How It All Ended

Chapter 16

The four of us were out of the area, running down the street and leaving the now dead scrawny guy and his two pals behind. Gina led our group to the end of the road and up to a dead end: A tall fence with barbed wire at the top, and the fence was covered in a thick layer of dead and decaying vines.

"We don't have time to climb over that," I said. I looked behind us and saw that the scrawny guy's friends were getting back to their feet. I figured that they'd be on the hunt for the four of us, so we had to keep moving.

"Here, take a look, Dom," Gina responded. She lifted up a bottom section of the fence. "Now start crawling. All of you."

As soon as we made it under, we followed Gina around a block of empty apartments, and then down another side road.

"Oh great, another damn side street?" I asked Gina.

"Shut up, it's only another block or so," Gina replied.

"Yeah, quit bellyaching, Dom. You have anything better to do?" Shauna wondered.

"Good point," I said. Shauna was right after all. The world ending did put a damper on my weekend plans.

When the four of us came to an intersection, Gina stopped and she pointed down the road to her left. "Here we are."

The street was a narrow road with five houses on it in total. Three on the right-hand side, and two on the other. But the most distinguishing feature of this particular road was the barricade that blocked the entrance to the street. Two box trucks were on both corners of the street, one of which was badly burned, while the other appeared to be operational. And in between the two vehicles, was a makeshift barbed wire fence. Strands and strands of wire separated by wooden poles.

"Impressive," I told Gina.

"Thanks," Gina replied. "I suppled the barbed wire." Gina tapped on the side of the bus on her left. "I'm back. Open up."

After a couple of seconds, a man wearing dark blue jeans, brown boots, an olive jacket, and a Detroit Red Wings hat appeared from around the burned-out husk of the vehicle and he helped Gina move aside the barbed wire.

"Oh, Gina, you brought some guests," The man remarked. He smiled through his thick, brown, beard.

"That I did. They're all right," Gina said to him.

"Good."

The man waved us all in. He and Gina went ahead while Amber, Shauna, and I stood near the entrance, and we looked around.

Gina stopped walking, turned, and looked at us, "You guys coming?"

"Yeah," Shauna answered.

"We're just not used to things being so...." I tried to say.

"...Normal?" Shauna asked.

"Yeah, that's it. Normal."

Gina motioned to the man standing next to her. "Oh, I forgot. Guys, this is Andy."

Andy waved at all of us. "Andy Denton at your service."

"This is Dominik, Shauna, and Amber," Gina told Andy

"Come on in and I'll introduce you to the others," said Andy.

We followed Andy down the road to the last house on the right-hand side of the street.

"This is sort of our command center. Or, whatever you want to call it," Andy told us.

Andy led us into the living room of the home. It was wall to wall with supplies: food, weaponry, you name it. Gina set down her bag of medical equipment next to some boxes.