12.Best out of 3

After getting inside the truck, putting it in park and turning it off. Alex refines the corruption much faster than before. Once done he inspects his wound.

‘The injuries on my face stopped bleeding but they haven’t completely closed. Those claws were sharper than usual.’

After checking his other injuries Alex discovers that they were in the same condition as the ones on his face.

Trying not to open his wounds Alex exits the truck and starts collecting the cores and analyzing the zombie’s bodies.

‘Their skin turned from withe to a light gray. Most of them don’t have any facial hair and only a few have some hair on their head, it’ll probably come out if I pull a little bit. Most of them are missing a lot of teeth. I don’t know if that’s how they were before they turn or if that’s part of the changes.’

When he was almost done, he checked on the decapitated head just to make sure. This one was missing all the teeth but had one black fang.

‘It kind of looks like a shark tooth but smaller. This is getting wors by the day.’

The last core Alex collected was the one from the man. He compered the core of the man and the core of one of the zombies he killed today.

‘The one from the man is slightly smaller and the color it’s lighter’.

After Alex finished gathering the cores and making sure he didn’t forget anything. He made his way towards his truck but stopped before going inside. Looking at the direction from where the man had come from.

‘I wonder if he was alone or if he had a group. He didn’t have any food, weapon, or anything really. Did he get caught off guard and leave his things behind? What if he got separated from his group? Hmm I should at least check the direction he came from.’

Alex got inside of the truck and made his way in the direction from where the man had come from. As he made his way slowly through the street, he noticed that in the distance there was a gas station surrounded by zombies.

‘His group might be trapped there!’

Alex speeds off towards the gas station. Once he was close enough, he honked the horn multiple times, getting the attention of the zombies as he passed them by.

“Yeah, assholes come get some!!”

As Alex rode away, he noticed that at a distance there were some cars and a school bus blocking the road.

‘Damned, what do I do?!’

As he got closer to the cars Alex remembers a video that he saw, about driving technics.

‘Is either that or leave the truck’.

Once Alex was about 10 meters from the car, he pulled the emergency brake and violently turned the wheel. The truck almost makes a full 180 but stops when the rear bumper hits the cars.

“Shiiit! I can’t believe that worked!”

After taking a few seconds to gather himself Alex sped off towards the approaching zombies.

BANG!! CRASH!!

After going through what felt like 2 dozen zombies Alex made another J-Turn. Once he stopped, he saw that there were a few remaining zombies that could still run.

‘This is kind of fun’.

After running over the remaining zombies Alex made his way towards the gas station. Once he arrived, he noticed that the glass doors were broken and that there were some zombies inside the store, but not many.

‘I could try attracting them out, but I could end up attracting a lot more zombies towards me. There are a lot of houses and stores in this area so there must be a lot more zombies than these. I’m probably just lucky that a swarm didn’t come down on me. Sight, the hard way it is, again.’

After making sure there weren’t any zombies in the vicinity Alex got out of the truck, with his axe and made his way towards the store. When he went through the door his foot stepped on some glass. The sound of crushing glass got the attention of the zombies. Once the zombies laid their eyes on Alex, they rushed at him.

When the first one was close enough Alex hit it with an overhead chop, cutting its head in two. From there he swings his axe in a diagonal line, cutting the side of head of the next one.

There were 3 more inside but they were too busy clawing at a door to notice him. This gave Alex a chance to approach the closes zombie without alerting it. When Alex was behind the zombie he swings at the back of its head, killing it instantly. This finally got the attention of the other 2 but they were too late to stop him from killing another one.

The last one tried to attack him but a well-placed kick to the chest sent it to the floor, where Alex easily kills it.

Turning towards the door that had taken quite a beating and surprised him that it was still holding on, Alex hesitated.

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‘What if they already turned? Haaa I have to make sure’.

“Is there anyone alive in there”.

There was no response for a moment, when Alex was thinking of leaving a voice finally responded.

“Y-yes, w-we are alive”

Alex felt like a huge weight was lifted off his shoulders and let out a breath that he didn’t realize he was holding. Before he said anything else he started to hear whispers from inside and from the sound of it, it sounded like the people inside were arguing.

‘They are probably scared and don’t know if I’m trustworthy’.

“You don’t have to come out if you don’t want to, I just wanted to help. If I’m making you feel unsafe, I can leave”

“NO, wait please!”

A little bit after, he heard things being moved around. They had probably barricaded themselves. Soon 4 people came out, of what Alex believes to be the office, 2 men and 2 women.

There was an awkward silence for a few moments until Alex spoke.

“Hi, my name is Alexander, but you can call me Alex”.

Alex extended his hand for a handshake. Instead of a handshake one of the women ran towards him and hug tackles him. It had been so sudden that Alex almost swung his axe at her.

“Thank you, thank you thank you so much!”

As the woman thank him, she started to cry. Not sure what to do Alex looks at the other people. The other woman was also crying in the arms of one of the other men and the two guys looked like they were a bout to star crying out of relief.

Alex pated the back of the woman with his free hand and addressed the group.

“I know that all of you are shaken but if we don’t get out of here soon more could come. So, I need you to get whatever you can take so we can get out of here”.

The group nodded and started to fill up their backpacks with food, water and whatever they thought could be useful. When the woman lot go of him and looked at his face she gasped.

“Y-your face, you are infected!”.

“””What!”””.

The other three people turned around and looked at his face.

“I did get scratched by a zombie, but I have a way to deal with the infection. I can demonstrate how to do it, but it takes a while. So, once you guys are done, we can leave in my truck, and I’ll show you when we are in a safer location.”

The group still looked warily at Alex. Before he could re-assure them one of the men spoke.

“How do we know you aren’t going to turn late!”

“Or are you trying to make us lower our guard so you can eat us!”

“What?”

Alex was so caught off guard by what the probable couple had said that he couldn’t respond. His lack of response made the group take a few steps back away from him.

“You can’t be serious! I just save your…. You know what? I don’t care. You can do whatever you want, I’m out.”

Alex turns around and starts to walk angerly towards the exit.

‘I can’t believe this shit; I might as well keep going alone…. Alone….. sight.

Before Alex crossed the door, he looked over his shoulder and spoke to the group.

“I’ll be on my truck for 5 minutes. If anyone wants to come with me, they are welcome to.”

As he stepped out of the store a lone zombie rushed towards him, but at this point one was hardly a problem for him to deal with. With a quick swing of his axe, he took the zombie out.

By the time he got inside the truck one of the women was running toward the truck, it was the one that had hug him. Close behind, the rest of the group follow her.

Once the woman sat in the passenger seat and the rest on the group was in the back seats Alex turned on the truck and dive of.

“We are really sorry about before”.

“…...Make sure it doesn’t happen again”

‘I was going to let it go but if I let them walk all over me, they might just take my food and throw me into a horde so that they can get away’.

“You don’t need to be so mean”

Alex steps on the breaks and stops the truck, turning around he stars at the woman in the back.

“If you don’t like my attitude, you can get off nobody is stopping you”.

The woman only looked to the floor and didn’t say anything.

“Any more complaints?”.

When nobody answered, Alex drove the truck back towards the street he was on to re-orient himself towards the church. When he passed the street where he saw the man running and asking for help, he asked the group about him.

“I saw a man running from the street that you guy where on. Was he part of your group?”.

“You saw James? Where is he?”

The woman on his right asked.

“It was too late for him when I got to him. What happened? You guys didn’t use him as bait or something like that. Right?”

Alex asked as his right hand went to his gun.

“No no no no! That’s not what happened!”

“We would never do something like that!”

“OK. So, tell me what happen”

The woman on his right started to explain what had happen.

“Ok but first let me introduce myself. My name is Melinda, those three are Tom, Kevin, and Nichol. We are part of a bigger group”.

Melinda had dirty blonde hair in a ponytail whit light tan skin. Her body shape was athletic and curvy. Honestly one of the prettiest women Alex had met. Tom was slightly shorter that Alex whit white skin and black hair. He also had an athletic build but in a leaner way. Kevin was shorter than Tom but was bulkier than both. He had blond hair and white skin. Nichol was the shortest of the group, her skin was brown and her hair black, she was skinny but fit. Kevin and Nichole were the two Alex assumed were a couple.

“Really?”

“Yes. When everyone woke up it was absolute chaos people screaming, running, crying, there was blood every were, the bodies….”

Alex notices that Melinda had started to shake, and she had a blank stare. As if she was reliving that terrifying first day.

Alex puts his right hand on top of her hands to try to calm her down, while parking the truck on the side of the road.

‘The story sounds like it’s going to take a while and maybe I should join a group that is close by instead of taking my chances on making my way towards the church’.

As Alex finishes parking, he looks back towards Melinda. Seeing that she calmed down a little he takes his hand off hers.

“Take a deep breath, it helps.”

“SIGTH, sorry about that”.

“Mmm, please continue”.

“At some point in the confusion all of us, our whole group, ended up at a clothing store where there was an older couple. The husband addressed the crowd, saying that we couldn’t stay in that store. There wasn’t any food, water or really anything that could help us survive and we didn’t know when help could get to us or if ever.”

“He, Mr. Terry, told us that he owned a mansion where the whole group could fit. He says that he had water, food, guns and even medicine. Out of around 50 people that were in that store, 31 decided to go whit him, us 4 included. It took us around 30 minutes to get there. It had everything that Mr. Terry had promise and it even has a brick fence that is tall enough that those…. Things can’t see us”.

“Just call them zombies”

“Are you sure they are zombies?”

“It’s close enough”.

“……Fine. Anyways, by the time we had gotten there we had lost 5 people, so our group had 26 people at that point. The first 2 days, while terrifying, it had been relatively easy to survive, but on the morning of the 3rd day we discovered that 4 people had taken a sizeable amount of food from the storage”.

Alex made a small wince at hearing that.

“The rest of the day was pretty much just arguing, yelling, and throwing blame around, there were even threats of violence. Fortunately Mr. Terry managed to get the situation under control. He also volunteered to come out and gather more supplies, but some people were worried that if he left the remaining people would take the rest of the food and leave”.

“When Mr. Terry asked for more volunteers, us 4 and 2 more decided to help, but it was a lot more dangerous than we were expecting”.