The New World

Ch. 4

"We'll be coming up on the highway soon."

I looked to my right and watched as a nervous smile made its way onto Ryan's face. He fidgeted with his fingers as he stared ahead, his handgun was tucked into the back of his waistband, hidden under his shirt with both his rifle and bag hanging from his shoulders. His once empty bag was now heavy with a few cans of food and water that I had given him.

"I can see the cars from here." I muttered out and it was true. We were currently a block away from the town's main road and I could already see the tightly packed line of vehicles sitting abandoned.

"You still okay with stopping at the cop shop before heading to the school?" I asked him, turning my head to stare at him from behind my mirrored sunglasses.

"Yeah, it's no problem." He shrugged. "I'm pretty curious what we'll find there, honestly."

Earlier this morning, before we headed out, Ryan and I sat down and talked out a plan over breakfast. The original plan was to just head to the school but I brought up the idea of visiting the police station.

My mother was a police officer and she had her own desk at the station. I'm hoping to find any clues as to her whereabouts and maybe pick up anything useful that was left behind.

Though I'm sure the police station's already been raided by survivors so I wasn't exactly expecting to find anything truly useful.

I probably wouldn't have even tried to go there had Ryan not been with me now, especially after finding out that a possible hoard could be near there. The station was just on the other side of the highway and I felt a little safer with Ryan watching my back.

We slowed our pace as we got closer to the main road and the closer we got, the louder the shuffling and groaning became. There weren't any walkers directly in front of us but as we came to the edge of a large red bricked building, I crouched down and peaked by head around the corner.

I clenched my teeth in both annoyance and a little bit of fear. There was a massive hoard stumbling around on the road and in between the abandoned vehicles. My eyebrows nearly disappeared under my bangs and my jaw hung open a little as I stared at what was easily a few hundred, if not a thousand walkers.

Ryan, who had crouched next to me, was also staring at the massive hoard with a pensive expression.

I looked to our right and saw an equally sized hoard shuffling around about a half block away. I sighed and leaned back. Ryan did the same and looked at me.

"The ones on the left are way too close to the police station." He whispered out, just loud enough for me to hear him.

"I know." I sighed out.

The zombies to our right were tightly packed together, their numbers nearly stretched all the way down the road as far as the eye could see. The police station was also sitting only about ten feet away from the hoard's borders, on the adjacent street half a block down.

I let out another sigh as I tried to come up with a plan. I really didn't wanna give this chance up since I knew that I most likely wouldn't be coming back here by myself for a while.

The area we were currently in would be considered the 'downtown' area of Blackpool if it  were big enough. Across the street to our left was one of the town's three different gas stations, directly across the street from where we were now was the town's theater, to the left of that was the post office and to the right of the theater was the town's only bank. To the left of the bank, right across the road, was both the town's police station and fire station which were built right next to one another.