The Price of Humanity

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Four

"That storage facility looks promising." I say to Zane as I walk back down the stairs. The gunshots keep firing repeatedly outside, Mia seems to have gotten used to them now but she still's tense.

"But we can't get to it." Zane comments, indicating to the horde creating a racket outside the barricaded door.

"Not unless we can do some James Bond shit over the wall." I mumble, looking up the stairs. I highly doubt myself or Mia could zip wire out of the window and over the wall without falling. Plus, we don't even have anything to use as a zip wire.

"Me and Adam saw something strange a couple of months ago." All eyes turn to Mia with suspicion, she looks into the fire, looking sufficiently creepy. She just keeps staring while Zane and I watch her expectantly.

"What did you see?" I ask. She looks up and picks at her thumbs.

"We saw a man with a herd of walkers. He was walking through the middle of them and he wasn't being eaten." Me and Zane share disbelieving looks, before turning back to Mia.

"Honey, he was probably a walker himself." She shakes her head furiously now on a determined mission to prove she was right.

"No. He masked his smell and so the walkers thought he was dead too." I squint my eyes, looking at her questioningly.

"How did he mask his smell." This makes Mia shiver and curl into herself.

"He cut up a dead walker and....and... smeared the insides all over him." She manages to get though the sentence but goes back to staring at the fire.

"Are you sure?" I ask and she nods slowly.

"I saw him do it." I walk over and sit by her, pulling her into my side in a tight hug. She puts her face in my shoulder and I stroke her hair, silently comforting her.

"It's okay." I whisper.

Movement changes my attention over to Zane who's now standing and running a hand through his hair.

He looks down at me, cradling Mia, and crosses his arms. His face looks conflicted, like he wants to believe the story but logic and everything we've learnt since the start of this whole situation is stopping him.

"It could work." He mumbles, deep in thought. That's not good. I release Mia, giving her a quick squeeze before walking over to my older brother, pulling him aside.

"You're not seriously considering this, are you?" I whisper, making sure we are out of earshot of Mia. No matter how insane the plan is I'm not going to be the one to tell Mia her plan means suicide.

"It makes sense." He shrugs, obviously ignoring all my reasonable demands and formulating up a plan in his head.

"It's insane." I counter, trying to stop any more outrageous thoughts in his mind. He looks over to Mia at the fire.

"It could work. We need to get Adam back, for Mia." I sigh, closing my eyes tightly. He makes a reasonable point, one that he's trying to manipulate me with, but I'm not going to put Mia or Zane in any danger from a plan that may or may not work.

Because if it doesn't work it will definitely kill us.

"It's too dangerous." I say trying to reason with him, I know he won't want to put any of us in danger either, unfortunately he's thinking about revenge rather than our safety. I know if we carry out this plan there would be one hundred and one things that could go wrong.

"I'll test it out on my own, then bring you guys out." I look up at him again.

"No way." I complain, he won't be going anywhere near those walkers, I won't lose another brother. "You're not going out there alone. Not even for a second." He runs his hands through his hair, frustrated.

"Then how on earth are we going to get past the corpses?" He practically shouts. "They aren't leaving anytime soon with the feast inside those walls."

"You're not going out there alone. We can wait them out..."

"We don't know if Adam has that long, we need to get him out of there now." I ignore the interruption and look over to the door where the growling has increased. Our raised conversation has obviously drawn the attention of the corpses outside.

"Just please be careful." I whine, defeated. He kisses my forehead and whispers to me.

"I'll see you on the other side." I nod, whispering the phrase back to him. He goes to the front of the bakery, peering through the gaps in the blacked-out windows.

"There's not too many out the front, I guess they've mostly gone down the side streets to get to the school." He moves over to the corner of the bakery, behind the counter where we hid the corpses.

He picks up his bag as he goes, pulling out a knife and standing behind the counter. I see the look of dread and nausea on his face before he starts cutting.

Even though I can't see anything, I turn around hating the noises that are hitting my ears. The ripping of flesh doesn't leave though and I hear squelching, and the smearing of guts onto Zane's body.

After a while, he comes out from behind the counter and crosses the floor of the bakery, coming into my line of sight. He looks utterly disgusting. Luckily, he chose to put on clothes that he hates before smearing the guts all over him.

I watch him slowly move the table out of the way and open the door. He takes a hesitant step out before slipping out on to the street. As soon as the door is closed, I run up to it, locking it and putting the barrier back up. Once I'm sure Mia will be safe downstairs I sprint up the stairs and into one of the rooms that faces the main street.

I quickly reach the window and open it, resting my hands on the bottom of the window frame and looking out onto the street below.