Outbreak Chapter 2

Will’s outstretched arms reached for George, his mouth cocked to the side, drool leaking onto the floor. George backed away quickly and bumped into a table, glass shattered on the ground as two glasses hit the floor. Without a moment’s hesitation, George took the now empty table and used it against Will. The small table wasn’t very heavy but George swung it anyway. The corner of the table caught Will in the left temple. A few splatters of the remaining blood painted the floor, mixing in with the alcohol. Will’s body collapsed like a tent.

Momentarily Will’s body lay there motionless, but soon he began to crawl towards George relentlessly. George let out a cry and pounded the creature over-and-over. After a few minutes George stopped whacking Will’s body, the table was destroyed and the only thing left of Will was a mush of brain matter and black goo.

Suddenly, George realized that he wasn’t alone. Seven faces stared at him; their eyes not moving shocked at what he had just done.

“It was going to…” George was too tired to explain himself and so he just dropped the broken wooden stake that used to be the table.

“We know.” A blond woman said as she stepped passed George to the bar where she poured a glass of bourbon and downed it in a single gulp. The police officer looked just as shocked as everyone else did, but he sobered up quickly.

“Okay, here’s what we have to do, we need to fortify this room and try and find an escape route.” He still sounded a bit intoxicated, but he was doing a good job at covering it up.

“Escape to where man, out there, with them?” It was a lanky black man with platinum blond hair. He stood up from the barrel table he was sitting at. “Look, we should just like barricade the windows and something and wait for the cops. You of all people should know that. Can’t you get on a radio or something?”

“I would if I was still on duty with my radio, but seeing as how I’m here drinking with the rest of you, I can’t do that now can I? It’s not like I thought ‘Oh, hey there might be a friggin’ zombie outbreak, let me bring this’.” The officer ran his hand through his hair and shot the other man a look.

“Maybe you should have.” At this, the officer stood up and began stomping over to the man in the blue jacket.

“Whoa!” A portly security guard got in the officer’s way. “Now, look here. We can’t jus’ go and kill ourselves now can we? You want to make it easier on those things, soldier?” He held his hand on the officer’s chest.

“Whatever”, The officer looked around, and then looked back at the security guard. “Help me with those barrels? We need to buy as much time as possible; we can push them in front of the door.”

“Alright, tha’s more like it.” He got behind one of the barrels and started to push it, soon after there were two barrels blocking the doorway, rumbling each time one of the creatures hit the door.

“Alright, uh now that we have time, we should find that way out. Um…” The officer looked at the waitress’ nametag. “Cindy, is there any way out of here?”

She hesitated, still looking at Will. “Y…yeah, through the back door there, the key’s right here.” She picked a key off the counter and handed it to the police officer.

“Thanks, I’m Kevin by the way.” Kevin smiled at Cindy as he ran for the door with the other six following. As they reached the door, one of the bathroom doors opened up and a petite, young, Asian girl. Kevin finished unlocking the door and motioned for everyone to follow. George was the last through the door.

“Uh, excuse me, what’s going on?” The Asian girl asked George.
“We’re not too sure, but it seems that people are just attacking each other, then getting up and doing the same to others. It looks like some sort of disease or something.” George said as they walked side-by-side in the small stairwell. “Come on, let’s hurry up.”

Up ahead, almost everyone was upstairs, except George, Cindy and the other girl. When Cindy walked by a small window at the top of the stairs, the glass shattered, sending shards all over the floor. Rotting hands reached out and took hold of Cindy’s shoulders.

“Help!” Cindy shouted as George raced up the stairs. The hands were trying to pull her out of the window, but George wouldn’t let that happen. He wrenched the hands off Cindy’s shirt and shoved the rotting corpse back away from the window. Cindy stumbled forward a bit, trying to catch her breath. “Th…thanks.”

“Don’t mention it; I’m George by the way.” George held out his hand to Cindy who took it. He helped her back up and continued up the stairs.

“Oh, I’m Yoko.” Yoko said as they reached the second landing.

“I’d say nice to meet you, but in the current circumstances it’s probably not a good time for formalities.” George said as they passed through an opening that led to a hallway in the employee’s lounge. The man, who had helped George with the body, was standing by with a nail gun and some planks. George finally noticed that his nametag read David.

David pushed past them with the planks, to the opening that they had just walked through. He busied himself with setting them up. “We’ve got to do whatever we can to slow them down.” His scratchy voice was just loud enough to be audible over the nail gun.

“Everyone’s here right?” Kevin asked the group as he stood in a little clearing near a desk full of supplies. All of the people in the room took note of everyone else and nodded when they saw the people they remembered. “Okay, good uh...” Kevin pointed to the security guard.

“Mark, pleasure to meet ya’.” Mark waved.

“Good, Mark do you have a gun or something?”

“Yeah, but I don’t have any ammo but what’s in mah clip.” Mark pulled out his pistol and showed it to Kevin.

“Right, I only have my .45…” Kevin trailed off, thinking about the situation. “Alright, uh…” Kevin pointed to the woman in a red business suit.

“Alyssa, and no I don’t have a weapon.” Alyssa sounded smug as she put her hands on her hips. “Are we going to go somewhere, or are we going to wait patiently for them to come and eat us?”

“First of all, Alyssa, I wasn’t going to ask for a weapon, I wanted to know if you could find some. Second, let’s just get organized first, we’ll die if we go out half-cocked.” Kevin raised an eyebrow, waiting for a response, but Alyssa gave only a click of her tongue and went around gathering supplies. “Cindy, is there anything around here that we can use?”

“Well, I have a little herb case that my instructors gave me. I’m training to be a nurse you see.” Cindy perked up at that last part, obviously proud about it.

“Uh…right, can you go and get that? George you’re a doctor right?” George nodded. “Good, go with her will you?”

George followed Cindy into a locker room behind them in the hallway. Kevin was issuing out more orders and the man who had given him trouble before was protesting some job he was assigned. Cindy opened the door and walked up to her locker.

“So, you want to be a nurse then?” George thought it best to strike up some sort of conversation to take their minds off the panic that was encroaching on their minds from the crisis at hand.

“Yeah, it was always my dream, you know. Dad takes you for hikes and shows you some stuff, you get interested, and maybe you want to go and learn more, things like that. It just sort of stuck with me, and well after high school, I went to college for a bit, but got side tracked and ended up here. Well, a few years ago, I decided to go back and next year I’ll be a registered nurse!”

He was almost happy for her, when he realized that next year might not come. George put on a brave face and smiled at Cindy’s dreams. “Well, maybe I’ll see you at the hospital then.”

Cindy opened her locker and retrieved the small case she had spoken of to Kevin. Cindy frowned when she opened the case. “Oh, darn. I didn’t fill it so I only have two of each.”

“Two of each?” George asked as he walked over to Cindy and looked in the case. “Whoa! I haven’t seen those in a long time, I used to work for a pharmaceutical company and make pills for them. With those, I might be able to make some for us if need be. If you find any more let me know.”

Cindy smiled and nodded. Suddenly, they heard it the breaking of glass, the loud crash. They were inside the building now, everyone had to move. George’s eyes widened and he ran for the door. Outside, David was still standing at the opening he had boarded up.

“They’re coming up the stairs, we’ve got to move!” He screamed as he ran back into the hallway.

“Cindy, how do we get out of here?” George asked as David brushed passed him.

“Uh…that door, right there.” Cindy pointed to the door opposite them. “It leads to the liquor room, where we can get to the roof and jump to the apartments next door. It’s locked though.”

“Not for long.” Kevin said as he kicked the door near the doorknob. The door creaked but didn’t move. He kicked repeatedly with similar results.

“Not to rain on your macho parade or anything, but the key’s right here.” Alyssa pulled up a newspaper on the coffee table and revealed a key with a blue tag on it. She took the key and unlocked the door, Kevin looked embarrassed, but didn’t show it too much. The eight survivors piled into the stairwell and went into the liquor room with the hope of escape.