These were not the zombies he had seen before, the ones that had come en masse after the living. Those zombies had been dedicated, focused on a single goal. These zombies seemed more like what Gabriel expected to see: the typical movie zombie that just roamed around blindly with no specific direction in mind, barely managing a snail’s pace, and only scary because of their disturbingly vast numbers. As long as they stayed like this, he should be able to slip past them with relative ease. If they were to regain their earlier focus he could be in serious trouble.Whatever the case, he decided he would have a better chance of getting away and surviving almost anywhere than he would by getting trapped in the gas station. So with that thought in mind, he made a dash for the nearest alleyway. The gas station sat in the center of a large, empty area, and crossing that area left Gabriel very exposed. He tried not to think of this – or of how loud the echoing of his footsteps rang in his ears
Almost immediately the door stopped, and Gabriel nearly collapsed against it. His eyes wide with sudden terror, Gabriel pushed against the door again, and again it refused to yield. Through the slim crack he could just barely make out the shape of some object barred across the door, lying on the floor. It must have fallen at some point, unintentionally providing a lock for the door. Daring a quick glance over his shoulder, he noticed that several of the creatures had begun to make their way toward him. There was no more time to waste. With renewed determination, Gabriel shoved his whole body at the door, shoulder first. The door moved a little, but quickly swung back to almost closed. He charged it again and again, each time the door yielded a little more. The nearest zombie reached for him, almost touching his shoulder.“Screw off!” shouted Gabriel , swinging his bag full of water and catching the zombie straight in the face. It crashed into one of his buddies, and as the two fell
Zombies continued closing in on him as he pulled himself up. At the top of the fence, two bars ran parallel across the length of the fence. Once he had pulled himself up high enough, Gabriel jammed one foot into this gap, and then used that leverage to swing his other foot up and over the fence to hook it into another such gap from the other side of the fence.Right then, one of the zombies reached up and grabbed his foot that was still outside. Gabriel yelped and tried to jump, but both of his feet were stuck. He twisted and lost his balance, which nearly sent him tumbling back down into the mass of zombies. He kicked his foot around until he managed to free it from the bars in the gate. The zombie, however, proved to be significantly less cooperative. The creature held on tight to his shoe and refused to let go. Gabriel kept kicking, and between the zombie’s pulling and Gabriel ’s thrashing about, the shoe suddenly came right off and Gabriel ’s foot slipped free.The sudden lack
Someone, at some point, had clearly driven into the gates in an attempt to bust them open. Most likely they had been trying to get away from a group of zombies that even then were gathered around the empty vehicle, wandering aimlessly. Or that person could have been attempting to get away from the group that was currently following him. In fact, the two groups could have been one group at some point, but some had made it through the gates, while others had simply continued to mill about outside.Standing there, letting himself catch his breath he suddenly got an idea. The mausoleum, the one he had found the zombies at, was all the way across the graveyard from his current position. If he ran fast enough, the zombies would probably lose track of him. Then he could slip inside the crypt, close the door, and try and wait them out.The thought of spending the better part of the day inside of a crypt during a zombie apocalypse didn’t exactly fill him with enthusiasm, but as every other dir
Again she held the hammer up and this time Gabriel took it, though somewhat hesitantly. “Are you… sure?”“Yes,” she responded, matter-of-factly.Gabriel twirled the hammer in his hand, still uncertain. “I, I don’t know…”“Please, Gabriel . I don’t want to be one of those creatures. I just want it to end. I don’t think I have long. I can feel the disease eating away at me. My fever is growing. Just, please, stick around a little while and then… then end it.”Gabriel nodded. “’Kay…” he squeaked, barely able to get the word out.“Thank you,” Sara said, and rGabriel ef seemed to sweep over her. She closed her eyes and turned her head away from him.Gabriel returned to his spot by the door and waited.After a time, he realized he had drifted off to sleep again. He seemed to be doing that every time he sat still for more than a few moments. These past few days had to have been the most exhausting of his entire life, and no doubt that was taking its toll on his body.He looked over to Sa
Despite his difficulty, he was able to break through the zombie mass and he burst out into the street. By now, sweat was pouring down his face and his heart was pounding away inside his chest. His breath was heavy and labored as his chest struggled against the weight of the bag’s strap. He grabbed a part of his shirt and tried to wipe the sweat out of his eyes, but it was of little use as the shirt itself was already soaking wet. Gabriel tossed away the mostly useless pool cue and pulled the bag off his shoulder. He reached inside for the next available item.He pulled forth a frying pan.Frowning, Gabriel almost simply tossed this item away as well, but taking a quick look around at the approaching hordes of zombies he decided he did not have the time or luxury of second guessing. Besides, he told himself as he hoisted the bag back up over his shoulder, he had also doubted the crowbar before finding it surprisingly useful.The frying pan quickly proved its worth. While the light, s
Here they had been relatively stopped in their progress. Between leaving the apartment complex and arriving in this town, they had run into relatively few zombies. Mostly they found themselves dealing with the occasional straggler, but never large groups like they had seen at the apartment complex. Not until they got to the town.At that point they were forced into a dilemma. They needed food and ammunition to keep going, and maybe a map if they could find one, and the town was their first chance for such a resupply that they had come across in a while. However, the high volume of zombies in the town had certainly made the prospect of going in seem more like suicide than salvation. After watching the town for only a little while, though, they noticed that the zombies seemed to be generally moving in one direction: north. So they decided that if they mostly kept behind the zombies, moving quickly and quietly, drawing as little attention to themselves as they could, then they might just
He did not have much success.Bright morning sunlight fell over the prone form, coaxing it back into the waking world. The figure, Gabriel , stirred and, with great resentment, opened his eyes.His entire body hurt. His head hurt, his throat hurt, his back hurt. His hands felt a little like they were on fire. He tried to wiggle his toes and immediately winced. Even his toes hurt. With immense effort he rolled over, and to his surprise found himself on the floor. He pushed himself up and glanced around. For a moment his heart seemed to stop. He did not recognize his surroundings in the slightest. He was in a small, square room. About halfway up all four of the walls they turned into windows that stretched to the ceiling. On one wall there was a door, and on the wall opposite there was a console with various monitors and switches and other controls. There were two chairs below the console.On the floor was a mattress – the one he must have slept on – and it was tied up in a thick rope.
At the end of the line Gabriel found another big building, which he knew the moment he stepped inside had to be a barracks. It was like a much larger version of the living quarters at the compound they had found in Texas. Just four long lines of beds stretching across the length of the room, with no care shown for privacy or individuality. All part of the process of breaking the spirit.“Newbie.”Gabriel turned toward the sound of the voice, to see someone, a prisoner, not a guard, judging from his clothes, staring at him. The stranger pointed toward the far wall and said, “You’ll want to see the manager. Hurry up.”Following with his eyes to where the man was pointing, Gabriel could see a window set into the wall, and realized there was probably some kind of office over there. He nodded a quick thanks to the man, only to discover he had already walked away, and then headed down the lines of beds toward the office.The door to the small room was open, and inside he found a woman se
“Uh… no,” replied Gabriel , noting strong hints of what seemed like a British accent in the creatures voice. “It’s an old term for a creature that slowly spreads through a village like a plague.”“Ah, such as the Vourdalak.”Gabriel blinked in surprise at this comment, stunned into silence.“Yes, well,” the creature continued, “it has long been the modus operandi of your kind to blame others for your own wrong doings. Judging from the state of things, I would say you plagued yourselves plenty well enough on your own without any help from me or mine. No doubt you still think yourself clever for the snide comment, however.”Gabriel had felt clever for the remark, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to admit that now.The vampire placed his cane on the ground and leaned on it with both hands, bending down to stare at Gabriel from a smaller distance.“Where are your others?” he asked.Gabriel ’s eyes widened, but he just shook his head. “What others?”“Don’t lie to me. We returned to the
“Turn out all your pockets, then,” said the big man. Gabriel did as he was told, or at least as well as he could seeing as most of the pockets in his cargo pants weren’t really designed for being turned out.When the others were satisfied he wasn’t carrying anything, the man tipped his head up to indicate Gabriel should move through the turnstile.Once through, the first figure motioned for him to stand on a line taped to the floor. She was holding one of the devices from the table in her right hand, a weird thing that looked a little like an electric razor only with a sharp point at the end instead of round blades. Once he was in place she said, “Roll up your sleeve and place your left arm on the table.”“What?” he asked stupidly. “Left sleeve. Arm. Table,” she answered, pointing at each thing in turn as she said it.Gabriel stared at the device in her hands but otherwise did not move. “What are you going to do with that?” he asked.Hands grabbed him from behind, pulling at his
“Hey, what’s the big idea?” Gabriel asked, annoyed. He blinked rapidly, clearing away more of the blurriness, until he could see that this wasn’t Joe and the others. He was surrounded by zombies. Gabriel let out a yelp and fell backwards, only to be shoved again from that side. This time the shove balanced him onto his feet, and he turned around to find that there were more zombies back in that direction, cutting off his path to the inside of the hospital. He turned toward the parking lot, only to see zombies had moved into position there, as well. He continued circling and found that he was surrounded on all sides by the undead. They had trapped him in, with nowhere to run. He felt like crying. He felt like panicking. But neither would help him then. So he closed his eyes, tucked his chin into his shoulder, and waited for the end. But nothing happened. Gabriel could hear some shuffling of feet, some of the eerie, inhuman moans that seemed to be an involuntary sound that the
Gabriel was fairly confident he couldn’t be seen from his position, since the doctor hadn’t noticed him yet. But undoubtedly the doctor was finally taking note of the rearranged equipment in the room. The beds moved out of place, the random cart just visible over the top of the halfway wall. At first glance it all might have looked normal enough, but the closer scrutiny he gave it as he stood there talking was enough to finally make him realize the difference. Bennet stopped talking and began walking, straight down the hallway toward the room. He moved cautiously, as though expecting at any moment to step on a landmine, but he continued on regardless. He reached the door, opening it with the same level of caution, peering around one last time before finally stepping into the room. After a moment he stumbled, one leg catching on a strip of cloth that tore away. A shelf of equipment came crashing down, slamming the door shut and barring across it as various items smashed against the
Horror movies told him that he should be looking at somebody horribly deformed, or wearing the skin of another person, or with a head full of small, scary spikes. Something. This guy could have been his doctor in the days before and Gabriel would’ve thought nothing of it. This man could’ve walked up to the gates of Joe’s little bunker community and they would’ve let him in and never thought twice about it. It was terrifying to contemplate. “Hello?” the man called, and just the sound of that simple word, muted and muffled as it was coming through the wall, turned Gabriel ’s blood to ice.The stranger started to turn away from the room, but then something made him stop and turn back.“Are you there?” the man continued calling out as he surveyed the room through the window with what looked like, at least in Gabriel ’s opinion, a sadistic grin. “That wasn’t what it looked like. I was trying to help that man.”Yeah, real convincing, thought Gabriel , but he remained silent as he crawled
He considered his options, favoring the one that said he could just wait there for the others to show up. But he didn’t know how long that would be and there was some good he could do inside the building while there.So taking a deep, steadying breath he pushed his way through the nearest doorway and headed deeper into the hospital.The hallways were dark, which was expected, but that expectation didn’t stop them from being especially eerie. Somehow, here and there, some emergency lights still clung desperately to life, flickering on and off at random times, throwing long, twisted shadows where they could span across the walls and floors, and leap out from around corners. The daylight provided sufficient illumination to counteract the lack of interior lighting, but as all the windows on the ground floor seemed to be either heavily tinted or located where the light bounced first off of walls before entering the rooms, the bluish glow it created only added to the ominous mood of the hos
“Gabriel !”Sturdy hands wrapped around his upper arms and shook him. He turned his head and his clearing vision made out the image of Joe standing in front of him. “Gabriel , get it together. We have to go. Now!”Gabriel nodded his head and tried to take a deep breath, and then found himself taking several quick gasping breaths. Was he panicking? He didn’t have time to panic.With as much certainty as he could manage he nodded his head. “Right,” he agreed, “let’s go.”They each turned and ran off in separate directions.This had all been worked out in advance, each person memorizing a map of the town, studying it, learning each street and alleyway. They’d all settled on a divided running path before they ever stepped foot outside of the base. So Gabriel knew where to go.Or he thought he did.Though he hadn’t been willing to admit it with the others, he had never been particularly good with maps, not great at visualizing the 2D images with 3D spaces. So it wasn’t that surprising w
“I’m telling you, you go to that place, the only thing you have to look forward to is death. You’re better off here. Just keep your heads down, hide out, and maybe they’ll never come for you. That’s the best thing to hope for.”There was a long silence marked only by the sound of some uncomfortable shuffling. Claire stepped forward so she could get a better look at him. “But… Gabriel … you went into the caves. You tried to make a difference.”“I was wrong, okay?”Gabriel shouted the words so loud that Claire took a step back.“I was wrong. I was an idiot and I was wrong and people suffered because I was wrong. I suffered because I was wrong. The world is worse off now than it was before, all because I had to go play hero. Well there are no heroes. There’s only the living and the dead and you’re either one or the other. You can stay here and stay alive or you can go out there and join the ranks of the dead. Those are your options. I don’t care which you choose, but if you choose deat