Chapter 3
The journey there was dangerous. Very dangerous. We were weighed down by our many bags, and it wasn’t exactly like the Zombies went in for tea. More than once we were cornered, but more than once we escaped, finally arriving at the huge building. But what we saw surprised us.
All of the windows had been bordered up, as well as the doors, but a huge banner reading ‘Survivors Welcome’ was draped over one wall. Half concealed snipers crept on the rooftop, every so often emitting a sharp, but slightly muffled, shot, downing a Zombie one at a time.
We entered through a small door in the back alley, which led straight to the main room in the Library. And what a change there was. The books were all having their pages ripped right out, and the pages were being piled up in huge towers, before being either flung into a protected fire or into small packs, which I assumed were supply packs.
We were greeted by the new manager of the Library, as he had us checked for Zombie bites. As we had none, we were allowed to stay and use the various amenities that the Library now had to offer, such as book cases filled with ammo, and a Kids Book Box filled up half with knives and half with pistols. We could also take a Supply Pack each, which was filled with food, basic medical supplies and some water bottles.
There were also beds, set up where bookshelves had been. They had been pulled down, either to make the fire with or to barricade the new Safe House. Courtney was very pleased with Daniella, as it had been her idea to come to the Library in the first place. Hannah? Not so much. She was unhappy at having to be loaded up with supplies, ‘like some sort of donkey’, and then having to tramp through the streets, not drive. Courtney then said that she should learn to drive if she wanted to get a car, so Hannah promptly shut up.
Whilst in the library, I had a chance to print out my theories, stapling them together for future reference. Hannah was practicing shooting her bow, with harmless arrows, Courtney was... wait, what was Courtney doing? She was reading through a book, on… how to drive. She was serious. We were going to get a car.
When I asked her, Courtney said that we needed a quicker way to get around. Hannah’s obnoxious comments about being a ‘Pack Donkey’ had left her wondering if the baggage was really slowing us down, and if we needed a quicker way around. Bikes were out of the question, but there were plenty of unused cars around. Courtney’s dad had even been teaching her to drive, so she knew the basics, she had just never been on an actual road before.
However, before we were doing anything, we were sleeping. It was only half six, but the day’s activities had left us exhausted. Besides, if we were getting a car then we could use the early morning fog, which had been coming down thick all week, to slightly shield ourselves from our undead nemeses. Although, saying that, it could also mean that we couldn’t see them either!
We all slept around the fire, in warm sleeping bags, after a tea of bread, butter, juice and biscuits. The bread was homemade, as one of the women on site used to be a baker, and tasted very good.
I had discovered why there were so many guns there, after talking to the Manager. He told me that they had predicted this, like many others, so had illegally (At the time) stockpiled weapons. They were currently getting many deliveries of ammo and weapons a day, via an underground road system which was linked to a highly protected factory. Well, at least we had a constant ammo supply!
In the early hours of the morning, we were all woken gently and told that, if we wanted to move, now was the time. Courtney must have memorized that book, as she was repeating many sentences to herself quietly. I had took the book, just in case we needed it, and memorized a few pages myself.
Hannah was complaining as usual, when we arrived at a house with a grey American Jeep Wrangler on the front. It was covered in a dusty and slightly blood covered car cover, but apart from that it was fine. This was our Jeep, which would continue to serve us loyally for a long time.
“Just what I was looking for!” Courtney exclaimed, slightly hopping from foot to foot, as she removed the dusty car cover.
But guess who was too busy whining and moaning to notice where she was going? No, not a Zombie, but good guess. Hannah. She almost walked straight past the dark grey Jeep! Her voice was noticed by a few Zombs, as Daniella now liked to call them, who wandered over, getting dangerously close, but blinded by the fog.
“Hannah!” Courtney whispered urgently. “Have you lost your mind, you nutter? Get over here!”
“Alright, alright,” She grumbled, walking over to the Jeep and clambering into the back.
But I heard her gasp a little, and turned to see her hastily pulling her leg into the Jeep and shutting the door in a Zombie’s face! I was riding shotgun, with Danielle in the right back seat and Hannah in the left, so tapped Courtney’s arm quickly, jerking my head backwards. Courtney found the keys still in the ignition, so stepped down hard on the ‘go’ pedal, and off we went, avoiding Zombies as to try and gain as little attention as possible.
We soon arrived at the less densely populated part of Ashton, where we found a suitable corner shop to stay in. Parking the Jeep around the back, we entered through the storeroom, a few employee Zombies giving us a bit of a shock, but not much trouble. Hannah practiced her bow skills on one dead Zombie corpse that she hung on a nail, while the rest of us set up camp around the shop.
Things were going normally for a while, as I did my usual job (Barricading the doors and windows). But suddenly we all heard a deafening crash, and rushed to the back room. Hannah had collapsed!
Courtney zoomed to her side, checking her leg. There, imprinted into her skin, was a bite. It was almost like a human’s, but the marks of each individual tooth were thinner, meaning that they were a little more pointed. The bite had broken the skin, meaning that the infection had been passed on through the bloodstream. Hannah didn’t have long left as a human.
We acted quickly. I grabbed Hannah’s arms, and Daniella her legs, while Courtney cleared a route for us, as Hannah had crashed into several shelves, breaking a few. The skin must have started to harden, I thought to myself, making her impact on the shelves higher than a normal human’s. We dumped her outside, quite far away from our base, before scrambling back to the safety of the Corner Shop.
Hannah’s death struck us hard, but also reminded me of an important message. People don’t always tell the truth. We should have checked Hannah over, when she had ‘almost’ been bitten, we should have seen it, maybe even put her out of her misery. After all, the transformation must’ve hurt a lot.
Speaking of transformations, I haven’t told you how this all started. I learnt it off a worker at the Library, who told me that some worker had slipped into a large amount of Nuclear Toxic Waste, most probably when working at a Nuclear Power Plant. They had been burnt alive, due to high amounts of heat in the waste, but managed to crawl out, barely alive. In their last few seconds as a human, their brain had taken over and told them to bite someone immediately to pass on their new genes. That had been their dying act, but this infection had developed from person to person, soon becoming airborne and travelling to many different places.
Not only was almost everyone infected, but some people were more susceptible to it than others. For example, Adults were more likely to get it than Children, most likely because most of the first victims were Adult Workers so the infection was more used to infecting an adult body. Furthermore, there must have been more Male Workers than Female, as the infection seems to affect Males predominantly, not trying to be sexist here.
But aside from the facts, we had a bigger problem: surviving. And morale was not high. Daniella was crying, Courtney had a bit of a short temper due to stress, and even I was a bit sadder than usual. We were not a happy group.
Dinner came and went, bread and some tinned beans cooked on an improvised but controlled camp fire, the food found in some crates around the back, and was a rather sombre affair. I mean, one Zombie’s death doesn’t mean shit to us, pardon my language, but a friend’s death? It hits you har
d, that’s all I can say.
But an interruption came to disrupt our ‘peaceful’ meal; a loud, high pitched, scream, followed by loud moans and the tearing of material, then a different scream, and running footsteps, then the scream of someone who needed our help. Urgently.