by Thomas, Jack
Marcus distanced himself from Edwin and me. He went far ahead to interact with us as little as he possibly could. He wanted to process options to deal with Edwin’s presence, options which wouldn’t endanger anyone.
We moved in a single file, slanted line.
“I’m sorry…” Edwin said minutes into the walk with Marcus and me.
“Don’t worry about it,” I tried to comfort him. “Did you at least let them know you planned to come along with us or did you suddenly leave them without warning? They could be in a panic right now, you know.” Without realizing it, my attempt to comfort him turned into accusation.
“I didn’t really have a plan. I left without thinking it through... They have no idea where I am.”
“Figures…” Marcus mumbled under his breath ahead of us.
“Well, that sucks. Guess panic mode it is for everyone back at Trevor’s,” I said.
“You do realize you will head back with me, right?” Marcus made sure to keep Edwin informed on the fact he was not going to tag along with me but instead return with Marcus to Trevor’s and stay there.
I didn’t have it in me to both watch the kid selflessly and put my family and my survival behind anything or anyone else’s. There was no benefit. The life of one for the life of many did not come across to me as a way to save humanity or my own sanity in this messed up world.
“I know. I just wanted to do something other than be trapped in that building for a long time.” Honest and simple.
I understood exactly what he meant. Boredom, although difficult to come by in the apocalypse, was still a real thing. While the days rolled by, the excitement of a zombie apocalypse died out and became something so regular we managed boredom all over again. Take into consideration that the blackouts put whole cities in the dark and the lack of safe outside entertainment; boredom was the next most dangerous killer of us all.
“Alright, you’ll have to stay close to us at all times. I don’t want you strolling off and getting hurt. We can’t risk injury. We don’t know how bad the towns and cities surrounding us have gotten in the past few days,” Marcus began when he stopped to face us. “You are at all times directly next to one of us and at all times obeying the commands that either one of us give you. This is not debatable; this cannot and will not be argued. Is this understood?” He became firm and strict, more direct than I’ve seen him ever.
Edwin didn’t know how to respond, he looked at me for assistance but I couldn’t help him here. Although the answer was easy and obviously a ‘yes’, the tone in which Marcus approached the subject was so strong it gave even me chills. Edwin must have needed a fresh pair of pants and underwear at that point. “YES!” He shrieked and his voice cracked. A fearful silence followed.
“Good,” Marcus said and continued to walk, this time closer to us but still ahead.
Confirmation came sooner than I could have ever expected.
Marcus stopped again. He noticed something ahead of us I managed to miss. “Say and do nothing.” The volume of his voice dropped to only a little higher than a whisper.
I didn’t know what was going on, best reason to panic, but I couldn’t panic. I was told to do nothing. I decided to freak out later. A freak-out rain check if you will. I couldn’t see anything happen to reflect the appropriate kind and amount of fear I should have, just another moment of confusion.
“Do you remember the alternate routes we mapped out for the area?” Marcus asked. He tried to keep his voice low. The question was for me.
I remembered most of the routes off of the top of my head, and some extra ones we didn’t even mark on the map. “Yes…” I answered my voice as low as his.
”Pick one, take it, and I’ll follow you after you’ve gone far enough. Take Edwin with you,” his voice shook like an earthquake took place in his throat, “Remember to run.”
I couldn’t move. He gave me a clear warning and command but I didn’t react with anything but stiffness and a distinct shiver which crept down my spine. Sadly, my reaction was within reason. A couple of seconds rolled by before a loud scream came from a distance. Similar to the random yells of the girl in my neighbor’s house on the first night, but somehow still different. I knew for sure it came from runners close by which meant we needed to get as far away from there as we could. Edwin was in his own little world of panic and kept his eyes fixed on me while he waited for me to lead the way. I did as Marcus asked and I scanned the immediate area till I located a building I could identify easily without the help of the map. The alley on the side of it would most likely have no snow because of how narrow it was. Not only would the lack of snow increase our speed, but the narrowness would also help us control the number of infected behind us and prevent us from getting overwhelmed. It would save our lives until we could get back to the main street.
Edwin and I moved fast, I swore I spotted a dust cloud behind us when I looked back. Marcus, now two hundred feet, or so, behind us, ran to catch up. In no time we were at the alley. A large vertically arranged waste container and a fence cut the alley down the middle. Push, and then jump. My thoughts clear, I could already see myself forcing the container in the way of the infected and jumping the fence. We ran by the waste container, large and green, the hulk. To move it was a two man job. Then I took note of the wheels it had. The container wasn’t going to be too much help. It would give us only a few seconds to split Marcus from the runners behind him. The infected would easily move it out of the way whether they were runners or not.
“Help me!” I yelled at Edwin when I turned back to move the container. He ran by me but turned around when he heard my order. With our combined power the container was moved, slow enough to give Marcus a chance to make it to our side before we would block off the path with it and take off behind Marcus.
“NO!” Marcus yelled out after he ran through the gap we left for him.
We did not know why he said it, but it looked to us like he told us to not move the container. We both stopped and continued to the fence further down the alley with Marcus. Screams and stomping was all around us. The walls bounced off of each other the sound of every dropped pin. The infected sounded like they were on top of us.
I wasn’t particularly fond of the idea of dying so I kept my eyes on the path and Marcus both of which were ahead of me. This meant I wouldn’t get to see how close the infected came to us but it also meant I wouldn’t get devoured because I tripped over something I couldn’t see while I stared back.
At the fence, Marcus gave Edwin a boost to go up faster and Marcus hopped on it too. I followed and began to climb.
Marcus made it over before Edwin and I went ahead of Edwin too. Marcus and I waited for him to climb over but it turned out he was going to slow us down after all. He moved too slowly to make it over before the infected would catch him. And then it got bad. (Yes, that was in fact the ‘good’ part of the program. Prepare for the part that isn’t.)
Marcus wasn’t chased by a thing; instead, there were people. A group of survivors tried to escape the infected behind them and the screams of the infected blended with the voices of the survivors. They simply tried to find a safe way out and saw us take a route they didn’t know of themselves. We weren’t going to have enough time to save them all, or any of them. We would only have the time to save one person on the other side and Edwin was already on the fence.
Save our own. The last thoughts in my mind before it all turned to crap.
Marcus shared the same idea; he went into position to give me a boost to the top of the fence so I could pull Edwin over.
Edwin, not turned back to see the chaos behind him, didn’t know what was about to happen back there. I thought to tell him to not look back but knowing the mind of a child, having been one myself, I figured if I said anything of the nature it would give him the curiosity to want to look. He didn’t need to see a large group of survivors get massacred right in front of him.
Edwin grabbed the hand I reached out with. I tried to pull him
up but his leg was grabbed by one of the survivors. The screams were so loud if I tried to yell my voice would get lost in the mix and never make it out. It was difficult to tell how many total survivors were across the fence. They blended in too perfectly with their hysteria that the only survivors I was able to identify were the ones picked off by the infected.
A woman held Edwin’s leg, she said something which was swallowed up by the screams, her lips moved and her hand let go of the leg.
In front of me and Marcus, behind Edwin, she was trampled. The other survivors tried to climb up over her and use Edwin as a ladder to get over the fence faster. As they made it to the fence they were also picked off by the infected. The sounds were worse than how horror movies depicted hell would sound. Screams, and more screams followed by more screams, with a side of screams and some desert in the flavor of screams. They were bitten and scratched. It was hopeless.
I wasn’t making any progress with bringing Edwin over the fence either. If a solution didn’t arrive soon it would be hopeless for him too.
One of the infected now held onto his leg. I didn’t realize he was grabbed again. Edwin was in some sort of shocked state caused by fear, he wouldn’t move or react. He held onto the fence tightly but wouldn’t climb anymore. I wasn’t strong enough to lift him up while he clung onto the fence. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to save him at all.
The boost which kept me up vanished and I now hung on with nothing but the strength of my arms which made it much harder to keep a grip on Edwin until I saw the reason for this.
Marcus stopped boosting me to climb the fence himself and help me bring Edwin over it before the infected could focus on him.
All the survivors were buried under the horde of infected which filled the alley. Multiple infected reached to grab at Edwin and a few more managed to successfully catch a hold of the same leg the first infected held onto.
Marcus made it to the top of the fence and reached out to grab Edwin’s other hand. Edwin wouldn’t let go of the fence so Marcus used force and pulled his hand off of it.
There was a small window before more infected would grab on and make pulling Edwin over impossible.
Marcus and I used nearly all our strength to pull Edwin up and over the fence. We fell to the concrete behind us to lighten Edwin’s fall from being too severe.
I could feel bruises on my body but this was the extent of the damage done to me. This was also the least of our worries.
Marcus stood up and with his right hand he forced Edwin’s face into his chest to keep him from the scene behind us. There, Marcus and I watched a group of survivors who came from nowhere get devoured by the monstrous infected.
Every day became a little worse, and every time I thought I was adjusting to the morphed world around me something new would happen and assure me I only deluded myself. I was ready for nothing.
The screams from the survivors faded and the gasps, chewing, and shaking fence at the grip of the infected were all that remained.
Although tragic, the death of the survivors made Marcus’s recon mission much more relevant. To see actual survivors still struggling for a safe place to go made the difference. He had to return and help every survivor he could.
“Let’s move. We can’t waste more time,” Marcus said.
He kept us focused on the mission at hand, priority number one; getting me out of the city. “We can’t be too far from the border of the city.” He let Edwin go and turned around.
“Right!” I agreed with Marcus and we continued our walk away from the fence.
I didn’t trust the reliability of the fence as it was. I pictured the horde of infected overwhelming the fence and bringing it down with them. Then the chase would be on again. Leaving the alley with some haste was a great idea.
Edwin was still in shock. It left him speechless and confused, a zombie not hungry. Nothing was active inside his head. The little hamster which spun in its wheel inside Edwin’s head became tired and took a rest. He was only active enough to follow commands from Marcus and me. As horrible as it is to say, it was the most ideal way for him to be. Primal survival would help us in the long run, more so than a scared kid could ever.
The air was thick. All I could picture were the survivors and their failure to survive. They were torn to pieces by the infected, ganged up on, off guard and overpowered, overwhelmed, over… everything.
The words to Empty Walls by SerjTakian played in my head. They fit the situation so beautifully you’d think Serj wrote the song while he expected the zombie apocalypse to sweep the streets of the world. My stomach turned at the thought of there being not enough people left to come up with a serum or antibody to the infection. The odds of someone intelligent enough to come up with these solutions and being alive both at once felt impossible. No one knew what was going on. This was really the end of life on earth as it once was. This was a new, more broken, more horrifying world. It would be run by the merciless infected. The uninfected that haven’t died out would live in a fearful state for the entirety of their lives.
Back at Trevor’s place, Marcus explained, if the situation was not global militaries from around the world would have swarmed the streets of the Divided States of America, but the fact that we were seven days in and still waiting was a sign, a global scale outbreak must of occurred. Every country used whatever resources they possessed to protect themselves and whatever people were left. This meant the virus would likely go on forever while all resources wasted in attempts to stay alive instead of coming up with the antivirus or a solution.
It was short of astonishing at how ritualized our actions became. Run; survive; back on track – Repeat. We expected this pattern to be the occurrence for the rest of the trip, but of course we were wrong.
An hour went by since we left the alley, but being out of danger didn’t mean we were okay. Edwin collapsed behind us. The fluffy snow broke his fall. Marcus and I rushed over to see what happened. My original conclusion was he succumbed to dehydration or exhaustion from the energy he wasted trying to run and get over the fence.
Marcus took a knee and lifted Edwin up to find dark circles around his eyes and Edwin barely able to keep them open.
“Where is it?” Marcus asked.
Well played Sir.
I acknowledged his successful endeavor of further confusing me. Where was what?
“My leg,” Edwin replied with a worried weak voice.
It finally made sense, I pieced it together. The lady that grabbed Edwin’s leg when he tried to make it over the fence, kept him low enough for one of the infected to grab on and leave scratches and bite marks on his leg. He was infected.
Marcus rolled up the legs on Edwin’s jeans and there they were. Scratches and bites deep enough to draw blood rested all over his leg. Chances were we heard Edwin scream in pain but didn’t notice because of all the other screams around us. He was infected and going to turn. His mistake was to follow us; our mistake was not turning back.
Marcus took a deep breath and sighed. He picked Edwin up and walked him over to a building and rested Edwin’s back again the building’s wall. “I’ll be back in a moment. You’ll be able to see us,” Marcus told Edwin and waved at me to follow him back onto the street to speak away from Edwin. “He can’t come with us.”
My heart stopped. Leave the kid out there to turn or die. “This isn’t right. We can’t just leave a child out here to die or become one of those things. He needs help!” I began to raise my voice, furious with Marcus’s suggestion.
“It’s either we leave him here or have him turn while he is with us and most likely catch us off guard. This is it,” Marcus paused and thought about something. His face flushed with depression. I knew exactly what was coming next. “He doesn’t have to turn...” Marcus didn’t want to finish the statement. He hoped I’d understand what he meant without having to say it out loud and make things real.
There was no logical response to something like this. I felt sick, twisted. Like
all the other junk we went through was simply to lead up to this. Every day, some kind of death or horrible act was involved. It wasn’t even the fact we now planned to kill a person. I would do it in the blink of an eye to defend myself from one of the infected or even a hostile survivor if I it was called for, but we dealt with something different, we planned to take the life of a child. This was going to be premeditated, thought out and planned out. We were in the very discussion which would decide his fate. In the course of seven days I went from average Joe college student to a child murderer. This was the last bright day I would ever have. From that point forward, life was real and dark.
I took a deep breath and swallowed the saliva gathered in my mouth from tension. “Okay.” The moment was so long.
Marcus looked shocked like he wanted to be stopped from going through with this. He reached around to his back and placed his hand somewhere on his lower back. “I have a gun.”
My body trembled.
“I managed to save it from a few days ago but I didn’t use it because there are only two rounds left,” Marcus lowered his voice.
I became cold. My fingertips were frozen. I knew what the two rounds were for. He was telling me they were to kill ourselves, in other words. If we came into a situation in which there was no other option, it would become the last resort.
“He’ll feel nothing this way,” Marcus continued. He looked over to check on Edwin and I did the same. “We’ll only have one left.”
I’ve never felt sicker in my life. There was only one thing left to decide. “Who’s going to do it?”
