I Remember...

My heart is pounding, I gasp for air but there is no air. My hands shake as they reload the 357 Magnum with the last six round quick load. I lean out the ruined apartment window and see a dozen or so undead feasting on someone two stories below. I look around the room and I want to cry. Everyone is dead. Alicia or Mark was infected, doesn’t matter which now, they both came running out of the bedroom and were all over Jessica before Eric and I could turn around from our posts at the windows. Eric panicked, he ran to Jessica and tried to wrestle her away from the creatures, but it was too late. As soon as the Alicia thing took a bite out of Eric’s neck I lobbed my last grenade in between them and hit the floor. Now I’m looking around the room, scavenging my friends’ bodies for weapons. What am I going to do now, we were just about to leave. I find Eric’s pistol with a full clip and I carry a pistol in each hand as I continue to poke around looking for the keys to the box truck waiting in the loading dock downstairs. Why did this have to happen, we were ready to go, all the supplies packed and waiting, and Alicia insisted that we stay the night…it was her, she knew she wouldn’t last the night, maybe she was going to tell us…now I’m left all alone, to retreat back to the jail with enough supplies to last a couple of years, and then what? I can’t live alone forever, what the fuck about me Alicia?! I find the keys but my hands get bloody in the process and I quickly wash them in the sink being careful to continue looking in all directions at once. No one to watch my back anymore. I remove my back pack and load it up with the few other items left in the kitchen from our little celebration banquet. Five years since Hell Day and here the five of us stood toasting to our success on another mission accomplished.
I end up having to leave some of the food behind because there's just too much, there were supposed to be five of us carrying this out! I don't want to risk a second trip since it's only a couple of hours after nightfall, I've got to get out of here, all of this fresh blood is going to attract all the ghouls within a mile. I strap my bags on tight and put my motor cycle helmet and gloves on. I feel claustrophobic in the helmet, I never liked the helmet in the first place, but now without my friends around the edges feel like they are closing in. I check my guns and tools one last time before leaving the apartment.
I kick the door open so hard it almost breaks in half. I sweep the hallway with my .22. Not a very powerful weapon, but one that I carry a lot of ammo for since it's so light. A while back Eric put a scope on it for me and it became my weapon of choice. The hallway is clear, but as I walk down the narrow corridor I can hear them scratching at the walls from inside other apartments. My skin is crawling and I can't stop looking behind me. At the end of the hallway the stairs go down four stories to a sub basement where the truck is parked. Somewhere down there I can hear a shuffling noise but it's drowned out by the sound of my heart beat echoing in the confines of the helmet. I put the rifle on my back and pull out my pistol since the stairwell is so narrow, no telling where the ghoul is until I find it. I take the stairs two at a time making a conscious effort not to look behind me, there's nothing there.
On the basement level landing I find the ghoul. He's dragging himself up the stairs
slowly so I dispatch him with the crow bar rather than waste a bullet. I fly down the last flight of stairs and bolt for the truck through the darkness. Once inside I turn on the flood lights that we mounted on the top to make sure the coast is clear and I'm off.
Outside the parking garage the air is cooler and fresh. The only course in and out of the city is a complicated one, largely due to the number of roadblocks still in place from the first few weeks of the fighting. The quarantined areas were marked by six foot tall cement dividers that had red and white painted stripes along the tops.
Every two or three turns I stopped to consult the map. It was large and detailed with scribbled notes and arrows covering all the margin areas. I was nervous and sweating, finding it more difficult than I thought it would be to read the map and drive at the same time. Some of the undead were following. I could hear there thumping on the sides of the truck each time I came to a stop. They were out there moaning and hissing, waiting for me to exit the vehicle.