The car door's slam echoed through the desolate streets. Breath billowed out before him as Evan moved to the center of the nearby intersection. Looking into the surrounding distances, he scanned for movement while straining to listen. Whatever clues of activity which had been present before had since vacated. A couple cars were visible which were in a crashed state, but nothing moved. Except for the city's usual detritus, most of the visible streets were pristine.
"I think we're clear for the moment." Evan called out as he relaxed his grip upon the pistol in his hand. "I don't see anything out here." He flicked at the safety and lowered the weapon into its holster.
"I see a couple of bodies. Nothing moving, though." Leon's voice became clearer as he emerged from the vehicle. A rifle hung from his shoulder via a strap.
They had brought their vehicle a few scant blocks away; the distance to the nearest grocery store. Parked along one corner, the engine was cut. They had waited in silence like that for a while, slowly recovering from the ear-shattering gunshots fired within the enclosed space. Nobody spoke to clarify why they were lingering. Evan had been the first to be satisfied and emerge for a better examination of their surroundings.
Minoko tentatively exited from the vehicle, following the lead of her peers. Pausing, she reached into the car and retrieved another of their scavenged rifles. The sling was lifted and placed carefully upon her shoulder. She did not speak or step far from the driver's door, instead keeping a watchful vigil on the streets. Despite notable nerves, she held rigidly upon the weapon exactly as Leon had instructed.
The building had several stories, but they were only concerned with
the immediate ground floor. A heavy concrete pillar was positioned near
the corner and on each side a few steps downwards led from the
sidewalk into a small inset patio. Along the left edge was placed a
sloping ramp. The sliding glass doors composing the store's front were
closed.
Evan descended the stairs and tested the automatic doors with his hands. "Locked." He inhaled deeply as Leon sidled closer with a flashlight, providing light as Evan made a futile attempt at force.
"Doesn't look like that will work." Leon approached, swaying the beam of light around. "Do you think someone could be hiding in there?"
"It would be a good place to hide." Evan pounded on the glass and waited, watching for any hint of movement or shadow to stir inside. Calm silence persisted, nothing but the unreliable, low whistle of air sliding through lanes of brick, cement and asphalt. "Seems no. We'll have to break in."
"Step back." Leon used the butt of the rifle to hammer repeatedly at the barrier.
Retreating to the sidewalk as Leon worked, Evan gazed along the intersecting streets. Standing beside Minoko, she was still frantically gazing into the distances both up and down the slight incline as well as the transverse path. She gripped her weapon in an agitated, nervous fashion.
Noticing that Lucas remained inside the vehicle, Evan retraced his steps. He still wore the same startled, bewildered expression on his face from walking through the zombie slaughter. Slowly, Evan waved his hand around in an attempt to draw his focus before rapping upon the partially lowered window. "Are you coming? Lucas?"
With his eyes wide, Lucas turned just enough to regard Evan. "I- I.." He forcefully exhaled. "I can't-"
A nearby bang made Evan jump back with a start. Frantically looking around, he calmed as he realized that Leon had fired at the door, and was continuing to pummel upon it. After a moment, he resumed speaking to Lucas. "Calm down, relax and tell me what's wrong."
"Before the power went out, I saw some videos online. In one of them a zombie had its arm ripped off and it was still moving around. It was- pretty bad, v- very bad, actually, but I could watch it. I thought that meant I would be okay with... But just now with the smell and stepping on..." Lucas stared back at him so intently Evan thought something was behind him. "Having to do this all... I don't think I will survive..."
"You're not alone. We are in this together." Evan could sympathize with the lasting impact the carnage had upon Lucas. After disposing of several zombies previously with an axe, what they had just done together was a lot less awful by comparison. But even so, Evan could feel the visceral sensation of every strike clawing at his mind. Stains lingered in memory, accumulating.
Lucas hadn't yet been directly exposed to such things, so it was likely even worse for him. Leon and Minoko had quietly averted their eyes once their confrontation had ended. Nobody seemed fully intact. The others were simply too busy to let themselves feel it yet. But once they were somewhere safe, all of them would likely witness those events again in their mind.
Perhaps once Lucas had other things to focus his mind upon, he would recover more quickly. Evan rapped on the window again to maintain his friend's attention. "Lucas, we need to help each other through this. I know what just happened was very, very bad. There's no way seeing things like this can't disturb someone. But I came to get you because I know you are strong."
Lucas silently listened, watching Evan as he waited for a reply that did not come. Warm breathing misted in the air as Evan contemplated his word choices.
"Lucas. You're the smartest person I know. And right now there's a lot of scared people who let their fear paralyze them. People who are too scared to make sense of what they see happening around them. But I know you. You've been carefully examining everything you've seen so far and you've been thinking about it. You will realize things other people won't, and right now that is the single most valuable thing anyone can contribute."
"I don't know anything." Lucas replied in a monotone fashion. "Not really."
Glass fell to the ground in a noisome crash. Leon reached inside the hole to unlock
the doors. He stepped back and called out. "It's open now. If someone
was in there I think they would have come out by now."
Evan replied. "Give me a moment, I'll go in with you."
Minoko
spoke nervously, moving incrementally towards the building. "Actually,
if nobody is inside, it might be better if you were the one out here."
"Yeah, I think I'd rather have you watching our back." Called out Leon, before he addressed Minoko. "No offense." She indicated no objection as she entered with Leon.
Evan
waved them on to begin their forage. On their
initial examination of the building, they had noted that the exterior
facings of the structure were still intact. He couldn't blame them for
preferring the dark but presumably safe enclosure to uncertain daylight. With the
others on their task, he circled around the vehicle and entered it to sit beside his friend.
"Lucas, we've got a car now. We're getting out of this."
"Good. I can't-" Lucas paused to inhale deeply a few times, easing his nerves. "I- I don't want to be here. I need to go."
"That's what we're doing. We're leaving to get help, just as soon as we get food for everyone."
"Bring Jessica and Ryan. They need to be with us."
"They're going to hide out and wait for the rescue."
"No." Lucas spoke slowly, forcefully taking deep breaths of air between words. "We all need t- To stay together."
Evan started to reply, but words failed him as he had a thought. The focus with which Lucas was speaking was intentional. If only a few would escape, he wanted to make sure they were the people he cared about. "We're going to get help. For everyone."
"We can't get help. Nothing we d-" Lucas hesitated, easing himself back with a deep breath before continuing to speak. "As long as there is a single zombie remaining, there is reason to come here. But they haven't come back. Not since the- the mass knockout event."
"You mean the- uh- black note?"
"Black note?"
"Yeah. Uh, Ryan sort of came up with that." Evan admitted.
"Like a brown..." Lucas broke into a chuckle, then a robust laugh. A mad display of sudden, unnerving emotion that kept spilling out for far longer than it should have. When Lucas finally settled down enough to be capable of speech, he seemed a bit more himself. "Sounds like Ryan... Anyway, after the blackou- Err, those black notes- all those people, they're... Keeping away. Maybe some of them also heard the sounds you talked about. Or saw something more..." Lucas trailed off, an inquisitive look on his face.
Evan had no good idea how to talk about what he knew. At the time, the sounds were just one additional surreal sensation during an avalanche of hazy experience. Harried as he had felt at the time, he had almost neglected the noises for their duration. "Whatever that thing was, it sort of... Made a whistling and clicking which sort of partially overlapped. Almost like wind chimes, or a pipe organ with loud snapping." Evan briefly thought back to the street littered with metallic debris and the whine of squealing metal. "I also saw a place where people should have been, but were just missing. There was torn metal and things were left."
"Interesting..." There was a moment of silence before Lucas continued. "See, before the- the black note and anything else they may have learned, our rescuers were treating this like an ongoing natural disaster. That made sense, because a natural disaster is random and undirected. So once you understand the dangers, you have some idea of how to keep yourself safe while resolving the issue. But now we know the real situation is fundamentally different. This isn't just some random event."
"What difference does that make?" Evan spent the effort to look around as he spoke. The streets were still clear. "Either way, we're still here."
"Because, what is really behind the zombie event is another civilization. So the choices for how to respond to it need to happen on a broader scale. From a scale where we, as individual people simply do not matter."
"So, you're saying we're not important enough to rescue? That the zombies here aren't worth killing?"
"Right now, yes. As long as they're around, it's the aliens that matter." Pausing for a moment, Lucas inhaled deeply to ease his nerves. "And there's only two responses I can think of for this kind of thing. The first is to attack any footholds as hard and quickly as you can to prevent encroachment from the invading civilization. And the second is to abandon anywhere you think is a lost cause so you might be able to defend yourself. So you don't pointlessly waste resources. Like what happened when the- uh, black note hit."
They sat in contemplative silence for a moment as Evan considered his friend's logic. It felt like something had to be wrong with it, but he couldn't figure out what it could be. "What if they wanted to establish contact? Try to communicate instead of fighting?"
"That's- sort of covered by the second thing. It would probably look the same to us, at least."
"So, you really don't think we could get help?"
"I think if we could, we would have already seen someone from outside come through here by now. Someone's family would be motivated enough to try." Lucas stared off through the windshield, still not seemingly focusing his attention on anything.
Evan frowned as he focused his thoughts. If they really could not get outside assistance, what other options did they have? "Is it dangerous to stay here for a while?"
"I- I don't know. It's impossible to know. Maybe if they're lucky, someone like you could survive here for a while, fighting the zombies and hiding until all this is over. But I- I can't." As Lucas's voice trailed off, Minoko and Leon appeared from the store with carts full of supplies.
Evan partially emerged from the vehicle, waving to indicate the area was clear. As Leon and Minoko began to approach, Evan returned his attention to Lucas. "It's going to be okay, we're going to get you out of here."
"All of us should leave..." Lucas whispered as the others were hurriedly tossing things into the trunk.
"We'll do what we can." Evan replied, thinking of Zack, weak with a broken arm back at the building. Maybe if they had weapons and the distance to safety wasn't too far, they could get everyone out on foot. Evan wondered if there was anyone else that would be better transported in the car.
