Decaying Humanity
Page 20
As we made it to the front entrance an eerie silence fell across the area. Harvey shook my shoulder and pointed at the doors. There was a mountain of bodies all across the floor. Zombies shambled about and feasted on the corpses. It seemed the Army had broken through the zombies and raiders, but more zombies had flooded the area.
Things were quiet, but the Army surrounding the building couldn’t have been overrun, could they? We crept to the doors and peeked out. The soldiers had been completely destroyed. The parking lot was filled with immobile vehicles and uniform wearing undead. In the center of the devastation stood a zombie wearing a hunting jacket, staring at me intently. It was the thinker from the motel. I glared at him, was this my new family?
“Jim, I think your fans are coming from even further away now,” she said. She pointed out past the wall of cars and a sea of zombies had come to our aid. There were thousands, almost as if we had stirred every zombie in the city.
“They came for us,” I said. “Where do we go now?”
“We just found each other. Even our love has beaten death,” she said.
“If we turned ourselves in, our sacrifice could save everyone else.”
“True,” she responded reluctantly.
I pondered this difficult choice. Should we bring Pablo his supplies and lead the zombies away from the town? We could be together, possibly forever. We would witness the world struggle to recover from this disease. Life would never be the same and those that survived would have to fight to stay alive. In the end I imagined the dead would consume the world. I loved her so much that just knowing she was with me, made me whole. Who cares about everyone else? My whole life had been following rules and doing for others. This could be our only chance to be happy.
Or, we could turn ourselves in. The scientists would pull us apart and study us. They might develop a cure from us and many of the world’s survivors could be saved. With this cure the world could rebuild itself. Life could eventually return to some kind of normal, but that world would hold no place for us. If they didn’t keep us locked up in some underground lab, they would simply exterminate us. Our sacrifice could possibly save millions.
I held my car keys in my hand and stared at them intently. Harvey stood motionless, watching me with questioning eyes. He waited for me lead. Shay wrapped her hands around mine, with the keys cupped tightly.
“Come on, let’s go,” she said with a smile.
“Where?” I asked.
“I think you already know,” she responded and kissed me on the cheek.
She was right … I had always known.