Why oh why do
Birds fly south?
The freedom they have above all the chaos below,
They are liberated from the horror show
That humanity is now faced with.
“Undead… Holy shit!” Daniel whispered.
“What do you mean?” Cedric asked him.
“I mean they’re zombies,” Daniel replied. “For some reason, a zombie virus, like in the movies, has broken out, and now it’s the end of civilization.”
Cedric felt his heart drop and a sharp tightness in his chest took its place. Both boys were still covering Elena’s eyes and mouth until she eventually ripped their hands away from her face before telling them she couldn’t breathe. She was still bawling her eyes out as a little girl like her could never unsee what they’d just witnessed.
“I think we need to get out of town,” Daniel soon said as he began to crawl away from the window under which they were still crouched. “It doesn’t seem to be safe here anymore. If movies and TV have taught us anything about zombies, it’s that the urban areas will be compromised first and foremost,” he beckoned for the Vargas siblings to follow him into the kitchen, and they did, “Hurry, we need to gather some supplies for the road.” Daniel said.
They entered the kitchen quickly and began emptying the cupboards of various canned foods, a can opener, two first aid kits, a whole case of plastic water bottles, flashlights, and a few packs of AA, D, C batteries. Needing somewhere to put it all, Daniel suggested they relieve their backpacks of whatever schoolwork contents were inside, and they did just that by dumping every last textbook, notebook, and pencil case from their backpacks onto the kitchen floor and left it there because who needs to keep homework during the end of the world?
While Cedric was stuffing food cans and batteries into his bag, he soon looked up and noticed that Daniel had left the kitchen. Worried, he called out for his best friend who in turn replied that he was now upstairs in his parents’ bedroom.
Cedric grabbed his little sister’s hand and dragged her up the stairs to the open doorway of the bedroom and asked, somewhat annoyed, “What are you doing up here?”
“Just grabbin’ some guns and ammunition,” Daniel replied as he was loading a few pistols and rifles he had taken out of his father’s gun case that was in the bedroom, “Gonna need something to defend ourselves with.”
“And you think the answer is guns?” Elena asked. “Those things attacking everyone out there are already dead.”
“Well it’s better than nothing,” Daniel slugged a rifle’s strap over one shoulder and carried his backpack in one hand with boxes of bullets making up half the contents within. “Let’s just go!”
The three kids headed for the garage on the ground level of the house. Luckily, there was a door inside that led to the garage, so they could make it to Daniel’s mom’s Jeep safely – or so they thought. As soon as they entered the garage, they heard banging noises on the garage door as there were undead pounding on it from the outside. There was a row of windows on the garage door and Cedric only saw a few undead right outside, even though it sounded like there were many more. He then noticed a metal baseball bat propped up in one corner of the garage next to a shelf. Acting on instinct, he dropped his backpack, grabbed the bat, and told both Daniel and Elena to get inside the Jeep and wait until he said it was okay to open the garage door.
“Wait, dude, you’re not seriously thinking of fighting those things by yourself?” Daniel asked as he grabbed Cedric’s shoulder to stop him, “I know you know we saw how strong you are earlier, but there’s no telling what’ll happen out there. Plus, what if you get bitten? Don’t you know that the smallest zombie bite is how they increase their numbers?! You outta know, I mean, we all saw it happen like not even ten minutes ago!”
Cedric didn’t shout or look at all angry when he turned his head to face his friend and told him, “I don’t like it either, but I was trained for this very moment. Or have you forgotten that?” The deadly serious glare in his eyes said it all. It was intimidating enough that Daniel let go of Cedric’s shoulder and backed up with a nod and getting into the driver’s seat of the Jeep.
Cedric exited the garage out through the side door that led straight to the outside. He made sure to close the door behind him, and then he surveyed his surroundings as they were crawling with zombies. At least a hundred of them on this one street alone.
He quietly and carefully approached the front of the garage where the undead were still pounding on the big garage door, making indents in the metal with their fists and heads. Gripping the baseball bat in both hands, he made an ambush on these undead, running right up to the nearest one and swinging the bat sideways in a one hundred eighty degree motion at its head. It connected and hit so hard that when the zombie’s head crushed against the garage door its brains practically exploded and sprayed all over the door.
This caught the attention of the other undead nearby, mainly due to the sound of their buddy’s head getting smashed apart. They all looked in that direction, which also happened to be the same direction of Cedric. He too looked in their direction, and then he began bashing in the heads of the next undead that were right outside the garage door. Brains and blood dripped off of and eventually got dried up on the baseball bat, which also got dented in the process of all this.
After about three or four more undead heads got crushed, blood and brains coated Cedric’s face, hair, and clothes. The undead that were wandering on the street right up ahead began making their way towards Cedric. So many of them crowded toward all the noise, the commotion attracting them towards fresh meat. Cedric was about to charge right at them, which may be like a suicide mission, but then he stopped right in his tracks when he recognized one of the approaching zombies. He gasped and his eyes grew wide as they felt like he was about to cry.
Her brown hair that had been in a tight bun now loosely hung at her shoulder and strung around her face. Her usual office worker white skirt and pink dress shirt with blood splattered on it. Her left ankle was twisted as she had her high heel on it, while her right foot was bare. Her tongue stuck out of her wide open mouth, and her eyes had gone all white, dead, and rolled back up into her head. She stood out amongst the crowd, and then she even stepped out in front of the crowd as though she were challenging Cedric one-on-one. (She wasn’t though, since was now a mindless undead.)
“…Aunt Regan?” was all Cedric managed to say as she kept getting closer and closer to him, ready to attack him and eat him.
In that very moment, a memory buried deep in Cedric’s mind resurfaced from his childhood from when he was imprisoned by his own parents. He remembered their words:
“When you are engaged with the enemy, always go for the head…” his father said.
“If you strike the head and destroy it, they’ll stop moving…” his mother said.
In a burst of energy, just as the zombie Aunt Regan charged at her own nephew whom she rescued three months ago, Cedric gripped the handle around the bat again till his knuckled turned white and struck hard. He figured this was the best way to thank her for all she tried to do for him to experience a normal life, and so he slammed the bat down on her head and smashed it into the pavement.
For a few moments, there was nothing but silence. No birds chirped. No breeze in the trees. Even the undead stood still, staring off into space.
Then Cedric lifted his head to show he was indeed crying but he had no time to wallow or mourn. He gritted his teeth and strained his muscles in every part of his body, and he prepared to rush the crowd of at least fifty undead on his own as a means of revenge for his aunt.
But midway through, he heard the garage door of Daniel’s house being opened slowly behind him. He looked back and saw the dark blue Jeep pulling out of the garage and then the driveway, much to his concern. The Jeep’s tires screeched as it spun ninety degrees while in reverse so that the front passenger’s door faced Cedric, and then the vehicle stopped. Elena rolled down one of the back seat windows and yelled at her brother to get in. He chose to comply, deciding it wasn’t worth it.
He ran to the Jeep, opened the door and got in, and Daniel floored the gas pedal before Cedric could even close the door. “You’d better buckle up, it’s gonna be a real bumpy ride!” Daniel said to his best friend in the midst of this.
The undead chased after them like crazy, and there were just as many of them in front in their path ahead. Daniel swerved around as many of them as he possibly could, while occasionally driving over them like deer-sized roadkill or a massive pothole. Elena screamed at every turn. Cedric clawed his fingertips into the vinyl seat covers so deep that they made open marks like that of a cat’s claws.
Fear gripped the three kids during it all. “There’s too many of them blocking us!” Elena suddenly said, “We’ll never make it!”
“I got an idea,” Cedric said as he rolled down the passenger side window of the Jeep and stuck his upper body out of it while still gripping the baseball bat.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait… Cedric, what are you doing?!” Daniel asked as he swerved again and it nearly sent Cedric flying out of the Jeep from how he was positioned.
Cedric ignored the constant demands from his friend and sister to get back inside and not do anything stupid. He swung the baseball bat left and right at the undead in their path. Some zombies tried climbing on top of the Jeep, but Cedric bashed in their heads and swatted what was left of them off the Jeep.
The strength of the undead was superb, but so was Cedric’s, and he knew how to kill them (a second time). It was a struggle to clear a path in the position he was in. Soon, the baseball bat had gotten so dent and busted up that it started doing half the damage it was doing before. Once this happened, Cedric began to rely on his fists while still using the bat. At one point, he even twisted off the head of an undead with only his bare hands.
This lasted a good twenty minutes before the number of zombies started to dwindle as they got further away from the urban areas. By this time, Elena asked in a shouting voice, “Where are we even going?!”
“Anywhere but here,” Daniel replied, “My best bet would be in the rural place because there are less people so, yeah, fewer potential victims. Which I guess also means less chances to find other survivors, but still, we just gotta get away from this!”
And so they drove and drove and drove. Daniel put pedal to the metal, Cedric fought off those trying to get at them, and Elena cowered and sobbed in the backseat.
Eventually, Daniel found a street that didn’t have zombies on it so he took it, and it led them to an entrance on the freeway. Shockingly they found haphazardly parked vehicles that had been abandoned on this freeway as though the people had to get out quickly and there was too much traffic and chaos to stay in their cars. Daniel swerved around these cars until there was a clear path ahead of them and they kept driving forward.
The three kids drove the better part of the day in silence. Miraculously, they didn’t come across any other undead during this time. Through all the chaos, Elena had somehow managed to fall asleep in the backseat after crying so much, but Cedric and Daniel were still on edge, for obvious reasons. Cedric was still covered in blood and guts from the undead, and the whole inside of the Jeep reeked of death because of it. It was an utter mystery to Daniel as to how Elena could still sleep so soundly with this smell.
They had exited the city, then the surrounding towns, and soon they reached the countryside, all while heading west on the freeway. The farther they got from the center of the city, the less zombies there appeared to be. The air was tense, and they didn’t see any other vehicle for many kilometers. No one dared to make a sound lest they could attract any unwanted attention, and the only noise was from the Jeep’s engine.
“So, what do we do now?” Daniel finally asked as he kept both of his hands on the steering wheel and his eyes on the road ahead that was getting darker as it was already sunset, “Where are we supposed to go in all this?”
Cedric had actually been thinking for this whole time. He thought long and hard, having been contemplating whether or not it was the right move until he eventually saw no other way out, before answering. “I think I know where we need to go, as much as I don’t like it,” he clenched his fists on his lap as he said it. “It could be our only hope, though. We need to get to the maximum security prison.”
“You’re kidding right? We’re in an apocalypse. What could possibly be at a prison that can help us now?” Daniel warily asked.
Cedric took a deep breath in and out before saying, “A lot more than you’d think. Because we’re going to get help from the only other people I know who had been prepared for all this: my Mom and Dad.”
Daniel nearly slammed his foot on the brakes out of shock and surprise. “Whoa, dude, are you sure about that?” he asked, clearly expressing concern, “Aren’t they the same people who, you know, trapped you and did all those horrible things to you? You seriously want to go see them again?”
“Believe me, I don’t like it at all, but it may be our only hope at this point,” Cedric replied.
Daniel sighed heavily before saying, “If you say so. Which prison were they sent to again?”
“You’re not going to like this, but it’s the one on the outskirts of Toronto. Back the way we came,” Cedric said.
“Back towards the undead, huh? Great, just fuckin’ great,” Daniel said as he made a U-turn on the empty freeway. He didn’t like the idea, neither of them did, really, but they didn’t dispute it any further.
Why oh why do
Birds fly south?
To escape the pandemonium
That has taken the ground.
They are the only things left
That are truly free.
ns216.73.216.98da2
and then Add to home screen.