salvation → g. rhee

days gone bye

Aubrey sat with her back against the rough brick building, clutching her bloodied knife as her heart pumped like a caged rabbit inside her chest. Twenty minutes previous, the shelter she, and many, many others, had taken refuge in had been invaded. It had truly been a horrible sight.

No one was prepared. Few survived the attack. It wasn't her family that died, because frankly, she didn't know where her family was, but it had been the friends she had made in her short time there that died. It had all happened so fast.

People's screams still rang in her ears, mingled with the rattling moans of the dead. She closed her eyes, but the latter eventually got louder, until she realized -

"Shit!" Aubrey hissed, jumping up from the concrete and peering around the side of the dumpster in time to see the herd that approached her.

She looked to the other end of the alley and saw more of those things. Her heart seemed to slowly drop from her chest as she realized she was going to die. She had survived the shelter attack, only to die twenty minutes later.

Aubrey saw no other choice. Closing her eyes, she took the pistol from her waistband, raised it to her temple and put her finger on the trigger. No fucking way was she gonna die getting ripped apart by those abominations.

"Hey, dumbass!" Aubrey's eyes flew open and she whipped around, wildly trying to pinpoint the voice. "Up here!"

Tilting her head back, she saw a rusted ladder hanging just out of her reach. Summoning all her might, she jumped up, and her fingers curled around the sun-warmed metal. She hurried to pull herself up a few rungs, tucking her legs up to her upperbody, as the dead below her reached and grappled for a meal they could no longer acquire.

Aubrey stared down at the rotting faces, panting hard, and startling when a hand enclosed hers, pulling her further up the fire escape and onto a utility platform against the side of a tall building. She leaned against the railing, her chest heaving.

She had just escaped death twice in less than half an hour.

"Hey, I know you..."

Aubrey ignored him, trying to collect her thoughts with a scowl on her shining face. He was probably just trying to make conversation.

"You were my last delivery that night... ever, really."

Her attention snapped to him, and she saw it was the bashful pizza boy from, what, weeks ago? He remembered her? Aubrey's cold scowl vanished and her features softened as she turned to him.

"Aubrey."

"Glenn Rhee."

"Well, Glenn Rhee, how do you suppose we get out of this mess?" Aubrey asked in a forced casual way, leaning over to gaze at the dead below their little platform with an eyebrow cocked.

Glenn let out a sigh and turned his head upwards, squinting in the bright sun. Curious, Aubrey placed her hand across her forehead like a visor and followed his gaze.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding me."

The rest of the fire escape was hugging the side of the building all the way up to the roof. Glenn gave her a look and started to raise himself to the ladder.