The Damage Has Been Done (Markiplier)

Chapter 21: Another Day Another Infestation

Mark's POV.

"Mark! Mark, c'mon, wake up! We have to hurry!" a child's voice screamed. Only feet away from me.

Chloe.

"Mark! Please! We have to go!"

(A/N. Song on the right! 'Numb' by Linkin Park!)

I knew the distressed cries were there, just, my conscious mind didn't find them important. My body didn't allow itself to move. It stayed, calm, still, unconcerned, oblivious to the shouts and yells that were being thrown at it. It didn't even allow me to open my own two eyes. The brown hue that sat underneath my eyelids never made its debut willingly. I was shaken violently, loosening up and moving. My conscious soon followed to the cries being important. But it fought it. Making me groggy and drowsy, lightheaded. My body then forced itself awake and I shot up from my sleeping and hazed state. Chloe was turning to me and yelling that we needed to go with desperation and immediateness in her voice. I had no time to ask questions or think, I simply reacted. I hurried to stand and grabbed bags that lay useless around the room. Now was their time to be put to a good cause.

I put together anything and everything needed to leave that I could fit into them and put one of my guns in the back of my belt, also grabbing my crowbar and pipe from next to where I had just been laying asleep. I grabbed Chloe's hand and ran downstairs, being greeted by an entire horde of infected. They were all going after everyone who was attempting to fight back. A few were on the ground, being eaten alive from the inside out. Others bypassing a few by luck to grab stuff and run. But only to be taken down seconds later by ones they hadn't taken into consideration. There was no saving them. Not a single one too close to the mass. Dayton, Amanda, Macon, Caroline then Franco. All gone in what seemed to be an instant. The single beat of a heart, one blink of an eye.

I looked carefully but lighting fast in the horde and saw four left standing. Derek. Mokuren. Matthias. Red. Four, against forty. They were important, not that the others weren't, but these ones had a chance to be saved. They needed to have one. I needed them to have one. I told Chloe to run back upstairs as I handed her the three bags, and she listened, just as she knew she had to in order to spare her life if I couldn't do the same for my own. I readied my crowbar and pipe in either hand and ran down the rest of the stairs, numbing myself to swing them into the skull of an infected. I'm expected to be the strong one here. Tom always put me in that position. 'You're the youngest, be the strongest. You need self will and determination'. Though, I usually was never able to. I hated disappointing him. He expected so much, and I didn't prove myself. Now, I had to. I was going to prove that I had the strength, mentally and physically, to save the ones that needed me now. I smashed in the rotting brains of one, then another, and another, and another, and yet another. At least ten or twelve of them were killed by my weapon-wielding hands before I was in the same position the four of my remaining fellow survivors were. Stuck. In the middle of it.

I couldn't over think, that'd take too much time, I'd get myself killed. I couldn't bash in decomposing craniums wildly, that'd be pointless to try to keep up that much energy. And more and more zombies kept coming by the second. In smaller groups of five or ten. Hurling themselves through the doors and windows, weak spots in the walls. I didn't know what I was going to do. I had to consider my options. Yet, none of them came about. I'm doomed. I'm going to die. Right here. Right now. In the exact time I could've saved myself. But I spared an innocent child. I saved her life. That's what mattered. That's what'd be my last good doing for the world. After so much, after knowing what I needed to do to fix everything, my life was going to be taken from me, along with my hope.

God, I can't give up now and surrender myself to become one of them. That's not like me. I wouldn't do that. Everything I'd ever done in my life suggested I'd do exactly otherwise. I had to make my move. Now. I just had to micro manage my swings without taking too long for deciding what direction I'd be swinging in. As long as I didn't miss the brain. I had to destroy the brain. That's the only way you stop them. You make the brain into pointless gooey soup. Spattered onto the floor. Lifeless. And it'd be over. I had to. I only had seconds. Milliseconds to go through with it all. And I did. I swung my blunt weapons into dead skulls without missing a single beat. It was rhythmic almost. Pause. Swing. Pause. Swing. Pause. Swing. Over and over again. Until I had an opening. All I needed was to be numb and rhythmic with my killings of self defense and I'd be home free. As would the ones I fought with.