She tried to slow her breathing and let her back glide gently down the tree. Eventually her hands met the ground and she began dragging her palms along the roots and grass, but her fumbled glasses were not within reach. She would have to step out from the tree to find them.
Quinn
could hear them coming. "please…. oh please.....please oh God…”she whisper-panicked.
Her glasses were crushed by a lifeless foot.
It moaned and dropped on top of Quinn. She screamed and attracted the
others. The zombie grabbed at her arms and she kicked and squirmed, keeping its bite away. It took a
hold of her wrist and would not let go. The other zombies circled and she
stopped screaming. Quinn knew this was it. Everything happened so quickly. She
could never escape it, now there was no denying it.
The
zombie
gnarled and drooled blood on top of her as she shook her head furiously
to get loose. Her long hair kept it from getting in her eyes or mouth,
but its
hand kept grinding her wrist. Before it was able to break Quinn’s skin
it was sliced from the rest of the zombie’s body, followed by its head.
Only after did she see that the rest were already brought down by arrows
to the head.
Quinn looked around. There was a figure standing before her with a red
hooded
zipper sweatshirt on and a black bandanna holding an ax. He helped her
up.
“Who
are you!?” Quinn was baffled.
“I’m
Chambers Khan.”
“Thank
you for saving me.”
“You're the first living person I've seen in almost three days..”
“I'm Amy…Amy
Quinn...”
“We
need to keep moving now, Amy, before more come-”
“Call
me Quinn.”
“Let’s
go”
They could hear someone talking. Quinn
ran towards it as Chambers picked up her broken glasses and chased after her.
They came upon a guy just sitting under a tree. Quinn got down next to him.
“Be
careful, legs. He could be…one of them…” Chambers warned her.
“He’s not…They don’t hold letters in their
hands,” Quinn reasoned "And I don't appreciate the nickname..."
Chambers
laughed and Quinn asked the man sitting under the tree, “Can you move? Are you
okay, sir? Can you get up?”
Chambers
was preoccupied wrapping athletic tape around the
broken latch and reattaching the lens on her glasses. They continued to talk below him. “I lost
them all…My wife…my kids…my parents…all in the blast…Not my brother though,
he’s in Florida.”
“How do you know he’s even alive?” Chambers asked,
now interested.
“He’s
in a maximum security prison and it's my brother, Job will survive on this earth until its just him and the cockroaches.”
Chambers
eyes lit up. Quinn looked over at Chambers and back down at Marcus, before
establishing, “We’re getting out of this city then?”
He finished fixing Quinn’s glasses and gave them back to her, “You bet your sweet
nerdy ass.”
Quinn
laughed uncomfortably at his audacity, not knowing whether or not to be offended. She put the glasses on and thanked
him. “Whoa,” she said as Chambers face came into clarity. He looked about sixty
years old and had long, shoulder-length, thin, dirty blonde hair pulled back
from his head by the black bandanna. He had a harness on the back of his red
hooded-sweatshirt with an ax, a bow, and a quiver filled with arrows, and his pants
were camouflaged.
Marcus, the hysterical man sitting by the tree
was quite handsome when Quinn got a look at him. Strong jaw, short brown hair,
thin beard, deep dark eyes, Quinn knew who she was sticking close to. Chambers threw him the ax
and took out his bow while he armed it with an arrow. He did not pull the arrow
back but walked ahead of them with it armed. They crossed the woods and before
they got to the edge they came across the zoo; where zombies were surrounding the
cages…
...Cages filled with…people…
Rebecca yelled at the top of her lungs. It was the guy she saw from before! He was the
one with the long hair and camouflage on. Chambers and Marcus ran around to the
other cages. Quinn followed Marcus to where Frank was locked in the cage. They
tried to get him out quietly, but the zombies could probably still smell their sweat and
heard their breathing if they got any closer, so they stayed away from the other cage.
Chambers
put two down with arrows, garnering the remaining few's attention. He fired two more
arrows and put two more holes in the zombie’s heads before stepping out from
the tree-line. He kept shooting arrows and pulled their numbers from the cage.
He strategically dropped the bodies so they wouldn’t pile on top of each other
and snap his arrows.
Samuel
and Atticus shot just a couple bullets each conserving their ammo and making as little noise
as possible, letting these two random strangers fight off the rest of them. Marcus
came rushing at the last three with the fire ax. He sliced the first zombies
head off, cut the other through the jaw, lopping off its head, and came down
with his finishing stroke on the third zombie, splitting its skull in half.
The
final zombies were taken down by Chambers as Quinn helped Samuel, Atticus,
Rebecca, Nora, and Uncle Ed out of the cage. In the other cage, Frank was
beginning to panic. What happens next only he already knew the outcome to. Another pack of zombies came down on top of them
from the trees. Chambers locked his bow back into his harness and pulled out a
machete. He stuck the first walker through the head, pulled it out clean,
and chopped the next one’s head off by the neck.
Quinn
let Rebecca and Nora go before her as Chambers gave his war cry and
sliced a zombie approaching the girls in the head. It fell weird and
landed on top of him. He was knocked back into an intruding zombie.
Chambers readjusted and pulled the machete out of the dead head,
thrusting it under the chin
and through the brain of the zombie.
They
both fell on top of Chambers. He survived, neither bit nor scratched. Chambers
exhaled. He grabbed the machete and pushed the zombie off. When
he did there was another one standing over him on the pile. Chambers could not pull his
machete free in time. It got down on top of him. It didn’t jump at him like a
predator or claw like a monster but unenthusiastically got down like a
defeated bum and grabbed his head, pinning it to the floor.
“HOLY
SHIT!” he screamed, “HELP ME!”
The
zombie lowered its head down and moaned, gurgling blood out of its mouth. The
blood spilled down into Chamber’s right eye. He squirmed and got his arms free
to grab the gun on his hip. A shot fired out. It blew the zombie off of
Chambers, and let him free. Atticus and Samuel surrounded Chambers. He got to
his knees and began freaking out, “I need a knife! I NEED A CLEAN KNIFE!”
“Clean?”
“Sterile!”
Atticus
popped out his tactical blade and tossed it to Chambers. Chambers poured some whiskey on the blade, took a deep
breath, and looked up at Amy Quinn one last time. He plunged the knife into his
right eye, twisted it, and pulled the eyeball out…all without screaming.
Chambers exhaled and passed out. The knife fell to the ground and the eyeball
bounced free from the blade for everyone to see.
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