ALIVE: The Aftermath Chronicles (Book 1)

Chapter 4 - END OF THE ROPE

Ethan voices from above her as he too makes the descent with her to hell, "Get your gun out, Hannah! Shoot when we get closer. I've got your back!"

She stops when she manages to reach the end. The point where her fall would no longer break her back, but the dead's fingers meet the soles of her shoes promising a worse death. Though she doesn't remember shedding them, the hot water from her eyes has pooled down her cheeks, cooling as she dangles as nothing more than fresh meat on a hook.

With one hand she holds herself to the rope as she draws out her gun to point at the chomping jaws she hoped to never lay eyes on again. Closing her eyes after she's aimed, one zombie is downed as Ethan shoots at them down before she can fire.

"Go! Go!" Ethan shouts as they both hit the hard, rank bed of the slain zombies beneath them.

Exposed, out in the open and ready for every enemy in this cruel new world, each breath weighs heavier in knowing it holds higher odds for it being her last. She runs, a young woman in flight, and in the fight for her life. Her ally, alongside her, in the blurring mess of tears, they aim bullets into barren souls reaching after them in their frantic escape from Richmond Hill.

Their bullets not only alert the cannibals but those who hunted her on the other side of the high-walls. A sniper has returned to the tower they escaped. A shot rings out after them, then another. More fire out, in whatever desperate command Russell gave to take down not just Hannah, but his own nephew.

One nearly misses her, whizzing past her ear and brings her to look backward at the tower she suspected for the near-perfect shot.

Once in the woods, it's harder to gain traction from the dead pursuing them over mossy rocks and trees that block a straight path.

Though they walk in their hunt for the living pair, it takes one fall, one blunder, to give the infected the advantage. They wouldn't stop, they didn't need rest. And, unlike the dead, eventually, Hannah and Ethan would have to stop running.

Safe from Russell, Hannah finally took a moment of regret for that first trigger she pulled, which sky-rocketed her into the land of the damned.

***

Two Years Ago

A stack of coupons later, scan after scan, Hannah knows she'll be hearing that sound in her sleep again when she goes home tonight.

Digit by digit, the number decreases, and the woman with long acrylic nails bedazzled to the nine watches eagerly. The line grows longer behind her and out of this stack of scans, Hannah knows some of them aren't counting toward the total. Like many others who go this far to collect coupons, they've either expired or are doubles that can't be applied to the same item.
Rules, that she's explained over and over to people, but now, Hannah's learned to not say a thing about it. There's no argument she wishes to instigate or debate she wishes to have in front of a manager, about why the twelve out of the fifty coupons are invalid.

Announcing her total, the woman's expression contorts in confusion above the N95 mask.

Already, Hannah knows it's coming. The war that'll leave her trampled over and upset about for hours to come, leaving her to qustion every moment of her life that's lead her to this dead-end job.

"That can't be right," the woman says, "Can we scan them over again? It should be at least ten dollars lower..."

That stupid question, like a thousand others, burdened down her blinks harsher than any other part of her job. She hated people, she hated the pay, she hated scanning a novel's worth of coupons, and she hated this woman's crooked haircut that fell messily underneath the clinching of the bands of her mask.