The rest of the night passed in a, glassy silence which was broken when I offered to wake Carly for her shift while Albus could take his rest. Carly was a sound sleeper I didn't think anything short of a gunshot next to her ear could wake her.
I went and shook her shoulder at which she gave a snort and woke up, she sat up straight and hit my head hard with hers, both of us fell down clutching our heads in pain, "Albus wants to take his turn on the bed so if you could come on guard duty, it would be a real help."
"Oh yeah, guard duty." She said ever so gracefully, I rolled my eyes and wondered how could she still be so disoriented this far along in a crisis. She immediately got up and put her tactical belt on which holstered her gun.
Albus walked past us with a slightly clenched jaw, Carly gave both of us a shifty look and wisely chose to not say anything about it, we were sitting on a cleaning cloth laid down by the door from where we could see if anyone, alive or dead, passes by our door, "So what was that between you two? Everything alright?" Carly asked in a slightly concerned tone.
"We just....we had an argument. Look it was nothing okay so please don't go looking into it."
"It didn't look like, 'just an argument,' but i am sure it will be fine."
The next two hours were spent in preparing and eating the MRE for breakfast, mine was spicy lamb rice. We started loading the stuff in the car, "Are you okay Liam? You look like you barely slept." Gran asked with concern.
"Yeah I plan to dose off in the car." I said to gran hoping that she would buy my little lie. She just gave a stiff nod. Carly hopped in the front seat with Carly riding shotgun, with the amount of tiredness I was carrying I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the seat.
I was woken up what I could make out was around three pm. Gran, Albus and Carly all were screaming their lungs out, all three shouting instructions to each other, their voices were too frantic and seemingly small to make out in the sheer panic of the atmosphere.
The car jerked violently towards the right and we crashed into a the side of a building, the airbags inflated and my head hit a giant inflatable when they deflated I shouted, "We gotta move, let's go!"
All of us carried out backpacks and whatever we could carry and left the car in a hurry. We stuck and ran on a pathway along the side of a building, I was worried about gran and wether she would be able to keep up with us, but she managed to keep a matching pace. We ran and Carly shouted, between gasps, "Follow me I know a place we could camp out at!"
She took a left and we arrived at a suburban area she walked into a random House and shouted, "Barricade the windows, quick!" I was still in shock from the whole ordeal of crashing a car and running from, wait a second were we running from? She shouted the orders and ran into the kitchen.
Albus and I barricaded the windows and put torn sheets as blinders on them, while gran reinforced the door. Carly came back out, "I have taken care of the back door," she said, "What about upstairs?" Albus looked at me we had forgotten about the windows upstairs!
We ran up the stairs with Carly and gran hot on our tail, we managed to cover one of the rooms, but as we opened the door to the second one, a skin crawling sight greeted us, there was a corpse hung to the over head fan, there was blood all around with a putrid, decomposing smell hanging in the air.
It's face was too jaundiced and mostly gone to extract any scraps of recognition from, I stared at the hanging corpse, shocked, I saw that it's arms were covered with bites and frozen brown blood."Maybe we should skip this one." I said already backing away from the body. We heard a loud splitting scream from down stairs, we all left the room in a state of shock and horror, but this was not a time to battle emotions, I sit them down and forced everyone Into the barricaded room.
"What happened when we left the building, what exactly happened?" I asked in the bare minimum voice I could muster.
"There was already a horde growing behind us, these all were the ones who could tolerate sun, it's either that or because of the lack of food they have started to come out into the sun." Carly stated as the hanging and screeching sounds downstairs increased.
"The few zombies grew into a giant horde and I could not shake them off whatever I tried. I could not even go fast there were too many obstructions, I'm so sorry," she said with a dry sob.
"Hey look it's not your fault we are going to be fine, we will find a way to get out of this!" Albus said, but the look he gave me said clearly that he also did not believe his own words entirely.
"I looked to my right for a sec and there, from the left a single zed came and to avoid it I took a hard right which crashed the car. The horde still followed us till here the first ones have arrived, more will be arriving." She said in a trembling voice.
There was no way we were going to survive this one Albus and I put our heads together to discuss a battle plan. We both agreed that staying in this room would be best as the dead body next doors would attract some attention. The sound of banging, growling and squealing grew louder by the second.
The house wouldn't hold for much longer. We lifted the sheets off of the windows for a second and saw an enormous horde at least a hundred in there and rising.
That was the moment when we heard the windows downstairs break with a mighty crash. Albus drew his spear, Carly removed her gun and pointed it at the door, gran kept a gun one hand and a twelve inch knife in the other, I withdrew my hunting blade from its sheath and held it in my hand ready for combat.
The worst part of it was that it was getting dark, more zeds would be emerging as we stood there weapons drawn, eyes locked on the door, hearts braced for what could be, our last stand.