Aurora Sky: Blackout (Completed)

Chapter 16

The husky voice sounded familiar. Rob leaned in intently with a puzzled look. That's when a well known face popped up in the light between the door and wall. "Holy shit! Duke is that you?"

"Yeah! I'm here!" It was their friend Duke Kaman, one of the friends that had planned to attend the Fourth of July party but never made it. "It's me, Valerie, Evan, and Emma!" A loud commotion sounded behind the break room door. After a few seconds, Duke emerged from within.

"God damn, I never thought I'd be so happy to see you!" he said. The former heavyweight collegiate wrestler in the navy colored rain coat dropped a sledgehammer from his hands and went in for a bear hug with Rob. He nearly dwarfed him in size at six foot four weighing two hundred fifty pounds. "Damn, everybody is here! What's going on Isaac? Sorry we missed the party," he slapped Isaac's hand and brought him in for a hug as well.

Nonchalantly, Isaac responded. "No worries. I think you had a pretty good excuse."

Sergeant Evan Samuels of the United States Marine Corps marched out of the room next, followed by his wife Emma, and Duke's girlfriend Valerie Collins. Evan wore loose white hoody with a tight brown shirt underneath that accented his muscular torso. Both pieces of clothing were stained with black blood and so was some of his buzzed brown hair as well. He came out with a wooden hatchet in hand and a handgun on his right hip. Emma and Valerie held crowbars close in to their chests with backpacks over their shoulders. Both wore tight blue jeans, similar black hoodies too large for their short and slender frames, and black wool hats to cover their blonde and brunette heads. Isaac recognized the clothes, they were some of Evan's old wear back from his high school days.

"I can't believe you of all people found us," said Evan with relief and hugging Rob tightly, "I was wondering if we'd ever find a way to get out. We've been stuck in this room for over a day now."

The four rescued friends looked worn and exhausted, although they didn't appear to be famished. As they exited the room, they dropped a few bags of canned goods, drinks, and snacks on the floor, and then exchanged hugs of joy, expressing their excitement to reunite with their friends again.

"I thought that was your truck outside!" Rob yelled. "What happened to you guys? How did you make it out here?"

Evan spoke first and told their story. "Well the rain started while we were driving back to town from the Foo Fighters concert. We got lucky and stopped under an overpass so we missed out on most of the heavy stuff. Once the gas cleared we booked it out of there.

"While driving, we decided to go to my parents house. We were going to go over there anyways to clean up and then come over to your party, but when we got to the house, they weren't there. They did leave me a note though. It said they were going to the hospital because they both had inhaled some of the gas and that they'd be home as quickly as possible. They never came back though. We stayed there for two days before we made the decision to leave."

"What made you come out this way though?" Isaac had to ask.

"Well we thought for a while maybe we would ride it out at his parents and see what happened." Emma added. "But then we saw what those, I feel stupid saying this, what those Zombies do."

"That's what we thought they were too!" Rob shouted.

Evan resumed the tale. "The morning after the fourth, once we saw a gang of those zombies chew a man down to the bone, we put it together that shit had hit the fan. That's when we made our plans to leave to come out here. We discussed it and thought to ourselves that Isaac's farm might be one of the safest places we know of since it's pretty far away from the city but not too far from us to get to, and either Isaac would be alive and take us in, or he'd be gone and we could just hole up there for ourselves. Worst case scenario if it didn't work we were gonna go west to the mountains. We took the chance and left. We took whatever we could manage to carry. Luckily my parents had a pretty stocked pantry and fridge, so we took everything that wasn't spoiled and all of the drinks. Then we grabbed some stuff for the cold weather, armed ourselves, and waited for the right moment to leave.