Stage 6

by James, Dylan

  When Lucy reached the bottom she cried out, “I’m not going to be able to step to the bus!”

  Kevin quickly kneeled and reached out to grab Lucy around the waist. He yelled, “Let go now! Trust me I’ll pull you in!”

  She looked up at me, closed her eyes, and let go. Kevin pulled her in amidst her cries of pain, and she and him both fell to the bus. Kevin helped her up, and then lowered her into the bus where I assume somebody else got her and helped her sit down.

  He looked at me questioningly, and I said, “I’m going to try and make it to the truck! Wish me luck!”

  He nodded, and ducked down beneath the hatch for a second and then appeared with Steve’s pistol. He said, “I’ll try to cover you Jack.”

  Suddenly something blurred past me and fell to the ground. Shocked I realized it was an Infected who had just splattered himself against the pavement.

  I looked up to see Ben’s incredulous expression, and to see him yell, “Those crazy dumb-ass cannibals! They’re throwing themselves off the roof to try and get to us!”

  I took a second to laugh at his choice of words, and then jumped to the ground beneath me. I bent my knees to absorb the impact, and then swiveled my shotgun to shoot the first Infected rushing towards me. He fell, and I backed up shooting against the swarm now rushing towards me.

  I heard Kevin yell, “Watch out behind you!”

  I turned around to see an Infected sprinting towards me and struggled to bring my shotgun up in time when another shot rang out, the Infected collapsed, and Kevin said, “Never mind! I got it!”

  I reached the truck off to the side and hurriedly got into the driver’s seat. I closed and locked the door behind me as an Infected crashed into it, almost cracking the glass. I turned the car on and squealed the tires rushing out of there. I started honking the horn, and I rolled down the window and waved at the Infected trying to get them to leave the bus alone. It worked, and they began to run towards me. I drove slowly, keeping just out of their reach and leading them away. I turned around a corner and went out of sight of the bus. I drove for a few minutes and then made a circle and suddenly the bus rushed past me going the opposite direction. It happily honked at me, and I made a sharp u-turn and followed it. We went out to a main road, and by this point there were over a hundred Infected following us. The bus sped up to fifty mph, heading straight out of town.

  We left the town, and I yelled “Yeeehaawwww!”

  I sped up in front of the bus, and headed down the straight road for a few minutes putting as much distance between me and the town as possible. I slowed down after a while until the bus caught up, and started tapping my brakes to get them to slow down. They slowed to a stop, and I stopped about twenty feet on. I got out and walked to the bus. The doors slid open, and I stepped inside.

  Ian greeted me with a smile and said, “Doesn’t this remind you of old times when we’d ride the bus together to school?”

  I laughed and said, “Yeah totally, except for the Infected running around in the streets.”

  I moved into the bus to see the supplies being moved around, and things being moved around.

  Ben saw me and said, “Jack, I’ve come up with three things we need to do. We need to agree on a destination; we need to organize our people and weapons among the two different cars, and we need to make some modifications to the bus. I think we should take out some of the seats to create more room for people like Lucy, who would like to lie down. First of all though, and most importantly, where should we go?”

  Kevin broke into the conversation, “Hold on a second, we’re all in this together I don’t see why you’re asking him where we should go. My vote counts too.”

  I replied eagerly, “Alright that makes sense! Let’s have a vote!”

  I took Ben aside and said, “Have you heard anything about the Capital? Has the Infection reached there?”

  Ben replied, “Well I’m not sure, but I would think if anywhere would be surviving the Infection it would be where the President is.”

  I asked, “So if NOT the Capital, where else should we go?”

  He replied slowly, “Well other than the Capital, I’m not sure honestly. That’s the place I would go to. I guess if we don’t care about what’s happened to the rest of the world we could try finding a safe house and lying low. Then again though, the best bet for somewhere safe is probably the Capital... I think we have our answer.”

  I turned to the group and said loudly, “Ok, so there’s only really one place we have in mind. Who’s up for a trip to the Capital!?”

  Cheers and whoops broke out, and somebody (I think it was Shawn) said, “Oh good I’ve always wanted to see how the White House would defend itself in a zombie apocalypse.”

  I turned to Ben and said, “Well that settles that huh? So on to the second problem. How should we divvy up the people?”

  Kevin obviously still had political equality on his mind, saying “I don’t see why you’re asking him Jack, we’re all equal here.”

  He raised his voice and said to the group as a whole, “Yeah, how should we divvy up the people? Who wants to stay here, in the comfort of this huge supply bus and who wants to go over to that crammed little truck of danger?”

  I spoke up, “The injured among us should ride in the bus. Nobody has to come with me to the truck, but I’d appreciate the company.”

  Shawn raised his hand, “I’ll go. I found the truck anyways; it’s more mine than anybody else’s.”

  Kevin looked surprised, but then raised his hand as well, saying, “Well if the kid’s going I guess I’ll go too. Can’t let him have all the fun eh?”

  I mock-groaned and said, “Am I going to have to deal with these two all by myself?”

  Everybody laughed, and Kevin muttered something rude under his breath. I told Ben, “We should probably take some weapons since we’re the scouting vehicle. The rifles will be useful.”

  He agreed, and reached through his gun bag and pulled out two hunting rifles. He handed them to Kevin and said, “I assume you’ll make sure Shawn doesn’t kill himself with one of these?”

  Kevin nodded seriously, and said, “You can count on me.”

  I then asked Ben, “So you’ll take care of the modifications on the bus? Can you do them on the road, or do you need to get them started now while we’re not moving?”

  He replied, “I should probably take out some of the chairs now, with the tools I have, but I can do some other modifications on the road and when we stop.”

  I said to the group, “Ok Ben is going to do some modifications to make the bus a better supply van, so let’s get everybody out for a while.”

  I walked forward to where Lucy lay on a seat, and slowly picked her up. She looked up at me and said with fake surprise, “You again? Ugh.”

  I replied, “Hey! I take offense!”

  I carried her out of the bus, and down in an open patch on the road. I put her down again and said, “Look at that. A successful lucy-carrying mission yet again! I’m getting good!”

  Kevin and Shawn climbed on top of the bus and begin using the scopes on their hunting rifles to search out the distant surroundings. I could see Kevin was trying to teach Shawn something about the limited knowledge he had involving rifles. The rest of us sat on the road, looking up at them and occasionally playing games like “I-spy.” I also took the liberty to use most of our fuel to fill up the bus and truck. I figured there was more of a chance the gas cans would be lost than the vehicles.

  A few hours later, sitting in the heat and feeling rather sleepy, Ben and Steve emerged from the bus and exclaimed, “Behold our wonder!”

  Lucy yelled, “Jack, I wanna see!”

  She lifted her arms up to me like a baby wanting to be carried, and I muttered under my breath, “You big baby. Don’t get too used to this.”

  She slapped my head playfully and said, “Aww come on you know you like being a big strong guy carrying around little old me.”

  I replied, “Yeah I love breaki
ng my back lifting you up.”

  She laughed, and I carried her in to see that Ben and Steve had taken out the entire back half of one row of seats, and the back quarter of the other row. The far back had all our supplies and bags, and the half row had some of the camping equipment’s sleeping bags, and the medicine bag spread out for a makeshift infirmary.

  I carried Lucy over and lay her down on a sleeping bag, and my Mom appeared and said, “Let’s see what we can do about your leg’s Lucy, with the doctor’s encyclopedia here.”

  Everybody got comfortable, and I approached Ben and compared two maps of ours. We carefully traced out the direction we would take on each map, so that I could drive ahead pretty far and the bus would still know which direction to go even if they lost sight of me. The signal that it was NOT safe would be to turn around and head in the opposite direction. The signal to stop from my truck would be to repeatedly tap the brakes, while the signal to stop from the bus would be to flash its brights. We agreed to drive through the night by taking turns, to get to D.C. as fast as possible.

  I took Kevin and Shawn with me out the door before waving and saying, “Goodbye! See you guys in a bit!”

  I jogged over to the car and jumped in the driver’s seat while Kevin and Shawn raced each other for the passenger door.

  Kevin reached it first and yelled, “Shotgun!”

  That made me remember my own weapon instantly, and I grabbed it from the passenger seat where I had left it and moved it to a corner in the back. I turned the car on, and as the sun was just beginning to go down I turned the lights on. I honked the horn, and waited a few minutes before hearing an answering honk, signaling that they were ready to go.

  I accelerated quickly, and we were off. Being the scout vehicle, it was our job to make sure the area up ahead was safe BEFORE the supply van reached it. I sped up to get pretty far ahead of the bus, could see nothing of any importance. We continued for a few hours, and soon the night carried over into the early morning of the next day.

  Day 11

  I yawned as I drove slowly through yet another pile of wreckage blocking the road. I was keeping the truck about a mile ahead of the bus, so I figured I had enough time to stop and wake Kevin up for his shift. I slowed the car to a stop and then reached over and shook Kevin awake in the passenger seat.

  He woke up groggily and glanced at the time before groaning, “four am? Just five more minutes Mom...”

  To my disbelief, he shook me off and closed his eyes to go back to sleep. Incredulous I poked him in the shoulder and whispered vehemently, “Kevin! I’ve been driving for hours! I’m tired, and I want to get some sleep!”

  He reluctantly pulled himself up and said, “Ok ok, how you want to do this? Should we just trade seats?”

  I nodded, not wanting to open any doors for fear that any Infected nearby would smell us or something. I just didn’t want to take any chances, and awkwardly jumped into the back, narrowly avoiding Shawn who was comfortably stretched out across the seats snoring. I waited for Kevin to get in the driver’s seat, and then hopped up into the passenger side. Kevin began to drive again, as we saw the lights of the bus coming up over the road behind us. I curled up to try and get as comfortable as I could, and slowly fell asleep to the rhythmic hum of the engine. It seemed like no time at all before a hand on my shoulder woke me up, and I turned to see Kevin looking anxious at the road in front of him.

  I glanced at the clock to see it was now nine in the morning, and Kevin said, “I’m not sure what we should do about this Jack, so I decided to wake you up.”

  I sat up straight and looked out the window to see some sort of Infected ghost town in front of us. It was a small town, but Infected could be seen roaming between the few buildings. I glanced behind us to see the bus had stopped also, and we were both idling, waiting to go into the town.

  I said, “Didn’t we plan this already? Let’s just go into town, and if it looks fine the bus will follow us shortly afterwards.”

  Kevin said, “Yeah I figured that’s what we’d do, but the bus honked its horn and flashed its brights a few times. I don’t feel like walking ALL the way over there in the middle of a damn apocalypse so I wanted to make sure you had that privilege.”

  I groaned and said, “You woke me up for this? Why can’t Shawn do it-”

  I took a look in the back to see Shawn still in the same posture he was in five hours earlier, sleeping soundly.

  I got out of the car, and slammed the door behind me. I stretched my cramped body as I walked over to the bus.

  The doors opened for me and Ben greeted me in the driver’s seat, saying, “Hey Jack. So two things, Emily wants to move over into the truck, and are we just going to proceed as planned with the town up ahead?”

  I thought for a second and then said, “Sure we’d welcome Emily over in our humble truck, and yeah I don’t see why not. Everything going ok?”

  He replied, “Yep everything’s fine over here.”

  He then called out, “Emily! If you want to switch vehicles then get on over there!”

  He said in a side voice to me, “I’m pretty sure she just wants to kill a few of those cannibals, so keep that in mind.”

  Emily appeared with a fresh new pistol at her side, and said, “Alright, I’m ready.”

  I nodded to Ben, and left with Emily at my side. I asked her, “Just out of curiosity why do you want to move over to the scout truck? It’s not very comfortable, and it’s pretty cramped compared to the bus.”

  She replied simply, “I’m looking for some adventure! The mall was kind of exciting, but that bus is just sickening, cooped up in a big moving house like that.”

  I laughed and said, “Well alright then, we’ll be glad to have you over here but don’t get your hopes up, Kevin can be a real pain and well Shawn will probably sleep the entire time.”

  She said, “Well maybe I’ll have to fix that won’t I?”

  We reached the car and I asked, “You want to be stuck with Kevin, or Shawn?”

  She thought for a second and then replied, “I already kind of know Shawn so I guess I’d rather be stuck with Kevin.”

  She opened the passenger door and jumped in, as I climbed in the back.

  I unceremoniously shoved Shawn out of my way and sat down, to hear him sputter, “What the??”

  Kevin looked in surprise at Emily and asked, “What is this? We have a new passenger on our epic voyage?”

  She replied, “Yep! I am looking forward to some excitement over here!”

  He replied, “Well I’ll do my best love, but Jack is kind of a buzz-kill so don’t expect too much.”

  Shawn struggled to pick himself up off the floor and said, “You got that right. Anyways where the hell are we?”

  Wincing, I replied, “Actually I don’t know where we are. Kevin how far have we gone?”

  He looked at the map a bit, and then replied, “About one hundred miles since I last took over.”

  Shocked, I asked “How have we gone that slowly? I thought we’d get there today! At this rate...”

  Kevin replied defensively, “Hey these are some atrocious road conditions. Several times I had to carefully maneuver through stretches of piled up cars for miles at a time!”

  Emily spoke up, “Yeah Ben defended himself the same way this morning; apparently the going is pretty slow because of all the abandoned cars and stuff.”

  I said, “Fine fine, I get it. Alright let’s get this show on the road, right? Onwards!”

  Emily cheered, “Onwards!”

  The truck started moving, and we cruised slowly into town. The Infected ignored us for the most part, although they did look rather curious about us. We passed all the way through town without an incident, and shortly after the bus followed us through.

  We continued on, and Emily said, “Well that sucked.”

  Kevin laughed and said, “Yeah I know right? Dumb zombies should have attacked so we could have an excuse to blow their heads off!”

  Incredulous
I asked, “You guys actually wanted them to do something? This isn’t a videogame guys! What if they had killed somebody?”

  Emily looked back at me and said, “Yeah I guess you’re right. It still would be exciting though...”

  I didn’t reply, for fear I’d start a big argument but I didn’t agree with that at all. We drove pretty fast over clear road for a while, but then quickly came to some more rough patches. A scenario we saw repeated quite often was a bunch of abandoned cars in the road leading into a city or town. Occasionally there would also be a random car in the road that had run out of gas or broke down or something. We came upon such a car, a police car in fact, and to our amazement there was somebody in the driver’s seat. As we approached he got out, and Kevin immediately stepped on the brakes.

  He said, “Quickly, somebody get a gun ready. We don’t know what he wants.”

  I agreed with him. The bus came to a stop behind us, and I could see Steve peering out of the window.

  I said, “Hey I’ll talk to him and see what he wants ok? Just from over here, a safe distance.”

  Kevin said, “Alright Jack, but don’t do anything stupid.”

  I got out of the car and said loudly, “Hello! Are you ok?”

  He held a hand over his head to block out the sun and then shouted back, “Yeah I’m fine, my car ran out of gas, can you spare any?”

  Before committing myself one way or the other, I figured we might as well know the extent of his predicament.

  I replied, “How much gas do you need? Are you a police officer?”

  He laughed, and said, “I WAS an officer. I don’t know if such a thing exists anymore.”

  Suddenly Emily opened her door and said, “Jack! I can see somebody else in the back seat of the police car. I just caught a glimpse, but there was definitely a person back there. Maybe a criminal he caught?”

  I took a step closer to get a better look, and asked, “Is there anybody else with you?”

  He glanced behind him and then said, “No, it’s just me! Look do you have any gas you can spare?”

  Emily said quietly, “You saw him look back towards the car, he’s obviously lying. There’s somebody in that car he doesn’t want us to know about. Maybe he’s a murderer? Or a kidnapper?”