Dead Days

Chapter 17

     Everything felt distant. My breathing, the light of day, even the sound of the relentless undead beating on the truck.

     I went somewhere deep in my head, dangerously deep.

At first it was nothing but a black void, but slowly a landscape began to form. Grass sprouted under my feet, hills grew in the distance, speckled with trees here and there.

A massive redwood shot up right beside me

And then she was there.

Her blonde hair flowed through the wind. The gown she wore rippled back and forth. Her eyes an even deeper blue than before.

"L... Lauren," I stumble with her name.

She walks to me and puts a finger to my lips. "Shh," she says. "This is not the end for you Jack. It's not your time."

"But I miss you, Lauren. I need to be with you." Tears fill my eyes and begin to fall down my cheeks, cutting lines through the dirt on my face.

"There will be time for that later, you have people depending on you right now."

"They'll be fine, I taught them enough to survive," I say, trying to convince her.

"They're in danger Jack, they need you. We both know your the only one that can save them."

"That's not true, Cassie is a smart girl, she'll know what to do."

"Jack," she says, disappointment in her voice. "You have to go now. They need you." She puts a hand on my shoulder.

"I don't want..."

She tightens her grip, "Jack, you have to."

"But, Lauren."

"Go!" She screams. She holds it out though, the ending turns into a garbled moan. Her face slowly begins to decompose and she pulls me closer.

I close my eyes. Accepting my fate.

But then memories of Cassie flood my mind.

"No."

I snap my eyes open and I'm back in the truck, the zombies broke the windshield and I'm face to face with one.

I wrap a hand around its neck and swing a right hook so hard that it's neck snaps. I feel the bones break in my hand.

The thing falls. I crawl into the back seat and begin kicking the window looking out to the bed of the truck. It's falls outwards on the third kick. I crawl through the hole and onto the bed.

     The sight was disheartening. Zombies milled from the woods, slowly gathering around the truck.

     They're moans and screeches almost deafening. The zombies at the front of the truck make their way to the back to get closer to their meal, opening up a path.

     I quickly grab the ammo bags and hop onto the roof of the truck and jump down to the pavement. I roll on the descent to avoid any injuries and come up in a dead sprint.

     The screechers behind me do exactly that, screech and then provide chase.

I pump my legs as fast as possible, my lungs burn as they try to supply oxygen to my body. Years of training in the military prepared me for running with extra weight, but not for this long.

My body is tiring, even with enough adrenaline to cause a heart attack. There's a bend in the highway coming up. Hopes of escape give me the strength to push forward.

Sweat is pouring like torrential rain, my legs are on the verge of giving out but I kick it into overdrive, I have to make that bend before they are close enough to see me take it.

Fifty feet. My lungs feel like they are about to burst. Thirty feet. My heart is screaming in agony. Twenty feet. A stabbing cramp form in my gut. Ten feet. I think of how I let every one down. Five feet. I'm sorry.

I dive into the bushes on the side of the road. My breathing sporadic and my lungs burn as if dipped in molten metal.

Hundreds of foot falls pass by me. Some sprinting, some shuffling.

I guess they're not smart enough to know that I'm hiding. They just keep going in the direction that they think I'm in.

I lay there, in the bushes for what seems like hours. I wait well past the point that I no longer hear them walking by.

It's not until the sun is sitting on the horizon that I leave the bushes. The undead are no where in sight.

I walk for ages. Everything looks so familiar that I start to feel like I'm going on circles.

But then something is different. A massive blood stain lays nearly dried on the road. It's recent, it hasn't fully coagulated yet.

I bring the stock of the rifle to my shoulder, just in case. As I walk further down the road, more spots are visible, but they are smaller, and scattered oddly. Whoever was bleeding was walking.

The night is silent. No animals bustling in the woods, no birds chirping, not even the sound of crickets fill the air.

But then it's not silent. The voice was so faint that I almost passed it off as the wind.

"Jack." It came again, this time a little louder and from my right.

I aimed the rifle in the direction and slowly made my way to it. A fit of coughing erupted from the source of the noise.

I parted the bushes and there, siting against a tree, beaten and bruised was Terry.