| He was not, however, prepared for what he saw when they left the house. The burst quarantine at St. Matthias’ had caught up to them with the setting sun. Now it seemed all the victims of the disease were loose and heading for the city limits. Davis hung his head and Jaina swore. Within sight were at least a dozen of the infected, ambling up the road toward them. “We’re still ahead of them,” Davis said, “let’s get moving.” The zombies were slow and generally stupid. Davis and Jaina could evade them, but it took time, and more zombies were showing up in the streets every minute. So far they had been able to avoid another confrontation, but it was only a matter of time. They were two miles from a junction with the interstate when they took a wrong turn. Neither of them noticed the Dead End sign and they found themselves on a terminating road. Considering it a rather simple problem to correct they turned around to return to the main road and found to their great horror that the entrance to the street was now blocked by at least seven zombies, and more of the infected could been seen in the shadows. The zombies had been so slow and reacted so little to Davis and Jaina’s presence that they never could have expected the zombies were following them the whole way. They were so unresponsive, so dead to the world that it never occurred to the travelers that they were being tailed, slow and steady, and were now, through the sheer inhuman perseverance of the diseased trapped. Pushing Jaina behind him, Davis opened fire. He had been lucky, earlier in the day, when he shot the zombie outside of Radio Shack. That had only taken one round; each of the zombies he faced now was taking repeated shots before falling. And this time, the others did not turn away. Slowly, one step at a time, while Davis and Jaina backed up, they approached disregarding the shots fired in their direction. Davis was rapidly running out of rounds and the zombies were getting close, so he made a split second decision to run for it. However, just as he was getting ready to grab Jaina and go, he again realized he had forgotten to watch his back as he felt his arm grabbed and twisted behind him. His forward momentum caused Davis to fall to the ground but he was quickly dragged back up by the arm. Once again Davis was accosted with the rotting flesh and horrid stink of the zombies and was now having his shoulder being wrenched from its socket. There was no knife to reach for this time, but Jaina could still save herself. “Go!” he cried, “Jaina get out of here!” For a moment it looked like she was taking his advice. Jaina dashed behind Davis, away from the approaching zombies. Then, through the pain in his shoulder he felt the zombie holding him lurch forward. It stumbled and released its grip. Davis turned to see Jaina holding the kitchen knife. “Thanks,” he said, then grabbed the gun and ran, Jaina behind him. Back on the road to the interstate they were going as fast as they could maintain. They no longer had a lead on the zombies and were relying only on speed to avoid them. Then, out of nowhere they saw headlights, and heard the sound of approaching engines. And then came the gunfire. It was an Army cleanup crew, five Jeeps with spotlights and gunners were opening fire on the zombies in the streets. Davis and Jaina dashed to the side of the road, standing in a doorway, they watched the show. The soldiers were mowing down the zombies, but there were just so many that they couldn’t be stopped from reaching the Jeep envoy. |