindfold black, only Joe had his
torch on, we made the kids keep theirs off, and I didn't have a free
hand for a light source. I'm still kicking myself for not getting
a helmet one from Thumbs Up Joe!
We
crossed the undercover car-park, keeping an eye out for any suitable
vehicles. That place was beyond creepy, especially with the howling.
I haven't heard it before, but Joe had, and the kids had. They were
terrified – the kids, I don't think Joe's scared of anything. They
kept pulling on us and begging to go back inside. The look on their
faces made me want to do that a whole lot more than my repeated
“It's okay!” let on.
The
carpark was one of those multi-decker ones with a view toward the
city, back along the highway, and home. With the sunrise and the distance I thought the bright flashes were reflected sunlight on windows. Then Thomas said– “Fire! 911!” Just like
Mom taught him. He was right, it was fire, but there isn't a 911 to contain it.
The wind changed direction and smoke boiled between
the skyscrapers, carrying debris high into the sky, in our direction.
“How
far away is it, Jenny?” Casey asked.
I
squeezed her arm and told her not to worry, the city was a good 25
miles away at least.
Joe
made a pretence of adjusting April to whisper to me. I agreed with what he said. There was no going back, we had to get out of this sector, to
the bus and away before the fire arrived. We hurried the kids up, got
them to run down onto the street and hide behind a set of parked cars
while Joe scanned the route ahead with his scope. It went on like
this, scan and hide, scan and hide, until we hit the highway. Here there were several burnt out
wrecks from a week or so ago, and as we crossed an overpass, the Yellow bus where we had left it, a mile and a bit in the
distance.
By now
smoke blew thick across the road making it hard for the kids to
breathe. Joe and I were fine, we had filters. We wet the kids
t-shirts, had them breathe through the cloth. We travelled three quarters of the distance this way. I had to wear my BOB and
carry April, walking with a spare wet onesie pressed to her face. That's
why I tripped on Vanessa, she squatted on the road, trembling. Joe
raised his hand for everyone to halt.
Loping down the highway,
between us and the bus, were a pack of reanimated. I couldn't see any
real detail, but the way they moved, hands to ground, stretched way
out front, legs pulled up under them– bums up, legs, hands, legs, hands,
legs, hands– nightmare in motion. They hadn't seen us, what with the
smoke. But we were trapped. They would pass us soon,
their rolling gait so quick, the overpass prevented us going over the side. Several ugly crashes from the first
week of the virus slowed them now and again. One would break from the
pack, leap onto a crumbled bonnet, stick its head through a broken
wind-shield. If it found something, it howled to the others. If not
it rejoined the pack. Then there we no more cars left between us and
them. We had nothing to hide in but smoke. We turned to go back,
but the wind changed with a rush of clean air, giving us oxygen and stealing our cover.
The reaninmated
saw us, I don't know what I expected, but they didn't charge us. They stopped, sniffed the air,
hands pulled up to their chests. Four of
the pack spilt off, two down each side of the embankment. I shoved
April at Vanessa, shoved Thomas at Casey, and fired my gun. Pop, pop,
pop. One, two, three, of the five remaining reanimated yelped, the
last two sped toward me. Joe was beside me, pop, pop, pop. Finally a
head shot. Then another. The two frontrunners fell bum-over-head and
didn't move. The last three bounded over them and crashed into
me. I grabbed Deathbringer, smack! It found an eye, I shattered the
rest of the socket getting DB free. The two clawed at me, thin white needles for teeth snapped at my face, sliming the plastic. I
tried to escape, tried to roll out from under them, tried to find
DB. Then Joe was there, he grabbed one, then another by
the hair, shot them in the back of skull. The last one howled,
limped back the way it had come. Joe, arm steady, tracked it. Pop! Reanimated brains splattered asphalt.
We ran, Joe carried Thomas and Casey, plus his gun,
plus his BOB. We got to the bus. I still had to fix the fanbelt.
Joe waved the kids on board, I tossed my pack on the ground to get
the toolkit and Joe grabbed me, spun me around. He didn't talk, held my HAZMAT
head in his hands and tilted it side to side, checked each and every
seam of my suit for splits. Then he sighed, rested his visored
forehead against mine and looked into my eyes. No one has ever
looked at me that way before. It was also the first time I really noticed how
dark Joe's eyes are.
“I'm okay, Joe, the suit held. Let's do this quick.” I told him.
He
squeezed my shoulders and asked me to hand him the spanner. It's
midday now and the city's a distant glow. The going's been slow, a lot of abandoned traffic to navigate but no reanimated, and we are heading in the right direction, things could be worse. I'm sitting at the
back, I said it was to lie down, but really, I can't shake the sense
that something's watching us. Okay, Joe needs me to watch for signs, we have to take the next turn off.
Update
Soon.
