We Are Risen

Chapter Twelve

I drove down the road, not exactly sure of my destination. Toby kept his hand on my thigh the entire time, and I couldn't help but smile at the thought of him as my boyfriend. Everything felt perfect at this moment. Well, except for the fact that my dad and brother are god-knows-where, my mom is dead, and there are aggressive, murderous undead cannibals waiting to feast on our flesh. It was a fairly nice day, pretty warm, actually. The sun is shining bright in the sky, and the sky is completely clear and bright blue. I kept one hand on the wheel as I used my left hand to crank the window down. I noticed a biter stumbling across the road, and I lazily drove around it. I watched in the rearview mirror as the biter turned around and lurched after my truck. 

"You should just run them over," Bryson spoke up from the back seat. 

I slammed on the brakes, whipping around to face him. 

"Hell no!" I snapped. "Do you know how badly that could damage my truck? This is the last thing my father gave me before he disappeared off the face of the damn earth!"

Bryson raised his hands in surrender. "Alright, alright! Sorry, I said anything."

I turned back around and lifted my foot off the brake, putting it on the gas. I watched from the rearview mirror as Dirk sped up so he was right beside my window. 

"Everything okay?" he called over to me. "You slammed on the brakes pretty rough."

"Yeah, I just needed to talk to Bryson," I said back, chuckling lightly.

Dirk nodded and fell back behind the truck. Toby reached over and laced his fingers with mine, intertwining our hands. 

"So where to now?" Ally asked, leaning forward as I took a right at the intersection."

"Not sure," I replied. "Somewhere safe? Somewhere with walls, and food. Running water. A place with people."

"Come to think of it," Toby said from the passenger seat. "I haven't seen a single person since we left Lakeview."

"Is there anybody even left?" Bryson chimed in. "What if we're the only humans left on earth?"

I sighed, taking my left hand off the wheel for a second to rake my red bangs out of my hair. "I just hope that's not the case. I'm sure there are people out there, we just need to find them."

We were silent for a few minutes before Ally spoke up from the back seat. 

"Hey, I'm getting hungry," she said. 

"Yeah, we should probably stop for lunch soon," I agreed with her. "We just need to find somewhere that isn't crawling with biters."

I started to scan the road for any signs for parks or neighborhoods. After about twenty more minutes, I saw a road sign for a creek that was about half a mile up the road. I kept following the road signs until I finally saw a path leading to the creek. I flashed my blinker to let Dirk know I was turning onto the road, and I took a left turn onto the road. We came upon a parking lot that was completely empty of cars. Turns out this place was some type of fish hatchery that just so happened to have a massive creek. There was a stone wall that surrounded a pool of water that had a bunch of crawdads swimming around in it. Beside the stone wall was a set of stone stairs that curved down to the creek bed with metal railing. There were some stone picnic tables on the clearing that led down to the stairs, and that's where we decided to eat our lunch. 

We all sat all around the table so we had a vantage point from all sides, that way a biter couldn't creep up on us. We pulled out some SPAM and started to munch on that. I wrinkled my nose at the taste, but I figured that this was better than nothing. After we ate a little less than our fill, we decided to go down to the creek to get some water to boil that night, just so we didn't run out. Dirk went to go fetch enough empty water jugs for all of us, then we made our way down the stone steps, and I realized that there was a sharp drop-off where the stone stairs had broken off into the water, so we had to climb down. Toby went first, and he helped his dad to climb in the water. After they had gone in, I took my turn. I crouched down on the edge of the concrete slab and slung my legs into the water. I stumbled a bit, as I hadn't expected the current of the creek to be so strong. Toby grabbed my hands to steady me, and then I helped Ally to jump in the water, and Bryson jumped in behind her.