Zombies

VII

Sydney:

The next two days were spent at Pete’s house. He fed us, and allowed us to stay until I recover. On the night of the second day, Dan called us together. “Do you think we’re ready to leave tomorrow?” Dan asked us. I had been feeling better, and had been anxious to leave that house, but there was one troublesome question. “How do you expect us to travel? My car is completely destroyed,” I asked him sharply. Dan’s eyes glimmered with a hint of hurt at my sharp words. “Well, Pete says his Auntie has a horse stable, not too far from here. We could potentially continue on by horseback if we offer her a good enough deal.” Dan replied eventually. I wished I could forgive him, but something kept me from doing so. “Horseback, Dan? Really? That’s literally the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” Mark stated arrogantly. “Dan, listen to me.” I looked at him, and gently touched his shoulder to get his attention. “We’ve seen these things up close. They’re faster, stronger, maybe even cleverer than we imagined. One of them could easily rip me off a horse.” I explained. Dan looked at his feet. “I see, but our options are pretty limited now. I don’t know what else to do. Horseback is a safer bet than on foot, and with horses we don’t need to travel on the road. We can navigate in all sorts of terrain.” Dan explained further. I looked to Mark for any signs of approval. He remained pretty emotionless. “I..I just need to think about it for a little bit, okay?” I looked back to Dan. He gave a grave nod. “Okay Sydney, but we’re seriously running out of time and options, so promise me you’ll make up your mind soon.” He sighed. “I promise.” I replied. He smiled sadly at me, and left the room. 

A few hours passes, and I had decided to trust Dan and attempt to continue by horseback. “Dan?” I called, looking around. He had seemed to vanish. Mark was in the kitchen, casually glancing over a stale newspaper. “Where’s Dan?” I asked. Mark shrugged his shoulders. “Dunno. Wait! I think he went out to the shed with Pete or something.” I nodded, and headed outside and behind the small rickety house where the shed was. I arrived at a terrifying moment. A zombie was wrestling Dan to the dusty ground, while Pete desperately tried to spear the creature with a rusty pitchfork. Dan was screaming in terror, and Pete was yelling something. I didn’t listen to whatever Pete said, and was rapidly scanning my surroundings for a way to free Dan from the monster. There was a cracked clay pot near my foot, and I quickly snagged it. I took the battered in one hand, and hurled it at the zombie. It collided with its face, knocking it off of Dan for half a second. Pete took this moment to pierce the monster with his pitchfork, and it soon stopped struggling. “Dan!” I cried, rushing over to him. Mark came running outside about this time as well. “It’s okay! I’m okay…I’m okay..” He gasped, sitting up. “Did it bite you?” Pete clamored, frightened. Dan shook his head ‘no.’ I helped him get to his feet, and hugged him. “Oh my goodness, I thought you were gonna die.” I breathed, relived that he was alright. I pulled away, and offered him something of a sad smile. “We’re willing to take your word for it, and go horseback.” I announced. 

Sonja:

I was shoved into the back of a car. They had tied my arms behind me, and thrown me into the car’s back trunk. Moments later, Tom was also pushed into the back of the same truck as me. HIs feet and arms were bound. He was kicking and yelling viciously. “Tom! Stop! Stop it! You’re kicking me!” I yelled at him. He stopped struggling, and looked at me. “Sonja! I didn’t even see you!” he replied apologetically. Then, the trunk slammed shut, and we were sealed in darkness for several hours.

The trunk opened again, and bright light flooded the back of the truck. Somebody roughly picked me up and threw me onto the sandy ground, and did the same to Tom. “Rise n’ shine bitches.” The man who got us out, cackled at us.  “Where’s Tucker?” I whimpered, baffled. Apparently, I wasn’t permitted to speak, and the man let me know very quickly, but delivering a fierce kick to my stomach. I shriveled up and fell against Tom, letting out a soft moan of intense pain. The man laughed hysterically, demonically. “Get up, you two. NOW.” The man demanded. I struggled to do so, but managed. We were escorted into a small, old looking house, and led down concrete stairs to a large basement. There was a plethora of people like us, that were captured and confused. There were two well armed men. “Alright newbies.” The man that had led us there  scoffed. “Welcome to the slave trade. You’re gonna be auctioned off to other bandits for whatever reason. Who knows? Bait, probably. Anyway, if you try running off, you’re gonna get a couple bullets in your head. If you talk out of turn, you’ll get beat. If you do it again, you get beat to death. Now Get!” He snarled. We both crawled out of his sight, and mingled with all the other kidnapped people. Among them, I found Aurey. She too, had spoken out of turn, and had a swelling bruise on one of her cheeks. Tom found Tucker and Jordan among the large crowd as well. We had all been reunited. I hugged Tucker tightly, and cried into his shoulder. He calmed me down, and returned the hug. “What are we gonna do from here?” Jordan asked in a hushed voice. “Shouldn’t we just let them do what they want? We don’t have a whole lot of options.” Aurey noted blandly. “No! We fight our way out!” Tom suggested. “With what weapons?” I asked him. Nobody responded to me though. “We just need to stay together right now, okay?” Tucker finally said, letting out an exasperated sigh. About that moment, a guard blew a strikingly high pitched whistle. We all jumped a bit, and turned to attention. All the armed guards had their weapons aimed at the crowd of startled to-be slaves. “Listen up, you rats. The auctioning is ‘bout to begin, so line up against the wall.” The whistle blower stated loudly. Aren’t they concerned about attracting  the zombies? I thought silently to myself. A flood of rough looking men came tearing down stairs, eyeing out the strongest and prettiest among us. There was a loud clamor as some of the buyers argued over who they would get. A gun fired, and a slave fell over, dead. I exchanged a terrified glance with Tucker. “A’ight buyers. Know that I gotcha attention what do you have to offer for this one?” The auctioneer/guard who had escorted us asked, pointing to the first person in line. It was a scrawny, middle aged woman. She looked fragile and weak. No offers were given, so the auctioneer pulled out a slender knife, and thrust it into the woman’s chest. The woman let out a bellowing cry, and fell over dead. This dreadful scene replayed over and over again as the auctioneer went dow the line, but several were auctioned off. The auctioneer drew terribly close to us, until he came to me, the first of us to go up for auction. “Any offers?” He shouted.