Pleasure in the Apocalypse Pt. 02

Time is a fickle thing. It never stays the same, and yet it exerts control over everything. It can be our greatest enemy or our greatest resource depending on the situation. This time, it was definitely our enemy.

I hurriedly put on my gloves. All I could think of was how the community was about to be overrun by zombies. Where would we go after that? Would we even survive in the wilderness? Will the horde come back and trap us in here, starving us out? What the hell do I do?

"Alright, do you have a plan?" Jenna asked me, looking into her bag.

I had nothing. My greatest weakness began to rear its ugly head- I hated situations like this, where something unexpected grabbed me by my balls. I was like a deer stuck in headlights- my tongue went dry and my mind went crazy. I began sweating, in winter.

"Calm down. Panicking's not gonna help." Jenna said, passing me a towel to wipe the beads of sweat on my forehead. "We need to find some way to distract the zombies away from the house." she said, looking out the window. "And I think I have just the thing."

What the hell was she talking about?

"What?" I asked. She held out a flare gun. I immediately understood what it meant.

"Take the flare. I'll run on ahead and warn the community." she said. I nodded. I'd learned to trust her survival instincts the day after she came to the community, when she disappeared for a few hours and came back with five rabbits in her hand.

I saw her looking at me with concern in her eyes. Her body language screamed fear.

"Yes, I'll take care." I groaned sarcastically.

"I love it when you read my mind." Jenna chuckled. But soon, the gravity of the situation dawned on her and her smile wore off. "But seriously, be careful." Jenna said, coming closer to me. We looked at each other for a few seconds, our breaths intermingling like it had done just a few minutes ago. Then, our mouths met. I could feel our pleasure flowing through. I put my hand on her neck. Her warm skin felt so good. The fact that we were saying goodbye made the kiss so much more passionate, and it felt like our tongues were dancing a final dance together.

Time was not on our side though. She pulled away soon.

"Fire it in five minutes." she said, as she turned around and jogged out of the outpost.

I set a timer on my watch. I readied my flare gun. As I waited, my mind slowly started drifting to when I was at the grips of death previously.

I had been wandering through the forest for three days at that point. The bottle in my hand was almost out of water, and my backpack only held a half-eaten bag of Doritos. But I had no idea what to do, other than to keep treading through the forest aimlessly. I could see the sunlight getting dimmer and dimmer by the minute. . I needed to climb a tree, as it was safe from the zombies.

I was just about to reach for a tree branch when I saw the huge stone wall. There were four people on outposts at either end. A wave of relief swept over me. People were a welcome sight. I could get some help from them. Maybe I wouldn't die in the forest after all.

"Hello!" I yelled. "I need help!"

My shout startled them. They immediately flashed their lights at me, and took cover. One of them yelled from behind the wall, "Come out with your hands raised!"

"Yes, alright. My name is Sam Richards!" I yelled, coming out to the bushes with my hands behind my head. "I have no food or water. Please, help me."

The people looked at each other.

"Weapons?" one of them asked me.

"No, nothing." I nodded my head.

I opened my hands and turned around, proving my statement.

The man took a few seconds to survey me. Then he nodded his head and whistled.

"Come over to the other side, that's where the gate is."

"Right." I nodded. It felt great to be able to speak to others. I was immensely thankful to these people for taking me in.

That was just two weeks ago. Since then, I'd formed good relations with most of the people. I volunteered for almost all duties- cooking, guarding and repairing. I took weapons class, taught by one of the General's trusted lieutenants. I'd chosen a hunting knife as my weapon- it was pretty long and handy. I was sure it could easily slice through a zombie head. I'd learned many things in my two weeks there, but in the end, I chose to be a scout. I was really good at remembering small details, which was a major advantage in the field. In the beginning, I used to sleep in the armory, but soon they trusted me enough to let me have a scout's room of my own.

There was a guy who I particularly liked. He had soft eyes, which gave off a kind warmth even to a stranger like me. The first time I saw him was the morning after I came to the community.

I was sitting on a bench, drinking water from my filled water bottle. He walked over to me with two beers in his hand.

"Hey."

He held one of them up to me. I nodded in thanks as I grabbed it and took a sip.

"My name is Tom. Tom Andrews." He extended his hand.

I shook it. "Sam Richards."

"So, what brings you to this part of town?" Tom immediately got to the point.

"Well, same as everyone else, I guess. Zombies attacked me on the way to Ashton, and I've been wandering through the forest now. Thankfully, I found this community though."

"Ah, I'm from Ashton myself, born and raised. Everyone here is."

"So how come everyone's so far from home? I thought you would've escaped by sea. The harbor is pretty big, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but not big enough for a whole city of boats. It got clogged up pretty soon." Tom's voice lowered. "It was a fuckin' bloodbath..."

"What happened?"

"The zombies split up, man. Blocked all the exit points. Some people jumped into the river, but I'm pretty sure no one got out alive from that godforsaken harbor."

"Damn..." was all I could say in response, as I took another sip of beer.

Over the next few days, we formed a good friendship. I learned that he had a falling out with his family on whether to go downstream into the harbor, or upstream into the forest. Apparently he made the right choice. His family, well...

Turned out, Tom was pretty good with a baseball bat too. He said he played for his school 'back in the day'. God, the pre-apocalyptic world seemed so far away now. He also had some good tips on how to use handheld weapons.

"To make it easier, the best way is to think of the weapon as an extension of yourself, one which you have full control over." he said.

It was a good trick, but I could never do it unless I consciously thought of it. Often, I ended up swinging the knife at the target without regard to speed or accuracy. I eventually got better though.

Within a few days, Tom was visiting me in my room and I often visited him in his tent. It felt good to have a friend to talk to in these tough times. Tough times indeed...

BEEP-BEEP

I was pulled back to reality by my watch. Five minutes had passed. Without the slightest thought, I aimed the flare gun at the sky, so that it would fall down in front of the warehouse. Taking in a long breath, I took the shot.

Time slowed down. The scene unfolded in front of my eyes. The flare went up its destined course, high into the sky. There was some movement in the warehouse. A zombie had seen the flare and began shuffling towards it. These bastards were usually insufferably slow, but give them a target and they were happy to move as fast as they could, which was about a light jogging pace.

My eyes followed the flare all along it's course. I realized that my aim was way off when the flare landed behind the warehouse. I moved back to get a better look. I found myself standing behind the outpost, squinting to see it.

Damn, I still couldn't see it. I stepped even further behind.

CLICK

There was something under my feet. It felt like a small remote. I stepped aside to pick it up.

BOOM!

The ear-shattering sound of an explosion reached me. A hot wave of air followed, and then the leaves around me fluttered.

What the hell? I looked up. The warehouse was covered in flames, sending clouds of smoke into the sky. Soon enough, it collapsed into itself, sending dust up in the air. I looked on as the warehouse was completely decimated in a matter of seconds.

It didn't take me long to realize that the remote caused the explosion. As I thought on, my mind came to the inevitable conclusion... But that would mean that there are others, and they might not be friendly at all...

BANG!

Another sound distracted me from my thoughts. My ears were ringing lightly from the explosion but I knew that it was undeniably a gunshot. What the fuck? It seemed to come from the community. Fuck! I was hating this night more and more.

BANG!

Another one. I could see the flash from the community's direction, but the sound made it a million times worse. Every zombie around for miles probably heard that.

Shit. I knew what was going to happen now- the horde was going to split. It's never pretty when a horde splits. As a horde you could determine where they were all heading, but once they became a sea of scattered zombies, they could probably come from any direction and block every exit. Unless you had some serious firepower, you do not want to get stuck in that. And as Tom told me, the last time that happened, an entire harbor of people...

It was quite obvious now that about half the horde would be heading towards me, confining me to the outpost for some time. I decided to secure myself before any of them saw me.

I got into the outpost and locked the door and windows, making sure twice. I was not going to die in this outpost, not with what happened tonight.

I sat in the corner farthest from the door and window, my flare gun in my hand and my backpack behind me for support. I found that some of my sweat had turned to ice at the tip of my hair. I wiped my face off with the towel, and rubbed my hands together, preparing myself for the long wait that waited ahead. I was going to be in here a while.

The second hand of my watch moved on slowly, agonizingly. I shuddered to think that every second I spent here was a second Jenna was alone, with a sea of zombies around her. No matter how good she was, there was always a bit of luck in play. If it didn't favor us, skills were just about as useless as garbage.

Every second felt like an eternity. Every second, a zombie took one more step towards the community. Every second, the fire of the warehouse got a bit dimmer, and along with it, the hope that more zombies would be attracted to it. As a diversionary tactic, this was a disaster.

As the watch ticked on, my mind started drifting again to Jenna. She'd come to the community just a two weeks and a half ago. Over the span of a few days, we had gotten to know each other a lot better because there was a lot of free time to talk with each other. I really admired her worldview and her thinking process. I started falling for her more and more. She had a knack for improvisation, which amazed me. I preferred to plan everything out, and was almost completely useless in unexpected situations, atleast for a few minutes.

My mind started drifting to a conversation I had with Jenna just a few days ago...

I was lying in bed, reading a comic. It was almost like a relic from the past. The pre-apocalyptic world was already leaving reality and moving into the realm of fond memories. I was about to close the book and get some shut-eye when Jenna walked in.

"Hey!" she said. She was drying her long, jet black hair with a towel. It caught my attention for a while, but I then I answered, "Hello."

"I was wondering what time it is."

I took a glance at my watch. "It's quarter past seven."

"And already so dark out there. Winter sure is coming." she smiled.

Desperate to make some small talk, I enquired, "Don't you have a watch of your own?" I wanted to talk to her more, get to know her better. She'd caught my eye ever since she came here, but I wanted to make sure I knew what I was getting into.

She chuckled with a tinge of sadness. "No, I lost it. First day of the apocalypse." Her smile turned guilty. She stopped toweling and started to get lost in thought.

"You okay?" I asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine." she replied. Sighing, she said, "Well, I'll be leaving now. Time waits for no one, isn't that what they say?" She smiled, and walked away.

'Time waits for no one.' I let out a deep sigh. Well, it sure didn't wait for my thoughts to end. I could soon hear the guttural groans of the dead bastards outside. I saw their silhouette through the milky glass. They slowly shuffled on towards the warehouse. It took the zombies about five minutes to completely pass the outpost.

When the zombies passed, I noticed that the shooting had stopped. I decided to head back to the community, maybe they had killed every one of them. I hadn't bothered to check for stragglers- zombies who stayed back from the horde sometimes. They were especially dangerous because they turned up at the most unexpected places. Thankfully, the horde was so engrossed with both the warehouse and gunshots that none stayed behind.

As soon as the community came within sight, I realized that my assumption was wrong. There were still a few zombies banging on the walls of the community. I started to slowly move along the trees, hiding behind bushes and making sure not to make too much noise.

I'd only moved for five minutes when I heard Jenna calling me. I looked around to find that she'd climbed up a tree. I quickly joined her before any of the undead unfortunately turned around.

"Hey, what the hell is happening?" I whispered.

"I have no idea. They started shooting at the horde. I didn't know you guys had guns."

"We didn't."

She shot a glance at me. She seemed confused.

What the hell was that huge explosion back there?" she asked after a few seconds.

"Right." It took me a surprising amount of nerve to break it to Jenna. "The warehouse is gone."

"What do you mean? You blew up the warehouse?" she whispered, her voice a mixture of surprise and annoyance.

"Not intentionally." I whined sarcastically. "Check this out." I said, holding out the remote. "I stepped on it, and, well..."

"The warehouse is gone."

"Yeah." I paused. "Look, I think there are others. Strangers. Possible enemies."

Jenna didn't seem shocked. In fact, she seemed eerily calm about the whole thing. She was lost in thought for a few seconds. The fact that she was not as shocked as I expected her to be made me uncomfortable, as if she knew something I didn't.

"Why aren't you more shocked?" I put my hand on her shoulder, trying to relieve my own fear.

She shook it off. "Nothing, I mean, you thought we were the only alive people out there?" She snapped.

Well, that was uncalled for. I felt bad even though I hadn't done anything wrong. I didn't want to see her like this. I decided to apologize immediately.

"Alright, I'm sorry. Let's get back to reality, ok?"

She took a few seconds to respond.

"Yeah. Look..." she looked into my eyes. "...I'm sorry. You didn't do anything wrong, alright?" she placed her hand on my cheek.

I smiled outwardly, but I knew something was bothering her. Maybe this had something to do with the topic she refused to talk about...

"I think we need to head for base. We can sneak up behind some of them and take them out too." she interrupted my thoughts.

"Right." I said, carefully placing my leg on a tree branch. I didn't want to pursue the topic further then. After all, we were on a tree with zombies just up ahead. I looked down at the ground. I sighed. Climbing up was always easier than climbing down.

It took us fifteen minutes to sneak all the way to where the horde was, near the wall of the community. We'd taken out about five zombies lost in the trees but it seemed like there were still about twenty of them. We decided to stay low behind a rather large bush and see what was happening before we made any decisions.

Even though there were a substantial amount of zombies left, I was quite relieved at this point. The gates were surely strong enough to keep twenty of them out. We could shoot all of them down by next morning. We were safe. I couldn't help but smile.

But soon my mind turned to the lingering question: who the hell planted the explosive in the warehouse? Something in me said that wasn't what I should focus on. Rather, I began to think about how the remote was near the outpost, just five miles or so from the community. How much closer had 'they' gotten without us noticing?

The sound of a loud, metallic creak almost made me jump. What the hell is happening now? I was getting fed up of this shit.

I peeked over the bush to see the metal gates opening inwards. Jenna was right beside me. "What the fuck are they..." she whispered.

We lay watching as the zombies staggered in without much resistance.

Then, the firing began. What sounded like a dozen handguns went off at the same time, instantly knocking down five zombies. I could hear people groaning from the loudness. More blasts rang off; dropping a zombie for every step the horde took. But then, the shots started to reduce in number, until all of the firing stopped completely. I looked over the bush- three zombies were still standing.

I could hear the people panicking, and scrambling to get away from the zombie.

What happened next is something I'll remember for the rest of my life. My brain went into overdrive. Rage started boiling over. "Come on, let's go!" I whispered to Jenna. We jumped over the bush, sprinting towards the zombies. We almost crashed into the zombies with our handheld weapons, a hunting knife and an axe. We took down all three of them before we even realized what we were doing.

All this time, fear and concern had control of me because of the unexpected situation. But now we were safe, and anger was getting in the spotlight.

Some idiot asshole had fired upon the zombies and then opened the gates for them. Even though I'd only been here for two weeks, I'd grown to care for the people there a lot. They felt like family because we were living together. We were survivors, and that forged us together. The tears of loss had helped everyone here actually connect with each other. We all had something in common- we were afraid. We were the last bastions of humanity. I'd starting warming up to Tom at this point. We'd just started visiting each other in our rooms. We started to spend more time together, and I really enjoyed it. He was becoming a good friend. My relationship with Jenna was just beginning. I was slowly learning the various activities of the community. Some idiot endangered all of this, and I wanted to destroy the person responsible.

I walked over to Nathan, the chef of our community. I'd learned a lot from him. I respected him because his food fed the whole community.

"Nathan, who..."

That was all it took for Nathan to fill in the blanks. He pointed a finger behind me. "Well, he told us to. I mean..."

I didn't bother hearing the rest. I turned around to see who the man was.

I'd never seen this guy before. His hands were on his hips, and he had kept one of his feet on a zombie. He stood there, staring at me. His black eyes held no remorse. His posture was of someone who had just won a battle. I grabbed him by his collar.

"What the hell were you doing? You've no idea how much danger you've put us all in!" I yelled at him. I had no control anymore. All I needed were answers.

The stranger pushed my hand away. "It wasn't my goddamn fault that none of these people know how to reload!"

Looking around, I saw the people all had a handgun in hand. They seemed uncomfortable holding the guns, as if it would soon explode in their hands.