Dead In The Street/Chapter 2

Crazy Plains
Jonas

There was tenseness in the air and Jonas could feel it. The crazies were soon to come out and if he wanted to live he had to think of something quick. He knew the heavy camera wouldn’t do much good, but that gun Daniel carried would help, and so could the sawed off Mossberg he kept in the back of the driver’s seat.

“Alright y’all listen”, he said. “Let’s get to the van and get out of here. I keep a shotty behind the seat.”

“My house isn’t far from here”, Wilson chimed in. “I live in Little Haiti, which is only like 10 minutes away. We could go and get more guns there”.

“Sounds like a plan”

The four men got back to back and started moving quickly to their destination. Every second counted as they knew infected were on their way to attack them at any moment. Jonas picked up a metal pipe and led the way. A loud metal groan was heard from the left as an infected lifted his head from behind a turned over vehicle. He was a SWAT officer apparently; a man who could have helped protect them in the past, but he was now too mindless to express anything other than hunger for raw meat. It attempted to chase them, but Daniel popped one right between its eyes, and it fell dead. Wilson and his eagle vision noticed it had a pistol tucked in a leg strap and ran over to grab it. Just then a dozen more infected appeared out of buildings and alleyways like an organized mob.

“Wilson, come on!” Daniel shouted

He ran over as they all piled into the van. Jonas started it and sped off just as Wilson jumped into the front seat. The infected numbers had now swelled, there were more than 50 chasing after the moving vehicle, leaving behind a cloud of dust as they stumped the pavement as fast as they could to try and feed. Jonas had no qualms about running them over. One infected hung on to the front door and tried chomping at the driver’s neck. “MEAT! MEAT!” the infected screamed repeatedly.

“J, move your head back!”, Wilson instructed him. With only one shot he was able to put the infected down. Not a scream or sign of protest was seen; it just dropped and rolled off, leaving nothing but smeared blood over the rearview mirror.

Jonas used his knowledge of the City to cut corners and maneuver through alleyways. They soon reached Wilson’s neighborhood, where they noticed that they were lucky. Only a few infected were mindlessly roaming the street there. Jonas ran over two of them with full force, producing a deafening sound of limbs being crushed. Then he jumped out, grabbed his sawed off shotgun and blew the head off of a third one. The result was a sickening but an almost artistic display of destruction and murder. The rest of the guys walked out of the van for the end of what couldn’t be compared to any rollercoaster rides. Wilson led them into the house to clear it off of weapons, food and supplies.

Jonas was supposed to keep an eye out on the door, but given how anxious he was about being able to choose his own gun, he asked for Jerome to replace him. He headed to the back of the house where Wilson kept his artillery in a hidden closet. The man was a hoarder, but the type that made Jonas smile. His face lit bright as he took hold of a silver dessert eagle that was lying on the small coffee table. He found it even more marvelous when finally blessed with the sight of the open closet. There stood a collection of machine guns, from RPG’s, AK 47’s, an M16, and even a thumper which delighted him.

“We can blow the head off these motherfuckers with that!” Wilson laughed and furthered the conversation with comments on which ones he liked most.

“How come you never told me you had that many guns, Wil?”

“Let’s just say words of that hitting the streets wasn’t gonna further my career as an anchor. They’d just see me as another angry black man”

“Yeah, I feel you. But you know I’m not the type to talk, man.”

Jerome finally broke his silence to express his concerns to the lot. He interrupted the small talk between the two, but it was for their own good.

“I think we should get going before the sun sets”

“What are you doing? Did you leave the door unguarded?”

“No, Daniel finished gathering the food; I made him take my spot.”

“How come you wanna leave so early?” Wilson asked.

“Driving in the dark is not a good idea. Our headlights will just lead the infected to us”

Jerome 

The three agreed to get going before it got dark, and exit a city exemplifying a real version of hell on earth. Jonas led the way, bravely carrying his new thumper and his new ammunitions, while Daniel and Jerome took care of the goods. Wilson followed after everything was loaded into the van. Jerome found it silly how obsessed Jonas was with guns. He knew it was a necessity at this point and wasn’t going to oppose it, but he also knew that they were servants to our emotions, as much as they can protect, and that wasn’t always a good thing. He was going to keep this to himself though, just like many other thoughts.

“We should gas up and start looking for a place”, Jerome told the group.

“…Why a place?” Daniel asked.

“Because we can’t just stay driving on the road forever, we need to find a spot, a safe house where we can hold up until this thing blows over”

“And what if it doesn’t” Wilson asked him.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there”

They piled in the van and headed on the highway going north on I-95. A once busy freeway full of cars and passengers was now an empty roadway. ______________________________________________vVv____________________________________________

They got off the highway on Hollywood Blvd and headed towards a local gas station where they hoped to stock on supplies. Jerome kept a keen lookout for any warehouse or storage area they could call home, at least for the time being. When he got his eyes back on the road he noticed they were speeding up and the woman crossing the street didn’t see it coming.

“Slow down! It’s not an infected! It’s not an infected!” That was a scream of warning from Jerome to Jonas. He sped up just as he saw a girl slowly crossing the street two blocks down, but he still managed to hit the brakes in time. The van came to stop just inches away from her.

“Are you fucking crazy!” she yelled while punching the driver’s door.

“I’m sorry, I thought you were one of them” he said with the window down.” Do you need help?”

“I don’t need your help” she responded.” The boys, Wilson and Daniel laughed in unison at her reaction.

“Oh oh oh! She’s feisty” said Jerome, but still disturbed that Jonas would try to crush anything that moves. He started the engine again, and slowly drove away. Jerome could see his eyes following her in his rearview mirror, he wasn’t going to judge, even he caught a glance of her cute face as they drove pass.

A few seconds later they heard a loud scream. Although it wasn’t clear, they were all sure it wasn’t an infected. It had to be someone frightful of becoming dinner. All four of them looked back at the same time “The girl!” said David in a high voice.

“I know. She aint asking for help, she just said she didn’t need any” retorted the gun loving driver.

“Oh come on man, let’s help her, J. We can’t just leave someone to get killed on the road” Wilson encouraged, while looking back for a nod of approval from Jerome.

Jonas jumped out of his seat, holding on to his machine gun and the desert Eagle by his side. David got out as his back up just in case. The girl’s leg was being pulled by a paralyzed infected. He fell off of his wheel chair and held on tight to the desired meat. She was doing her best to beat its face off with a stick, but it would have been a losing battle if Jonas didn’t come along. He kneeled, stuck the gun in the infected’s mouth and pulled the trigger, bullet and brain matter making their way out of the large exit wound. Blood sprinkled over their clothes, but it was better than being eaten alive. They both looked at the back of its skull with disgust. It was empty. What an air head.

“So are you gonna come with us or stay here and get killed?”

Natalia

She was always independent and feisty. Her soft, chocolate beauty almost contradicted her fiery attitude. Her parents and little brother were some of the first to fall to Pale Fever. When she heard that people who were infected were going crazy, murdering and feasting on the flesh of the uninfected, she had to put them down herself or also fall victim to the their psychosis. When reports of worldwide panic started to flood in, she knew her only chance of survival was to think strategically.

She left the home she grew up in and went searching for a new safe haven. Her neighborhood wouldn’t be safe anymore. She traveled through the alleyways avoiding the mobs of infected in the street. She saw them all as they pulled rods apart and fashioned crude weapons. Some were still consuming the corpse of their victims, while others just wondered the streets aimlessly. She sneaked around a few corridors with the goal of reaching a main street, and getting out of the infected populated neighborhood. When she finally reached one, she saw a van speeding towards her full speed until it finally stopped short.

“Are you fucking crazy?” she yelled at the driver.

“Sorry I thought you were one of them” he responded with a goofy grin on his handsome face. Ugh. It’s always the assholes that are cute, she thought to herself. “You need any help?” he continued. She wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction. She can make it on her own.

“I don’t need YOU help” she shot back. She heard his friend say something about her being feisty and two other guys laughing. Huh, four niggas in a van driving around in an area full of infected? Must be looking for some gullible bitches to fuck, she postulated. She wasn’t about to be another victim. She stormed off, not realizing that an infected was waiting for an opportunity to attack. Out of her left she was tackled. She was able to kick it off but it grabbed her leg and was ready to chomp on it. She kicked and couldn’t help but scream as she saw her life flash before her eyes. She grabbed a stick and aimed for its face with severe blows, but that wasn’t stopping the infected.

That’s when she saw a gun enter into its mouth, and saw its brains splatter all over the pavement. She looked up and recognized that it was the asshole from before. “So you gonna come with us or stay here and get killed?”

Her options were few and she knew she had to survive. “I think I know a place to go, the university. They should have food, water, and probably medicine.” He helped her on her feet.

“Well good. Let’s get moving because that gunshot is probably gonna bring more of them here.”

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She rode in the back of the van while Daniel patched up her leg.

“It looks like you just have a sprain. That infected squeezed pretty tight on your right leg, but you’ll be ok” he told her. She thanked him, but didn’t trust him. She didn’t for any of them. She couldn’t. This was a new world, with new rules and anything goes. All she wanted was to ride with them to the university to make sure her friend Francis was ok, nothing more. She carried a small .280 near her ankle. It made her feel good that she could at least blow their brains out if they tried anything.

Daniel was nice, but seemed to have hidden motives. Jerome and Wilson were quiet. And then there was Jonas, the asshole who almost hit her. This was going to be an interesting ride. And if things get too interesting, she still had a little friend wrapped around her left ankle that Daniel didn’t seem to notice.