ThirtySix- Kyle

Simple. Easy.

Wishful fucking thinking is what that was.

We made it down into the tunnels before a car came prowling for us or there were any sounds of someone searching in our direction on foot.

But I hadn't entirely thought it through, running into a dark tunnel without so much as the moon to light to way. Much less a flashlight.

"Any chance you got a light on you?" I whispered into the darkness.

The shuffled around quietly. "Got some matches," he muttered to himself as he checked his pockets, a whispered "Ah-ha" when he found them. The match was lit and the dim light brightened the place enough to know this wasn't a good idea. The subway entrance was filled with zombies enough to make all of our breaths catch as we jointly stepped away from the mass in the tunnel. I leaned forward and blew out the match before more than a couple eyes turned toward us.

We started to move up the stairs back toward the street, but the woman stopped blocking the path when she heard noise from above us.

Well, shit.

The awful thought that I should have left them behind when I had the chance entered my mind. I could have saved myself if I hadn't saved them. It was a shitty thing to think, yeah, but I had made promises that I intended to keep and in that moment, it didn't seem possible. Fuck me for exactly what we agreed we wouldn't do. Fuck these people for needing rescuing. I had people to get back to. I had someone to keep safe.

I shook the thoughts from my head. It was too late now anyway.

And this wasn't over.

We weren't the most successful runners due to luck. We - I - knew how to navigate shitty situations. And you don't go a year out here without learning a few things about the zombies.

Zombies weren't super humans. They were dead humans whose bodies still worked. They didn't have heightened senses and I certainly doubted they could smell anything over the stench of their own decaying bodies. They worked on audio/visual cues. They gravitated toward things making noise, which is why the speaker system these assholes had set up was a pretty damn good idea. And if they spotted you, they would follow you. But I didn't think their vision was all that good. I'd seen them try to take bites out of one another before only to back away when they realized the meat wasn't good.

There were a lot down here. A lot. The amount that would have been in a crowded rush-hour type day for the subway.

We just needed to get past them. Just waltz right by. Quietly. And without light.

Super simple stuff.

"We can wait them out," the woman said in the barest whisper.

I didn't think we could. We were too close to their base. There would be no point in the very immediate future that I would feel confident strolling back up the street and walking toward Ella's house. I would not chance being followed. I shook my head out of habit since they couldn't see me. "No. We need to move on," I said quietly. "Without sight down here it's just sound. We keep quiet and head through."

"That's insane," the woman said a bit too loudly.

"No more insane than going back up to street level." I paused, reminding myself to be careful to keep my voice low. "You don't have to come, but I have people who need me."

"We're with you," the man said and his wife didn't protest.

Once we got to the tracks, inside the actual subway tunnel and further from the station, the zombie congestion would clear up. I hoped it would at least. The man, protective of his wife, put her between us and she reached up to set her hand on the back of my shoulder so I could guide us all down further without getting separated.

I took a step back down the stairs. It was the slowest step I had ever taken. There was something so wrong about walking into a dark room filled with dozens of zombies. It would just take one misstep. One sneeze or— no, not thinking like that. I kept with stepping forward. Down, down, down. Slowly, taking care not to slip or trip. Closer to death. Closer to the people I cared about.

That became my mantra. Over and over, reminding myself that I had somewhere to be. People who would come looking for me if the sun came up and I was nowhere to be seen.

We made it to the bottom of the stairs.

Closer.

My eyes tried to adjust to no light, the pitch darkness of it a little disorienting, but I kept on. The people behind me. People I'd saved but whose names I still did not know, kept up.

Low groaning.

Breaths from behind me grew shallow and more frequent. At first I thought it was the woman, but I realized it was the man. I didn't know if it was the dark or the moaning reminder that we were tiptoeing our way through a crowd of things that wanted to eat us that had him on the verge of a panic attack. I felt seconds away from losing it myself. But this wasn't the time. I didn't dare chance speaking to him.

One step, another. Two steps, another. Three steps, another. Four steps— I kicked something and stopped in an instant, both people piling up behind me. I nudged it gently again, not knowing what was in front of me. A body? No. Sure it was solid, I reached out with my hands to figure out where I was and then turned around, leaning down and whispering into the ear of the woman.

"Turnstiles"

Getting over them quietly wasn't going to be easy in the dark. Not when I didn't know how big they were or what was on the other side.

Bracing myself on either side of the turnstile, I lifted my feet from the ground and quietly maneuvered over the blockade. When I let my weight down, my feet weren't on the ground. I tried to gain my balance stepping—tripping over someone I hoped was really, really dead. I pulled my foot up, but my ankle was restrained and, again, I stumbled to regain my balance. The low groan of the zombie grabbing me, cued several more of a similar nature in the area. Like a goddamned dinner bell.

I paused for only a second and pull my foot from the weak grip of the zombie that was trying to get us all killed. When my foot was free, I listened for its sounds to determine where the head was. When I had a pretty good idea, I stomped my boot down putting all my weight behind it. The skull crushed under my foot, cracking easily almost like a bug.

Others were groaning now, interested in the noise. We stood frozen, silent. With the zombie that cued their reactions dead, they quickly lost interest and sense of direction. Turning around, I reached out, feeling for my travel companions to help them each over the turnstile. The woman's hand, shaking grabbed onto my arm and I held steady, supporting her weight as she made her way over the contraption. The man was next. He too grabbed my arm to help support his weight. With some of the adrenaline of the escape gone, I could tell now that his leg - and maybe other parts since I was sure they'd beaten him some - were aching enough that it affected the way he moved.

His front dominate leg was over, resting firmly on the ground. His injured leg - we would really need to check that out when we got a chance - came over the bar, but he misjudged where it was his foot caught on the metal barrier. The ringing of his steel-toed boots against the hollow aluminum turnstile would have been enough to draw attention our way even without his echoing grunt that followed.

My eyes widened and it was everything not to yell at the idiot. Zombies began shuffling toward the noise. Their groans growing in numbers as more became interested in what held the attention of some. I couldn't tell how close they were. The sound was off, echoing in the large tunnel, making it difficult to determine how many, how close and where they were coming from. But I knew they were headed toward us.

"Move," I breathed out.

I gripped the woman's wrist and, figuring she had her husband, we moved sightlessly toward the tunnel that would hopefully offer some reprieve.

"Shauna?"

I stopped.

He called again, louder this time.

How did they get get separated?

He wasn't right behind up; probably back by the turnstiles.

The woman, Shauna, screamed as she realized it wasn't her husband that she'd felt behind her, following along, but a zombie. I yanked her close, before the zombie behind her could grip on and bite and put my hand over her mouth. She struggled against me. A pained yell filled the room. One I recognized. It was the same scream I'd heard every time I witnessed a person being bitten into - torn apart. It wasn't just a scream of terror or of pain. It was both. It was the horrific realization that they were about to die and it was going to be too slow and too horrible. And all that could be done was to wail until you couldn't. I'd heard it more times than I cared to remember.

His wife fought. She wanted to run back to him in the darkness. To save a man who couldn't be saved. To die with him.

There was no saving him. But we had a chance.

His screams offered the distraction we needed to move quickly.

I whispered to the woman that we had to go. That she needed to be quiet.

It wasn't a reasonable thing to request of her. Not when the man she'd been married to for... decades possible, screamed for help not more than fifteen feet behind us. Telling her to buck up and shut up. To move on, leaving him behind. It wasn't reasonable. But it was necessary.

My hand was soaked in her silent tears by the time I dropped it and pulled her through the dark tunnel. I put her hand to my back and had her grip tightly on my shirt as I shoved through zombies. She stayed glued to my back, moving closely behind me.

The zombies crowding us were more interested in getting to the source of the screams. Few noticed, as we pushed past them to make a path for the ourselves, that we could potential be food. Those few were easily shoved aside, or grabbed and quickly knifed - some two or three times until I hit the right spot.

But mostly, what I had learned about the zombies had been right. They weren't noticing us. We weren't making noise and they couldn't see us. We were nothing more to them than an obstacle to get to what they needed.

A train was stopped in the station, so we worked our way toward it, I let my hand slide along the cool metal until the train ended and it was time to get down to the tracks. We'd made it through the station. The tunnel wouldn't be as bad. I hoped. I carefully slid down on to the tracks and then helped Shauna down. Following the path the tracks created for us, we moved.

After a few minutes of walking blindly, I stopped.

"Matches?"

"They," she whimpered out. "They were in Roy's pocket."

Shit.

"Lets just keep moving."

Sliding my hand along the the walkway next to the track, I cringes as I felt rats skitter over my hand and squeak away from us as we walked. Maybe it was a good thing we couldn't see much. But walking a few miles in this wasn't going to be so awesome. It was also going to slow us way down.

"How far are we going?"

I tried to remember the name of the subway stop I'd passed signs for on the way there, but I hadn't paid close enough attention.

"Two stops down," I said, sounding more confident that I felt with that answer. Right or wrong, in two stops we'd get back up to street level and go from there. We walked several more paces, the silence stretching between us. There could be some zombs down here, but it sounded like we were the only ones so, after brief hesitation, I cleared my throat. "I'm sorry about your husband - Roy."

"I thought he was behind me. I thought I felt his hand on my shirt," she said emotionless. Still in shock from what happened, the truth hadn't settled over her just yet. "We're going toward Old Town."

"Yeah." That sounded right.

When we came up on the next stop, we hopped up on the access path on the left side to pass by the train. It was only a foot or so wide and with the large gap in ground where the tracks were and the zombies lack of climbing skills, it was nothing to get through the second stop. Seeing the dimmest light at our exit made it bright enough to walk and to see shadows from the zombies. Thankfully there weren't as many here as there were when we first entered the metro tunnels, but getting out wouldn't be as simple as walking through. We were maneuvering over and around truly dead bodies while avoiding the ones that came back to life.

Carefully, we climbed up the steps and back to street level. I peeked out and around for any sign of the people hunting us, but saw none. Getting out, I was a little turned around. We didn't exit on the same street that I'd followed to get to the Costco initially and further, I wasn't sure if we'd already passed the house or not. A bit of looking around and feeling lost and the woman's hand fell onto my arm.

"Where are we going?" I listed off the address I'd memorized. "This way," she said seemingly knowledgeable of the area.

"Born and raised right here in Alexandria," she said by way of explanation. "I had some friends who lived on that street where your people are."

"You never left?"

"Roy had a deal with Lawrence and his boys. We were left in peace, given supplies."

"A deal?"

"He's an engineer." She paused. "Was. He was an engineer. He helped them build up their walls. Get their security up."

"What went wrong?"

"They got in an argument a couple days ago. Roy wouldn't talk about it, but it was bad, I'd never seen Roy so mad. Ready to kill someone. Guess a few of his men were killed then." Shauna paused, eying me. "Know something about that?" She went on, "Lawrence was sure it was Roy. Maybe he was just looking for an excuse to get rid of us, got tired of us draining his supplies."

We walked on and finally, I recognized the homes on the street as ones I'd passed by on my way out. Ready to get back, my pace increased and Shauna kept up. I looked over at her knowing if we hadn't come here they'd still be fine.

"I'm so sorry."

"You didn't mean for all of this to happen. And I don't blame you for killing those men. I just—" her voice cut off when I grabbed her arm, hauling her on the porch of a nearby home before the heavily armed girl in the street spotted us.

"They're here," she whispered. "How did they know we'd be there?" She wandered aloud.

My stomach turned. Were they in the house? Had they been watching, knowing when we were vulnerable and attacked when we were gone. God, We'd left an injured man alone to protect a sleeping girl and a sick girl. Why the fuck had we thought that was a good idea? Ella was practically alone. If Hunter had to chose, he was keeping Zero safe. Miles and Joel? I had no way of knowing if they were back yet, safe.

"They didn't." I took a step away from the wall. Ella's house was just a few down from where we were, but I couldn't see a damn thing. "You should stay here." I pressed a gun into her hand just in case someone saw her over here.

"I know these people, I can try to talk them down."

I raised an eyebrow. "These people hung you out as zombie bait. You won't be a good mediator here. And I'm not planning on talking."

"There could be five or six men in there." She tried to stop me. "They don't usually travel with less."

"I can't leave them."

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AN - Sorry these haven't been as frequent guys! I'm doing my best to pick up the pace. The plan is to have it totally finished by the end of the month!! (I'm aiming for posting a chapter a day and that should about do it - or very nearly!)