“Their shooting guns now too?”
“More than that --- forget the supply bus, it’s fucked. We will be all fucked less we get out of here!”
The remaining biker group formed up and headed out, ignoring the screams of those trapped in the bus as they abandoned the mission. Buzz, Vamp, Showtime, Thrill-Killer, RPG, and Frontsight had made it out, leaving Smiley’s body to be picked off and burned by the flames. It would appear that the new zombies didn’t take too kindly with them riding into their territory, and somehow, they must have evolved or became self-aware.
* * *
Captain Reilly reviewed footage of the scavenging patrol from the video recorder of Buzz’s bike and witnessed the peculiar zombie behavior. He had the installation’s remaining scientist watch it although his expertise wasn’t in biological anomalies, it was close to scientific analysis as they were going to get. The engineer stood there watching the footage and how the zombie manipulated a weapon to kill one of the bikers.
“I’m not a biologist by any stretch of the imagination,” he said. “But I’d gather it isn’t too farfetched that this prolonged outbreak wouldn’t at some point, evolve with all that is going on and what they are able to get into… the possibilities are endless.”
“That is what I gather too,” the Captain said. “This place was safe but judging by these events, it’s probably best to attempt to move farther away from here.”
“Do we have a choice?,” asked Cedric. “Our supplies are dwindling and the last mission not only took out some much needed manpower but the converted bus and the potential supplies inside were all lost.”
Cedric used to be a city council member for Philadelphia, but when the outbreak occurred, the city structure and its management were caught up in the initial attacks and were all but killed. There was a council consisting of a civilian mind set and a government mind set, with Captain Fellows being one of the main members of the leadership within a circle of five in which majority votes won any type of argument or course of action that affected the small group as a whole. Jimmy Richards was one of those members and lead the 8 Horsemen Gang, the biker group name was coined when they had met after the outbreak. Although with the loss of Smiley, it left them with 7 members. Jimmy had allied with Captain Fellows and the survivors of downtown Philly as a means of protection. If he allowed the use of his gang as support for scavenging operations and security; they were allowed to share the shelter of a well-guarded base from the zombies within the city. The other two members of the council were an older woman named Grace Travers whom was a school teacher in one of the high schools within the Philadelphia school system. Hector Price was an engineer for GE who was the most scientifically minded of the bunch. Captain Fellows still had a pretty strong contingent of 50 Marines that manned the walls, 10 operating Humvees, one armored command truck, two out fitted buses, three 53 foot trailers converted into supply storage, and a small fleet of police cruisers, motor cycles, and an armored money truck that was converted into a mobile machine gun platform.
“So what are we going to do?” Asked Jimmy who put his boots up on the table, “I lost one of my guys for this mission. We didn’t get a fucking thing out of it.”
“I am sorry for your loss,” Captain Fellows said. “Who could have planned that zombies would become intelligent? We don’t even know how this is occurring and neither do we have the proper resources to figure that out --- but the how doesn’t matter… it’s what we want to do.”
“I haven’t heard anything from the neighboring safe havens,” said Grace. “They are either not safe anymore --- or there are no reports of this new development. We haven’t heard from the supposed safety zone along the West coast, which is where our next move should be…but the road is long and very tough with many unforeseen obstacles.”
“And if we don’t move…,” Said Cedric. “We’ll wind up dying or life will get extremely difficult with these….smart zombies.”
“I get it,” Jimmy said, “Two options I guess --- fight on this ground and probably at some point buy the farm or take our chances and head west.”
“We aren’t even sure there will be anything waiting for us westward.”
“And if there isn’t?” said Cedric. “If there is nothing left of us even there, then we are dead any way, in which case then it’s just lingering until we’re all either zombies or food.”
“I believe then we need to vote on this,” Said Hector. “Those who vote to stay and see what fate will befall upon us or we pack up and take our survival elsewhere.”
“Alright then let us vote.” Said Captain Fellows. “Those that believe we must stay say I.”
The five of them looked at each other but no one raised a hand to the motion. It was clear then what they were going to do and each was willing to take the chance for going cross-country, hopefully finding any place that provided hope amongst this apocalyptic world.
* * *
Jimmy rested against a makeshift pillow looking at
