World of the Dead

Another Gruesome Scene

Before she left, Quinn decided to do one final sweep of the store just to be sure that she hadn't missed anything. After rifling through the way to expensive clothes and cheaply made toys that had been knocked on the ground, she managed to find a green beanie. While it wasn't much, it had been pretty chilly as the fall season progressed and she thought it would be a good idea to have something extra to keep her warm. It fit snugly over her head, and she was glad that she had checked again.

She tried the door and found out that it was locked. Might be the reason why both windows were smashed. Not really feeling like finding the key, she decided to just hop through the window like she had done earlier. Looking up and down the street that was now lit with early morning light, she only saw three of the infected down the road with their backs turned.

Not waiting for them to turn in her direction, she carefully swung her leg over the windowsill and hooped out of the store. Glancing back into the building, she wondered if the owner,a sweet older man,had managed to escape. She really hoped that was the case as she strode away, not wanting to think too hard on it.

Because in the back of her mind, she knew that the opposite was more likely.

The street was eerily empty as she walked down it and she couldn't decide whether she thought that was good or bad. Good because it meant that there was less chance of her getting shot or eaten, bad because of the question that was burning in her mind.

Where is everyone?

It was a disturbing question. Did everyone already evacuate? If so, how could they have done it so fast? Then she reminded herself that she had been unconscious for hours so she wouldn't have been able to see it happen firsthand. Not only that, but there had been people evacuating before she and her family, meaning that they had probably gotten pretty far.

But what about the infected? Where were they? Maybe they followed the flow of people running away she realized. That troubled her. If everyone was running in the same direction at the same time, that could lead to a major traffic jam. After all, she had seen quite a few abandoned cars that were either smack dab in the middle of the road or slammed into each other. If the roads became blocked, it would have trapped many of the fleeing people or at the very least slowed them down. Then once the infected came...

Not wanting to picture the death and bloodshed that most definitely occurred, she tried to think optimistically. There were soldiers, she had seen them herself. That meant that the infected could have been stopped or slowed which would give people a chance to get away. Maybe they even got the survivors to a safe zone nearby.

This cheered her a little, but not by much. Quinn decided to just focus on getting to her stuff and not think about that at the moment. The shit she had already seen was just about enough for her.

The watery morning light had strengthened, sunlight creeping over and through the buildings. She had never been so happy for the sun to rise. It made her feel safer, as if the sunlight would somehow improve her chances of survival.

Things becoming more visible was a double-edged sword it turned out. While she could see obstacles that would make her trip, she would also now see where some of the people had gone. In a blue SUV that had crashed into a light pole, she spotted a chubby man slumped over the wheel, dead. A German shepherd with mangled back legs and coils of intestines spilling out was to her left, being picked at by crows and swarmed by flies. To her right was an infected teenage boy, trapped under a flipped car and missing his lower jaw. He reached out to her with one arm that was snapped and dangled horribly as she passed, like he was asking for help.

Despite the gruesome sights her stomach growled again, this time louder and she remembered that she did in fact need food. Pausing by a purple Nissan, she set down her bag and slipped a hand into her pocket to find her snacks. Breakfast would be a pack of sweetened peanuts. Ripping open the packet she began to pop them into her mouth, doing her best not to bother her loose tooth. To her starved taste buds the meager meal was heaven.