The World Left Behind

4. into the fire

I've stayed on this roof for three days and this horde has not moved, like really? Come on its bad enough that I'm alone but having a horde of moaning infected below me ain't helping. Even though there must be a hundred infected down there I still got into the store via the loading dock and took a few items of food and dranks. Yes I said dranks instead of drinks because I heard someone from youtube say it and I thought it was catchy. Right now it's sundown and I decided I better go to bed so I can be fully rested to face to moans of the infected tomorrow without going crazy. With that I fell asleep on the cold hard roof of ingles. I awoke to the sound of machine guns firing in the distance, I got up and walked to the edge of the roof to see a group of about nine or ten men firing shotguns and military rifles at the group of infected with Nick leading the charge. The group made short work of the infected and I climbed down the ladder to greet them, I ran to them stuttering my thanks for getting me off that God forsaken roof. Nick came up to me and took me by the shoulder before I could talk to the members of the group, listen Bryce before you talk to them you need to know a few things, one of those things is that alot has changed in the last few days, the government has erected a quarantine wall around madison county starting at the buncombe county madison county border. Another thing is that these guys are real serious about surviving and trying to get out and I put in a good word for you so you can join us Nick said. What do you mean us ? I mean Nick said is that if we work together we can try to contact the government for them to send more aid even though they already have a good setup on the island in downtown marshall, one of the their guys knows how to hot wire cars so they got a few military humvee with mounted guns they left behind before the wall was erected. I decided to go with them to the island to see this setup. When we got there I was speechless, they had two humvee with men on the guns halfway across the bridge parked nose to nose to make a barricade. When we pulled up one of the humvee moved out of the way so we could get through, we went to the actual end of the bridge and saw they had built makeshift guard towers on either side with men holding hunting rifles in them. We took a right and headed down to the community center where they had men working on cars and cleaning weapons. The car stopped and we all got out and Nick grabbed me and led me inside the building to our left wich had been an old highschool back in like the eighties or whenever and he took me up a flight of stairs which lead to a tiny office like space. In the cramped office I noticed a small wooden desk and an office chair turned toward the window facing the bridge, when the chair turned toward me and Nick I was faced with a boy with long dyed black hair, gauges and a red plaid shirt. I was Staring at my former friend marcus and he had grown from the short, fat boy I rememberd to a good six foot in height and he had had lost some weight since ninth grade. Me and him stopped being friends when we had an argument over a girl we both liked who had actually went out with him but that fell through in tenth grade. He looked at me and said well look who's here Bryce robinson in the flesh he said, Nick here says you could be a good addition to our group of survivors and since I'm feeling generous I'm willing to put aside our differences so you could join us except if you do want to join up you have to pass a little test. At that he pulled out a big revolver and shot Nick in the chest and Nick crumpled to the ground. I was to stunned to say anything but even if I could marcus said if you want to join finish him off so he won't turn. What do you mean turn ? I said. Well you see marcus said the funny thing about the whistling Dixie virus is that anything can be infected if exposed to the virus, see we wall was exposed to the air born variant of the virus when the military convoy crashed but the ones already to far gone to be saved was either bitten or scratched so they turned, so are you going to give him mercy or let him suffer in the hell that is the whistling Dixie virus marcus asked. He put the revolver on the desk and said I dident have long to decide before he decided for me. I feared what he would do if I dident end what was left of Nicks life so I picked up the revolver, looked Nick in the eyes and wisperd I'm sorry and closed my eyes. I felt the cold metal of the gun in my hands and pulled the trigger, Nick was gone.