Z Day is Here (16 page)

As we ran out the back, a group of about
twenty more zombies followed us. We caught a quick glimpse of
Alisha and the others, so we went to their location. Once we
arrived, our rest was very short lived because of the pursuing
group of undead heading our way. The shotgun person waved the gun
in the air and yelled for us to follow. Because we had nowhere else
to go, we had no choice.

The shotgun person led us to the entrance of
the old maximum-security prison facility. Once there, the large
metal gates slid open slowly and just enough to allow us entry.
Once inside, the gate quickly slid closed, trapping us in some sort
of "holding" area. The person with the shotgun turned to face us
and removed the mask to reveal it was a woman. She wore a prison
guard uniform with a broken nametag that read “Mego.” She had one
shotgun in her hand and one strapped to her back. Around her waist,
she wore a gun belt with three pistols strapped to it. She stood in
front of us, sweating and breathing heavily from the run. She
whistled to someone inside, who opened the next set of doors to
allow us access. As we stepped inside, we were all shocked to see a
group of about twenty people. They looked thin and scared but happy
to be alive. Mego told us to all take a break and relax for a
while. She showed us to a couple of cells that she said we could
use for shelter for as long as we liked.

We all crashed for a while. I could not
sleep, so I decided to write about what had happened today. I just
heard Mego tell someone we were going to have a "prison meeting" in
the morning. I am not sure what that means, and frankly, I am too
tired to care. I will wait till tomorrow to be concerned. As of
right now, I am just going to enjoy the slight safety.

We all woke up at around the same time this
morning. Having gotten a good amount of sleep, we were all anxious
to see our surroundings. We felt like strangers in a strange land.
We wandered through the halls of the old prison until we found
Mego. She was sitting in the warden’s office, watching security
cameras, drinking Captain Morgan’s Rum straight out of the bottle,
and eating gummy bears. She welcomed us in to the office and asked
us to sit down. Once we were seated, she began telling us a little
about herself. She was a prison guard at that very facility when
everything started. They locked the place down, hoping to avoid any
infection in the prison, but like everything else needing to stay
out of a prison, somehow the infection got in. Her and other fellow
guards attempted to contain those infected by locking them in cells
below the prison, but eventually it got out of hand. She is the
lone survivor, and after clearing the main prison from the living
dead, she decided to turn it into a sanctuary for any survivors she
could find. There are still zombie inmates in the bottom part of
the prison, but they are well secured. Mego told us that during the
air strike, one part of the prison had been destroyed, but they
blocked that part off and have two people guarding the spot at all
times. They have no food reserves, so they have to go out
scavenging for food whenever they can. She showed us on one of her
monitors a little patch of ground that used to be a recreation area
that is now used for growing plants. Their plan is to stay in that
shelter and let the zombies outside starve to death.

I like her plan, but I fear that we are all
just rats in a cage in here. If the zombies found out about the
amount of people living in here, they would be all over this place,
forcing their way in here, and we would have no place to run. I
have already begun plotting our escape. I have a really bad feeling
about this place. The whole place kind of creeps me out.

Mego told us there are thirty-seven people
staying here. They are survivors from around the city that she
found a few at a time while she was out looking for food. We just
happened to be the latest ones found. As I was glancing around the
room, I saw people with rifles in the guard towers and people
walking up and down the prison’s inner walls. It was as if we were
in a military base or a well-guarded compound in another country.
Mego flipped a switch on one of the monitors to reveal a crowd of
zombies. There must have been two hundred or more. They were all in
a large dark room. I heard Tonya gasp a little at the sight. I felt
very uncomfortable, and judging by the looks on Ed and Jeremiah’s
faces, I could tell they were none too happy either. Mego assured
us they are completely locked away with no chance of escaping.

During all of this, Cole stared out the
window. He didn't say anything, just continued to stare. I got up
to check on him. When I got to the window, I saw what had drawn his
attention. From where we were in the prison, we could see over the
entire city and beyond. Just past our location, heading straight
towards the military base, was a mass of undead people. They looked
like a dark black cloud in the distance. There were millions of
them, as far in either direction as I could see. Cole looked up at
me and asked, “What are we going to do?"

I had no good answer for him. All I could do
was grab him by the arm and whisper, “Survive."

We all stood by the window yesterday for
hours, staring at the "black cloud," wondering how we are going to
make it. Where can we go when everything around us is destroyed and
when everyone is trying to get us? As we watched the millions of
zombies, there was a huge explosion seen in the distance. Ed took a
step back. He shook his head and said, "That's the base. We have
nowhere to go."

Mego started laughing and pulled us away from
the window. She walked back to the desk, plopped her feet up on the
desk, and continued eating as if nothing had happened. We quickly
excused ourselves and went on to tour the rest of the facility.

The rest of the day was rather boring. We
walked around and met a few people staying in the compound. There
were people from every walk of life, from the very poor to the very
rich (or at one time they were rich). We met a doctor named
Kenneth, who lost everything, including his whole family during the
first wave of the undead. He said Mego found him wandering around
the streets of the city over a month ago. He was a very angry and a
glass-half-empty kind of guy. For some reason, he gave me the
creeps, kind of like Roger did.

We met a really nice family from West
Virginia, who just happened to be visiting the city when everything
happened. They had stayed together, and all of them just happened
to survive. They were very thankful for everything they had and
were very optimistic. Cole met some girls that he seemed to have an
instant crush on; they were just about his age, but after
everything that had happened, a few years’ difference wouldn't
really matter. I didn't have the heart to tell him not to get too
comfortable, since we would be leaving in a few days. With a group
of zombies as large as we had seen in the distance, being in this
area was the worst place we could be.

I went to bed early last night and awoke
early this morning. I have been enjoying the nice quiet life so far
today. Alisha and Tonya have been getting to know each other today,
and I get the feeling they are quickly becoming friends. Ed and
Jeremiah have decided to go down to the basement/lower lock-up
levels to ensure there are no escapes from the zombie inmates.
Hopefully, things can settle down a bit before we have to
leave.

I am beginning to get the feeling Mego does
not want us to leave. I mentioned it to her late last night. She
didn't say we couldn't go, but she just tried to talk me into
staying. She said we (the human race) need to stay together, to
repopulate the world once the zombies are gone. Now, I for one
completely agree. We do need to stick together, but we need to do
it far away from the city area. I give it a few more days before
the zombies find out our location and decide they want in here. We
need to get someplace safe. I don't know whether that means the
desert, the arctic, or some tropical island, but I know we can't
stay here. These walls may keep a couple of hundred, maybe even a
couple of thousand out, but it would never hold the millions out
there. I don't know if it is safe anywhere. I thanked her for her
hospitality but told her we (meaning myself and anyone who wanted
to go with me) would be leaving soon. She just laughed and put her
arm around me and said, "I'm sure you'll change your mind soon,
honey."

I slept in a little this morning, since I was
up so late last night. When I awoke this morning, Kenneth and Tonya
greeted me. They were standing by the door to my "room" arguing.
When I walked around the corner, everything got silent. Tonya
stared down at the ground, while Kenneth stared at me as if he had
something to say. When I asked them what was going on, Kenneth
began to say something but was stopped short by Tonya's sharp
glance. He mumbled, “Nothing," and began walking away. As he was
reaching the end of the wall to head out of sight, he turned his
head around and yelled at Tonya, "Then you tell him." My gaze
instantly went to Tonya, who looked as if she were about to explode
with anger.

It took a good ten minutes before Tonya began
telling me what was going on. As I write this, I am filled with
every type of emotion imaginable. Hopeful is the best way to
describe it. Hopeful in the face of insurmountable odds but hopeful
nonetheless. I need to go find Kenneth now, so I can find out
exactly what he knows, but as of now, I do know that he saw Darcy
in the city the very day Mego found him! He said she was carrying
around my picture and was showing it to everyone. Tonya said
Kenneth instantly recognized me but wanted to wait till the time
was right to tell me. That is all Tonya would tell me. Kenneth has
to fill in the blanks NOW.

I tracked down Kenneth yesterday and pretty
much pinned him to a chair, forcefully "asking" him to tell me what
he knew about Darcy. I tried to be calm about it, but when I had
all but given up hope for finding someone then, out of nowhere I
find out someone knows something about it, there was no stopping me
from getting that information. Luckily for Kenneth, he was very
willing to talk about what had happened. I was a little surprised
by what he had to say.

Shortly after the uprising began, he and a
few coworkers had locked themselves in his office. Things were
going fine until they ran out of food. Kenneth sent his nurse out
to find food; she never returned. Next, he sent one of his interns,
who also never returned. Finally, he decided to go himself. While
out looking for food, the doctor encountered quite a few zombies,
who, as he put it, met their match and were destroyed.

Now let me just say that the way he described
the fights between himself and the zombies sounded really good, but
they also seemed a little extravagant, so take the fighting with a
grain of salt.

Kenneth continued to tell about his fighting
with the zombies...

He walked into a grocery store. It was
silent. He was making his way down the canned food aisle when he
was completely surrounded by the undead. He ran towards the first
group and slid on the ground, tripping the two zombies in his path.
Once they were down, he jumped to his feet, grabbed a broom that
was propped up against one of the shelves, and impaled both zombies
through the chest. Next, he went after the three remaining zombies.
He grabbed an arm full of cans and began throwing them at the
zombies, knocking them down one by one. He grabbed a shopping cart
and filled it full of food and bottles of water, fighting his way
out of the store all along the way.

When he got outside, he said he pushed the
cart into the street and heard a noise behind him. When he turned
around, he was face to face with the impaled zombies. Thinking
quickly, he reached down and just happened to find a crowbar laying
on the ground, where he again impaled the zombies, this time
directly through the skulls, killing them once and for all. Just as
he was finishing off the zombies, a mac truck came roaring down the
street, slamming into the shopping cart before coming to a
screeching stop about one hundred feet away. Out of the front of
the cab came a scruffy looking man with long hair. He introduced
himself as Malice!

In the truck were a group of survivors he had
found right outside of the city. Malice told him that he was
heading to Florida to find his woman and invited Kenneth to tag
along. Kenneth declined but asked Malice to help him get some food
to his office. Together, they reloaded the shopping cart full of
food and loaded it into the cab of the trailer. Kenneth jumped in
the cab, and they made their way back to his office. Once there,
the survivors in the back of the truck helped move the food and
water into the break room. While moving groceries, one of the
survivors pulled out a picture and asked if he had seen the person
in the photo. That person was me. Kenneth told Darcy that he had no
idea who I was but promised to help find me.

After a few days of rest, a group of zombies
decided to get in the office. In the process, three survivors were
killed. In the end, Malice, Darcy, Kenneth, and one other survivor
got out of the office unharmed, but they were separated. Kenneth,
Darcy, and the other survivor went one way, and Malice ran to his
truck, leaving the three behind.

After about a week, the military came
through, shooting almost anything that moved. He stressed the word
almost, because Darcy and the other survivor (whose name he could
not remember) were picked up by a passing patrol one afternoon. The
truck stopped, three men jumped out of the truck, grabbed them
both, and drove off, leaving Kenneth in his hiding spot, unseen.
That was the last he had seen Darcy.