ZPD 8.8

Somebody told me once, that all fears were rooted in a fear of the unknown. Scary people wear masks. Clowns wear makeup. Monsters hide in closets, and under beds. Heights… well, anyone who’s afraid of heights has never fallen off the Eiffel tower. If they did, they aren’t afraid of heights anymore. It makes sense. That’s what’s so frightening about the dark. When you’re not sure what’s there, your mind will make up all kinds of horrors. Twitching Freaks roving the roads, searching out anyone healthy enough to bugger to death. It was the closest thing to real live zombies.

"Shots have stopped" Pete whispered from the window.

I sat against the wall, watching him stare outside. It was impossible to see us from the road, but the street lamp across the street gave us a pretty good field of vision in our immediate vicinity. My body was sore. Adrenaline had kept me going for that first stretch, but I had to start calming down. Too much adrenaline makes your muscles tire out. If you’re exhausted, it’s hard to be on the ball when crunch time comes.

"I think I hear someone" Pete said, turning his head back to me.

I got up and went to the window. At first, there was nothing. It was silent. The only sound I heard was the blood pumping through my own ears. Then I heard it. ‘Shhfff Shhffft Shhfff Shfff’ Someone was dragging their feet. It sounded like someone running in sandals 3 sizes too big.

"Stay quiet, don’t make a sound" Pete whispered.

"You’re the one who keeps talking"

"Shh!"

There was no way of knowing what was coming. The darkness covered everything. We stayed silent. Still as statues. I’m not sure if we took a single breath between us. The shuffling grew louder as it got closer, and soon we could hear the huffing and puffing of the runner. He was almost out of breath, and slowing down. Then, there he was: the fattest jogger I’ve ever seen. I may have seen fatter people in my lifetime (morbid obesity was actually a big problem before), but I usually didn’t see them move any faster than a leisurely waddle. The poor guy looked like he was about to have a heart attack. He stopped at the streetlight, put his arms around it, and held himself up trying to catch his breath. Pete and I remained stoic. The man was shaking, but it was hard to tell whether that was from his run, or a sign of his insanity. He wheezed in and out, struggling to breathe. My resolve was starting to soften. The man was having a real hard time. I tried to give Pete a look to express my feelings, but he was already looking at me the same way.

"Heh, that guys gonna croak on the street if we don’t help him out." he whispered.

"Yeah"

"I’ll go out and get him, you stand guard."

I nodded to him, and looked to the window. Great timing too. Just as my eyes glimpsed outside, they caught a shadow disappearing.

"Pete, hold on!" I whispered, grabbing his arm.

"What?"

"Look over there, across the street behind the guy and on the left.  Behind the fence I think."

We sat and watched, and sure enough, there was a shadow moving along the fence line.  It was quick and silent.  The man seemed oblivious to it.  He stood there, gripping the streetlight and shivering.  Pete grabbed the window sill, his jaw was locked tight.  I hit him in the shoulder and got him to look at me.  The poor guy on the street had no idea what was coming, but neither did the shadow.  I put my finger to my lips with request to keep quiet, and picked up the .22 rifle I had taken from Pete’s house.  The shadow would need to step into the light for me to have any chance of hitting it, but I would be ready.

I wasn’t ready.

Though I had taken aim at the window, it was near impossible to see beyond the glow of the streetlamp.  When the shadow finally made it’s move I hesitated for a second, and it was on him.  It was a girl.  She came over the fence and leaped onto his back so quickly that I barely had time to be surprised.  Pete, seeing it was a girl, tried to stop me from taking the shot by pushing the barrel away.  My hands tightened on the trigger, and a shot fired off loudly and harmlessly.  The noise seemed to catch everyone off guard.  The girl looked up at the tree, and seemed to loosen her grip on the mans neck for a moment.  The fat man took his chance and managed to pry her away from his neck, and throw her to the ground.  Suddenly, there was no mistaking his state of mind.  His face and head twitched compulsively, and even his legs seemed to jerk nervously as he moved towards her.

Pete was out of the window before I even had a chance to stop him.  He practically ran along the branches before dropping down onto the sidewalk.  The tweak paid no attention to him.  The big tweak was trying to hold on to the back of the girls shirt with one hand, and seemed to be trying to undo his pants with the other.  She screamed, and tried to run on the spot.  The back of her shirt came off in one big strip, and she tripped and fell forward.

The big tweak just looked at the fabric in his hand for a moment, and then Pete was on him.  The aluminum bat swung three times.  Twice while the fatso was still standing.  The girl took off, and Pete went after her.  I tried looking hopelessly through the scope of the rifle to see further down the road, but it was even darker than the real thing.  Then I heard Pete shout "Whoa!".

Now let me tell you.  Fear of the unknown is terrible, but knowing that the unknown is a fear shared by your hero, who happens to know it… is much much worse.  I slid the bolt back on the rifle, and recocked it.  Shapes moved into the light.  Shapes that I didn’t recognize.  Then Pete came into the light, holding on to the girls arm.  The shapes were a group of three men, blocking his way.  I shot one in the back.  It screamed, and Pete threw himself at the one in the middle.  The third one jumped on top of him as I reloaded, and the girl dogpiled on top of them.  I had no shot without danger of hitting Pete.  It was a mess.  The girl seemed just as insane as the men.  She was clawing at the tweaks face one minute, and trying to choke him out the next.  Pete threw both of them off, and came around with the bat while still on the ground.  He missed once, but the girl was holding on to the tweaker pretty good.  He couldn’t move, and Pete finished it a few seconds later.

He brought her to the tree, and started boosting her up, but things got pretty heavy really quick after that.  Tweaks were coming out of nowhere.  They came at Pete and the girl one at a time at first.  I guess it was first come, first served for them.  But after Pete beat them back a few times, they started to form a semicircle around us.

"Gavin!" Pete shouted.

"Yeah!" I shouted back, as I took another shot.

"We need to get out of here.  Like, we need to get out of here now!"

"Kay"

"Now, like right the hell no

w. Get out!  Let’s go!"

FOOOM!

There was a satisfying flame from my very first molotov.  It hit a group of four tweaks and they scattered, lighting up the area around us like human torches.  It was frightening to realize how many of them were out there.  Just from the light of that first cocktail, you could see maybe 20 of them.  I grabbed our packs, and threw them down.  Then I lit another cocktail, and threw it at the biggest mob I could see.  Pete and the girl were getting into a car that I assume belonged to him. I came down the tree slower than Pete.  When I hit the sidewalk, there was a large tweak coming straight for me.  I think I recognized him, but I’m not really sure now.  I tried to shoot him, but I hit him in the stomach.  Unfortunately, a shot to the stomach with a .22, although painful to the extreme, won’t bring a tweaker down.

He just screamed at me, and hit me in the face.  It spun me pretty good, and I sat down hard.  The .22 was bolt-action, and not auto loading, so I couldn’t shoot him again, but you don’t need to shoot when the stock is made of solid wood, and you’ve got a clear shot at his shins.  I brought the stock down hard on his knee cap, and that felled him pretty good.  I grabbed the bags, threw them in the car, and jumped into the backseat as Pete punched the accelerator.

He drove pretty well I have to say.  If it were me, I probably would have lost it around the first turn.  He was driving 100km/h through suburban neighborhoods, but for the most part, he kept it under control.  He even avoided hitting tweaks.  I thought that was smart.  Hit enough of those, and soon you won’t have a very healthy get away car.

"Hi!  I’m Gavin" I said to the girl.  Don’t ask me why I was so upbeat about it.  I had just killed for the first time.  I had watched people burn, after throwing the fuel.  They had all died horribly… but I was alive.  And now we had more company.  Sane company it looked like.

"Guy" She replied

"What guy?"

"That’s my name."  She seemed annoyed.

"Your name is Guy?" It’s a funny name.  I didn’t know any girls named Guy.  She looked about my age, maybe a year younger.  She had dark skin.  That’s why she was so hard to pick out.  Her clothes were dark too.  What was left of them anyway.  She was just trying to keep the front of her shirt on.  The back was completely torn away.

"Here, hold on a sec" I said, fishing into my pack.  I had a roll of duct tape in there.

"Lean forward" I told her.  As she did, I taped a strip across her back and connected either side of her shirt.  Then again on her lower back.  That would at least make her comfier until she needed to take it off.

"Thanks" she said.

"How much food do we have?" Pete asked.

"About 6 granola bars, and some pepperoni"

"And water?"

"4 bottles of water"

"How much ammo do you have for that gun?"

"Maybe 5 shots left"

"Alright… well that settles it."

"Settles what?"

"We need to go shopping."