May 24, 2019 - O2 Remaining: 19.91 Hours / 0.83 Days - 2:20 PM

Eury Morrissey

Alaska watched out the window for a moment longer before turning back to the rest of us.

“I’m telling you guys, I think that now’s the time.” Davis had gathered us all at the window to share his theory. “They’re blind, slow, and above all, they’re starting to pass-on. I told you that I noticed that they were being affected by dehydration. But look at them now!”

“Are you blind? Have you seen how many of them are out there?” Kelly said pointing at the window.

“I have, but I’m telling you, they’re docile. At this point, I’d wager the vast majority of them haven’t eaten or drank anything in the last six to seven days. The fact that they’re even still standing right now is a miracle in itself.”

“More like a magical curse,” Alaska corrected.

“There’s no such thing as magic,” I interjected. “The world is plenty fucking bizarre that we don’t need add that shit to the pile of what if’s. And besides, I agree with Davis on this.” Alaska and Kelly both looked at me, their mouths slack. “What? It’s what I’ve been saying this whole damn time. Kelly, I told you this what? Four days ago? It’s the water. If they’re not even bothering to sleep properly, then they sure as hell aren’t drinking water.”

“What about that girl, Wren?” Boyde asked.

“That Banshee’s a special case,” I spoke before Davis could, “I have no clue what the hell’s wrong with her, but that bitch isn’t like the rest of them.”

“Teddy too,” Kelly added, “and that’s why I’m against going out there. God knows how many others like them are out there.”

“One or two is nothing. We’ve got three guns, a ton of bullets, and two crack shots. We can easily take out two sick people,” Boyde retorted.

“I don’t know how you haven’t noticed, but it isn’t just the two of them to be worried about. The Banshee can do something to rest of them. I don’t know if she’s able to control them or direct them or what, but whatever it is, she’s more of a danger than just one sick person,” I said. Even though I agreed with Boyde in a way, I couldn’t let him downplay how dangerous Wren was. The average infected out there? They made sense, their sickness progressed in a way that just made sense. But Wren? Teddy? They didn’t make a lick of sense, and denying that would probably get us killed.

“Regardless! Look! Just look at them and tell me that you think they can see a damn thing,” Davis said pointing to the window. “To them it might as well be midnight! Speaking of midnight, how long do you even have Eury? By my best guess, you should have what, maybe twenty hours left between those tanks and that concentrator?”

“Less than twenty at max. At eighty percent, just a bit more than twenty-four hours?”

Kelly glared at me the moment I spoke. I had forgotten that he wasn’t aware I was running my O2 lower, not since he had scolded me last time.

Alaska, looking more fed up by the seconds said, “even if the bridge is less than a mile away, and assuming we can get through the crowd—”

“We can,” Davis interrupted, but threw up his hands after Alaska shot him a dirty look.

“If we can get through the crowd, then we’re looking at a fifteen-mile hike up into the mountains to get to the Morrissey's.” Alaska looked around the group to see if anyone had anything else to say. “At that rate, we can wait. Fifteen miles in even twenty hours is easy enough, we can do this.”

“I think we should leave as soon as possible,” Kelly’s switch of positions, caught me off guard.

“You said it yourself, it’s too dangerous out there right now. We can’t get through hundreds of them like this!” Alaska looked over to me, but then, her gaze fell to the empty silver E-tank beside me. “We’re down three people who we need carrying supplies.” What Alaska wasn’t saying was that because of my condition, I might as well have not even been there to top it off. After last night’s bout with sixty-percent, I was feeling and looking worse than I had since before O’Brian’s.

“With the two of us running point, and everyone else sticking close, what difference will it make if we go now or later?” Boyde asked.

“Because they’re out there now! I know you’re hot shit Boyde, but there’s more to this than that,” Alaska said.

“All I’m hearing is that either we take a chance now,” Kelly’s tone had dropped even further, “or we wait until it’s too late and waste our window.”

“We can make fifteen-miles in less than twelve hours! Stop being ridiculous!”

“You all can,” I interjected, “I don’t know if I can.”

“Eury c’mon. Don’t be—”

“You don’t know how bad it can get. When things start to go sideways, you don’t know how bad it can get,” I said, cutting Alaska off.

“She’s pre-hypoxic. I wouldn’t be surprised if liquid has already started to gather in her lungs. The longer Eury is out here, and the longer she’s on low intake, the more likely her body is going to start shutting down. Now that we have a chance, we gotta take it.” Davis was backing up my case with facts. It figured, of all of us, he’s the one who would know.

“We’re rested, and they’re even slower than last night. We haven’t heard that Banshee chick since last night. Now’s the time.” Boyde added.

Alaska took in a sharp breath before almost yelling, “look! Look with your own fucking eyes, and tell me that we can get through that.” I didn’t look. I didn’t need to. I knew that she was right, but so were we. “If we go out there right now, we, will, die!”

“And if we wait, then I die. You all can stay here. But regardless of what happens, I need to go, as soon as I can.”

“Eury wait, you—”

“I’m going with her.” Kelly added instantly. I met his glance with a small smile.

“I’ll go too.” Davis added. Hearing that was a pair of conflicting emotions, both of which I pushed down. The three of us looked at Boyde, but I knew that was a useless argument waiting to happen. There was no way in hell that he’d leave Alaska.

Alaska’s scowl finally broke, if only ever so slightly. “But what if—”

“If I stay, I die. Alaska, I love you, and I’m not asking you to do this. But I have to go. And if I go now, there’s at least a chance that I’ll be able to help. That I’ll be able to fight.”

Alaska’s whole expression changed as I spoke. At first, she was worried, and angry, even a little sad. She closed her eyes, and ran her hand over her head. After a few seconds of thinking, she looked up. “We’ll go. Get you stuff, we leave in five minutes.”

May 24, 2019 - O2 Remaining: 19.82 Hours / 0.83 Days - 2:27 PM

May 24, 2019 - O2 Remaining: 19.65 Hours / 0.82 Days - 2:40 PM

It didn’t take long for us to gather everything we had brought. Between eating and drinking at the office, and going through two of my three O2 tanks, we barely had anything left. Other than about ten hours of O2 left in the tank on my back, we had a few jugs of water, and a couple of beef jerky and chocolate bars that we could scavenge from the vending machine in the small office. Other than what we could eat there, it was too dangerous to bring along anything else. They have proven time and again that their sense of hearing was beyond normal, regardless of whether or not they were blind.

“Where’s that other tank?” Kelly asked me just as we hit the bottom of the stairs.

“Up there,” I answered

“What?” Kelly caught himself. This close to the door, even the near-dead outside could’ve heard him if he didn’t. “Why?”

“Because it’s empty. Why would I bring it?”

“Because…” Kelly stopped to think. That was just like him, act on feeling before really getting a whole thought in. “Because, you might need it. It’s not like those things grow on trees.”

“Well I don’t have a third arm to carry it in. So, that’s not really an option.”

“I can just carry it. I don’t mind it’s not—”

“There’s no way in hell I’m letting any of you get weighed down by my shit. You carrying that damn concentrator is enough. I’ve got this.” I readjusted my slipping grip on the jugs of water I was carrying.

“But—”

Alaska shushed us just as Kelly was about to continue. The street out front clear, she pushed open the door. Kelly’s eyes lingered on mine, before he followed Boyde. Davis, stuck behind me, was responsible for what little was left of the food.

I held my breath as we stepped onto the sidewalk. The nearest person to us was no further than ten feet away, beyond the large heavy-set man, the next nearest were only a step or two, beyond them, the street was like the Lloyd center the days leading up to Christmas. Packed shoulder to shoulder, walking aimlessly. In a way they really were like shoppers on the lookout for a deal.

In a tight line, we followed Alaska who led us away from the direction we first came from. Being quiet, and moving quickly, it was hard to tell if any of the masses of infected we weaved through noticed we were even there, but it was obvious that every time she sidestepped a blind shambler, Alaska’s whole body went rigid.

As we passed a small gap between the first office building we were in and the next set of shops, I instinctively tensed. I needed to be ready. Our luck with alleyways up until now has been too bad to not be prepared. I was relieved as Alaska passed by without incident. Boyde, then Kelly as well. Finally, when it was my turn, I made the mistake of looking into the gap. I looked away quickly enough to not catch any real details, but Davis who wasn’t stood shocked for a moment.

Maybe if I could’ve seen the alley that Teddy had come from back before the clinic. Actually, I guess I did see his work, the stumped man did come from there as well.

A few steps later, Davis caught back up. My fire poker rattled between Kelly’s back and his sword, as he suddenly stopped. Standing at the next street corner, Alaska held up a flat palm to us, only letting Boyde approach carefully. Now that we were closer, I could see exactly how far gone these people were. For the majority, their skin was stained black and blue. Most were covered in their own sick and blood. And worst of all, their eyes. To combat their slowly lost vision, their eyelids were practically peeled open. For some, the glassy inflamed red and white was bad enough. But for the most unfortunate, black and red empty sockets and the accompanying torn flesh leading away from them scarred their faces. Their blood must’ve been thick at this point, I had no clue how else they haven’t bled to death.

Alaska and Boyde stepped out from the corner, but Alaska’s hand stayed up as they strafed across the street.

Kelly tapped me on the shoulder, and pointed up past the awning we were beneath. Following Kelly’s finger, I looked up to the sky. The clouds were rolling in from behind the building above us. They were a boiling, rolling sea of dark grey.

And that explains why it’s so dim out here.

And as the clouds moved further in, invading the light grey haze of extremely high clouds, the street itself only got darker. The cloud cover was so absolute, it was almost as if night had fallen. With this, there was a chance that we could actually do this. I felt actual hope for the first time in a long time.

From the other side of the intersection, Alaska waved us over. A minute ago, creeping past the crowds of barely-alive infected, I would’ve been worried to cross the street. But seeing them now—after an up-close view of their deterioration—it was obvious that the vast majority of them were too far gone to be much of a threat.

That means that they’re too far gone to be saved too doesn’t it?

As was quickly becoming my habit over this last week, by the time we met up with Alaska and Boyde and started toward the highway, my mood had soured by the realization that this wasn’t likely something that we could come back from. Despite my rags of hope still being maintained for our survival, I couldn’t help but feel worried about the town at large. There was a value to that hope though. I had been there before, that hopeless pit, and being that way wasn’t going to save us. Back at Alaska’s, the day before Kelly arrived, that was the lowest I had been since my surgery, but at the time I don’t even think I realized it. It was funny in a way, there wasn’t a specific thing that Kelly had done to break that doom-loop I had fallen into, and yet, it was implicit in my subconscious that it was his doing that got me out of there.

Again, Alaska stopped at the last corner before the street met the highway. The buildings here were a far cry from the brick and mortars that lined the streets further into town, these ones were new. Sleek steel and glass. They practically looked like they belonged in some big city somewhere not in the middle of nowhere Sheridan.

I was staring at the back of Kelly’s balaclava’ed head. He was still. Laser-focused forward, just like the rest of us. I guess, except for me.

I imagined that Kelly was pretty good at his job before all this fell to shit. There was something about how he was able to step into a situation that he knew nothing about, and slowly worm his way into it. I remember that first moment that I realized just how dangerous talking to him really was. Not dangerous in the scary way, but in the way that after all the doom and gloom I had subjected myself to for the days leading—

Days? My inner-bitch was quick to correct.

Okay, yeah.

—for all the doom and gloom that I had subjected myself to for the vast majority of my life, he felt like a goddamned wizard for being able to come in and help me find a way out of my spiral. And at the end of the day, all he really did was show up and talk. About nothing in particular and anything at all—with only one understandable exception. That was probably the reason why I never felt too bad around Alaska too. Sure I’d give her shit but at the end of the day spending time with her was always the highlight of my summers off from Gonzaga.

Kelly glanced back at me, and our eyes met. Even with everything else going on. The sick and crazed all around us. My oxygen reaching it’s last dregs. I still smiled. It caught him off guard—of course it did—but it only took a second before the bags under his eyes scrunched up. That was another good thing about him, he smiled with his eyes.

A sharp crack above us snapped me out of my idle daydreaming. The metal awning we were under was suddenly dented.

Pwang. Pwang.

A pair of footsteps above us. Alaska turned away from the highway, eyes wide and mouth ajar.

“Move!” In the single syllable, Alaska’s expression changed three times. Shock, horror, then anger. Kelly, Davis and I all scattered, trying our best to avoid whatever was above us, but also the few infected that were on the street around us. The same infected who after hearing Alaska’s command, already were starting to surround us. Our only saving grace was that this street, unlike the highway or the other two was relatively empty, only a dozen or so severely deteriorated shamblers.

By the time my foot hit the asphalt, Alaska had already drawn her shotgun, dropped it back into its sling, and withdrew her baton. Another step away from the sidewalk, I craned my neck to see what it was that had her so panicked.

Backed by a tumultuous near-black sky, a towering man stared back down at us. His eyes were bloodshot, his skin that had been mostly white when I last saw him was nothing more than purple and black. His shirt was completely torn from his body, giving us a full view of the pustules and burst lacerations that slashed across his chest.

Had he come from the roof? What the hell was he doing up there?

It was obvious that the others—the ones mindlessly shuffling around us—would never have been able to get up there on purpose. Just like the Banshee, Teddy was different, and now the disparity between him and the rest was obvious to everyone. His blood-red eyes flicked between us purposely until finally landing on Kelly. Seeing him, Teddy’s jaw unhinged at its edges, spraying black blood as he garbled out an enraged battle cry.

Kelly stumbled back a step as he fumbled to draw his sword. Teddy leaped off the awning slamming into Kelly, then to the ground. This time, he wasted no time and Kelly had no chance to defend himself. With Kelly’s arms protecting his face, Teddy went to the opening he left over his stomach. Teddy’s first few swipes weren’t much more than wild and unaimed ferocity, but within the first second, he had already managed to grab and tear open Kelly’s jacket with terrifying strength. Another grab, another pull and Kelly’s shirt was ripped away. Like me, the rest of our group was almost completely frozen. Even though we were on high alert, there was no way that we could have prepared for something as ferocious and focused as this. Everything up until now had felt so random, so instinctual, but this, this was different.

Teddy was trying to tear into Kelly’s stomach flesh, but without a cut in the skin, or a weapon in his hand, it was fruitless. But it barely mattered, the flurry of punches and swipes and scratches was more than enough to break the skin and probably the bones beneath.

Do it.

From the moment Teddy appeared, until that thought, it was as if time had slowed to a crawl for me, but as reality and my thoughts began to flow normally, I didn’t hesitate. Consequences be damned, it wasn’t hesitating this time.

I dropped both jugs of water, then it was a single fluid motion for me to reach beneath my tank bag, and withdraw the pistol holstered there, and take aim at the man violently attacking Kelly. Alaska and Boyde had already begun sprinting towards them, but there was no telling what the difference of a few seconds would make.

Bang! Bang!

I pulled the trigger and the handgun jumped in my hand, what strength I had back in the clinic had deteriorated further as the very weight of the gun was almost too much for me to hold.

Whether it was the first shot or the second that did it, Teddy launched himself off Kelly, away from me. Rolling first over his shoulder landing on his back, before quickly scrambling to his feet. As he got up, Alaska’s baton met his face, sending him stumbling back into the window behind him. Seeing Kelly’s motionless body on the asphalt I took aim at Teddy again. Alaska’s movements were quick and precise, but it was seemingly useless against Teddy, who looked almost no worse for wear even after I put a bullet in him.

I had a half-second between when I heard the weak moan of the man behind me, and when his hands were already wrapping themselves around me. I ducked to avoid his curled purple hand, but his second had followed me down, grabbing my hair. With a surprising amount of strength, the man pulled me backwards.

Disoriented, hypoxic, and distraught, I struggled to remember my self-defence training. Training that was made simultaneously more difficult and somewhat easier with the pistol in my hand. After trying to bat his arm away with the pistol, as I was taught, I realized my situation. I looked away from the man’s nearly-desiccated face and pulled the trigger.

Bang!

His grip on my hair didn’t loosen but as he fell, my hair began tearing away from my head.

“Fucking, ow!” I screamed, bashing the limp arm until it finally finished its painful removal of the chunk of hair.

Boom!

Free from my attacker, I spun around again, raising the pistol to where Teddy was. But the scene I returned to was completely different from before. Alaska, standing in front of a cracked window of a shop, was aiming down the sights of her shotgun towards the highway. Boyde was hovering over Kelly saying something but all I heard were hard spat S’s and F’s. Almost thirty seconds had passed and somehow, Davis was still in the same spot he was before, only his head moved as he was now staring at the highway beyond the rest of the group.

The sound of shuffling steps behind me spurred me into movement. With one hand I holstered the pistol, while the other grabbed one of the water jugs. As I ran over to Kelly, Boyde took that as an opportunity to grab the stunned Davis. Kelly’s stomach was exposed and bruises were already forming at the bottom of his ribs alongside the shallow cuts that must’ve been from Teddy’s nails. I knelt down beside him and unscrewed the cap of the water jug. I drained the jug onto his exposed flesh, cleaning the wounds as best as I could. Kelly’s eyes shot open and he let out a quiet groan, as he tried and failed to sit up.

“Kelly! Are you okay?” His eyes looked glazed over, a look I had seen before. A common one after grappling matches. “We gotta get going!” I tried my best to ignore the rapidly spreading bruise along his rib, there was nothing we could do about it right now, and we couldn’t stick around here. With Alaska’s help, we got Kelly to his feet, and the group of us slowly made our way towards the highway.

Behind us the weak moans from the shamblers around us were almost more pitiful than anything else. The sound of Davis muttering something to Boyde was also concerning.

As we approached the highway, the huge mass of infected that had gathered there were now slowly making their way to where Teddy had attacked us. They were slow, but the amount of them was more than overwhelming. If we slowed down or even hesitated there was no chance. They would overtake us and that would be it.

But, as the Banshee’s wail rang out from the direction of the highway Alaska stopped and turned towards the sound. The cry cut through the wind that had been picking up progressively since we left the office. The shambling infected around us all looked towards the source that was no doubt just beyond the buildings across the street.

“She… she… knows.” Davis stammered out.

He was right. She was looking for us. And we just gave ourselves away.

May 24, 2019 - O2 Remaining: 19.22 Hours / 0.80 Days - 3:12 PM