There’s Something You Need To Know About The Infection That’s Spreading Throughout This Place
"Something happened six weeks ago, someone screwed up and this happened. As for you only remembering this starting two days ago, I, uh, was trying to protect you guys.”
By 
Liz Zemlicka
“C’mon guys, join us. Don’t be rude.” Adam waved his hand, inviting us to sit.
We sat down next to the fire hesitantly.
Adam began to ramble.
“We’ve been in the woods for a while now, haven’t run across many living people. We usually go hunting for food, don’t wanna go near the city for nothin’. Tried it once, damn near lost Frank. That was right after the city got quiet, when everyone was gone, but we’re gettin’ low on ammo and decided to move on and find a smaller town to scavenge for supplies. If there’s any left by now”
Something was wrong, I looked to Abby and Max who seemed to have noticed this too, but Randy seemed unphased. This infection started two days ago; Adam was talking like this has been going on a lot longer.
It was Max that finally spoke.
“Why would everything be looted by now? It’s only been two days, and where are the rest of the survivors? More people have got to have made it out”
Adam stared back at Max blankly.
“Kid, what in the hell are you talking about? Where have you been… TWO days? Did you hit your head or something? It’s been more like TWO months.”
Stunned silence followed this revelation.
Before any of us could speak, a loud crash came from behind us, startling us out of our confusion.
Randy spun around, gun aimed toward the trees where the sound came from, nobody moved. I’m not sure we even breathed.
Crash
It came again, closer this time.
“What the hell?” Frank whispered.
Adam jumped up, grabbed a handgun and joined Randy.
“Everybody down!” Adam ordered.
We waited on the ground, watching the trees for what felt like hours, when a figure emerged from the trees, limping slowly. Adam took aim but Randy reached over and grabbed his gun.
“Wait!” he whispered sharply.
Another figure limped out behind the first, then another and another. To our horror, they kept coming.
“We gotta go!” Randy yelled, grabbing bags and waving at us wildly.
The six of us ran with what we could grab of our things, Randy and Adam ran behind us, shooting at any of the infected that got close enough.
“We gotta find a place to lay low, we can’t beat ’em all!” Randy yelled.
“I know a place! Hey Frank head to the highway, there’s an old airstrip up the road!” Adam yelled
Frank waved back at him to acknowledge he heard him and turned toward the highway.
Frank was already red in the face and huffing before we reached the road. We seemed to be putting a good distance between our slow pursuers and us.
Frank stopped with his hands on his knees “I just need a minute,” he huffed.
“Old man, you need to get in shape!” George elbowed him jokingly, huffing himself.
“C’mon guys, the airstrip isn’t far from here, let’s keep the distance between us and them!” Adam scolded.
We decided to cross the road, packed with abandoned cars, and head toward another tree line for cover.
When we slowed down, Abby grabbed my arm and whispered.
“Did you see that? In one of those cars, there was someone behind the wheel, but he was completely decayed like a skeleton was driving!” she sounded scared and disgusted, and I had seen that, more than once actually. I just nodded.
“How is it possible that this has been going on for 2 months?” she asked again
“I don’t know, I’m still wrapping my head around this they’ve gotta be messing with us,” I said
“Then what’s with the decayed people in those cars?” she asked. I had wondered the same thing.
“I think we need to find this airstrip and get more information out of these guys,” I said, Abby nodded, still looking perplexed.
We made it to the airstrip in silence, watching carefully for any sign of the group that had followed us.
Adam and Randy went in first, guns drawn. After a few moments, they reappeared and waved us in.
“We need to reinforce the doors and windows, but we should be safe here for now,” Adam said.
Abby and I found some dusty chairs and sat down, exhausted, while the guys gathered what they could find to board up the doors and windows.
“No fire tonight guys let’s keep as much attention away from this place as possible.” Randy sounded as exhausted as the rest of us.
Randy sat down, running his right hand over the top of his head. He never looked up from the floor.
What did he know?
The light was fading fast now as we sat in the dark, little airport terminal silently.
Finally, Max broke the silence.
“Two months?!”
“Yeah kid, I know it’s hard to keep track of days, but this definitely didn’t start 2 days ago…D..Did you bump your head or something?” Adam furrowed his eyebrows at Max in concern.
Max didn’t respond, he stared down at his hands; I imagined he was thinking the same thing we were. How in the hell did we lose that much time?
“I remember it starting two days ago too.” I chimed in finally and Abby nodded in agreement next to me.
This time Frank spoke
“I’ve been keeping track, we had been in those woods for about three weeks, wandering around, attempting to find food and supplies in the city for at least a week or two before that, and we were holed up in my office building for about 5 days before everything calmed down.”
Frank looked up at everyone staring silently at him.
“Numbers are my thing,” he mumbled into his hands.
“Well I count that as around six weeks,” Adam said. He was staring at us, eyebrows furrowed
Randy was unusually quiet, still staring down at his hands.
“Randy!” I snapped. “What are you not telling us?” I stood suddenly, hands on my hips.
For a moment, Randy didn’t move, then sighed heavily and waved for me to sit back down.
“I don’t know much, I was like you, stuck in the middle of an all-out war, trying to survive. What I do know is that these leeches are not from our world. It’s classified information, but I guess that don’t matter anymore huh?” He still didn’t look up.
“What!?” I asked, incredulous.
“The military learned about a tear. I guess you could call it that anyway, this tear goes to another world. I know how crazy this sounds but I swear it’s true. We had known about it for years, had to keep it heavily guarded after we lost men exploring the other world, it was deemed too dangerous.” he paused, only glancing at us.
“Something happened six weeks ago, someone screwed up and this happened. As for you only remembering this starting two days ago, I, uh, was trying to protect you guys.” he cleared his throat uncomfortably.
Silence.
“Protect us? That doesn’t make sense!” Max jumped out of his chair angrily.
“It does if the tear was hidden in the armory.” Randy wouldn’t look at any of us as we let that sink in.
Stay Tuned For The Next Part, Coming Soon
