Generation Z

Chapter 2 - A Safe Haven?

I woke up the next day at around 9am; the sounds of birds chirping outside reminded me of how things used to be. The room was filled with a cold breeze from the winter air as Leah opened the window
"Oh, good morning" She said, handing me a heated up bowl of beans and a few slices of bread.
I stretched my arms and took the bowl from her, the heat warming my hands.
"Thank you" I smiled, looking up at her as I began eating.
The rest of the group were outside, waiting for me to join them so they could go through plans of supply runs and searching for more survivors that may have set up camp near here.
I stepped outside to join the group; everyone was smiling, telling jokes and laughing whilst they were sat cooking bacon on the small gas cooker Josh brought with him from the town.
This was the first time since all of this started that I had seen everyone so happy. It was almost like everything that they had been through was forgotten for a moment.
Tom pointed out that he had seen smoke coming from the top of the mountains just north of the park during his shift on watch last night.
"You want to go check it out?" Gabriel asked, relaxing next to the heat of the barbecue.
"I think we should, if there's a chance of survivors we should go help them." I replied taking a piece of bacon from the barbecue and placing it in-between two slices of bread.
When finished eating, we started assigning each member of the group a job role.
Leah, Gabriel and I were going to go look for the survivors up in the mountains; Josh, Amy and Tom decided to head out to the town to bring back some supplies that we desperately needed. Finally the other members of the group were going to stay back at the park and ensure nothing gets in whilst we were gone.
We waited for another hour so that everyone had eaten, gathered their equipment and some of them even said goodbye to their loved ones just in case things went wrong. Who could blame them; in this world we couldn't guarantee our safe return.
Nicole and Tania followed us to the park to let us out through the large gates at the top. They were by far the least crowded by infected.
They both took one side of the gates and opened them slowly, making as little noise as possible. We didn't want to pull any more attention than we needed to, especially this early on in our journey.
We set out taking a shortcut that Gabriel pointed out. There are steps in an alleyway that take us to higher ground and closer to the mountain. At the top was a small housing estate.
"We're going to have to be quiet." I whispered, pointing at the estate at the top of the steps.
We quietly and slowly walked up the steps in a tight formation, making sure none of us could get snuck up on. We noticed that there were a few infected walking down the road in the opposite direction we were walking.
Once they had disappeared out of our sights, we continued down the street and spotted a child walking toward a house.
"Do you think she's infected?" I asked Gabriel, trying to define any specific signs of infection.
She looked normal, even though I could only see her from the back. I decided that I should get a closer look. I wasn't about to just leave a poor, young girl walking these streets without at least making sure that she was alive or dead.
I began walking towards her with Gabe and Leah waiting back, ready to assist me if I needed it. I had my bat and gun if things got too bad and couldn't risk Leah getting hurt. There was something about her that I really liked.
I approached the girl, reaching out to put my hand on her shoulder, I could hear footsteps coming from behind a house to the left of me, followed by more children walking out. These children had obvious signs of infection, the pale white eyes, blood on their clothing, tears of the skin and some had broken legs, crawling across the floor. This was when it occurred to me that the girl I was approaching was also infected; she had a bite mark behind her hair which was hidden until I got close.
Suddenly the girl turned around and started stumbling towards me, followed by the rest of the children.
I backed up into a wall and found myself surrounded by the infected. Leah and Gabriel were heading over to me, so I just had to stall until they got there. There were far too many of them to handle by myself and if I tried taking one out, the others would surely be able to grab me or at least manage to bite me.
I tried backing up further, trapping my foot on the curb and falling backwards, slamming my back onto the pavement. I could see the infected children gathering around me and thought this is where I was going to die.
Suddenly, Grabbed grabbed the girl silently and dragged her away from the others so they wouldn't turn on him and crushed her skull in an alleyway, blood showering the pavement.
Leah killed the young boy closest to me by driving a knife into the back of his head just as he lunged towards me. She killed the third child by smashing it's head through car window, driving a shard of the glass through its skull and cutting her hand. I could see that she was holding in her pain as tears built up in her eyes.
If Leah and Gabriel didn't rush to my aid, this would have been the end for me. Imagine that... taken out by children after all I have been through, that would have been ridiculous.
Leah gave me her hand and helped me onto my feet, showing no concern for the pain she was in.
I took out one of the bandages, my bottle of water and sat Leah down so that I could clean the wound on her hand.
"You guys wait here, I'm going to look ahead" Gabriel said noticing something in the distance.
As he walked off I screwed the lid off the bottle and poured it onto Leah's hand, cleaning the wound. Thankfully the cut wasn't too deep and wouldn't need stitches; I could see she was biting her lip from the pain.
I carefully wrapped the bandage around her hand and sat with her. sharing some of the food we had brought with us. 
"Could be here a while huh?" Leah laughed, still clenching from the pain in her hand. "So, what did you do before this all happened?"
"Well, I used to work as bar staff for a bar in town and I'd spend my free time, going out with my friends and get drunk, sing karaoke  and dance like a lunatic." I replied, smiling to myself. "Those were some of my favourite memories and though it's only been a few days it seems like none of that will ever come back."
"Oh, I don't know. Just because the world has gone to shit, doesn't mean we can't make our own fun. Electricity hasn't gone down yet, surely we can find some music and have our own karaoke and there's definitely alcohol somewhere!" Leah smiled, biting into a sandwich she had packed. "As for me, I just worked as a retail assistant, nothing too exciting. If I had any idea any of this would have happened, I definitely would have travelled more and been a bit more adventurous with my life. I've always wanted to go bungee jumping or sky diving, despite my fear of heights."
"Yeah, like you'd ever catch me doing anything like that." I laughed, drinking my water. "I wonder where Gabe went."
Thirty minutes later and there was still no sign of Gabriel. Packing up the food we were eating we decided that we should go look for him and find out why he was taking so long.
We sprinted down the end of the street and heard shouting coming from one of the alleys in between the houses; we backed up against the walls and listened in to the conversation.
"I'm not going to ask you again, where is your fucking group?!" A man shouted.
"If I told you, I'm afraid I would have to kill you" Gabriel laughed, spitting blood onto the ground.
He sounded like he was in pain; it was obvious they were beating him from the tone in his voice. He sounded tired.
"Let go of him!" I shouted, running around the corner aiming my Glock at his head.
He looked startled, and turned his crossbow onto me.
"Gabe take Leah, get her away from here." I said, shaking. 
"Like fuck am I leaving you here." Gabriel replied, spitting onto the ground once more and proceeding to stand.
"You're a brave one." He said lowering his crossbow, raising his fingers up to his mouth and whistled.
Three members of his group walked out from the trees. There were two guys wearing masks. One carrying a shotgun and the other an SMG.
They were shortly joined by a woman wearing a mask, holding a hunting rifle and walked towards me, aiming for my head. We were clearly outnumbered so I lowered my gun, put the safety on and placed it onto the floor in front of me.
"Careful now, she doesn't miss." 
"David! There you are!" A voice came from within the group, as he stepped out and took off his mask. "I've been looking for you, after I seen the state of our mother's street I thought you were dead."
It was my brother Danny; I was surprised to see him though. I was certain that he was with the rest of my family in Oxfordshire.
He dropped his weapon, ran over to me and hugged me. '
"This is David?... Shit man, we've actually been looking for you. Danny said you might have been holding up somewhere around here if you were still alive. My name's Eric, Danny, you know, the woman with the hunting rifle there is Paola and the one on the left is Keir and our sniper is Taylor." Eric said waving his arm signalling Taylor to come out.