2.5.9.3 No Way Out

 

There was something about her that could not be explained. The dog loved her from day one. Jackson got his furry neck snapped back as he uncontrollably urged for the strange girl. "Aw!" Alice squeaked as Jackson barked frantically while Marcus reeled him in. Alice soothed the pup and scratched his head. Jackson stopped barking, he loved it. The first thing Alice couldn’t help but think upon meeting Marcus was what a dashing man he was… As far as first impressions go; she had trouble looking at him directly in the eye, and blushed when he smiled at her.

Samuel ran over to Alice. She was smiling and crying all at the same time and looked at him, waiting to say hello. Samuel did not look her in the eye. Instead he examined her from head to toe. “Are you bit? Are you hurt at all?”

“Nope,” she squeaked in giddy excitement, “I’m the last living human in this lovely capetown.”
“Your…accent…”
“Oh! Roight! I’m British. Weird, huh? You’re probably thinking… How did this brit get all the way to Jersey? I’ll tell-”
“Who’s this?” Atticus interrupted.
“Hi! I’m Alice. Plesha!”

The rest of the group surrounded Alice and she laughed. She was nervous and excited. Alice went from feeling like the last person in the world to the new girl in town. She remembered what it felt like to be special, a feeling she had lost with her fiance. Everyone introduced themselves to her.

Quinn loved Alice's curly brown hair, having straight hair herself. Rebecca acted like a mom and a doctor as she immediately felt Alice’s forehead for a temperature. She was very careful with her behavior after the bridge incident. Rebecca felt terrible about Corey’s death, taking responsibility for his sacrifice and blaming it on her causing conflict within the group.

Chambers looked like an ‘80’s hairband guitar player and scared her a little when he strung his bow with an arrow and shot it right at her, just narrowly missing her face and colliding with the head of a zombie leading a full-on charge at them. . .

“RUN!”

The zombies from in front of the hotel had heard all the gunshots at the cemetery and made their way around the town to the road before the hill. There were so many of them. Samuel turned to Atticus. “We don’t have enough ammo!”
“What do we do!?” yelled one of the girls.
“RUN!” Chambers screamed again as he got in between the horde and the survivors.
The dog took off from Alice’s side and she didn’t start running with the rest of them, instead she just stood there, yelling, “HERE BOY! COME BACK! NO!”
Marcus grabbed Alice’s hand and told her quickly, “Don’t worry, he always comes back. Right now 
he’s the safest out of all of us.”

Alice was already taken by Marcus and unbeknownst to him she would have most likely done whatever he said anyway. Atticus and Samuel led the front of the group with Rebecca close in-toe.
The zombies were slow but not as a horde. They seemed to gather energy from each other and in masses were often unstoppable. Outrunning them now was not an option; they needed a shelter or means of escape.

“Alice! Where did she come from!?” …Yelled out Samuel from the front.
“Is he talking to me?” Alice asked Marcus, all in the rush of running.
“She must have been held up somewhere, right!?” Samuel went on when he got no answer from Atticus, who was a little preoccupied putting down a couple zombies trying to flank them on the right.

“I think they are,” Marcus answered Alice, “Is it nearby…your hideout?”
“The Cape May Inn! I closed the door when I left. It should be-”
“Tell them!” Marcus interrupted.
“It’s the Cape May Inn!” Alice tried to yell with her polite British accent.
Marcus amplified with his own shout, “CAPE MAY INN!”
Samuel and Atticus looked back at them, “WHERE?”
“Down the market, and up to the left, right before the boardwalk!”
“…DOWN THE MARKET!” Marcus yelled, “…TO THE LEFT…”
Marcus gave up trying to scream it all, “Can you run?”
“Whot?”
“I mean…are you tired…can you run faster?”
“Why? Are you…”
“We need to lead them there; we should lead them…right?”           

Alice was confused and scared, but not tired, “…Roight…Yes!”  They sprinted while still holding hands and together passed Tyrell and Jill, and Quinn. Alice was almost having fun. They got to Samuel and Atticus, with Rebecca now slightly in front of both of them.

“She can show you!” Marcus let go of Alice’s hand, and she ran up to Rebecca who was turning a corner. “No, it’s this way!” Alice grabbed her shoulders and they both ran across the street to an unseen path. It looked like a town-block too small to be a road. It was the marketplace. And it served as a funnel for the horde following them. 

The brainless undead had a lot of trouble in the marketplace, comically tripping over all of the benches, tables, and chairs from outdoor dining restaurants. This gave the survivors some much needed time and space as they left the market and crossed the street. The last block before the beach and boardwalk was sparse with zombies.

Alice showed them down the alleyway to the back door. Before they got to it, Alice climbed up the fire-escape, into a window that was slightly propped open, and inside, letting the window close and lock behind her. When the rest of the group got to the back door it was locked. Everyone caught up to each other and took time to catch their breath.
“What are we gonna do now?” Jill panicked.
The zombies turned the corner down the alleyway.

 “NO!”

Chambers pounded one last time on the door before walking away from it and Marcus. The girls backed away as he stepped forward with Marcus, Samuel, and Atticus, all wielding their melee weapons. Chambers clipped his bow onto his quiver and unsheathed his machete. Marcus threw one up against the wall and stuck a flat-head screwdriver up into its cranium. Atticus used his tactical knife to put the zombies down that Samuel knocked over with his shotgun.

Marcus let the girls bang on the door while he stood between them and the fight. Too occupied to help it, one slipped by... Marcus held the fire ax tight. The axe closed in on the grotesque face and implanted into the wall. The fire ax wouldn't come free, as the strike was too high, and the zombie was starting to wiggle free, its bottom teeth still biting for Marcus who was unwilling to leave the ax behind.

Their feet got tangled and Marcus fell back with it on top of him. He freaked out with it squirming above him, blood pouring out everywhere. Marcus broke free and moved back only to find it nipping at the girls' legs. Mustering what strength he has left, Marcus pulled the carnivorous corpse by the pants back towards him.

It's a good thing zombies are not picky, because it came right back for him.

With one hand keeping its head above him by a firm grasp of the neck, his other hand frantically searches for his screwdriver. His fingers wrap around the screwdriver caught in a tear of his jeans. It slowly shakes free, sliding out from his belt. Unable to focus it slips through his fingers and rolls away on the floor towards the feet of another approaching zombie.

2.5.9.1 One More Reason

"Don't do this...please...I don't know what I'll do..."
"It's the only way I can be sure you're safe. We've seen what happens. I know how they act now. Don't leave, stay quiet, and no matter what always-"
"STOP IT! STOP IT! STOP! I DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT!" She banged into his chest as she cried, "...You're! ..saying! good bye..."

He pushed her back by grabbing her wrists. With enough force he got her safely inside, and closed the door behind her, remaining on the outside.  All she could see out of the small window panel on the door after it was quickly covered by blood were their shadows coming down on him from the alleyway.

After that, only one constant reassurance allowed her some glimmer of comfort: not seeing her fiance turn up as a one of them.

Alice woke up. It was a beautiful sunny day. She put her plush robe on and walked out onto the balcony. The breeze felt nice. She had no problem appreciating the smaller things, mostly because she had to. It had been 3 weeks since she’s seen another living person. The kettle whistled and she went back inside. She returned to her deluxe oceanfront suite balcony at the Cape May Inn with a nice cup of earl grey tea. 

Alice was on the second floor, watching the waves come in, trying to ignore the persistently inconsistent swamp of zombies between her and the ocean. It was one solid block packed with roaming zombies, too hot to go far, and every so often catching Alice’s scent in the ocean’s salty winds kept them lingering. Alice tried to look past them, over the boardwalk arcade, through the sandy beach with spotted trapped ghouls in the sun cooked sand.

The past few days she made a show out of it, watching the undead soak into the bed of sand and then not being able to get out before it dried. Some would give up and sit down, some would never stop trying to break free, and some fried in the heat, becoming a mound of carcass, the way death was originally intended to be. But Alice could not go on like this forever.

She knew there were other people out there, but she was too scared to go looking for them. The last time Alice was out there she lost her fiancé, before that she lost contact with her parents, brother, and best friends over in Britain. She had lost everybody in her world to this plague. Alone and imprisoned, she made her final attempt at keeping her sanity.

As far as she knew, there were no zombies in the hotel. With his dying breath her fiancé barricaded the doors from the outside as they gnawed him to pieces. Out of twenty six people, Alice was the only survivor to make the trip. Between each death along the road she was not too damaged, for her dear beloved was right by her side the entire time. They never let each other out of their sights and always kept their guard up. Every time the camp was attacked or they were overrun, Wilfred kept Alice safe. Even in the end, he was her saving grace; and now he was gone.

Alice sipped her tea and heard a feint scream inland. She instinctively jumped up, ran inside, out of her hotel room, and to the roof. She looked into the woods, where the continual screams were coming from. Something was moving in the ground behind the church along the old road. It was a fenced lawn on a hill, with rows of age-old tombstones. Alice could hear the screams. And there was no mistaking; they were the screams of living people.

Samuel ran through the cemetery with a shotgun he had picked up along the way, and Rebecca and Quinn by his side. Everything was different for Samuel now, after Corey. He would not lose control of the group again. Chambers followed up behind them with his ax out. From across the way, the church doors blasted open and Atticus ran out with Marcus, Tyrell, and Jill.

Although Marcus had trouble taking care of the dog, a promise he reluctant made with Corey, Jackson didn’t need his late master anymore to go out and scout the road ahead for the group. He was comfortable with Samuel, who was always a familiar face. Once in a while, Samuel’s family used to dog-sit for Corey, so Samuel, and also his son Warren became close with Jackson back before the outbreak.          

Alice heard the dog bark at the cemetery. That one bark compelled her to leave her hotel sanctuary; a safe place she thought she would never walk away from. She snuck out the kitchen door in the back alleyway and ran quietly away from the horde in front of the hotel. Alice was terrified, but she kept thinking about how scared that dog must be. She ran down the old marketplace, so tight and close together that there is no room for cars to drive through. Luckily for her there were no zombies in her way, until she came to the street before the ridge.

Jackson ran back to Marcus who struggled to grab and pet the dog. Jackson awkwardly dodged Marcus' attempts at affection and ran to Samuel who was turning down the street. He put the scattered few zombies down with his shotgun, from right to left and came upon Alice standing still in the street, last on the line. There was no blood on her, no bites, no scrapes, she was…alive.