Infected inside

Infected inside (chapter 6)

We were both sweating but besides that Liam seemed fine, I on the other hand was not as fit as he was and so I was bent over gasping desperately for breath and coughing and spluttering in between completely giving up on any pride.

“That was so close.” I said, once I had finally gotten my breath back.

Liam looked at me with an expression I couldn’t quite make out but had my heart race picking up. Licking my lips I nervously asked, “what is it lee?”

He went over to his stash of guns and started going through them making sure they were in working order and were filled with bullets, the ones that weren’t he loaded with the correct bullets for that gun, grabbing boxes of ammo out of the drawer on the desk. Finally he turned and looked at me. “We shouldn’t sleep tonight. We managed to get away, barely, and even then they were chasing us for a long f*****g time. Running back to this bunker wasn’t the best plan, I don’t know how close behind us they were but if they were close enough to hear us come down here and lock up then it won’t be long before we are surrounded. We will be trapped in here, until eventually and trust me there will be an eventually, they will break those chains and that door.”

He gave me a knowing look at the end not needing to explain what breaking the door would mean for us. My heart stopped beating altogether at that point and as if he could sense my terror or more likely see it plainly written across my face, he added, “that’s only if they were closer then we know. There’s still a chance we got far enough away that they lost track of us and we will be fine, I just think for tonight we should stay awake to be on the safe side or at least give ourselves a fighting chance, worst case scenario.” He smiled reassuringly at me and I tried to smile back but I really wasn’t feeling it, what I could feel however was fear running ice cold through my veins.

As night fell we had our weapons ready and waited. Liam stood guard pacing back and forth while I sat in the arm chair holding my pistol, an assault rifle on my back in case I used up the pistol bullets. Liam had an assault rifle too, on the desk within easy reach was a shot gun. He was holding a pistol of his own right now like me, saving the stronger and bigger weapons for last.

He had given me a blade too, clearly some military type s**t because It barely touched my skin and nicked me it was so sharp. I had it tucked into my belt, we didn’t want to get too close to the zombies at any cost but as a last resort like if we got a dozen or more zombies coming at us and the guns ran out and we had no ammo left, just for a fighting chance we could use the blades to fight our way out.

Liam had taught me how to remove a blade by practising on hard but penetrable objects and even on a deer carcass we had come across on one of our travels. I hadn’t realised why I needed to learn how to remove a blade from whatever I stabbed, it had seemed pretty obvious to me, you just pulled the damn thing out no big deal. I was wrong. It was incredibly hard, it took most of my strength to remove it and I had to use both hands barely managing on my first attempts, but with practice I had gotten pretty good at it and Liam had insisted I learn to remove the blade with one hand too.

I snapped myself back to the present and tried not to act so restless. Did you ever have that feeling? You know the one. Your stomach twists and turns with a thousand butterflies, your heart races faster and suddenly that thing you so desperately wanted to do a few moments ago suddenly seems like a terrible idea? I had that feeling in the pit of my stomach right now, that primal instinct that something was wrong, that danger was here. I had learnt real fast to never ignore that feeling. The night seemed so silent, too quiet, the quiet before the storm. There was an electric current in the air like something was about to happen, like we weren’t alone.

I couldn’t stop shaking my legs, it was the only thing keeping me from getting up and running away. I was watching Liam pacing the floor and it only made me more nervous. A loud bang had me jumping so hard I literally jumped out of my skin, if this had been a cartoon you would have seen my skeleton no joke.

“They’re here.” Was all Liam said. He looked at me and I looked at him, he nodded at me and I nodded back. We were ready, or as ready we ever would be. Another loud band and the rattling of chains. Another bang, then another and another so that I couldn’t tell the difference from one bang to another. So many out there, bashing on the bunker door and clawing at it to get inside to us. I could hear the chains being rattled and pulled and my heart froze when I heard the splinter of wood splitting as they pulled taut on the chains until we both heard the chains snap under the pressure and clank to the floor outside. They had broken the chains.