by Thomas, Jack
The music styling of The Infected was unique and ahead of its time. Their genre ranged anywhere from Drum and Bass crossed with Screamo all the way to Death Metal and Terror Rock. Through their eight day rise to fame, this prestigious group managed to complete all their performances without a specific lead singer. In fact, the group was divided into two subgroups who still performed together; The Runners and The Walkers. Every member of The Runner subgroup was technically the lead singer of the band. Many times the band would not only perform musically, but also have performance art in their shows. Described by the New York Times as being “Heart Stopping” and “Deadly to Miss” as well as saying “Once the musical talents of The Infected meet your ear drums, it’s only a matter of time before you can’t control yourself and you become part of the movement.” Many listeners have already joined the ranks of The Infected in an attempt to spread the sound and art through as many generations as possible. Their live performances will leave you drained and zombified with their radiant talent.
By the time I arrived at the hallway the madman who made all the noise was already gone. No time to waste looking for where he went. The infected broke into the building. Windows shattered; glass cracked and sprinkled all over the floor. The worst part was only the runners managed to get inside and prompted me to dash through the halls and find a way upward to the roof. There I could at least assess the number of infected and maybe find a fire escape down if it was safe enough. I ran right passed the hallway through which I came into the building and almost immediately all the runners in that hall tailed me.
I ran straight, right into the hallway I didn’t pick when I decided where to hide, the right turn, and all the doors were kicked in on that side too. More infected poured out of the rooms and gathered with the rest of the ones who followed me. At the end of the hall was another right turn. This led straight to a small lobby like area with an elevator and an emergency stairwell right next to it. It’s what the doctor ordered. I ran through and pushed the door to the stairwell, and immediately raced up the staircases. Second floor, third floor, and another door which led to the roof, it was open.
They must have run up here too.
I couldn’t slow down and cautiously check to see if they were really up there, I was short on time, the infected were racing up the stairs. I ran through the door before they could get a chance to see me go through, the infected would assume I vanished at the top of the stairs. My choices were to get killed by a crap load of infected or by some hostile survivors with a lack of common sense. Sadly, the survivors were the safe bet out of the two. I sucked it up and shut the door behind me.
The roof was empty. There was no one at the top. It turned out that the same idea occurred to them, to the roof and head down through the outside of the building.
I couldn’t immediately see the fire escape ladder because of the rush and adrenaline which kept everything unfocused and fast, but I did get a chance to assess the magnitude of the infected when I looked over the building’s edge. Hundreds of thousands of infected gathered in the front of the building trying to squeeze in through the windows and the front door. I walked along the edge of the building to see how many gathered on the sides and it was significantly less, but still too many to deal with. Finally, on the back of the building rested the ladder to the fire escape. Below, the infected walked away from the building which could have only meant they saw something worth the chase, the guys who hunted me down. Their reckless lack of awareness created an opening for me to escape through. I went down the fire escape and jumped off of the last level to the snow below. Only walkers were left down there, but they were deadly enough. I maneuvered around them.
There were limited options from then on. Every other side of the building crawled with infected, so my only escape plan was to try to follow the infected that chased the hunters, but needed to be done without being seen or heard by any of the runners in the area. On the bright side, the runners which gathered back there already vanished after the hunters. I bobbed and weaved through the walkers and succeeded to not attract anything else into the mix. Now, this plan would have otherwise been incredibly easy, except… BANG, BANG, BANG! The idiots shot their guns again, only this time I was between them and the infected gathered around the building. Screams became louder so I ran right passed the walkers ahead of me to avoid all the runners that now came from behind.
This was incredibly stupid. I couldn’t figure out what the damage was with these guys. They couldn’t put two and two together? Why would they want more infected behind them? If I was them I would have avoided the use of my guns as much as I could while I ran for my life. Either way, I was on the run in their direction since they didn’t give me much of a choice.
I ran onto a street parallel to the highway and in the same direction. The infected behind me already spotted me and joined the chase under the impression I was the one who shot the gun. There were too many to try to run into another building, I‘d likely get trapped in front of a locked door and killed. My only chance to survive was to hope the hunters made their way somewhere safe enough for me to also hideout undetected.
I was either never hypothermic which was a miracle on its own, or the heat built up from having to run and the adrenaline that coursed through my body made me warm enough to fight off the hypothermia. My body was nice and warm and I ran full speed with no restrictions, even the snow was little. Who knew being near death would save my life?
The further down the street I went, the lower the ruffle and mess of shoeprints in the snow became. From every direction except the front infected spilled out and focused on the only person they could see: me. By then I involuntarily ran a straight line down the street.
The street came to an end and at its end rested a warehouse, a large one at that. It was safe to assume the hunters ran in there, it was also safe to assume there was no option but to do the same. Too many infected came out of every dark corner outside and prevented me from heading anywhere else. They even came from the sides of the warehouse so I couldn’t go around. At least one of the gun shots must have come from the warehouse for all the infected to know exactly where to go before even I knew.
A huge sliding steel door was the entrance to the warehouse from the side I was on, and it was already open enough to fit one person at a time. The narrow entrance was definitely going to thin out the number of infected by forcing them to squeeze in one at a time. The steel the warehouse was made of was going to assure the infected would not break their way into the place.
I ran in.
The Warehouse
Inside the warehouse there was a familiar darkness. The outline of large shipping containers and wooden crates lit up by the moonlight that seeped in through windows at the top of the warehouse. I went deeper inside to get away from the entrance. Some of the infected already roamed inside, the deeper I went the more I could hear. They gathered somewhere but I couldn’t turn on the lantern to see where and become an immediate target. Quite the predicament I was in.
Some parts of the warehouse were lit enough to see the floor and the things on them. I took my time through these spots, but I didn’t step in the light rather I would walk in the shadows which surrounded the light. Using the moonlight, I could better identify my surroundings and spot any of the infected if they moved around, which there happened to be many of.
I searched for a safe location where I could halt movement but it all looked the same. The warehouse was last used as a storage unit for whatever was inside of the containers and crates. There wasn’t any other purpose for it.
Several minutes after slow movements around the warehouse, I was ready to give up.
Something moved. I caught it from the corner of my eye. A flicker of orange somewhere high on the walls of the warehouse crossed my peripherals. I turned my attention to it and there they were, hidden inside of an office that overlooked the inside of the warehouse, the hostile survivors, the hunters. There was a flame active inside of the office for light whil
e they waited for the infected to thin out. The flicker of orange was their flame dancing around while it peeked out through the crack in the door the way one of the hunters did. Luckily, I was still hidden in the shadows not to be seen by the infected and it served me as cover from the hunters too.
My new goal was to reach the second floor and take cover up there the same way the hunters were doing, except I had to hide from both the infected and those hunters for however long it would take to be safe again. The door on the second floor shut and I took it as my cue to look for a way up there. The darkness didn’t help and there wasn’t any moonlight shined in that direction, this led me to believe they camped out in the warehouse long before this moment ever arrived. How else would they have so easily located an office in the dark? They possessed prior knowledge of it.
I moved under the office to find a way up but there wasn’t, at least not one I could see. Like the use of fire escapes, repetition worked well during the apocalypse, if it isn’t broken it doesn’t need to be fixed, so I went back to a trick which worked before, I slid my fingertips along the wall in the dark. Cold metal grazed my fingertips some twenty feet or so away from the door to the office. The chances were there was in fact a staircase somewhere, but it was safer to go up a ladder since the infected could not follow me up.
Quietly, I climbed the ladder to the top, stood on the catwalk, and went over to the door where the office was.
“How much longer do we have to wait here before we can go?” a voice from inside of the office said. I listened in on the conversation through the door.
“However long it takes for the infected outside to forget what they’re looking for.” There was something about their voices I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
“This whole town is infected. With the exception for the guy you let get away back there. This place has been looted dry.” They confirmed my suspicions. They hunted anybody they could find to take their supplies.
“Richard’s going to be pissed if we don’t find something before we catch up with him.” A chill ran down my spine and my heart sped up. These guys were Richard’s men? The reason their voices bugged me so much was because I remembered them from the larger group back when Jason and I first met Marcus. They told me all I wanted to hear. They would lead me straight to Richard and by default, straight to Jason. All I had to do was follow them to wherever they headed.
“We’ll leave for the next town as soon as it clears up outside.”
“Yeah, maybe we’ll have more luck over there. This place is a health hazard.”
Tell me about it.
“Tell me about it.”
Jinx, you owe me a coke.
“Check to see if it’s clear yet.” With that, I established the higher ranking one was also the one with the deeper voice. He was the leader of the two, or at least the brain, which isn’t much said based on their trigger happy display.
I leaned against the wall behind the door and it opened a crack again. This time he stood there a while longer and stared out into the warehouse.
“Here, use this.”
A click and footsteps headed over to the door. A bright light shot out from behind it, a lantern. It must have contained mirrors to direct the light, because it was brighter and more direct than mine. Throughout the warehouse the light went, it allowed me to see the large number of infected quietly strolling aimlessly in the warehouse and the stairs to the second level, right next to the entrance on the other side.
“What’s the news?” a third, younger, more intellectual voice followed by footsteps leading out of a separate room located inside of the office.
I assume one of three things was possible. First, three people chased me the whole time. Second, the third voice came from someone who was in this warehouse the entire time. Or third, the office magically generated and materialized henchmen for Richard.
“Too many infected have entered the warehouse.Now we’re stuck here. We need to come up with a different way out. It’s probably packed with infected outside too.” This was entirely their fault. If they would have simply avoided the use of their guns there wouldn’t have been so many infected collected in one area.
“On the other hand, so many infected around us means there are less of them to roam the streets. We can make another sweep through the town if we find a way out,” the third voice was clearly the brains of the trio, unlike what I thought before I heard his voice. The manner in which he suggested the idea rather than giving an order or command told me he was the brains but not the boss, the deep voice was still the big cheese.
To put it simply; the guy with the deep voice was the leader, the guy with the weak voice was the brains and the guy with the neutral average voice was the idiot and probably the one who shot his gun.
“I’m all ears.” the one in command said.
“Yes you are!” the brains of the trio jokingly replied. I already liked him.
Now, at no moment did these three say each other’s names and it wasn’t weird, there wasn’t a reason to say each other’s names since they already knew who they were. But this small detail can create some confusion. So let’s call them Dummy, Bossy and Smarty. Just for giggles, let’s also say they were all a foot tall and blue.
“We can climb down the side of the window if we could find some rope or something as strong to tie on this end,” Smarty said.
Whatever they planned to do I was fully onboard with it. Obviously after they were done doing it, but I was onboard nevertheless.
“And where do you expect us to find a rope?” Bossy said.
“We’re in a warehouse. Go look around. I’m sure you’ll find something useful,” Smarty replied. He was a pretty rational guy. Common sense was his strong suit.
“But the warehouse is crawling with infected!” Dummy redundantly said.
“You don’t say,” Smarty replied.
How I adore the aimless banter of the Smurfs.
“Let’s just get this over with so we can get out of here,” Bossy became aggravated by the stupidity of the overall conversation taking place. That made two of us.
“Just sneak around, if they don’t see you then they won’t know you are there. Be conservative with the light and you should be fine,” Smarty assured them.
Based on the fact that Smarty neither volunteered to go along with them, and neither Dummy nor Bossy expressed a problem with his cowardice, it was a logical assumption he wasn’t fit or armed well enough to go out there and deal with the infected personally. He was only there to assure the other two kept intelligent ideas floating around their stupidity.
My cue to get the hell out of there and go hide somewhere was given, but it was given too late. The door opened and I flattened myself against the wall behind the door again. I waited for Dummy and Bossy to walk out. The door hid me till they were outside of the office. I still couldn’t see their faces to identify either one. I could on the other hand tell which one was Bossy thanks to Smarty’s remark towards his ears. Between a walking tank and an averagely built guy; he was the averagely built guy, maybe a bit more muscular than me. Dummy shut the door behind him and didn’t look back. They continued around the second floor catwalk until eventually they were sucked into the darkness. This combined with their silence made them vanish into the confines of the warehouse entirely.
Now there was an even worse problem to deal with. I was smacked between two guys I couldn’t see and the one in the office.
What do I do?
The more I thought of it, the more sense it made; I held a gun, and based on his reluctance to participate in the more risky ventures along with his epically slow companions, it made sense Smarty didn’t have an entirely solid defense going on. This was no more than a bluffing moment.
This is actually pretty perfect.
I needed to be timed nicely. I had to get in and get an angle on the guy, the gun was the angle.
It’s better than getting shot here without trying anything.
Gun in hand a
nd the door in front of me, it was time to move in and hope for the best. The cold door handle pained my palm. I took a deep breath and went for it. The door came open. On the other side of the room a guy no older than I was, frozen in place with a look of surprise and disbelief. He was definitely too young to be one of Richard’s military buddies. This was some kid he picked up along the way.
“Put your hands up and don’t say a word or you die right here,” I whispered with a stern tone, one which demanded respect and boasted authority. It was bluff.
He nodded back at me and put his hands up.
“Nod yes if you know where Richard is going,” again with the demanding tone in my voice, the plan was to keep the act up long enough for it to be the only thing he knew about me. This was particularly important because according to Marcus, Richard felt intrigue for people who could handle themselves one way or another. He had to believe I was more of a threat than he was.
He nodded yes.
Now to see how far I could push the guy.
Numbers!
“You will lead me and my group straight to him. You will not say anything to your two friends out there. If you do this, we will let you guys live; if you disagree, my guys will shoot them both and I will personally and slowly kill you if you waste this opportunity I offer you. None of this is debatable; none of this will be discussed.” Man, did I feel badass saying that! I pulled a Marcus. “What’ll it be?” I asked him.
He remained like a statue and watched me but said nothing. Forever went by without a word. Then I remembered when I listened through the door he was a sarcastic guy. Maybe he made light of a bad situations by doing the same thing.
What would I do in a moment like this if I was on his side of things?
I remembered I did tell him to stay silent. “You can talk now!?”
“Yes,” he suddenly said and began to hyperventilate like he held his breath for a while, “God, I didn’t think you’d ever let me speak again. I was trying to say yes I’ll do it.” No second thought given. Did he even want to help Richard or did he see it as the best available option for the time?
