Day 10: Emergency Meeting

David felt the tension boiling in his gut. He knew he had mere moments to get to the truck before the horde set upon him and with a blockade of eight festering corpses in front of him, his options were limited. Suddenly, he saw Cristian turn the wheel of his vehicle toward him. He was preparing to run them over. Diving out of the way, he listened at the sound of decayed carcasses bursting upon impact with the front grill of the truck.

Knocking up against a stack of pallets, he rushed to his feet as he heard more zombies closing in. “Get in!” Liz shouted. “Hurry!”

Jumping into the passenger seat, he heard the door slam shut as Cristian maneuvered the vehicle into a U-turn, starting toward home. “That was a close one,” David replied. When they reached the main street, they noticed a number of fires burning around them. 

Cristian’s driving slowed a bit when his attention was momentarily distracted by the sky to the east. In the distance, over the tall line of buildings, dark columns of rising smoke was visible. It appeared that quite a bit of the city was burning. “These guys are everywhere,” Liz said. “We need to get out of here. Fast!”

A single car with its hood up was the only thing visible ahead on the street and Cristian drove closer slowly. Moving to a corner occupied by the fire station and a convenience store, he came to a stop. “What’s that?” he asked, waiting for the others to see what had caught his attention. A large military vehicle was blocking the main road. The engine revved. And a few moments later, three members of the BioCore Militia exited the truck.

“Go,” David said in a low tone, staring at the men as they readied their weapons.

“Are they…they wouldn’t,” Cristian said. One of the men took aim at the group. “Holy shit.”

“Go!” David yelled.

Slamming his foot on the gas, Cristian raced down an opposite street, heading east away from the prison. Taking as many back streets as he could, he made a few turns and started north, ensuring they weren’t followed or driving down any barricaded roads. “Did we lose them?” he asked, not daring to look behind him again.

“Yeah, we’re good,” Liz replied as Cristian turned down the road toward home.

Dominic gently placed Elise on a cot in the infirmary and watched a moment as Natalie tended to her wound. “How bad is it?” she asked once the blood had been cleaned up.

“Actually,” Natalie replied. “You’re gonna need some stitches but you should heal just fine. I’ll grab you some antibiotics and pain meds from the back once we’re done here.”

A beeping alarm alerted them that the others had returned and Matthew met the group at the door. “Is everyone alright?” he asked, hoping they too had not met with unexpected injuries or trouble.

“We’re all fine,” Liz replied, “But we need to talk. All of us.”

“Agreed.” Matthew called an emergency meeting. After everything that had happened in the last three days, there was much to discuss. “We need to figure out exactly what is going on,” he said. “There are too many accidents for any of this to be coincidence.”

“Exactly,” David chimed in. “Someone has to be orchestrating these run-ins with all the zombies. We are always extra careful and vigilant when we go out, yet the last four time we’ve all met with hordes of these creatures who seemingly appear out of nowhere.”

“Not to mention the fact that they run now,” Cristian stated. “It makes for extremely dangerous situations.”

“We found a couple of BioCore’s guys while we were out. They may be able to give us Intel on the company and what they have planned for survivors,” Troy said. 

“One thing interesting about that, they were held in a room with a couple of zombies and neither were attacked.” Dominic added. “I don’t know if they’ve figured out some way to repel zombies but I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Could it have something to do with the black ooze coming from them?” Portia asked. “My last kill, the zombie spewed this slime that I’d never seen before.”

“Anything is possible,” Josh replied. “We just need to be careful. Since learning that a person can turn whether or not they’d been bitten or scratched, everything has an added layer of danger.” The group nodded and the room fell in silence for a moment. 

“There’s something else I think you should know,” Matthew said. “James and Nicole found a girl hiding in their truck. And after a lengthy and insightful conversation Sumiko revealed to us that she has been bitten on numerous occasions and survived without infection.”

“What?” Liz gasped. “How is that possible?”

“The only explanation I’ve been able to come up with is she’s immune. But more importantly what that means is she’s the key to a possible cure.” He replied, standing more erect at the front of the room. “There may be an end to this apocalypse once and for all.”

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