Last Dawn of a Horde

Chapter Eight: The Cure ~1 John

~John~

All I was able to say was, “The hell, man! I don’t need jokers today! The zombies and the traitors aren’t a good prank.”

Bridge didn’t budge. If he was joking, he should.

“Okay, so may I hear it?” I said.

Jet and Katie ran to the back of the truck, and reactions boomed on the load. I felt the back grumble, and Jet and Katie was with us now. I hate to say this, but…We sort of betrayed them.

“Well, my uncle was surely one of the terrorists, and—“ Bridge stopped.

“What the hell, you might be a traitor number two! God!” I snapped.

“No, that’s why I came here to help,” Bridge continued. “I want to pay back for my uncle’s deeds.”

“You ran away?” I said, nervously tapping my fingers on the steering wheel. If he was a complete jerk…then I have a quick way to kill him—by my own angry and tired fists.

“I’ve read some of his notes, and thanks for our Biology classes, I understood some proteins and shits I’ve read,” he added, unwrapping papers from his small bag.

“You’re not from St. Joseph’s University?”

He nods. “Well, I study at—THE ZOMBIES ARE HERE!”

“Wha--?”

I stepped on the gas hard, and we screeched against the paved road. From the huge convex mirror on my side, I see a horde of shrieking zombies running so fast like rabid dogs. The new crony Bridge did something common—he held tight on the truck’s pole.

“What are you doing! I’m going to die!” Bridge yelled.

“Hang on there for a while,” I say, steering quickly. When I hear gunshots from behind, I also hear Stanley’s groan:

“Get us out of here!”

I did.

After driving for about sixty miles per hour, the coast is clear. I drive away to where Bridge was pointing, and when I slowed down to five miles per hour, he sat beside James, squishing me in the process.

Few more blocks away from the school, Bridge got to his breath.

I still didn’t trust him, and I alerted myself to have a small knife tucked in my back pocket. Whoever this guy was, his intentions didn’t convince me still.

“I hear you guys are good fighters,” Bridge murmured.

“Where did you meet Jet and Katie?” I asked him in a cautious tone.

He rummaged through his bag, and took off several folded papers I don’t want to look at while steering unless I want all of us to die instantly.

“I was escaping that time. My uncle was suddenly gone from our house,” says Bridge solemnly. “That was the day when I saw zombies wandering everywhere. I survived, of course, for about three days. Then suddenly, when I was destroying our dressers and closets for wood and protection, I saw these papers.”

He lifted the papers close enough for me to see. Age was certain about it, and smells like it hasn’t been touched fifty years. Written by hand, I see diagrams, structures, and notations I don’t want to understand. It’s the same hexagon structures I’ve seen on our Chemistry and Biology classes about protein chains, and being unable to understand it makes my gut freeze in terror.

“Maybe Prince or Matthew or Rich will understand that,” I say, but after five seconds, I realized I’ve said something that made my stomach churn—Rich and Matthew being dead already, leaving me one last hope.

“Are they your classmates? Nerds as well?”

I shake my head.

“I’m not a nerd, either,” Bridge says. “But studying these simple formulas, I realized they weren’t carbohydrates or something.”

I sigh, as I steer to the left and crushed a zombie, its blood spraying on the bottom of the windshield. “Ugh, don’t talk to me about that, I suck in there.”

“Well, I’ll talk to your classmates will expertise in that field later,” he adds. “Well, you know the basic chemicals, right?”

“Chemistry,” I say. I slowed down when a cat passed by the road. It came slow because its leg was broken and limp. On the dashboard, three cans of spray paint fell to my lap. This might come in handy, I thought. “Poor cat.”

Bridge saw the cat, and he smiled, showing his dimples. “Aww, so cute, but it’s got sprain.”

I was about to come out of the truck, (“Why do we stop?” Gray yelled from behind,) and get the cat for rescue, even though I have no plans for keeping it, when a small kid darted swiftly he was a blur, and when he materialized, I see he was eating the cat. Starting from its neck, literally.

“No!” Bridge cries.

I steered forward, and I hear bones crunch under the thick tires. James stirred feebly, and groaned, making Bridge jump from his seat in surprise.

“Who is this?” he asked me.

“Don’t be so shaky,” I remind him. “He’s my best friend, James.”

Bridge nods, and studies my best friend. I want to shrug his hands off, when he was trying to check on his wounds.

“No, no, no,” Bridge said. “Who tied this bandage? It’s wrong! This guy will die if he’s not fighting it!”

I whistled in disbelief. Hey, I was the one who tied it. He removed James’ bandage, and James moaned.

“Hey, be careful,” I say.

After three full minutes of dripping some kind of fluid from his flask to James’ arm, he wrapped James’ arm with a fresh bandage.

Bridge hands me the bloody bandage he changed. “What is that for,” I asked. “Souvenir?”

“Keep it,” Bridge said, returning his things on his bag.

“For what?” I frowned.

“Zombies can smell, trust me,” he beamed. “Zombies and vampires are more like of each other.”

“You mean vampires are real?”

He sighed. “You mean sickly tales about vampires falling in love? Not so true. I was believing—“

“Wait!” I said, and I steered sharply to the right, avoiding a blockade of zombies. They were feasting on something, and seeing the truck that can crush them made them shriek. When we had gone to a narrowing road, I felt a thud on my chest—where am I heading, really?

“Just right,” Bridge says, wiping his face from sweat. “A few more kilometers, though.”

“We’re heading for your house?”

He nods, checking James’ neck.

“You mean you changed places?”

He nods again. “Of course, and people left their homes to relocate somewhere the government assigned.”

I sniggered. I can’t forget how the SWAT tricked Geno’s father into letting us hear the brilliant plan of going to the school and got ourselves killed.

“I’m not trusting the old president now, I think,” I say.

Bridge nudged me. “Hey, don’t be so bitter about him. He didn’t do everything bad. For one good deed, he sealed us off from other countries, and our neighboring countries are freaking out about the expected worldwide plague.”

“Very good for him, he’ll get us dead within a month,” I said sarcastically. I wondered why no helicopter came into following us, and they can even attack my classmates from behind.