The guys in the second truck nodded as they passed by. I counted to 40 slowly closing my eyes. I tried to drown out the dying calls of the people below.
I saw the car that held John, Adam and Jacks, moving slowly around back. They flashed their lights once to let me know that they were in position. The second truck had held back a little. Ready to provide back up if needed.
I took a deep breath, before I could chicken out and fired a shot into the air.
I watched as one by one their heads turned towards the sound, I stood in plain view of them hoping that at least one of them could see me or even smell me. Who knew how they worked? I let off another shot.
Then waved my arms around like a mad man, their groans got louder, their movements with quicker and they came at me with purpose. I looked through the binoculars, the first line of zombies seemed to have a lot of damage to them, they were decaying a lot quicker. My first thought was that I was glad that I wasn’t down wind and that I couldn’t smell them. My second thought was if they were decaying, then maybe within time they would just rot away. Back into the earth, twice dead. It gave me a glimmer of hope that we could outlive this. That we could start to rebuild our world.
I watched them for a few minutes, trying to climb the hill, one step forwards then about three back. They only started to gain as the ones behind climbed over the ones in front that had fallen. Even then it was slow progress, they would fall over limbs, get up and then fall over something else. But they never took their eyes off me. Their lunch for today.
I moved away slowly backwards, making sure that they could still see me. I turned and looked into the trees behind me. I hoped that they would continue walking that way, thinking that I had also.
Then I had an idea, I ran as far as I could whilst still being visible to the road and hung the jacket from my back pack on the tree. I was hoping that it would draw them into the trees and away from the compound.
Then I ran as quickly as I could down the hill, hidden in the tree line adjacent to the path that my friends had taken just minutes earlier. Not looking where I was going I tripped over something, falling hard and winding myself.
I rolled over and gasped for breath, my chest burned. My knees stung from where the gravel had shredded my trousers and cut into them.
I looked around, wildly shaking my head from side to side, convinced that I had fallen over a legless zombie like the one I’d killed earlier that day. And that any moment I would feel its jaws clamp around my leg and tear at my flesh. The game over for me.
But it wasn’t a zombie, it was a man. Well the body of a man anyway. He wore a doctor’s coat, black trousers and smart black shoes. I shuffled away until I could catch a breath, all the while keeping an eye on the body and on my surroundings. I didn’t want any nasty surprises.
By the time my breath came back, the body still had not moved. I walked closer to it and saw why; it had a bullet hole in its head. But I couldn’t see any sign of a gun around the body, and no obvious or visible signs that he had been bitten.
Had the good doctor been brought out here and murdered or had he simply taken his own life and the weapon had been picked up by another survivor. All these questions I had and they would never be answered.
I had a quick look around in the bushes and trees around the body to see if there was any sign of a bag. Not finding one I continued down to my friends, vowing that one day I would sit down and try to remember some of these lost souls. I would write about them in the hopes that one day in the future, they may teach children about our struggles during the apocalypse of 2015-????? Who knew how long it was going to last.
As I came to the bottom of the hill, I could see my friends fighting off a few undead that were left with various hand-held weapons. No guns and as little sound as possible so as not to draw the horde back to us.
I turned my jog into a run, panting hard. I really need to get fit, was my last thought before I too joined in the fray.
Chapter 11
The fight was short but hard and incredibly messy. Putrefied blood, guts and brains were spewed across the floor. I had to concentrate hard on the one that I was fighting so as not to lose my stomach contents over the floor. I hadn’t realised how queasy I was until I saw the inside of a human being.
It lunged at me and I lashed out quickly with my knife, slashing it across the arm and causing it to stumble a few paces away. I spun towards it, the deep gash in his arm not doing anything to slow it down. It came at me again, I stuck out my foot to trip it up and then thought better of it. It could have fallen and bitten me through my trousers. So instead I dropped my back pack at its feet and watched it fall to the ground. This one was quick, freshly turned I thought. Within seconds it was trying to get back up. I put my foot on the back of its head and pushed
