*Gillian POV*
All three of us split up, but the monster began its pursuit after me. I look behind me, just to see it running.
Slowly but surely it is catching up to me.
Panicking internally ever so slightly, I speed up my run, but I fail to run any faster due to the heeled boots I have on me now.
"I'm a fucking idiot for wearing these..." I tell myself.
Not long passes before gunshots filled the tense and smokey air. Looking to my left, I see Frank with a gun shooting the monster.
A few more shots are emitted from his gun, each ending with a painful moan from behind me.
Briefly turning around, I see the monster holding onto its chest, blood is leaking down its stomach.
Seeing it's too busy looking at its wounds, I quickly hide behind a car to give myself a breather. Peering from the car, I see the monster look around before it began walking elsewhere.
Not too long passes before Frank joins my company.
"Are you okay?" he whispers, also trying to take hold and control his unstable breathing.
I nod, but then it hit me...
"Where is Alex?" I ask. Immediately, I notice how Frank's face paled ever so slightly.
Just as we were about to do something, the reeving of a jeep engine confused us. I got up onto my feet and got a perfect view of the bulky car with its headlight on as it stood right in front of the big, bleeding monster.
Tire screeches were heard seconds later as the vehicle changed for the monster. Milliseconds after the car took off, I see a person jump out of the car right before a loud crash echoed throughout the whole garage.
Suddenly, another quake hit the underground parking lot as more and more debris found its way down from the ceiling to the ground. I see new crack form as the lights began to blink ever so slightly, seconds pass before everything stops. The lights stop flickering and the quake goes away. But something is telling me that this peace won't last for long...
"Frank??...". A shout from the man that just jumped out of the car caught my attention.
I see Frank laugh before he approaches the man that is dressed in police overall.
"Well if it isn't the man himself, James," Frank begins, but just as they were about to greet, a loud explosion rocked the garage, causing even more debris to fall to the ground. It wasn't before the sound of crackles were heard and new cracks began to form that we began to worry. The structure is beginning to show signs that began to collapse.
"Come on, let's go! Amy's waiting in the jeep..." the man by the name of James replies, leading us towards the vehicle he was talking about.
We are centimetres away when the jeep powers up to life.
Hopping in, we are greeted by Alex already inside, with another woman sitting by the wheel of the car. She must be Amy then...
"Are we all in?" I hear Amy say.
With a glance, James shakes his head. Suddenly my eyes were caught by the fiery vehicle moving before a hand of the monster peaked by the door.
Before I could see anything else, the wheels screech and we take off.
"Hold on, guys," I see Amy look back before backing and hitting a brittle-looking pillar. Immediately, she rushed towards the exit as the big pillar now no longer can hold the weight of the structure.
Turning back, I see how more and more debris falls to the ground, the lights begin flickering as more and more cracks appear on the ceiling. This all happened right before I saw the garage began falling in on itself.
A plumb began to rush after us, getting closer and closer. But before we were engulfed by the plumb, we manage to rush out and onto a dirt road.
RAIN.
Skidding left and right, it only takes us seconds before the vehicle manages to settle.
I once again look back and see the plumb of dust rise before a huge explosion erupted from underground.
A black, thick column of smoke rises towards the clouds before the debris began to rain down around us.
From here, it will take us 20 minutes until we reach my house.
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"Where is it?" Amy asks.
"After this house is my home," I reply, pointing at through the windshield at a house that looks no different to any other house around my whole estate.
"Alright...". With her saying that she pulls up into the driveway. Powering off the engine, we all hop out of the vehicle.
Just when we thought that was it for tonight, ominous growls filled the air around us.
"What the fuck..." Alex mutters.
Though we are out in the rain, I don't think any of us comprehend our clothes slowly but surely becoming drenched.
It was not long before a small herd of zombies walked into view. They slowly dragged their way towards us. Behind them, another, slightly bigger herd, showed up. They were all facing us.
"Wait for me here..." Amy said and quickly walked to the trunk of the jeep we came in. She pulls out two large suitcases before quickly walking back towards us.
On that note, I turn towards Alex just to see the bag with all of our information on her back.
"We need to put that somewhere safe..." I say. "It has a lot of things that are not worth losing," I add.
"I know..." she replies. "... But where is 'safe'? What is 'safe' right now? I mean... your house, yes, but not for long..." she adds to which I nod. She's right.
Then we were interrupted by Amy as she handed both Alex and I a gun.
"A gun?" I mutter under my breath. I have held a pistol, many times, but a gun like this...
Then Frank comes around to me. "Remember what we said..." he began before frightening with the sudden aim of one of the zombies in front of us.
"No regret, just shoot..." he whispered as he brought his gun up to an aim, then the sound of gunshots rocked the air.
He shot a couple of shots, all of his bullets hitting the zombie and then... its head explodes, blood spraying everywhere. The headless creature showed a sign of life for a second more before collapsing onto its knees and falls to the ground.
A loud yell was heard, one of the zombies began to run towards us, a few more followed behind it.
"Shoot. Shoot them now!" Frank yelled. Not even a second passes before gunshots, once again, filled the air.
Then Frank once again got to my eye level. "Okay, as scary as this may seem, I need to see you shoot down a few of these motherfuckers. Do you hear me?". His choice of words surprises me, to say the least.
I look at him, into his eyes. I see the concern.
'Gillian, this is no time for gazing!' I shout at myself.
Diverting my eyes from James, I look at the herd of zombies, but see that only three are left standing, within seconds, even the last three are killed.
"Is that it? Is it over?..." Alex asks.
"I'm not sure..." I reply.
"Nothing is over, not just yet..." Amy says as she takes a couple of steps in front of us. James and Frank follow behind her.
"I think we better head inside before some more come," Frank suggests.
"Yeah..." I hear James agree.
"Alright..." Amy says a couple of seconds later. "Show us the way," she adds, looking at me.
I look at them before nodding. "Whatever happens, run as fast as your legs can carry you... I don't know what is on the other side of this door..." I say.
Quickly, I open the door before running up the stairs. Milliseconds pass before I hear other running behind me.
Quickly, I grab the ladders before forcing them up the trap door.
Managing to get the ladders through, I quickly climb up the ladders before opening the trap door fully.
From there, Alex, Frank, James and Amy climb up and into the attic.
"There was nothing downstairs..." Amy begins.
"We were in luck... this time..." I reply.
"Okay, why don't we use this time to look over what everything we have collected?..." Frank suggests.
"Sure..." James replies.
With that, we get all the papers out of the backpack and place them all on the ground. From there, we begin looking.
I come across diary entries, letters from the company in which my father worked in, asking if they would want to buy their new product. I also come across some irrelevant pages of paper.
It wasn't before I heard my name being called out that I stopped doing what I was at and moved towards the voice that called my name out. I go towards Frank.
I see him holding up a large piece of paper, like a poster.
"You'd want to see this..." he says as he continues looking at the big page, and when I reach him, he lays it down onto the floor.
I kneel down beside him as I start to scan the page. Within seconds, I acknowledge that it's a map. And after that, it flowed almost naturally into my head, it's the map of the... laboratory.
"That the map of the laboratory, alright..." I say under my breath, surprised how Frank managed to find this.
"Mh-hmm..." he hums in agreement. Then I see him point to a corner, "Why are those numbers there?..." He asks. "A potential date?".
"Maybe..." I reply, looking at the handwritten numbers.
20-06-16.
It looks like a date to me. But it couldn't be. 20th of June, 2016? Three years ago??
With this whole event happening at the beginning of April of the year 2014, I don't see a reason why 2016 would be a topic of discussion.
So with that, I take the whole page into my hands and turn it around, I scan the back. Nothing. I move back to the front face of the page and scan the map, but this time, I look closely.
And the more I look at the map, the more of a strange feeling I get. Something feels off about the map.
I give it another look, by eyes heading towards the bottom of the drawing. Suddenly, I stumble upon something... A square. Beside it, I see the word 'elevator'. From what I can remember when I was in the laboratory, there was no elevator, there never was an elevator. Father and I used to move up to the ground floor and down to the lab via stairs.
Holding that thought, stairs, I trace my finger to the location in the map... there they are, the stairs.
And then, on one of the corners, I stumble across words that make my eyes pop out of their sockets.
Date of printing - June, 2016.
"What did you find?" Frank asks.
"Tell me..." I begin. "From when do you think this map is from?" I ask.
He begins to gently shake his head as his eyes widen, he is searching for an answer.
"Pre-apocalypse, I'd say..." he replies.
"That's what I thought too... but look..." I tell him, pointing towards the writing I saw.
"June, 2016?..." he says, tracing his finger over the writing, right before moving to the written date. "20th of June, 2016...".
He looks up at me with a raised brow.
"But how could that be?... Didn't the facility explode in that catastrophe??... With the main building, the lab must have been destroyed too, right?".
I look at him.
"Did they refurnish the lab?..." he asks.
At first, I shake my head. "No, it is not possible. With all of the high tech equipment... I really doubt it. It would have taken more than two years for them to rebuild and restore everything that was in the lab," I reply.
Then quiet descends upon us. The only audible sound is the murmurs from the rest of the group.
"What is your take on this whole thing?..." Frank asks, breaking the silence between us.
"I think that... or I am now beginning to think that, the explosion was set up..." I say, keeping my eyes on the map. "Because that way, whoever was in that lab, they could then have shifted everyone's attention away from the lab..." I add.
This may have been simple to find out, but it sure as hell took me a while to get here, to find this out.
"Wait, wait... what are you trying to say??" he asks.
"By looking at all the things on the map, I think the laboratory was never destroyed by the explosion. It was unharmed by the explosion that happened a couple of years back. A year after this whole nightmare happened...".