Taylor is a college student home alone when the outbreak hits her small town. One minute she is working on a project, the next she is hiding away from the monsters outside. Taylor will have to find it in her to survive until her parents can -hopeful...
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"Greg, Taylor, Jacob, Micheal, Liam." Hendricks says our names the moment Kirk is gone.
I had no idea why I was being lumped in with the others, they were the ones that had gone out with Kirk. Even though I didn't get why I was being called in, I followed the group of men to one of the only rooms without people. The storage room for all the suits and gear. It's cramped and I have to shove myself between some hanging coats.
"I'm so sorry." Greg starts once the door is closed behind Hendricks. Greg starts spilling everything that happened from the moment the group left. They had made their way to the cars, the van, and SUV, and started the rounds. They were going to hit up some of the houses on the east side, closer to where my house was. But then they saw the Piggly Wiggly in the distance. Kirk had convinced them to go, just to check on it to see if the zombies were still as bad as they were a few days ago. Once there, he somehow convinced the group to take out a small hoard on the main road. That had gotten everyone worked up and confident.
High on adrenaline it was easy to convince them to go a little farther, pushing into the parking lot. The thing is, it's a hot day out today, the firefighters in their gear were quickly heating up and getting slower. The others weren't used to having to fight in melee for so long. They pushed their luck going even farther into the parking lot. Heather had tripped and screamed, bringing in a ton of zombies from more sides. From there Greg said it was a blur. Jacob one of the other firefighters would have been right with Heather and Jeff had it not been for his suit. He said he got tripped up in the heat of the moment and fell. It was a miracle that they managed to pull the three of them to the cars.
"You understand how fucking stupid you were being?" Hendricks asked them, they all nod, eyes cast down. I was pretty sure Hendrick's favorite word was fuck.
I slowly held up my hand, not wanting to poke the bear, but my curiosity was burning. Hendricks slides his gaze to me, I clear my throat. "Why exactly am I here?"
Someone lets out a snort, Hendricks looks exasperated and just done with this situation. "Because you seem to be the only one who listens to reason. You go out all of the time and there are never any problems with you. They need to learn from you, and you need to learn from their mistakes."
"They walk past her." It was from one of the others, I didn't recognize the voice from exactly which one.
Hendricks turns his attention to me. "Tell them."
I half turn towards the other men, all their attention on me felt weird. I didn't like it. "I uh, learned that if there's a distraction I can run right past them. If I talk they turn to chase me, it's easy to lose their attention if there's something else to take it away. But." My eyes go back to Hendricks, I had only told him this next part. "If it's quiet, and there's nothing for them to focus on if I get too close, they seem to realize I'm not like them."
That hadn't been fun to find out. I was just trying to skirt past a zombie on the street, it was quiet and out in the middle of nowhere. I got within arms reach and it sniffed the air, that was my only warning before it lunged for me. It was horrifying to figure out that I'm not completely able to just stay quiet and run past them whenever I want. It's why I hadn't offered to run into any stores to figure out what was left in them. I wasn't going in anywhere where there were no distractions.
"Taylor has never tried to do more than she's capable of, and she knows when to back off. This," Hendricks motions around us, "is a learning moment for all of us, at the cost of probably two lives. You can disagree with me, but we need to have a discussion about doing stupid things before you do them. That way we can all at least put in our ideas to execute them."
"Does that mean you want to raid the Piggly Wiggly?" Greg asks, Jacob snorts and smothers his laughter. That's why everyone calls it the supermart, people who aren't used to the name of the store giggle at it.
"Of course, I want to get the stuff from the supermart, but we can't be fucking stupid about it. We've already lost enough." His tone in that last sentence made my chest hurt, it was clear something happened that he hasn't talked about. I wouldn't push to know, it wasn't my place to ask. Looking at the others, I could see the same sad look I probably had. We had all lost something in this new world.
