The sound of automatic gunfire was the only thing that momentarily silenced the moans of the zombies heading towards us. There were so few of us remaining but we didn't want to give up the fight. For some reason, the few of us still had hope.
"Yas, twelve o'clock!" Greg's eyes were wide as he shouted out to me, watching me intently as I threw my gaze across to my twelve and saw the zombie heading straight towards me. With her clothes torn and her hair matted and bloody, she was hard to recognise but I could work out that she was only about twenty and her T-shirt had the logo for our local café on it. Even with what was going on around us, I liked to give a moment of thought to each zombie before I killed it, just to appreciate the person they were before Umbrella ruined everything we knew and loved. Our neighbouring city, Raccoon City, had been wiped off the map because of this virus and now it was spreading. It was moving across the country, across the sea, it was taking over.
All of us were distracted with a myriad of zombies coming from all directions. We did what we could to help each other but we all knew at some point, it wasn't going to be enough.
My handgun flung up to shoulder level and without a moment of hesitation, I pulled the trigger and watched as the bullet flew through the air and pierced through the zombie's forehead at incredible force. "Oooh, nice shot." Greg's face changed to a sly smile. My café zombie seemed to straighten with the impact before falling backwards onto the tarmac with a hard thump. I offered Greg a quick nod and a smile as a thanks before we continued to take down as many zombies as we could.
It had been a long journey so far, one that had lasted us at least a week if not two. It was hard to remember because we were always on the move no matter if it was day or night. We were attempting to head into a shopping centre, one that was apparently still boarded up and safe with the possibility of a few survivors if we were lucky. From a group of twenty, we were now down to five. We had lost so many friends and family to this world ending virus yet we were just soldiering on. At one point, every now and again, one of us broke down and finally let the feelings we had pushed to the back of our minds pour out. We grieved and mourned, we screamed and shouted and then we picked ourselves back up and carried on the fight. None of us were military trained, special ops masters... We were teachers, administrators, personal trainers. We never imagined in our lives, or the lives of anyone in our families for generations, that we would ever encounter something like this, yet here we were.
"Can we get a fucking move on? We haven't moved an inch." Patience was just as upfront and honest as always. She tutted as she fired off another handful of bullets at a group of zombies that were slowly getting closer. "If we wait around all day, we'll be dinner for this lot. We need to make a break for it." She glanced in the general direction of where we needed to go, taking a moment to quickly tally up how many of these virus stricken undead were in our way. With a defeated sigh, she looked back over to me as if to tell me that we were screwed either way. I took in what she said but I knew I couldn't say that to the group. We needed to stay positive.
"We are faster than them, we have to use that to our advantage. Let's run, save the ammo for when we really need it. Run in pairs, make sure that we are helping each other to get there." Of course this meant that I would be running alone, but the group already knew this was the drill. With one last look at each other, Suny - our personal trainer - took off in a quick sprint with Greg running as fast as his legs could take him to keep up. Patience was next to start running, with our quiet member Cara hot on her heels. I began my run last, to make sure I could see what was going on ahead of me.
There was nothing more terrifying than running head first into hundreds of zombies knowing that the outcome of it was never going to be the same. We'd done it many times since this virus started and every time the end result had been different. We'd had times were we were all fine, others where we had a member bitten, other times we lost someone altogether. One time we even had someone take off in a different direction, hoping that they would make it to some sort of safety alone. That one in particular hurt us all a lot. Zena was a good woman and a loving mother but this virus had stripped her of all her humanity. In quick succession, she lost her husband and her son and, when we stumbled upon her by a school, she had given up all hope. We rescued her, putting our team on the line to fight through hundreds of zombies that included school children just to reach her. We counselled her, we trained her with a weapon that wasn't the strimmer she had stolen from the groundskeepers shed, and we grew to love our newest member. Then one day, that all changed.
