Crazies

Kota's A-Report

(Edited)

*~* Dakota Lee's POV *~*

The pounding rain masks any noise we make as Nathan and I carefully climb the slippery ladder that leads up to one of the many water towers dotting throughout the city. I silently count each metal rung my hands grab, trying to focus my mind on the task at hand

I'm keeping my promise.

Sang's sweet voice invades every crevice of my mind, causing my right hand to slip off the next rung.

I tighten the grip of my left hand to keep from falling and take in a shaky breath.

"Keep it together," I whisper to myself as I lean my forehead against the cold, wet ladder.

"You good?" I shift to the side to look below me to see that Nathan has caught up to me. His blue eyes are the only distinguishable thing about him since his face is covered with waterproof camouflage face paint, and his red hair is tucked into a black beanie.

I give him a curt nod before grabbing hold of the ladder again.

"Yeah," I tell him, "just needed a second."

Under my breath, I continue to count each rung until I finally reach the platform surrounding the ginormous tank. I keep my body low to the ground before making my way around to the side facing downtown Rome, Georgia.

Crouching by the railing, I pull out the laminated map we stole from a rest stop out of town and light it up with a tiny pin light I modified to shine blue to keep from being spotted easily.

"How's it looking?" I ask Nathan as he takes up a position next to me. I hear him shuffling around as he fishes out the handheld scope from one of his pockets. The Scout III 240 is a military-grade thermal scope that we were able to get from an Academy team that helped us get into Georgia, and he uses it to check the city.

"Can't see any markings," he tells me as he does a few sweeps over the city, "looks to be controlled by Cranks." I sigh in slight relief as I pull out a black Sharpie to write a C in the top right corner of the map.

The sick are easy to deal with.

It's everyone else that's the problem.

After Charleston fell to the sick, it created this domino effect across the east coast. Within a month, thirty cities were overrun by this altered virus as the CDC failed to contain the problem. Which then prompted the government to issue martial law to control the rioting people long enough to create a blockade along the Mississippi River.

Creating a visible line that cuts the east off from the west.

As you can imagine, that just set off even more turmoil when that left hundreds of thousands of healthy citizens to survive against the sick without military aid.

The result of it all set off what the trapped citizens like to call the Survivors War.

I huff in annoyance as my thoughts recall the last few months where we had to physically fight to be where we are now. The exact number of people we had to hurt and the sick that had to die flash like a neon sign inside my head, causing my teeth to grind together.

Looking out over the dark city below us, my heart speeds up, knowing we're so close now. With everything that we've had to endure up until this point, there were a few moments when I almost lost hope of moving forward again.

I'll be waiting.

Hearing my sweet 10's voice again after having gone so long without it makes my heart beat double time. Most likely trying to make up for stopping four months, two days, and ten hours ago.

"Outer sector looks clear." Nathan's voice pulls me from my thoughts, and I force those memories back inside that locked door in the back of my mind. With my focus back on task, I put an X within the space we mapped out before coming up here, and move my hand inward to the next part.

"I see three on the far southeast in sector two." A large 3 goes around the area, and I make hash marks a few blocks around that part just so we know to stay clear of that area.

We do this back and forth until we have a rough idea of what's going on in the city.

"So, what do you think?" Nathan inquires as he secures the scope in a pocket again. Sighing, I look down at the map and weigh our options.

"It could be dangerous pushing through but nothing we can't handle. The only downfall I can see would be using our limited amount of ammo if we encounter too many at once. Which could cause problems when we hit Atlanta." I fold up the map and look out over the city. "Saying that I believe the reward outweighs the risk."

"Sang will always outweigh any risk."

"Always," I agree as we start to maneuver our way down the water tank and back to the others.

Time to go get our Sang.