Chapter 16 - Ryan
Haley and I were the first ones up that morning. We had climbed up to the top of the RV, holding each other as the sun rose.
"Ryan" she said "If anything happens, I want you to know that I love you more than anything in the world."
"Don't think like that sweetheart" I responded "everything is going to be alright." Her face and body sunk as the words escaped my mouth.
"I've got kind of a sinking feeling babe, like something bad is going to happen." she said in a rather depressed tone. I put two fingers under her chin and lifted her face to where our eyes met.
"I am not going to let anything happen to anyone ok?" I told her softly. I leaned in and kissed her. As we pulled away, the frown turned into a smile on her face. Everyone was up before 8, and we had gotten packed for the heist the night before. It was in question whether Jeremy and Haley were in the right physical and emotional states, but we couldn't procrastinate any longer, we needed food, and we needed it now.
"Alright guys, you all now the plan. We go in, gap two shopping carts each, and grab necessities. If we run into the undead, take them out as quietly as possible. If anyone hears a shot, find the nearest exit. Cool?" Haley spoke. Everyone nodded their heads in agreement. At that, we all took our weapons and headed out. It was a good ways to the mall, probably a few miles, so it was going to be quite a walk. I began to feel a bit bad about Jeremy, my vote was the reason the group decided to have Haley on as permanent leader. I began to reminisce on the first day with both of them gone. When Haley had been saved by Jeremy, Jeremy went comatose. Everyone was in a panic. With the two figureheads incapacitated, we needed to unify. Ashley and I had rallied everyone and calmed them down. Weir assured us that Haley and Jeremy had pulses periodically, but for the time being someone needed to take charge. Ashley and I ended up being the ones to stand up, but it was hard. Both of us were torn apart. Our loved ones were out cold, with no signs of coming to anytime soon. The pain I felt in that week was worse than any pain I had ever felt in my entire life, and I think I could say the same for Ash. My thoughts stayed centered on the events that happened days ago, while my body continued toward the mall. The time in which Jeremy and Haley were comatose were undoubtedly the darkest time for the group. No one knew what to do, no one had any idea what we were going to do. To Ashley, watching Jeremy wake up must have been the greatest feeling in the world. I felt it when I held Haley in my arms as she awoke. People needed small miracles like that to keep going, to keep hope in their hearts. As I came back to reality, I noticed we were considerably closer to the mall, only about half an hour now until the heist began. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if the group was ready. Not only were Haley and Jeremy not at 100% emotionally at this point. However, we would have to make do, there wasn’t any more time we could spare. At this point I was still worried about Jeremy, how he was taking the honesty from us. Being the one to lead us filled him with such pride, and then come to find out that he really isn’t as good of a leader as he thought he was,, that probably hurt his pride a good bit. The guy was a big ego-tistic, he was actually the one who coined the term ‘leader’ in the group. Originally, it was supposed to be a dominant democracy, some of the group still believes it is. However, in a dominant democracy, there is no set ‘leader’; it is controlled solely by the people. I will admit, having one set leader has gotten us out of some bad situations, but I believe it has done more harm than good to us. The reason most of us like Haley better as ‘leader’ was actually because she didn’t see it as a leading role. She saw it as a spokesperson, or figurehead role; someone to represent the group, and I’m not sure that’s how Jeremy saw it. Jeremy was indeed a good leader, he was great at giving speeches and pep talks, a great figurehead, and he’s a great guy in general; but his style of leadership is not what this group needs. He needs to get it through his thick, stubborn skull that he is not a bad leader, just not the style we need. Through all of my thoughts I hadn’t realized that we were much closer to the mall now. The heist was about to begin. As we approached the front entrance, everyone started loading up their guns. Wilson and Zach took position by the doors as Jeremy and Weir set up in front of the doors. Wilson and Zach busted down the doors and stepped away, and Jeremy &Weir were ready to fire inside. Luckily, Jeremy and Weir didn’t have to fire a shot, which gave us a better chance because we hadn’t alerted anything yet. Everyone began to file in, Zach and Wilson taking the lead with me and Jeremy at the rear. We started to notice that most of the walls of the inside were cracked and molded, which scared me a bit. We kept walking, and the room began to expand into a giant room with about 80 shops in it. This mall had to be at least 3 storied, so that’s a total of 240 shops approximately that we could raid. Each level except for the bottom level had a floor that circled around into itself with a chunk missing in the middle, so the people on the upper floors could look down at the bottom. We decided that Jeremy and Weir should go up to the top floor, Zach and I would take the 2nd floor, and Ashley, Haley, and Wilson would take the ground floor. When we found the stairwell, we split up. It was hard for me to part with Haley, but I knew in my heart she would be fine. As Zach and I trudged up the nearly demolished staircase, I reflected upon what Haley had said earlier. The bad feeling she had about this heist. It seemed too real to me, as if I had shared the feeling. I shook the thought out of my mind as Zach and I got to the door to the 2nd floor. He opened the door to the room full of deserted shops, cracked walls and floors, and the smell of the undead. Zach and I continued onto the floor and tried to sot shops to raid.
“Look over there Ryan.” He said “Candy Shop.” I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t had candy in about a year, and I was seriously craving some sugar. Zach and I began to sprint to the shop, but about halfway to the shop, we felt an abrupt shake and an ear-piercing rumbling sound, along with the scraping of metal. I happened to look down and saw that there was a giant crack starting to make it’s way across the floor a few yards in front of us. I looked behind us and saw another crack, the floor was breaking.
“Keep running!” I yelled. Zach had started to slow down, but when he realized what was happening he bolted. We were almost to the crack in front of us, when the floor started to drop. Zach and I jumped right as the floor chunk detached from the rest of the level. I made it back onto the level and slid forward, but Zach didn’t make it. He was hanging onto the rest of the level, as his feet dangled in the air below. I crawled over and grabbed his hand. Desperately, I tried to pull him up. Luckily, I was strong enough to lift him up and over and back onto the level. We both collapsed onto the floor after my successful rescue, breathing heavily.
“Thanks man, I owe you one” he managed to say
“You owe me two. Come on, let’s get some candy.” I responded. As we started to get up, we both looked at the gaping hole in the ground. This place was seriously unstable, so we needed to get in and out quickly.
“Everyone OK?” my walkie-talkie spoke in Haley’s voice. I picked it up from my belt and gave a confirmation that Zach and I were ok, followed by Jeremy’s confirmation. Now that a piece of our floor was missing, we would have to circle around to the other side of the mall to exit. What was worse, it looked as if the chunk of the floor falling alerted almost all the zombies in the mall with it’s noise. We would have to double-time it out of here. Zach and I agreed to go to the candy shop, being sure to walk this time. We got to the shop, and saw a few shelves empty, but there was still a lot of candy here. I grabbed a bag from behind the counter and started stuffing the candy that was still good into it. By the time we were done loading the bag, it was about five pounds. We decided to leave the shop and try to make it to the exit, but just as we exited to the shop, we heard the sound of a floor dropping again. However, this time it was not our floor that was dropping, it was the floor above us. The floor that held Jeremy and Weir. Zach and I looked up, watching fo
r which section of floor was going to come off. After a few moments, we realized that it wasn’t only a piece that was coming down, it was the whole level. The end of the floor that wasn’t attached to the wall began to bend down into the center of the bottom floor. Suddenly, the middle section of the third level snapped and the end connected to the wall slammed into the wall. That end of the floor went vertical, and everything from shoes to video games to shards of glass rained down on us. It seemed that the shops collapsed into themselves when the floor began to crumble. Suddenly, through the dust and rubble, Weir fell from the third floor. Luckily, he appeared to be on the side that went vertical into the wall, so I could catch him. I held my arms out to try to catch him, and sure enough he fell into my arms, and then thanked me for the save.
“Quick! Watch for Jeremy! He was on the other side of the floor!” He yelled, panicking. Zach, Weir and I all looked over at the side of the floor collapsing into the middle of the bottom level. Sure enough, we spotted Jeremy. However, he was in a free fall. His limbs were flailing as rubble and chunks of floor flew down with him. I ran over to the edge of our level in an attempt to watch Jeremy. I saw him hit the floor on the bottom level, back first. I had a little hope, until a huge chunk of the ceiling started to fall, right were Jeremy was laying.
“Jeremy! Get out of there! Move!” I yelled, but to no avail. In a few moments, the ceiling piece hit the floor, crushing Jeremy beneath it.
“Noooo!” I heard a faint cry. It was Haley. She started running toward the fallen piece of ceiling, but before she could get too far out of range, Wilson grabbed her and held her back. He was probably telling her we had to go, and he was right.
“Zach, Weir, let’s get the hell out of here!” I yelled. They didn’t object. We started sprinting across the floor and looking to cross over to the other side. As we began to run, we could feel the level begin to shudder and sway. We were running at full speed and had almost reached the exit. There was a small amount of time where the only thing that was running through my mind was ‘We’re not going to make it, the whole building is going to collapse on top of us’. However, I knew I couldn’t afford to think like that. We let out a final burst of speed and pushed the exit door open. We jumped over the balcony that was looming over the entrance to the bottom floor and fell onto the awning. We slid off of the awning and fell to the ground, where we met up with Wilson, Haley, and Ashley. Haley and Ashley were huddled on the ground crying, while Wilson was just staring at the crumbling building.
“We have to go!” I yelled as I grabbed haley’s hand. Haley got up, despite being in tears and ran with me. The thunderous sound of the whole building coming down deafened me, and it felt like a giant earthquake. We ran all the way until we reached the city limits.
“What the hell happened Weir?” I shouted.
“There were at least 500 of them!” Weir responded. “There was one survivor, but he was covered in blood. Somehow, the zombies weren’t attacking him. When he saw us, he started shooting one of the support beams on the 2nd floor. That’s why our floor began to crumble. Jeremy saw how it was bending and shoved me into the wall. He saved me.” He continued. The only thing I could think of was the possible reasoning that someone would do something like that. Why would someone give their own life to take ours? Haley and Ashley were still on the ground sobbing, and with good reason. Jeremy, our friend, was gone.
Kinemortophobia (The Fear Of The Undead) Book 1 Page 16
