Kinemortophobia (The Fear Of The Undead) Book 1

by Jeremy Bandicoot

  Chapter 19 - Weir

  This was all so bizarre. Magic rings that would let the wearer control the elements? Highly unlikely. And if that were the case, why couldnt I wield one? Why hadn't a ring chosen me as it's master? I clearly have a more vast intellect than anyone in the group, so I think I deserve one. It must have all been a trick, an illusion of some kind. However, it was beyond me how Morgan could make a whole building turn to rubble in mere seconds. I stared at Ryan as he stared at the ring. I wasnt going to believe it was 'magical' until I saw what it could do. Finally, Ryan looked up at me.

  "Skeptical?" He asked. I had forgotten that we all knew each other so well, spending so much time together made the group learn about one another. I nodded at Ryan's question. "Yeah, me too, I'm not sure if any of this is real to be honest." He continued.

  "There's only one way to find out." I said. He replied with a nod, then turned around. He looked out at the Rocky Mountains and saw all the snow on them. I figured he was thinking exactly what I was. Snow was frozen water essentially, so his ring should work on it.

  "What do I do to make it work?" He asked Haley.

  "From what I understand, you can't 'make' it work. It has to come naturally to you. It has to agree with you, so to speak." She responded. Great, more mysterious mumbo-jumbo.

  "Wait a minute guys, where's Morgan?" Wilson asked.

  "Last I saw him, he was trying to hold his own against the blast." Ryan responded. We started to look for him, and eventually found him. He was in the driver's seat of a car that whizzed by us. It appeared that out beef with Morgan was not yet over. We decided that the best course of action was to try to figure out where Morgan was headed and follow him. As we treaded away from the destroyed building, many of us began to express our sorrows. Everything that was going on had just hit us like a ton of bricks. Jeremy's death, the deaths of our families, what the world had come to in just 3 months, how much longer we would have to endure this hell, how our hopes were relying on these rings that may or may not have 'magical' powers. The ones that weren't hit very hard tried to comfort the ones that were hit the hardest. Wilson and myself tried to comfort Zach and Ashley, while Ryan worked to comfort Haley. None of us knew exactly how to help each other, even though we had spent the past 3 months getting to know each other. Nothing like this had ever happened in history, and no human being was meant to endure this much emotional and physical pain. We had no cure, and nowhere we could think of to go. Morgan was the only person that we could think of that may have the slightest idea of how to stop this plague, but we had no idea where he was headed. Most of us agreed to adapt back to our old ways, pure survival. Wilson and Zach disagreed.

  "We need to find Morgan and get more information out of him, see if he knows if any of the scientists in Vermont had an antidote to this thing as a precaution." Wilson suggested. This fueled us back to the idea of trying to find Morgan, who we had already lost track of. We made our way down to the highway, walking away from Colorado Springs forever. We walked for at least an hour before we got to a rest stop. The rest stop was completely raided, but we thought the soda machines might still have had some soda in them. As well, we needed to search the car wash for cars, because walking definitely wasn't cutting it. Zach and Wilson went inside to check the soda machines, while Haley, Ryan, Ashley, and I went into the car washes. If there was a car here, it was definitely invisible, because I wasn't seeing one. I could, however, see about a million gasoline containers. Suddenly, an idea struck in my head. I sprinted out of the car wash and into the rest stop. I made my way behind the counter and found a bunch of tools. Among them, I found a few sturdy ropes and some heavy looking metal slabs. All I needed to know was which of these tools could break a pipe. And, even if I found something hard enough, I would need to raise it up 20 feet to the top pipe to break it. As I was contemplating, I heard two different pitched 'honks' outside. I looked up at the rest stop's security camera feeds and saw two cars that Ashley and Ryan found. One was beat up, almost beyond repair, and the other was almost new-looking. I knew from the get-go which car we were going to take, but maybe we could make use of the other one as well. Now we would need 2 ropes and 2 anvils, or at least something very heavy. I saw Zach and Wilson walk by with 5 milk gallons full of soda, when I caught their attention. "Abloogywoogywoo!" I yelled from behind the counter. They jumped so much they fell and 2 of their gallons exploded onto the ground. It reminded me of the 'gallon smashing' youtube videos that went viral just before the outbreak. That was the most fun I have had since the outbreak began. They shot dirty looks at me and told me that I had just wasted 2 gallons of soda.

  "I have a plan that can get us about 15 gallons of water." I responded. I explained my plan to them and told them the only flaw in the plan was getting up to the top pipe of the car wash. At that, Wilson had an idea that would test the truth of the rings as well. My plan was that we tie something heavy to a sturdy rope, hang it from the top pipe, hit the object hanging from the pipe with the beat-up car whilst driving, and the force should either knock the heavy object in the air, and the force of it's pull as it comes back down would pull the pipe off, or the car will 'grab' the object in the grill and the pull between the car and the rope would pull the pipe off. Wilson said that he could use his ring of darkness to blend into the shadows of the car wash and climb up to the pipe. And that he did. To my surprise, when Wilson stepped next to the shadows on the inside car wash wall, his ring began to glow. Wilson began to merge with the shadows. His whole body turned black as the shadow, and it looked as if he had become attached to the wall. Wilson then began to crawl up the wall and onto the ceiling, rope in hand. As he tied the rope to the pipe, it looked as if he was standing upside-down on the ceiling. After tying the ripe, he climbed back down, detached from the wall, and transformed back into the normal Wilson. I guess seeing truly is believing, because he surely made a believer out of me. What I had just witnessed was nothing short of miraculous. I was so much in awe that I had almost forgotten the next phase of the plan. The others and I had developed a pulley system in the car. One of the heavy metal slabs I found in the rest stop was placed in the beat-up car, suspended a few inches from the gas pedal by another rope. This rope led through the door and in our hands. The door was acting as our axle. We let go of the rope and the heavy metal fell directly on the gas pedal. the crummy car sped off toward the car wash. The car hit at least forty miles per hour before the impact into another metal slab that we had tied to the dangling rope. As I expected, the metal slab latched onto the car's grill and the rope holding it to the pipe tightened sharply. Suddenly, the pipe snapped and water started to fly and spew everywhere. As it did, the car kept going until it crashed and exploded into the wall and the other side of the car wash. I happened to look over at Ryan and saw his ring start to glow. He suddenly raised his hand, and when he did, all the water that was just flung into the air by the impact froze in mid-air. None of it flowed, none of it dropped, none of it froze over into ice, it just hovered where it was. ryan's ring was supposedly the ring of the water, and that is why. Ryan must have the ability to control the water.

  "Weir, go set those gas containers up, I'll direct the water into them." He told me. I did as he told, not questioning the power of the rings anymore. As I set up each gas container, some of the water above me drained out of the mainstream of hovering, frozen water and flowed into the individual gas containers. I honestly couldn't believe my eyes, these rings truly possessed magical powers. As Ryan poured the water into the gas canisters, I noticed that quite a few zombies were coming from down the road. With all the stuff concerning the rings, we had all nearly forgotten that we were in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.

  "Hey Ryan, you might want to hurry that up, we've got company." I warned.

  "I'm going as fast as I can." Ryan hissed back. "Just stall them until I get this done." Zach, Ashley, and I sp
rinted across the parking lot, looking for an idea. there were at least twelve dozen of them, there was no way we could fight them all. the lot was nearly empty, so there was nothing we could do to distract them or use against them. It almost looked as if it were the end of the line. We were surrounded, there was nothing we could do. "Hit the deck guys!" Yelled a familiar voice. As we were instructed, Ashley, Zach, and I dropped to the ground. As we did so, a huge wall of wind hit the zombies head-on, lifting them into the air. I watched on as all the zombies rose off of the ground and start to swirl around, as if they were in a tornado. The wind around us was almost too much to handle, we were about to lift off the ground ourselves, when, just in the nick of time, the tornado of zombies was launched sky high and into the distance. I heard a huge slosh in the distance, probably the remainder of the water ryan was handling hitting the ground. I looked up and saw a girl floating on a cloud about 15 feet from the ground. the back of her head looked quite familiar, though I couldn't put my finger on where from. As her cloud descended to the ground, I found myself finding her even more familiar. She stepped off the could and onto the ground, then turned towards us. I couldn't believe it. It shouldn't have been possible, but there she was, standing before us. It was Caitlin who had saved us all.