I woke up this morning feeling like I hadn’t slept a bit, as usual. The sun was beaming in through the window. It felt good to just lie there for a few minutes, looking out at the clouds. It’s strange to think that during all of this, the weather is still nice. It’s probably in the fifties and would be a great day for brisk morning walk. Then I remembered that it would be more like running for my life than walking.
“No, there is no way we can do that.”
“We don’t have a choice; we’ve got to get out of here while we still can.”
“There are way too many of them out there. It would be suicide. I know you guys are nuts, but I’m not risking my life just to help you complete your mission. What the hell is your mission anyways?”
“That doesn’t matter. Just follow my orders and get ready to head out.”
“Fuck you, we’re staying right here.”
“Then you’ll end up just like the rest of them.”
Pete and Chuck were arguing about something. This is not what I wanted to wake up to this morning. I really need a cup of coffee before I have to deal with this. I walked into the room where they were arguing. Everybody else just looked down as if they were trying to ignore the conversation.
I broke in, “What are you guys arguing about? And what are you doing here anyways? Obviously, four guys in a truck weren’t sent in to rescue us or anything.”
“Were part of the Operational Maximum Ballistics Squadron. Zeta team.”
Chuck showed me a tattoo on his shoulder. It was a skull with a knife through it and under it were the letters Z.O.M.B.S.
“I don’t get it.”
“Never mind. We’ve got an important mission and because we lost half of our team, you’re going to help us.”
Confused, I asked, “What mission and why should we help you?”
“First of all, we saved your asses back there. You are running out of food and supplies. And if you want to get out of this mess alive, you have no choice.”
Pete got pissed again, “You guys are fucking crazy. What the hell do you think you’re going to do? Just waltz out of here and finish some pointless mission? We’ll all end up dead, at least for a few minutes. Then we’ll just join those other poor fuckers out there.”
I tried again, “Okay, so what is this mission? Are there even any safe places to go if we do complete it? I haven’t had any communication with the outside world in awhile. There’s nothing out there that could be safer than we are now.”
BW finally looked up. He’d been scraping his finger nails with a knife as long as my forearm. “It’s a simple reconnaissance mission. We have to check out a couple of places that our supervising officer believes to be ‘of interest’ to the man in charge. Then head to the top of the IDS tower where we will rendezvous with a chopper. Then it should be smooth sailing back to base. They’ll know what to do with you guys there.”
Pete just lost it, “Reconnaissance? IDS tower? What the fuck do you mean ‘of interest’? The only place of interest to me is any place where there are no walking corpses. It doesn’t look like there’s much of that left. You can tell this ‘man in charge’ that he can suck my…”
All of the sudden, BW was inches away from Pete. The blade of his knife was about an eighth of an inch from Pete’s left eye. Pete was dead silent and you could see the sweat beading on his forehead. A drop fell and landed on the gleaming blade. Pete just put his hands up and slowly backed off.
BW smoothly lowered the knife and turned back to me. “Anyways, you help us or we leave you here to rot.”
Pete lunged at him from behind with a crazed look in his eye. Just before he hit BW, Chuck’s foot slammed square into the side of his head. One of the girls gasped as Pete dropped to the ground. Out cold. Chuck just stood there with his leg up. As he lowered it, BW nodded and pulled out a map.
“This is ‘Point of Interest #1”
I looked down and before I could say anything, Stephanie cut in from across the room.
“Uhh, guys, I don’t think were going anywhere anytime soon.”
She was staring out the window. We all hurried over to where she was standing to see what she was looking at.
The streets were packed. The dead were standing shoulder to shoulder, covering the entire street. I couldn’t even see the ground they were standing on. It was like an ocean of people, rotting, hungry, dead people.
The weird thing was, none of them were moving, just staring up as if they were waiting for us.
Chapter 11
Looking for more Zombie Fiction?
Click Here for my list of Free and Other Zombie Books