He interrupted, “Where’s your friend?”
“She’s gone. Didn’t you hear the gunshots?”
“I was wondering what that was”, he said. “Also, my name is Dave, nice to meet you, Margie. This is Jason. He’s usually more talkative.”
“Look, Dave, we don’t have much time. The noise attracts them and I don’t think we should be here”, Margie said.
“Okay, I’ll get him ready to go. Go into the gun shop over there, grab what you can find, and I’ll follow you”, Dave said.
Margie collected a few loose bullets that seemed to fit her gun and loaded them. She began to shake as she put in the last one. She cried quietly and her mind drifted off. She remembered the faces of those who had been with her before. She remembered Mr. Fontaine, Tommy, Paulie, and now, Kara. They were all gone. Whatever madness swept over the world had swallowed them whole.
She stopped to remember her father through all of this, how he was one of the first and how he was torn limb from limb right in front of her eyes.
The tears poured down her cheek.
“Hey, we’ll get through this”, Dave said to her calmly. He propped Jason against a nearby wall and put his hands on Margie’s shoulders. “We are going to the army base nearby and we are getting out of here. They’ll take us all away and things will be better. Come on, Margie.”
He carefully dried her face with part of his shirt.
She giggled through the tears at seeing the #1 grandpa shirt.
“I knew that shirt would come in handy”, Jason weakly said.
He smiled a little as he returned to the world.
“Oh, God!”, Dave yelled as he hugged his friend. “I was scared I lost you!”
Jason hugged back, “Come on. I needed a little nap. Who’s your friend”, he asked.
“I’m Margie.” She said.
“Well, I’m Jason. It’s nice to meet you. You weren’t the one that clubbed me, right? No, you were in front of me. So, who hit me?”, Jason asked.
“That was…Kara. She didn’t make it”, she said sadly.
“Oh, I’m sorry”, Jason said sadly. “Nice girl, though”, he said, as he rubbed the back of his head. “Good arm, could have used her.”
“Ass”, Dave said.
Jason got up to his feet. He was a little shaky on his legs. Margie caught him.
“Thanks, kiddo. Now come on, we need to get to the base. Dave, I heard you fill in our new friend. We need to hurry.” Jason bumped into the walls on his way out of the gun shop.
“Is he always like that?”, Margie asked.
“Usually, he’s not a morning person, either”, Dave replied.
They met with Jason outside of the shop, who was looking at the two corpses on the floor.
“Come on, we don’t have time for him.” Jason made his way to the nearest exit that he remembered.
“Goodbye, Paulie, and thank you”, Margie whispered at the scene.
The group made their way to the exit. Jason stopped and looked down at Kara, a look of terror frozen on her remaining eye.
“Come on-oh-shit”, Jason stood at the doorway, the parking lot was littered with zombies. Dave’s car was on the other end. It would be too risky to run over to it.
“What do we do?”, Margie asked.
“Should we fight our way out?”, Dave asked.
“Noise, Margie, you said they go to noise, right?”, Jason said excitedly.
“Well, yes, but…”
“Dave, uh, sorry about your car, man.”
“What do you mean?” Dave asked.
Jason fished around his pocket for the car keys. Remembering he had grabbed them a second before they made their way to the mall. Jason looked back.
“Okay, get ready to run. We’re going to head for the road under the highway over there. That should take us to the direction of the evacuation site”, Jason said.
He pressed the PANIC button on the car keys.
Dave’s car began to make one of the most annoying noises known to man…a typical car alarm.
The zombies turned their heads to the source of noise and began to make their way towards it.
“AW, NO! Not the blue rider!”, Dave yelled.
“The blue-what?”, Margie chuckled.
“We can mourn the death of the blue rider in a second, right now we need to…” Jason was interrupted by a loud explosion off in the distance.
A building in the adjacent city had just exploded and was beginning to collapse. The falling building slammed into another building. The noise shook the very ground that the group stood on as they watched in sheer awe.
They could hear the windows exploding, the bricks hitting the floor, some bricks even landed in the mall parking lot.
“Five seconds, Jay. Five. Seconds! That would have been enough noise, right there!”, Dave yelled.
“Well, it didn’t die in vain, and say good-bye, who knows when we’ll see the blue rider again!”, Jason yelled back as he started running towards the road.
Dave and Margie followed quickly.
A Walk to Remember
“What do you think will happen when we get to the evacuation center, Jay?”, Dave asked.
“I don’t know. They’ll take us somewhere far away that not even the zombies will touch. Nebraska, probably”, Jason said with a smile.
“Or maybe South Dakota!”, Margie chimed in.
The group shared a much-needed laugh. The road they traveled was littered with the occasional body, but most of them were not zombies.
“Handiwork of those men from earlier, I guess”, Margie said
“That’s right, you mentioned the men in the truck shooting people”, Dave replied.
“Well, hopefully all that, and…all of this will be gone soon. I hope they take us somewhere that’s nice and green”, Jason calmly said.
“I lost a lot of people since this started. I saw my father die right in front of me, shredded apart by those things. Then the people I was with, I lost them, too”, Margie sadly said.
“Well, you won’t lose us”, Dave said.
“Yeah, we’ve been through a lot, like, paintball. We used to do that when things were normal”, Jason said.
“Paintball. That’s it?”, Margie said. “You guys are funny.”
“Well, no, there were other things, like, rock climbing! That was dangerous”, Dave quickly said.
“Dude, we never went rock climbing”, Jason replied.
“Well, she didn’t know that!”
Margie laughed.
“If that was funny, this whole thing, really, really must have gotten you down”, Dave said.
“Well, yeah…”, Margie said.
An awkward silence filled the air.
“So, what did you do before this, Margie”, Jason asked.
“I volunteered at church. My dad was the pastor there. It wasn’t much, and sometimes I hated it, but, I’d give anything to go back to it now”, she said.
“I was a bank teller. It’s amazing how much of themselves people reveal when you handle their money”, Jason said.
“Oh, anything good? I always had a feeling that there was good in people, even after seeing all…”, Margie was interrupted.
“No, they were bastard covered bastards with bastard filling”, Jason quickly said back. “I always wondered how the world would be like if there weren’t any people around at all, just for a day. Well, be careful what you wish for, I suppose.”
“Look.” Margie pointed to a dimly lit construction sign that read.
“EVAC ONE MI – “
Most of the light bulbs that make up the sign, it’s orange paint was scratched heavily, and it was moved around.