Emergency broadcast

Chapter 2

I waited. And waited. I foolishly kept glancing outside to see if they had left. It was almost dark and I felt like I was losing my mind.

I even contemplated opening the door, thinking they might not want to harm me. And as a last resort I held my kitchen knife close, so that I can try to fight them off or in the worst case scenario, slit my wrists. Thoughts raced through my head about them breaking in and ripping me apart limb by limb with their bare hands, so I did not want to find out what they planned to do to me and how creative they were.

As I sat there, trying not to make any noise I decided to peer outside one last time. Looking outside I was faced with the same people, standing in the same position, still staring at my house.

But then there was a sound. Something that sounded like three deliberate gunshots a few blocks away.

Almost instantly, the people jerked their heads towards the sound and without any hesitation started sprinting towards the source, some of them screaming along the way or making animalistic sounds.

I thought there may have been like ten or twenty of them surrounding my house, but I was wrong. As I was looking through the peephole to see them leaving, more and more of them just kept running past my house, almost for a whole minute, which made me think for a moment the horde would never end. But eventually all went still and there was no person or sound remaining anywhere in the vicinity of my house.

That's it. I'm safe, I thought. I put my back against the door and breathed a sigh of relief.

And then I heard another voice. I looked back through the peephole and saw someone across the street. A black woman and a middle-aged man were moving cautiously towards my house in a crouched position. The woman had an axe and the man seemed to be carrying a baseball bat.

"Come on, they'll be back soon." – the woman gestured for the man to follow her and they stopped right in front of my house.

"Hey, you there." – she tried to speak quietly, but loud enough for me to hear.

"Hey!" – she knocked on the door – "You need to come with us now. Those lunatics will be back soon."

I clutched the knife harder and held my breath.

"Look, we're not one of them. Now come on, open the door."

"He's not gonna open." – the man shook his head – "Come on, let's go."

Maybe it was the fact that I desperately wanted not to be alone anymore in that moment, but I quickly unlocked the door and opened it slightly.

"Hey." – I called out to them from behind the door, concealing the knife.

"Finally." – the lady said – "Come on, they'll be back soon. We need to evacuate."

"Wait, the broadcast said we should stay inside." – I argued.

"Fuck that. There's no help coming. Now come on or we're leaving to the evac site without you."

I knew there was no time to argue and much less time to prepare supplies to bring before those freaks returned, so I just locked my house and left the keys in the nearby bushes.

"I'm Angela, by the way. And this is Travis." – the lady said – "It should be safe to leave the neighborhood this way."

I introduced myself and asked what was going on.

"Don't know exactly. People just started acting crazy. The town's been quarantined, but there's one checkpoint where we can get out."

"They got soldiers there." – Travis said with his raspy voice – "Should be safe to wait for this to blow over outside town."