How I Survived The Zombie Apocalypse

Chapter Eight - Be Aware That Journeys May Take Longer Than Anticipated

The road climbed higher and higher into the mountains and soon the trees had become sparse on the rocky mountainside. The road kept getting narrower too, the drop on the right hand side getting steeper with every few feet.

I feel like this is a good time to say that I hate heights. I fucking hate them. Usually I'm pretty good at walking in a straight line but when I'm next to any kind of drop you'd think I was trying to impersonate Captain Jack Sparrow.

"Will this be ok?" Asked Luke, he had been nervously watching things behind us. I had too and they were getting desperate. If the others went too fast they attracted the walkers behind us, too slow and the walkers behind them caught up. It was a tricky situation to say the least.

"A little bit further, the roads still too wide." I replied. I wanted to rejoin the others just as much as Luke did but I knew if we fucked this up, we'd all be in some serious trouble.

"I really hope they guess what were doing otherwise they'll be over run." Sandy said as she began biting her fingernails.

"Me too." I banged the steering wheel in annoyance. "Why does there have to be so many? Fucking fifty, fifty bodies between us and them. Why is nothing ever simple?"

No body answered me and a few minutes later the road had narrowed even further and I decided that was the place. I slowed to a stop and waited. The others didn't stop but they slowed down, they were going too slow, the walkers behind them were going to be all over them.

I cursed as I unfastened my seat belt and clambered through the sun roof. I gestured for the others to keep on coming and they sped up slightly. Brian appeared at their sunroof and shouted across to me.

"What are you doing?! We have walkers behind us!"

"You were getting boxed in!" I shouted back. "Just keep driving, I promise it'll be ok. Just protect your back."

"Well ok then."

"Did you get Chris and Lilly?!" I asked, more of an afterthought if I was honest.

"We did!"

"Thank God." I muttered as I climbed back into the drivers seat. "Sandy, Luke, you need to get on the roof, keep them off us as much as you can, we don't want them smashing the back window."

"You got it!" Sandy said excitedly as she wiggled through the sunroof.

"I'll be right here, ready to set off as soon as we've cleared enough of them so the others can get through."

"Ok." Luke replied simply, following the little blonde onto the roof.

I held my breath as the others approached. I really didn't want to be responsible for their deaths. I shouldn't have worried though, the plan worked so freaking well! Just like I thought it would, the zombies were getting packed in tighter and tighter and seen as they couldn't go forward, back or left, they had to go right, straight off the cliff. The wonderful thing was that no matter how many of them fell and broke on the rocks below, they just kept on wandering off! They had absolutely no idea that they were walking to their destruction, I doubt they even had any concept of death.

"I can't believe it's working." Luke said in amazement through the open sunroof.

"Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence." I said sarcastically. "Come on guys get back in, we need to go."

Once Luke and Sandy were safely in the jeep again I set off, fast. There were a couple of walkers left in the road but Zak plowed through them as if they were cardboard cut outs rather than actual bodies.

I only really managed a couple minutes of feeling relieved before the next panic attack came on. I was suddenly imagining a huge group of the undead blocking the narrow road and trying to fight our way through, in case you're wondering, in my scenario, we all died horribly.

Finally we reached the top of the mountain pass and soon there was no drop on either side and two lovely wide lanes. Eventually we'd dropped down back into the forest and while I can't honestly say I felt relaxed, I did feel a little better at least.

"Where are we?" Asked Luke as the sunlight began to fade.

"The back end of nowhere." I answered. "Not far from the Wyoming state line actually."

"Well that's helpful." Luke said as he rolled his eyes. I grabbed the map and threw it at him.

"Ashley National Forest. If you're that bothered you can look it up for yourself." Sandy laughed at the shocked look on Luke's face.

"I suppose that was fair." He admitted with a grumble.

"I think we're safe to pull over." I thought out loud and at the agreement of Luke and Sandy I slowed down and came to a stop. I made sure that my trusty axes were handy as I stepped out of the Jeep and scanned the surrounding trees.

As soon as the others got out of the car Lilly ran over and hugged me. I was taken by surprise and almost toppled to the floor, only just regaining my balance in time.

"Hey Lilly." I said awkwardly. I'd only known her for a couple of hours and I felt awkward as hell.

"Thank you. Alex we were so fucked back there, if you hadn't have thought of that plan I think we'd probably be dead." She said with tears in her eyes.

"Lilly." I started, shifting my weight from one foot to the other, feeling an ugly redness creep up into my cheeks. "I'm sure you'd have been fine." I mumbled.

"No. We were screwed." Zak said casually as he sauntered over. "There were one or two moments I was sure you were going to leave us. You didn't though, you kept stopping and waiting, attracting those assholes right to you. Thank you Alex."

It was starting to feel far too mushy for my liking and I hated the amount of attention I was getting. I tried to think of something else to say to move the conversation on but my mind kept drawing blanks. Thankfully Luke shot me a knowing look and cleared his throat.

"Right. So Alex knows roughly where we are." He began, spreading the map out on the front of the Jeep.

We managed to narrow down our position somewhat and began the long process of deciding which way we should head next. Long story short we decided to head North. We coudn't explain why and there wasn't any real logic to it apart from North was as good a direction as any. We knew we had to keep moving.

We had decided that trying to stay in one spot just wouldn't work, we couldn't defend ourselves properly if another roaming town came our way, our best bet was to just keep moving and hope that we would eventually find a small scrap of civilization left for us to cling to.

It took us two weeks to pass through Wyoming. Two whole fucking weeks. It should have been done in a day but it seemed we had developed some real bad luck. On the first day we came across an army blockade that was overrun with Infected, we had to divert from our original plan and then we ran into other problems on the detour so that little incident ended up costing us almost four days. Then after that Zak was leading the way and stopped suddenly to announce there looked to be an ambush waiting up ahead, so we turned round and high tailed it out of there. After that we got hopelessly lost then found ourselves almost back in Utah.

It was a good job that Zak had been so astute, because after he had spotted the ambush we started to spot roaming gangs plaguing the highways. It was a real wake up call to me, I had been so unimaginably lucky to not have come across anyone until I found Luke and Sandy. I stopped looking at those weeks of loneliness as a curse and started the view them as a fucking miracle! I knew, deep down, that if I'd have come across one of these gangs on my own, I wouldn't have stood a chance, hell at some points I'd probably have tried to introduce myself. That would not have ended well.

Basically it was a laugh a minute, a sarcastic, bitter and hate filled laugh, but a laugh all the same. Finally we crossed the state line and I have to say, I almost cheered.