“Wait up,” she says gently.
I turn to her as she catches her breath, bending over to her knees. “Are you okay?”
We’re inside a very open, unfinished building, snarls and roars are everywhere. Dan halts, checking the perimeter, holding his rifle out.
“No, it’s… my… stomach.” She gulps in every word; her breathing becomes faster. She whispers, falling to the ground. “I can’t breathe.”
I grab my bottle of water and offer it to her, getting on my knees. She chugs half of it while rubbing her tummy. Her breathing becomes more rapid and deep. “Let’s stay here for a while, then,” I say.
She holds onto my arm as I try to stand up. “No, you guys should go.”
I chuckle as I find it silly for her to say. “What are you talking about?”
“Just leave me and go. The others need you.”
“I’m not leaving you, Riles.” “But you have to. They… they’re coming.”
“Then let them come. I’m staying with you.”
Dan glances at us as he continues checking the surroundings. “Guys, we’re running out of time. Just carry her up, Zac.”
“Alright, I’ll just carry you.” I lean forward to reach for her waist.
“No, I’ll slow you down. Just go! Dan.” She nods at him.
Dan’s eyes don’t leave hers for a long second, and he’s reluctant about what he has to say. “They’d be looking for you.”
“I know, but they’ll be fine.”
“Look, Riley.” He approaches us and kneels down to level her. “Pain should not be taken as a reason for death. It’ll go away and it will always come back. You can take your life away, but you can never have it back. Are you just gonna risk your life just cos you’ve got an achy tummy? That’s downright out of character for you. The Riley I know never gives up and is always relentless. I even thought you could ignore pain, and I don’t enjoy getting disappointed. And I am totally sure you don’t want your friends disappointed. So, do not disappoint me. You understand?”
Her stare intensifies, and her mouth forms an arch. She nods.
“Good, so get your ass together and get off the damn floor.” He offers her his hand to help her up.
I look at Riley proudly with a smile. She smiles back a smile that I’ve always wanted to see. The smile she once flashed in front of Ivan. The genuine and full-of-spirit smile that could bring peace to chaos.
I draw out my elbow so she can have support as she runs and so she won’t lose her balance. Her hand touches it and then it runs through my skin and falls into the plain field of my hand. I feel my heart pounding and my face heating up. I look at her for assurance and the same smile is still on her face, making the corners of her cheeks. Then we run out of the building and look around; bloodies all over the town, sprinting and stumbling as they come for us.
I take off the sling of my rifle and offer it to Dan. I toss it over to him as he tosses his handgun over to me in exchange. We shoot bullets after bullets, and his handgun runs out of ammo first. I grab my baseball bat, which is on my back—slung around with a thin rope—and swing it hard onto every bloodie’s head. Riley frees her hand from my grasp and also gives them strong blows with her ax. Kicks and punches also add to the action, which makes the three of us hyper-focused on the horde, which obviously outnumbers us. But the goal is to keep living.
Though I know Riley can survive this despite having to endure cramps on her second day of the month, it still makes me think otherwise. What if she’d just fainted suddenly, and we didn’t even notice it?
There are too many of them, and I don’t think we can get out of the stampede. I don’t think running through them is an option. They might catch our limbs and take a bite of them. I strike one bloodie, making me throw my arm so hard that I almost lose my balance. And when I almost regain it, I get knocked down to the ground. I grunt in pain as I have my shoulder take my weight as I fall. But feeling it doesn’t get enough time. I use my bat to block two mouths from getting near my neck, yet it seems like they’re overpowering me. I groan as I try hard to not get my hands and neck bitten, yet I still get the time to look up around me where I see Riley being pinned on the wall as she pushes them with her bare hands.
“No.” That word still manages to get out of my mouth despite struggling.
Dan runs out of ammo, too. He uses the rifle as a melee weapon as some other bloodies swarm toward him. My breathing becomes hard all of a sudden and my heart aches like something just stabbed me as I thought,
Is this the end? Are we all gonna die?
The deafening snarls and roars become muffled, replaced by a loud ringing noise. I squeeze the hard solid bat in my hands as I feel like my strength is leaving me. Any moment now, my elbows will surrender and give these monsters an open space to get to my flesh. The gore faces of the bloodies now look surreal. It’s like the colors of their faces—red and black for blood, and white or brown as the hues of their skin when they were once humans—mix into a colorful distorted pattern that goes spiral, but some slight blur is added to it. I can’t really see how they look now. I try to keep my eyes open, but they always fall close.
Until I give in. I lost my strength. And that is when I start waiting for them to penetrate my skin. I wait. I wait again. I wonder why it takes so long for these up-close zombies to get into my neck. I finally regain consciousness, and the first thing I hear is a whooshing sound that is almost similar to a speedster like Quicksilver breaking the barrier. And it’s too close to my face. I open my eyes and look on the right side; I find Finn pulling a tight string with both ends tied to a strong, arched plastic with a sharp, shimmering pointer in the middle. The pointer gets thrown as Finn releases the string and it pierces the skull of a bloodie. I also noticed that those bloodies who were on top of me are now dead, arrows in their heads.
I pat my neck and everywhere else on my body to check if I had a wound. Then I look to my left and find Riley killing a bloodie as she strikes her ax on its head. Blood sprinkles on her face. Behind her is Nathalie, who just throws a spinning kick at another bloodie and gives it a bullet on its head.
Then I clasp my ears as a rapid gunshot takes place, Riley, Nath, and Dan ducking down as well. Edward intentionally makes the clicking sound of his rifle—as he reloads—way louder than it could normally be pulling it so hard. He puts one foot on a styrofoam box and shows a facial expression that’s almost similar to Arnold Schwarzenegger from Terminator. Then another batch of ransacking loud and invisible noise kills the bloodies, tossing their bodies away like they’re dancing rave or something. Then the gunshots stop and I regain my hearing ability again, which instantly overlapped with zombie noises.
“You alright, Zac?” Stephen comes to help me up. I nod yes.
“Thought you guys already bailed us.”
He laughs. “Jerks like you believed that. Come here.” He pulls me towards him and gives me a comforting embrace. He pulls away and looks into my eyes. “Where are the others? Lenore?”
“I… I haven’t seen her. I’m sorry.” I shake my head as I give him an apologetic gaze.
He drops his head and nods. I see it’s not just Stephen and my other friends who came back. Ysa and Katy are teaming back to back as they kill these bloodies with an ax and a baseball bat. I see that Riley isn’t the only one who relies on these particular weapons, because she knows the fact that they can be as lethal as an actual melee weapon.
On the other hand, Kirby probably lost his weapon because he’s currently using a worn-out wooden stick and he’s definitely having a hard time trying to hit the bloodies with it. Riley runs to him for help and takes a long jump as she stabs the back of the bloodie’s neck with her legendary box cutter. Glad she never lost it. Then she twists the blade like a key and slits it through the neck outwards.