Episode 9: Fortified

Episode 9

"Fortified"

Wendy kept on screaming, until she eventually passed out from the pain.

"Jess and I will get the bullet out and patch her up," Jake began, "Then we will decide what to do with her after."

Brandy ran to Jamie and she hugged him, I was angered.

"Why would you want to save her?" I asked.

"Because we still need to act like good people," Jake said, "We have to stay human."

"If you knew what we've been through, you wouldn't think twice to let her die. You don't know what's out there, and it's not just the stranglers either. You don't need to waste the supplies on her." I argued.

"We're helping her and that's final." Jess yelled.

They picked her up and brought her into the storage room to work on her in peace. If I was the leader of this place, I would have shot her in the head, and killed her. That just goes to show that when you are out there on the road too long, you become a lot more tougher, and less sympathetic. I walked over to Kayla to see how she was doing, I was expecting her to be trembling in fear after having to shoot someone. She wasn't. She placed the gun down, and had a small smirk on her face. She didn't look guilty at all. A little girl shouldn't have that attitude. I want her to cry, I want her to freak out like a normal little girl would. She wouldn't though.

"Kayla?" I asked.

"Yeah?"

"Are you okay?"

"Yes, I'm fine." she answered.

"Jeff!" Patrick called over, "We need to run to the roof, Wendy attracted a shit ton of the stranglers over here. There has to be at least thirty of them all trying to get in."

I looked back at Kayla, she didn't look scared either. I decided to forget about it for now, we need to hold off this mall. I ran onto the roof with Patrick, he grabbed a silenced machine gun, and handed another one to me. There was no point in using the mirror strategy in this situation, all of the stranglers in the area all knew we were in here and were banging on the front doors of the mall. I aimed carefully, and shot one in the head. It dropped. The stranglers looked over at us, but then looked away and continued banging on the doors. Sooner or later they were going to get in. All of them piled up against it is not good. I guess I spoke too soon. Before I could get another shot, the door busted open and the stranglers flooded through the mall. It would only be a matter of time until they found the food court. I ran downstairs with Patrick.

"Everyone stay here! Do not leave!" I shouted.

"Stranglers got in, didn't they?" Winston asked.

I didn't answer, I was hoping he would leave the subject alone. Patrick and I can handle this, we don't need to worry anyone.

"I'm coming." he added.

Winston grabbed a shotgun from his gunsmith table and loaded it, before I could argue, Mark volunteered too.

"I may be one handed," he said, "But I've made it this far." he grabbed a pistol.

I didn't know what to say, I thought all the people in here were slightly cowards, since they haven't really seen the outside world. I guess I was wrong.

We all gathered up by the food court doors, and counted down from three.

"One, two, three, now!" I yelled, I kicked open the door and we ran throughout to mall.

We were watching corners, stranglers will be here any minute, wanting to kill us. We kept our guns raised high. I heard screams, then tons of stranglers pouring out from a corner.

"Shit! Fire!" I yelled, we started shooting our guns off at them.

Most of them were dropping like flies, but some of them we would miss, nicking their arm or something. Then they would keep coming. We backed up into the mall some more, the stranglers kept on pushing us back.

"Don't let them near you!" I yelled.

We were getting overpowered though, we had to run. We ran from the stranglers, looking for a good spot in the mall to hold off in. I then spotted a hardware store in the mall, we headed for it. I ran to the doors and opened them, thank god they were unlocked. I slammed the doors behind us and looked around. There were still about twenty stranglers outside, pounding on the glass doors.

"Now what do we do?" Mark asked, "We've trapped ourselves!"

"Yeah I was planning on making it back alive for my wife and daughter." Winston said.

"Just let me think dammit!" I cried.

I looked around and grabbed a weed waker, everyone looked at me in disbelief.

"You can't be serious." Winston said.

"It's our only shot."

"Yeah, imagine you scrambling all of the stranglers up out there," Patrick began, "Then you get infected, I'm sure their blood and guts flying around like confetti won't get you sick."

"Shit you're right," I said, "If only we could find something to block-"

I looked to my right and saw a row of respirators. I looked back at everyone, they saw it too. I smiled.

"I think we've found our solution." I said.

We strapped on the respirators, and everyone grabbed a weapon. We may be safe from infection now, but we don't know for sure. Stranglers can also rip people apart too, so as long as we stay a safe distance from them, we should be safe. Luckily this place had a couple more weed wakers to go around. Mark couldn't use one though, it was too hard to control it with one hand. He was a little upset, but he then found a hammer, which he was okay with. I turned on the weed waker, along with everyone else. Then I kicked open the doors, stranglers came running in, but we held our weed wakers out. They ran right into them. We were scrambling their guts, blood and everything flying around. A strangler got around the chaos and got a little close to me, I swung the weed waker around and sliced it's head clean off. Mark stood back, and only used his hammer if he absolutely needed to. A couple got close to him, but he bashed their brains in pretty well. I started to think maybe we should have grabbed safety goggles too, but it was too late for that. Once the majority of them were gone, we ran through the rest of them like it was nothing. I kept my weed waker out, and ran out the doors with everyone else, we sliced anything in our path. After that, we finished off the remaining ones with a simple swipe, and then turned them off. I took off my blood coated respirator and backed up to look at the hardware store. It was painted red, it was disgusting, with bodies lying around the place all cut up.

"Of course I picked today to wear my white shirt," Winston began, "Is this what the outside is like?" He took off his respirator.

"In a nutshell, yes." I responded.

"It all happened so fast, that was really good quick thinking."

"You tend to learn it when you've been on the road for so long."

"Come on guys, let's head back, I'm gonna throw up." Mark said.

We headed back, bringing the weed wakers with us, these were actually pretty nice weapons. I ran to the front doors of the mall to see how much damage was done to them. The doors had been bashed down, we needed to find some way to fix them.

"Damn," Winston said, "We need to find a substitute for doors while we fix these things."

"Any more bright ideas Jeff?" Mark asked me.

"Not this time." I said.

"Wait a second," I said, I walked closer to the door, "Now I know how they got in."

"How?" Winston asked.

I walked over to the metal cage that would go over door. The one that Jess shut when we first got here, it would keep out the stranglers. Wendy must have left it open when she went on a walk. I thought she only went on walks around the mall, she actually left the mall?

"How did they get in Jeff?" Patrick asked.

"Wendy opened it." I said.

There was a long moment of silence. I was furious, I wanted to throw her out, but I don't know how that will go with Jess and Jake.

"What do we do?" Winston asked.

I walked over to the cage and closed it, locking it in place.

"We never open this thing again, unless we need to," I answered, "I don't know how long this cage is going to last, we need to find some new doors soon."

"Let's just go back to the food court, everyone is probably worrying about us." Winston said, trying to wipe all the blood and guts off of his clothes.

"Agreed," Mark said, "I want to change my clothes."

"Wait," I said, "We might want to go find some new clothes somewhere in the mall, I mean we can't come back like this. Who knows, we might infect some people by accident, we are covered in their blood."

"True, do you know where any clothes stores are in this mall?" Patrick asked Winston.

"Sure do," he said, "Follow me, we've survived here long enough to know where some things are. When supplies run short, Jess and Jake would run through this mall and grab whatever they need."

He led the way, I put my respirator back on, the smell of my clothes was really starting to burn my nose. It smelled just how it sounds, rotted guts. We walked up an escalator, of course it wasn't working though, power was gone. It's been gone for a few weeks now, we found out about it before attacking Derrick. It was devastating. We walked a few feet, looking at stores, until we found a hunting store, it had tons of stuff.

"Wow," I said, "A hunting store? Is this where you guys got all your guns from?"

"Yep, except the silenced guns. Those are illegal." Winston answered.

"Then where did you find them?"

"They were Jake's, let's just say he knew a guy before all of this started."

I opened the doors and my eyes lit up, hunting clothes, gear, guns, anything you could think of.

"Why didn't you take all of it?" I asked.

"We only take what we need," Winston said, "If we needed more we would come back."

I walked over to a hanger and picked off a green t-shirt. It wasn't camouflage or anything, just dark green. I then found some jeans, I wasn't much for camouflage, I didn't like it. Mark did though, he was decked out in full camouflage before I could even get my new clothes on. Patrick wore a camouflage coat, with jeans like me. Winston wore a camouflage t-shirt, along with dark green cargo pants. I looked in a mirror, and wiped some blood off of my face. I had to say, I kind of looked badass. I picked up a shotgun from a wall it was hanging on. I loved shotguns, when I was little my grandpa let me shoot his. I was good at it too. I grabbed some ammo for it, and loaded it up. I put the weed waker down, this shotgun was much better.

We headed out of the store, Winston grabbed a few more weapons for his gunsmith shop, and we started back to the food court. We went down the escalators again, and turned a couple corners, until we found the food court doors again. I opened them and people looked at us, they were a little confused by the fact that we were wearing different clothes and respirators. Jess and Jake were still working on Wendy in the other room. I took off the respirator and hung it over my neck.

"Jeff what happened?" Sabrina asked.

"We took care of it, Wendy must have left the cage open by the front door, that's how the stranglers got in. We had to change clothes, because it was a bloodbath. We found a way to possibly stop the virus getting you sick though," I said, I held up my respirator, "These things, wear them and it's almost like a block to the sickness."

"Smart idea," Jess said, walking out of the storage room, "Who thought of that one?"

"Jeff did." Winston smacked me on the back.

"Impressive, after being here for almost three months, we've never thought of using respirators as a potential cure."

"So how's Wendy doing?" I asked, I honestly didn't care but I wanted to make conversation.

"I don't know," Jess explained, "She's been passed out for a while, her pulse is very faint."

Jake then came running out of the room, he looked panicked.

"Her pulse has gotten faster." he said.

"So she's pulling through?" Winston asked.

"I don't know," Jake looked really panicked, "It's not normal, it's too fast."

We all packed into the storage room, all of us. We surrounded Wendy, I put my two fingers on her neck, it was fast, like a machine gun fast. I pulled it away quickly.

"Yeah, that's not normal." I said.

"No shit!" Jess yelled.

"I don't know what to do with her! I don't know if this is a sign of death, or a sign of someone pulling through!" Jake cried.

"I've never seen anything like it." Ned added.

Wendy's veins then started to change colour, and get more visible. They got really bright, like someone shined a flashlight inside of her body, then turned red. Just like the stranglers.

"Everyone stay back," I said, "She's turning."

Wendy's eyes then opened, they were bloodshot and full of rage. She screamed, but this time it was an angry scream. Before she could do anything else, Mark smacked her in the forehead with his hammer, leaving a big hole in her head. She was dead. Blood ran off of her head and onto the ground next to my foot.

"What the hell was that?" Jess asked.

"That," I started, "Was someone turning into a strangler. When she went on her walk after she was angry, she must have come in contact with too many. I've been in contact with plenty of them, I was just lucky. Wendy wasn't so much."

"I can't believe that just happened."

"You'll get used to it."