Stage 6 (5 page)

I went over to my mom hesitatingly, “And you mother? You’ll come won’t you?”

She looked up at me, and what she said next was burned into me forever. “You have a great responsibility Jack. You are in charge of our lives, and you must be responsible with that burden. Don’t take risks that don’t have to be taken, and don’t hold back when we must push forward. Any slip, and the people following you, might die. And then who is to blame? Are they to blame for following you, or are you to blame for leading them to death? Of course I am coming with you Jack, because you are my son and I love you. I just wonder whether or not it’s smart to attempt to escape again.”

I looked at her and simply said, “Mother. We have no choice.”

I moved off, feeling strangely more in control than I did. Her words had seemed like they had been pointless warnings, but they had given me a real sense of the power and responsibility I have leading these people. I would not allow myself to fail them.

We huddled by the garage again, and I explained the new plan. “Last time, we were too risky. We just shot up a bunch of Infected, and ran out to the truck. This time, we are we going to open the door and wait here, with all our guns. We’re going to kill ALL the Infected that come to us, and then when it’s entirely safe go out to the car. Also, since last time the gunshots were nearly deafening I found some old earplugs we can use.”

I handed them out, and asked, “Everybody ready? Let’s go.”

I opened the door cautiously and then crouched on the ground below the hunting rifles aimed at the door behind me. Suddenly an Infected rounded the corner, and the rifles blasted as he fell dead. Then the rest of them charged. Our guns flashed and rang out, killing all the Infected that tried to get past. As the hunting rifles stopped firing and Lucy, my mom, and

Karen, using her dad’s gun yelled, “Reload!”

Ian and I stepped up. Ian was an amazing shot with his pistol, and the sheer power of my shot gun was doing great as well. I unloaded twelve shots into the crowd of Infected, killing about ten as Ian covered my pumping time with his pistol. There were now around twenty more Infected piled on the floor all over the garage.

As more Infected began to fill the garage, I shouted, “Remember, make your shots count. Aim for the head!”

We backed up as my mom and Lucy had finished reloading. Karen was stuck and looked confused at the reloading but I had no time to help her. I quickly pulled the box of ammunition from my bag, and started the lengthy process of reloaded my gun. Ian had a clip already ready for him, and in about thirty seconds he had his gun reloaded and joined back into the fight. I reloaded my gun a few minutes later, and looked on to see the entire garage to be filled with Infected and more outside, just before Ian shot an Infected in the head and grabbed the door handle. He slammed it shut and bolted it. I stood, shocked that my plan had failed for the second time. In a daze we all checked each other for bites just in case, but found none.

They all looked at me, and I angrily swore.

“Alright so that plan failed to. Let’s get a good night’s sleep tonight, and I promise you tomorrow will NOT fail.”

Mad at myself, and still surprised that we had actually not even stepped foot into the garage during that entire time, I grabbed some food for dinner. As I was eating I heard the shower running, and jumped up to go check it out. My mom stopped me though, half way to the bathroom.

“It’s just Lucy, Jack. Karen, Lucy, and I want to take showers before we go. We haven’t showered in three days.”

Thinking about the possibility of Infected getting through the tiny window in the shower, I dismissed it. There was no real harm in letting them take a shower. Besides, running water would undoubtedly be shut off any day.

My mom continued though, “I think you and Ian should take one too.”

I agreed, and went off to find appropriate clothes to be out in a world of biting Infected. I told Ian he could borrow some of my clothes, and quickly found the best stuff to wear. We both grabbed the thickest jeans we could find, disregarding the fashionable jeans with holes in them. Now in this life or death situation, we realized how silly it was to buy jeans with holes throughout them just to look cool. We were down a few pairs of useful clothes because of that.

Ridiculous.

Then, we grabbed the thickest shirts, some over shirts and a jacket each on top of that. Under normal circumstances this would be suicide in the Texas summer heat, but this wasn’t normal circumstances and I figured heat exhaustion was better than being eaten alive.

We all showered, taking as long as we wanted, savoring the normalcy of this once everyday activity.

There wasn’t much to do afterwards, and we all got to sleep early.

With a start, I woke up just in time to hear as the shattered glass hit the floor.

I quickly woke the others, and Lucy who was on guard duty looked at me, “I have no idea what that is. They’ve been increasing their attempts to break in for hours but nothing like that has happened.”

Then, as I was explaining the situation to the others who were groggily waking up another window broke somewhere in the house. Then an explosion of glass behind me, and I turned around to see hands groping through our sliding glass door. It was heavily fortified, by a table and couch. I could hear Infected in the master bedroom trying to push past the door blocked by my dad’s old shelf, but reasoned that was pretty well blocked off.

I quickly said, “Mom, you stay here and make sure the Infected don’t get past the sliding glass door. Use your gun if you have too.”

I walked into the kitchen to find the far window by the back yard was broken, and Infected were reaching their hands through trying to pull apart the wooden boards nailed to the wall.

I shouted, “Lucy, you take this window, don’t let them get past the boards.”

I then advanced on towards a bathroom, and checked the shower. No signs of damage there. Ian walked past the door and as he was about to open it we both heard thuds and moans from the other side. Crap, we both thought to ourselves. I opened the bedroom door a few feet away, almost adjacent to the one now filled with Infected. The Infected were just beginning to pry off the boards and squeeze through the window. I locked and shut the door.

“Ian, stay here by the bathroom with your pistol and make sure none of them get through either of these bedroom doors.”

I went off to systematically check the rest of the house. The front door was fine, the garage door was fine, and most of the windows were fine. The problem areas were the sliding glass door, the back kitchen window, and the two bedrooms near the bathroom. There were five of us, all armed, and only four entry points, two of which could be handled by one person. That left two people to help out where needed. I had already decided we weren’t trying to escape at night, so we just had to hold them off until morning.

“Karen,” I said, “you and I don’t have a place to guard, so we are going to have special jobs. You stay near your brother, and if he needs any help than help him ok? And if he seems to be doing fine than walk around and check the rest of the windows and doors to make sure they’re not getting through.”

She nodded, and skipped off towards Ian.

Incredulous at seeing this little girl skip in the face of a terrifying death, I said, more to myself than anyone else, “We may just get through this after all.”

We fought all night long, constantly shooting but making sure it counts. We were all low on ammunition. I only had a few shells after the twelve that were in my gun, Ian was down to his last two clips, and my mom, Lucy, and Karen were all down to a handful of bullets. When the sun began to come up, we noticed a distinct lessening in the aggression of the Infected. I reasoned that the virus must heighten the eye’s sensitivity, and make them prefer the dark much more. It does seem like this would have some advantages. During this break, we gathered our things and head tiredly to the garage door.

I started telling them my new plan to break out.

“There is no plan. We either get into that car, or we die. There is no coming back into this house. We all understand that right?”

Ian grabbed his pistol tighter, and I could visibly see him steeling himself and preparing to give it his all.

I took my mom’s hand, “Alright? We can do this.”

I unlocked the garage door, and turned the knob slowly. Then I kicked it in as hard as I could and it slammed into an Infected on the other side. I rushed into the garage, stood in the corner by the back, and blew as much Infected back as I could. Ian bolted to the driver side door, unlocked the truck and jumped in. I could hear the click as all the doors unlocked and I finished off the last of the Infected in the garage. As Lucy, my mom, and Karen hurriedly opened the doors and climbed in I saw some Infected coming from inside the house. Apparently even minutes of us not guarding our windows, and they could break through. I was about to slam the garage door shut from the other side, when I saw Hunter running for the door chased by Infected.

I screamed, “Come here boy!”

He jumped through and as I slammed the door I turned around to see all of my party screaming at me from inside the car and an Infected right behind me. Hunter attacked the Infected and pinned him to the floor, but for some reason was smart enough not to bite him. Perhaps the dog had some six
^th
sense, and knew not to mess with the Infected. I opened the side doors that my mom had already shut in panic, led Hunter in, and climbed into the passenger door. I thought to myself grimly,
I call shotgun,
and told Ian to punch it.

The engine roared to life, previously untouched because of the noise it made and how it would attract the Infected. He threw it into reverse and screamed out of the drive way, almost flipping the truck in the progress as we backed into the road over a few Infected, and then drove off down the street. Ian swung out of our cul-de-sac, and hit the gas.

We drove out of our neighborhood, seeing dazed Infected wandering about or chasing squirrels, some crowding around houses like they had to us. I guess there were a few other survivors left in our neighborhood. We pulled out to the main road, the first time we’d been anywhere out of our house since the Infection. Wrecked and abandoned cars were strewn across the streets, and groups of Infected were crowded around nearby stores. There was no sign of life anywhere, except for the occasional bird soaring in the sky. Ian punched the gas, and we zoomed up to seventy miles an hour in about ten seconds.

He screamed, “Yee haw!!”

I joined him, laughing and crying at the same time. We all started yelling for no reason, shouting in joy. We had made it. We were free. I didn’t want to spoil the mood, so I let it go for a few hours, but towards two o’clock I decided we needed some plans. It was lucky we had a pretty huge truck for all our supplies and passengers, but even a great vehicle wasn’t a good plan all by itself.

“Alright, so I think a good rule straight off the bat here is we never stop the car unless absolutely necessary. We will take turns driving and sleeping, and at all times the driver and the passenger should be awake. We don’t want the driver making dumb decisions because he’s tired. While the car is moving, even just coasting, we will change drivers inside the car. In-between driving and sleeping shifts, we should try and make plans for where we want to go.”

Ian cut in, “Hey Jack, this all sounds good but aren’t we going to the nearest fort?”

Sheepishly, I replied, “Oh... Yeah sorry I got caught up in the moment. We’ll go to the fort or camp or whatever. Isn’t that camp Mabry?”

Ian cut in again, “Can we try and find our family? Our mom went to the store, but probably went somewhere else after that. My grandparents live not far from here, and she often visits them so she may have gone there. After that we can go to camp Mabry.”

I knew this had to be done to put peoples doubts behind them, so I said, “Alright for starters, let’s try and find our families. While we’re at it actually, let’s see if any other survivors need our help. Judging from the extreme danger of us breaking out of our house, there’s probably lots of survivors stuck inside their houses. Ian, we’ll try and find yours first. Then Lucy’s. After that, we’ll go to the fort and hopefully wait for this thing to blow over.”

I turned around me to look at Lucy, and she smiled at me and said, “Thanks Jack. We owe you our lives. During this whole thing we’ve all panicked and not known what to do, but you’ve always had something to try.”

Ian grinned, “Here here!”

There was much laughing and mockery, as we turned the car to head towards Ian’s grandparent’s house. With the exception of the occasional Infected chasing us, and the flaming buildings, it could have been a normal day.

As we were nearing the house, I reminded Ian, “We can’t just pull up and go inside. If we stop the car we risk getting stuck just like we were in my house. So let’s switch drivers now, I’ll drive and you get in the passenger side. I’ll drive us up slowly, and you hop out and go check out the house. I’ll drive around in a loop, and meet me back outside in five minutes. Ok?”

We painfully switched drivers while still moving, an awkward process but a successful one. I drove by the house he pointed out, slowing to five mph but nothing slower. Ian opened the door and jumped out, barely managing to swing around and close the door before I drove off. I circled the loop around the neighborhood, taking note of any Infected or possible survivors. There were plenty of Infected, wandering aimlessly around, and actually quite a few houses with evidence of survivors still inside. One was looking out his window, and even waved at us as we drove by. Now I began to wonder, just how long the Infected could survive before they died of starvation. It seemed that they only ate living, breathing things, so after the initial rush of human prey what would they eat? There was no time now, but I happily resolved to ponder this later. Maybe we only had to survive a few days, or a few weeks before they killed themselves off?

A scream from Karen interrupted my thoughts as an Infected broke off from a group he was in, and suddenly ran towards us. I increased speed and he bounced off the side door, smearing blood from his face all over the window. A few other Infected seemed to just notice us for the first time, as if coming out of a trance. They started running after the truck at full speed, and I swerved to avoid Infected oncoming in the road.