My mind wakes up before my eyes, all my senses coming back together. Bright light shines through the open windows, and the room that was once entirely dark is as white as the inside of an asylum. Cemented walls peek through the holes of torn-out white paint, broken glasses, and bottles at the edges of the floor. Dust and ashes were piled up in every spot, and the couch is dark-tinted green. Holes on its foam and its leather clothing are worn out. Lenore sleeps on the seemingly rough and comfortable furniture, her head lying on the pillow she offered to Riley once. I look around, finding all my friends sleeping in the corners and on the floor, then I feel heaviness on my shoulder. Riley’s head fell onto me when we were asleep. And I can’t help myself but admire it.
I love you, my mind says. But is it too early for that? No one cares.
I put my head on top of hers, and take a few seconds to snuff her scented hair. I gently kiss her scalp, and then I feel her head slipping off of my shoulder. I hastily stop it from falling by using my hand as a guard, cupping her forehead. Then she moves, lifting her head back up. She covers her mouth with her fist as she yawns, turning away from me. I smile widely as she looks at me again.
“Good morning,” I greet her.
“Good mornings are non-existent, Isaac.”
I drop my head down, chuckling. “Your logic is flawless.”
“Come on, we have to get up now.” She lifts her pants as she stands up. Then she offers me a hand.
I glance at it for a second and then at her for assurance. She nods to the right with a smile on her face. I take her hand and help myself without putting all my weight on her. My phone buzzes underneath my jeans pocket. It makes me wonder what is up. As I turn it on, a reminder pops up on my screen, then a side smile appears on my face.
“Hey, you know what day it is today?” I ask Riley.
She grabs her water bottle and replies before drinking. “No, what is today? Monday, perhaps?”
“It’s supposed to be our graduation day.”
“Oh. That’s… a surprise.”
“Yeah, well. Happy graduation day to us.” I cheer slightly.
We wake the others gently and quietly, and the dog stretches its long body, and then his mouth widely opens, showing his teeth and tongue. He walks up to me, wagging his tail and then sitting in front of me. My heart skips a beat just looking at him straight in his eyes.
“What do you want, dog?”
He lifts up his paw and brushes it on my jeans. He whines, then a sudden bark escapes from his mouth.
“Whoa!” I flinch back, almost losing my balance.
Riley rushes to us and pulls the dog away, and then I can finally breathe. “Sorry about him. He’s like this when he’s hungry.”
I rub my chest to ease up the pain in my heart, taking process around the spinning ground. I hear ringing in my ears, and then my stomach churns. I take deep breaths bending over, leaning on my knee caps.
I take deep breaths bending over, leaning on my knee caps. The others rise from the floor, now taking process of the bright light and the clear view of the room.
After eating some go-to food, we prepared ourselves wearing knee and arm caps, a bat, an ax, or a machete in our hands—Mark even became unique to the team, he’s got an M16 in his hand—and then the formation of the Z Team.
We are in a V form in three. The Protectors in the front, behind them, are the Inner Circle, and then the Fighters at the back. Our backpacks tightly hung on our shoulders, and now we’re ready to go.
Stephen and Mark open the door, an empty stairwell in our sight. We don’t believe it, yet we warily take gentle steps on each flight, until we reach the second floor. Some doors are opened, bloodstains on the walls—some artwork these bloodies made last night. I’m impressed.
Then, we hit the second floor. Still, the same and there’s no sign of any undead being. The ground floor made a huge difference from last night. Glass shards are all over the floor and the windows and the doors have become holes. The bloodies seemed to show some proof of how strong they’d become as a horde. Another difference is that the room behind the stairwell that was once eerily dark has finally shown what’s inside it.
Torn out army uniforms, and some even dropped a couple of dog tags. I pick up each of those.
Randall Rutherford
Emmett Brown
Sergei Rodriguez
They died as heroes. I wear them around my neck, hoping to lend them to the army to at least pay them tribute. Then ahead of me is a rifle. The others found some, too. I check its magazine and find a few loads of bullets. That’ll do.
I offer the rifle to Riley and yet she declines it, staying loyal to her bat and ax. Then I take a peek outside the building and find the same horde wandering around only a few yards away. I nod to them as a go signal. Then we run out as silently as we can, constantly glancing behind us in case we’ve just caught their attention until we arrive at the exact spot.
However, the team begins to scatter around an area—near an alleyway—and then they make noises by shouting and hitting poles with their weapons. Some of us take a stand in front as we ready our attacks. The bloodies then run towards us, roaring and limping. Their limbs are hanging loose from their bodies. I focus on an X mark the team put in last night, and when the bloodies hit the mark, Adam and Andrew pull up the ropes that are tied to a wide tarpaulin above our heads, and then the tarp falls onto the bloodies, trapping them inside. Some didn’t get caught by the little trap, but we’re aware of that. We continue running, heading to another spot where we created another trap for the rest of them. We dash through the alleyway, ducking our heads under the ropes tied vertically that are intentionally lower than our heights. I’m sure the bloodies that are behind us got their necks strangled by those.
Well, we know those booby traps don’t take them long to get out of, so we’ve prepared more than just two traps. I guess we’ve got one more because we didn’t have more materials for another one. But, hell. Ropes are really useful. Last night, we created a map to get out of this town, though the way out is still so far and we only made a few booby traps. But it’ll do. At least it would buy us some time to be a lot farther away from these annoying zombies. We didn’t take the highway road as our path because it’s an open field and the bloodies might see us right away.
We take a flight of stairs leading to the rooftop of one of these houses, and somehow, some bloodies found the stairs and took them to surprise us here. We fight our way through, throwing them off of the ledge. I glance at Riley to check up on her. And she’s doing well so far. I grab her hand and we run together. We cross through an alleyway on thick plywood and drag it off from the end of the rooftop as we reach the other end of another rooftop. The bloodies fall twenty feet to their demise—hopefully. That’s not the booby trap, yet. We’re only saving it for the best part.
We head back down as we reach the rooftop end, where Finn, Edward, Jay, and Josh grab fuel containers full of gasoline—they got them from a working gas station last night. Dan is such a genius. This one would be very exciting. Though I wasn’t with them to witness the making of these booby traps, we’d already discussed these concepts before they left. Even the ones left in the building with me and Riley knew the drill.
The four of them wash up the path we just crossed with gasoline. There’s also a rope lying horizontally parallel to the ground, and as the bloodies find us, Mark ignites a match on fire, and when they step on the rope, their feet get strangled, trapping them there forever. And as enough of them have been trapped, Mark drops the flaming match onto the gas-mopped way, burning the corpses of the once dead monsters.
That should kill them.
Then we finally make it out of the alleyway until we realize some of the bloodies took a detour. We take out our rifles and gunshots to replace the screaming and snarling of the bloodies. The others stick with their melee weapons, causing concussions to the bloodies that make it too close to us.
Dan gets knocked down by a couple of them, dropping his handgun, then Riley rolls to the gun, ending in a proper stance—one knee above and the other on the ground—and points it to the bloodies and pulls the trigger twice, shooting one bullet at each of them—one gets shot on the forehead and the other on the neck. Dan pants as he rises back up, a smile growing on his face as he looks at Riley in fierce mode. “Not bad, kid. Where’d you learn that?”
She stands up straight, flipping the gun pointing at her as she offers it back to him. “The movies.”
I look in the opposite direction, finding the others already on the run again, leaving us. “Let’s go—Look.”
Riley and Dan look at where I’m pointing. One of the bloodies that took a bullet on its neck rises back up again, then Dan immediately shoots it on its forehead, just like where Riley killed the other, which is still on the ground. I notice the difference.
“Riles, I guess I have the answer to your question.”