1 | I Am a Survivor of the Zombie Apocalypse | ✅

Chapter 11 - Emotional Escapade

"Wynne, run!"

I hear Seth's shout and take off. I hear the dead things growling and snarling, I smell the stench of their decaying bodies. I run down the long hallway in the semi-darkness, panting and trying to pull the slide back on my Glock.

Let me explain something: After our feast, we continued down the road until, after a day or so, we finally reached a town – a pretty good sized one, too. And then we stupidly entered the high school that holds about 150 dead things.

So now I'm running, I have no idea where Doyle is, and Seth is probably trapped right now. We had spread out (like idiots) to find more supplies, and then the dead things swarmed down on us.

I turn a corner, only to almost run into a writhing wall of dead things. Gasping, I back around the corner again, my shaking hands finally pulling back the slide. The bullet clicks.

"Only shoot if you have to," I whisper to myself, trembling.

I run down the hallway, back the way I came. I see Seth running, a couple of staggering dead things trying to catch him. Hopefully there aren't any runners.

"What are you doing?" He yells at me, his brown eyes darting around frantically as he searches the hallway for an escape route.

"There are more," I gasp, pressing a hand to my chest. My heart is pounding so fast I'm surprised I haven't gone into cardiac arrest or whatever. "Do you know where Doyle is?" I ask.

"No." That one word drives a blade of ice-cold fear through me.

"We have to find him," A terrible wave of panic washes over me, and I can't breathe.

Seth looks me in the eyes. "We will."

He grabs my shoulder and pulls me with him into a classroom. The desks are broken and thrown all over the room. I close the door behind us, and Seth runs over to one of the windows, picks up a chair, and throws it through.

Glass shatters everywhere. Seth jumps through the window. "Come on!" He calls to me from outside.

"But Doyle –!"

"Come on!" He yells, firmer.

I don't want to give up on Doyle, but I know dying won't solve anything, so I heave myself out the window and run across the grassy area over to the parking lot.

"What are we going to do about Doyle? Where is he?" I gasp as we stand beside a navy blue pickup truck.

"I don't know, Wynne. We'll just have to wait." Seth looks as terrified as I feel, "He can take care of himself. He'll come." He sounds more like he's trying to convince himself more than me.

He takes a deep breath, then says in a somewhat lighter tone, "In the meantime, I'm gonna try to get one of these vehicles to run so we can get out of here."

He turns toward the pickup truck and starts doing I don't know what. I stand with my back to him, eyes on the high school, waiting, hoping. Doyle can't die. He can't. Seth has already lost his entire family, I already lost my dad and watched a little girl die. Doyle cannot die. I think Seth would finally break. And I wouldn't know how to protect both of us. And I wouldn't know what to do without him.

It's seems an eternity before I see it. A lone dead thing straggles toward us from some hidden exit to the school. I raise my gun, the bullet already in the chamber.

I look down the sight, focus, and as my finger tightens around the trigger, the thing yells at me.

"Don't shoot!"

My eyes widen in shock, and my grip loosens as I lower my weapon. It's running now. And as it nears, I see.

"Doyle?" I whisper, my feet moving forward, seemingly of their own accord. "Doyle!" I shriek, and start running.

He seems to be covered in guts or something, but I don't care. We collide, and I wrap my arms around his neck, probably a bit too tightly. And I'm crying.

"Oh my God!" I sob into his shoulder. His disgusting, covered-in-zombie-guts shoulder. "I'm so glad you're alive!"

"So am I." He's holding me just as tightly, his hands between my shoulder blades, his fingers trembling.

I can feel the heat of his body against mine, I can hear his heart beating. His back heaves with heavy breaths. His hair tickles my cheek. I don't ever want to let him go. He's safe, and I want him to stay that way.

I don't know what's come over me, I just – "I knew you were too stubborn to die." I let go of Doyle at the sound of Seth's voice and quickly swipe away the stupid tears on my face, hoping no one notices.

"Or too stupid," Doyle says, taking a step away and looking past me.

Seth comes and stands beside me, looking Doyle up and down. "What's all that?"

"I figured, maybe, if I smelled and looked like 'em, they'd leave me alone," Doyle says, looking down at his gore-covered body, "Worked like a charm."

"Smart," Seth says, punching him in the shoulder. "Now, come over here and help me with this truck."

They leave me standing there alone, feeling confused about what just happened. What was with that crazy emotional escapade? What happened? I've never hugged a boy like that before. I never really hugged anybody like that before, not even my dad. Because I never thought somebody was dead before. Yeah, that's all it was. Relief. Just relief. Not......anything else.

          +++++

They manage to find one car that runs, with just a little over half a tank of gas. Doyle wasn't able to bring his pack with him. All the food and water that was in there is lost. And the pictures of his family and Miranda.

Before we get in the car, Doyle insists he go find something to get some of the guts off of him. I have a shirt and pants that I found in the store back in the three-building town to change into in my backpack. I go around to the other side of the car and tell Seth that if he peeks I'll kill him, and he turns to look the other way, covering his eyes with his hands. I throw off my dirty clothes as quickly as possible and pull on the clean ones. I stuff the gross shirt and jeans into an outside pocket of my backpack and toss it into the backseat of the car.

"Okay, it's safe now," I tell Seth.

"Good to know," he says jokingly, turning around and uncovering his eyes. His left eye is still purple and bruised from where he got punched. I'm sure it hurts.

A moment later Doyle returns with a bucket of water. "It probably won't be very effective, but it's all I found."

He hands the bucket to Seth and tells him to throw the water on him when he tells him to.

Then Doyle turns to me, reaches into the back pocket of his jeans and says, "And you can hold these for me." He places the precious pictures in the palm of my outstretched hand.

"You saved them," I say, gazing at them, the strangers' smiling faces looking up at me.

"That's all I could save," He says, and I look up at him. Our eyes meet, and I feel myself blush. His hazel-explosion eyes are so beautiful...... WAIT! What is happening to me?!

He doesn't seem to notice – thank goodness – and walks away from me, pulling off his plaid shirt. I stare at the pictures in my hands as Seth sloshes the water. I look at Doyle and Miranda together, their faces, hers smiling and his so intent upon gazing at her with pure love. I wonder if anyone would ever look at me like that. Would he?

Ew! What is wrong with me? Where did all this come from all of a sudden? Still just relief!!! Yeah, we'll go with that. That's all it is. Just relief. Please just be relief......

Ohhh, boy.