Chapter 5: Chapter Four

After cleaning the mess on the staircase with various items lying around on the rooftop, which took most of the sunlight, I decided not to kick them straight out onto the street like I had originally planned.

“You guys got a place?”

“Yuh, I’d guess ‘dis is yours?”

“Yep, how far away is yours?” I felt a little bad considering I had just saved them and gave them a place to sleep.

“East, other side of the city.” The cool girl chimed in.

“Jesus, I’m not sure if you’ll survive that without weapons, considering vehicles have been forbidden by the Alliance. As well as you all looking around like confused dogs when I gave you guns, I’m gonna assume you don't know how to use them.” They all glanced at me and then at their surroundings, trying to avoid eye contact.

“I’ll take you all there and show you how to use a weapon on the way.” Shocked at my sudden kindheartedness, no one said anything but I could tell they weren’t opposed.

Turns out they’d actually slept with the guns I’d given them as a precaution.

“Before we leave, do you all like the weapons I gave you or would any of you prefer something more close range?” Looking around at each other, the cool girl piped up.

“I’m pretty good with a sword, but I can imagine you don’t have one?” It was hard, but I decided to give her your sword until we could find her another one. Is what it is, Ash. As long as this story doesn’t have a chapter where she breaks it. Thankfully not.

I reached behind an idle sheet of thin metal leaning against the edge of the roof and pulled from it your sheathed sword, untouched for at least a couple months. You hadn’t had time to use it much since they got stronger.

“This has some weight to it.” She looked pleased.

“Less force needed to cut clean through something, anyway I hope it’s sharp enough to cut flesh ‘cause it hasn’t been used in a while. He mainly just had it for decoration.”

“He?”

“Don’t worry about it, we need to get going now.” Deflecting the issue, I began to pick up my stuff and walk towards the opening in the ground leading to the inside of the building. They followed close behind as I carefully stepped down the red-stained stairs.

“There will be plenty of food on floor four.”

“Man, that’s like six floors down from us!” The less cool girl exclaimed.

“The rooftop is my living space, my group uses the whole building to house survivors and the fourth floor is above the main housing space so it’s where they keep all the food and water. They must be out right now.”

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“Yeah well it’s too far!” Her complaining about small inconveniences will become a common theme. I personally have no idea how you put up with that. I don’t either, believe me. For now I ignore it. I’m going to be honest with you, I don’t know why we decided to leave in the evening but I just didn’t think of it at the time. Smart. Shut up. Anyway our bags weren’t very big so we decided on only eating when we needed to and trying to stop at places where we knew we could steal food from. We just had to hope we didn’t run into The Alliance while we were out. Looting buildings and taking prisoners, only releasing them when their loved ones gave up valuables like food and first aid. We were more scared of seeing their blackout arm tattoos than we were of running into a horde. I can imagine.

As I was saying, we left the building hesitantly, checking over our shoulders constantly. While they travelled in groups, paranoia set in and thoughts of being snuck up on invaded our minds. Smoggy skies and streets layered with fog, it made seeing anything of importance almost impossible. We had to use our knowledge of the city to find where we needed to go. We had been walking for around fifteen minutes when we heard a deafening shriek come from around the corner of a city block to our left. Something paralysing, but we knew what to expect so we were ready. One way or another, we had to get through them if we wanted to keep going east. However, we were a little more hesitant to fight when we felt a slight shake in the concrete beneath us. This horde was big, it had to have been the biggest I’ve ever encountered. Rounding the corner, they saw us. More and more seemed to be running towards us and the width of the horde took the space of the whole street. Cool girl raised her sword as I raised my assault rifle, the other two saw us and cautiously raised theirs too.

”Hey uh, we still don’t know how to use these.” Her voice quivering.

”Better be a quick learner.” I remarked. Cool girl chuckled.

Bullets began to fly and bodies were dropping fast. I don’t know what drugs cool girl was on but she was in the centre of the horde slicing heads like fruit. This scared us a little as we didn’t want to shoot her unintentionally. BANG. From a building behind us sounded the firing of a bullet bigger that must’ve been bigger than my hand. Just like that, a dent in the horde had been made. A single bullet made more progress than the four of us had made after using almost all our ammunition. Scanning around, the flash of his rifle made me aware of his position. The rifle and the head of the figure were just visible, they wore a face mask, I couldn’t see what was on it but they had just helped us so I didn’t care. I gave them a thumbs up and they returned it and aimed down the scope again. Looking back, the horde was shrinking. Cool girl hadn’t stopped, or even slowed down. Suddenly, a crushing weight in my chest stopped me. I had a bad feeling about something.

“Get out of there! Now!” Don’t know what it was, but she needed to move. She didn’t look at me but she must’ve heard me ‘cause she started moving towards me whilst still fighting. Making it out but being pushed back.

”What? I was doing fine.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know but I got a feeling telling me you needed to get out.”

”I can’t do anything from back here.” She seemed frustrated.

”I know, I’m so-“ Another firing went off behind us and I was cut off. Flying over us slowly was a small projectile. My sight stayed on it as it landed in the middle of the horde. Looking back up at the figure, they were signalling for us to move.

“Shit!” I screamed.

“Go, go! Now!” Frantic, everyone ran back towards the building the figure was on top of as the projectile exploded on the floor sending blood and flesh all over the street. That should’ve been the end of that interaction, however the explosion caused the bottom of the building closest to collapse. Debris falling and shooting out the sides towards us. Louder than anything I’ve ever heard, the smashing of glass and splitting of concrete echoed through the streets. Shards flew into my legs and a piece of the building shot towards me and collided with the side of my head.