That sounded about right to LeBron. Every time he looked out the windows upstairs, he expected to see one of the surgers running down the street screaming for blood. Every bump and creak he heard at night made his heart race. His mind instantly going to those night vision videos like he’d showed his dad. The human shaped monsters with the glassy dead eyes coming out of the darkness.
Preparing for a deadly storm was pretty familiar to all of them. Living in Florida they’d dealt with a ton of hurricanes over the years. They’d done their fair share of boarding up windows and stocking up on water and toilet paper. They’d listened to the reporters talking about how if you didn’t evacuate when ordered the government wouldn’t send anyone to save you. They were well aware that the biggest killer in the hurricanes was the storm surge that arrived before the actual storm and just kept coming. It snuck up on people and trapped them in their homes. The water rushing in and rising until they drowned in their attics. LeBron imagined the first wave of the infected would hit like that.
LeBron decided to wake up Drew when he went back upstairs. Drew stumbled sleepily to the sink where he carefully dipped out some water to splash on his face. If they were really trying to fortify this house, they’d need to figure out how to handle getting extra water sooner rather than later. Drinking the runoff out of the retention pond outside was the easy option. As long as they were able to get out of the house. LeBron sat down watching Drew head off to start the rounds.
“How are you doing?” LeBron asked Drew as he crisscrossed the loft to the opposite windows to check the alley. Drew stopped to look seriously at LeBron.
“Not great. If I’d killed that cop, then mom would still be alive. If I’d killed the moron that I tossed into the woods, then dad wouldn’t be hurt. We have to start making the hard choices. It’s not a nice world anymore.” Drew said sadly. Yawning he turned around and walked over to the window.
“Don’t blame yourself. Nobody else blames you. There‘s no way to know what to do anymore. We just have to – “ LeBron stopped talking immediately when Drew raised his hand in the air and made a shushing noise. Hand still in the air he motioned for LeBron to join him at the window.
Drew moved out of the way so LeBron would be able to see out the window into the alley below. A morbidly obese man was sprinting down the middle of the alley. The man’s T-shirt had ridden up around his stomach which was bouncing around like a Jell-O mold in an earthquake. Watching him LeBron realized he’d have a really hard time outrunning somebody moving that fast. The man’s eyes were fixed on the house down the street. He looked like he might be screaming as he ran but LeBron didn’t hear anything from where they were watching.
“What are you looking at?” Yue asked from behind them. A startled LeBron leapt forward banging his head into the two by four. Drew spun around with his fists up ready to fight. Yue stood there with her eyes wide open trying to figure out what she’d just walked into. LeBron rubbed his head where he’d slammed it into the wood and moved out of the way so Yue could take a look.
“Fat surger.” He whispered to her as she watched the overweight monster in the alley break all kinds of track and field records.
“I think he just died.” Yue said standing back so Drew and LeBron could see. The large man who’d been riding the surge of adrenaline the newly infected get was now lying in the middle of the alley. He looked like the pictures of the bodies in the streets all over the world that showcased the dead the morning after the surge. It wasn’t a shocker that someone with that much extra meat on their bones hadn’t made it. It was actually pretty crazy his heart had held out for that long.
“It’d be pretty ironic if we survived in the United States just because we have way more fatties than the rest of the world.” Drew said sarcastically. It was funny but LeBron thought he may actually have a point.
Startling all of them again Bart made an appearance. He’d managed to drag himself up the stairs using the bannister as a crutch. His face was pained but he wanted to see what was going on. Looking at him Yue made the call in her head that their dad should just stay upstairs in the loft moving forward. She helped him hobble over to the window to look out.
“I guess LeBron was right then. I was kind of hoping just this once your brain might’ve misfired.” Bart said staring down at the dead guy in the alley.
LeBron couldn’t physically keep his eyes open anymore. He went in his room and collapsed on the bed. Everyone else was awake at this point. Between the vulture buffet in the alley and all the other recent events they were all waiting to see what was going to happen next. Yue was the next to see one of the surgers sprinting by. She barely caught a glimpse of a woman running impossibly fast down the sidewalk in front of their home before the woman disappeared from sight down the street.
An hour later Drew saw one that was shuffling
