5.1
10/04/2009
"...Can we really just walk in?" Nikki asked Blake.
"As I said before," he replied, "We've timed this just right, so it won't be nearly as dangerous as it typically is."
"...But we can't just walk in, right?" Nikki asked again in a high voice, face tight with anxiety.
"Thanks to your seventh sense and the timing we've chosen, we should be able to navigate the city," Blake replied reassuringly, as if he was an infinitely patient father.
The squad had been fairing more or less the same over the previous two weeks. Eve didn't speak. Nikki spoke, but her voice didn't contain a hint of the same energy and happiness that her companions were accustomed to.
Corvus and Blake, on the other hand, acted, at least towards the others, the same as they'd always done. Corvus just loped along silently, and Blake had been confidently leading them westward along the vast river, the same one they'd come across weeks earlier, when Jelani was still with them.
Naturally, they were all under the impression that they had left Jelani to die on the summit of Mount Hood, so the mass of flowing water they were forced to look at every day didn't exactly bring up refreshing memories.
They'd been taking the road that ran along the river's bank, not traveling with any urgency whatsoever.
When Nikki had questioned this, Blake explained that he was trying to time their arrival in Portland with the phase of the moon. It was important that they arrived on the correct day because that would maximize their chances of survival.
Therefore, he'd said, the ideal time to arrive was the morning of October 5th. However, getting from the outer suburbs to the city center, which was their final destination, would be a trip of well over 10 miles. Since they wanted to arrive in the city center on the morning of October 5th, they would need to use the 4th to get as far into Portland as possible.
Now, the four still walked on the same highway, but it had separated from the river a few miles earlier and was about to bridge across a different, smaller river.
On the other side of that strip of water, the old city would effectively begin.
Dense suburbs, a place where hundreds of thousands of people used to live, would give life to new beings. When they crossed that bridge, the real journey would begin.
Nikki stared at the cracked road ahead. Small trees grew up out of the pavement and long grasses crept over the barriers. A few street signs could be seen in the distance, although many of them were strewn about on the ground, perhaps punctured with little holes or splattered in blood.
Nikki couldn't see those signs of war, though, and she couldn't see the decaying human teeth either.
Blake stopped, looking out across the bridge and into the city that lay beyond it. "You're not sensing too much danger, are you, Nikki?"
"...I guess not," she replied in a small voice. "But I'm afraid. It's like, we're not in danger, but… something bad is going to happen."
"Well, we know it's going to become dangerous at some point," Blake stated matter-of-factly. "Let's get started. We can make decisions as we go."
The morning sun had just risen over the horizon, and not a cloud was in sight as the squad began their day by crossing the bridge to Portland.
They found themselves on a road with massive, black burn marks, chunks of pavement torn out, and guardrails thrown around like they were made of paper.
There were strips of high grass on either side of the highway, so, apart from the road, they couldn't see much of anything.
But the buildings they could see had been obliterated.
Walls had been blown to pieces and burned to the ground. Shattered street lights were bent in half and scattered along the highway, right alongside the signs whose metal faces had been mercilessly shredded.
Nikki stopped abruptly. In a defeated voice, she murmured, "Those are teeth, aren't they?"
Hundreds of teeth, all grouped together in a small cluster on the pavement.
"It's only to be expected," Blake replied. "Many people lived here, so there will be remains."
Nikki followed reluctantly, steering well clear of the teeth in the road.
"Ah!" She grabbed tightly onto Eve's shoulder and pointed into the distance. "That's a person!"
Eve had already seen the person, who was running towards them with a lopsided gait, but she hadn't said anything.
Blake squinted at the distant figure. "It must be a rogue," he observed.
As the rogue came clearly into sight, they could see that it was a person, but something was distinctly off about them. The woman, who looked to be around 50 years old, had yellowish skin that had completely rotted away in places, and her hair hung in tangled knots around her shoulders.
"A zombie?" Nikki muttered, both exasperated and afraid. "Again?"
The most unusual thing about this woman, however, was not the rotted skin or tangled hair. Instead, it was the fact that there were knives where her hands should have been.
One knife on each side, sticking straight out of her wrists. They appeared to be large chef's knives, somewhere around 18 inches long, and the sun glinted off their blades as their woman awkwardly swung her arms from side to side.
Blake sighed sadly.
She looks pitiful.Desperate, even.
On that silent road that stretched out in front of him, he imagined chaos.
Some day in the distant past, screams must have been echoing from every direction. There would have been bangs mixed in with the terrified shrieks and smoke rising up from the entire landscape.
This woman, he thought, looks like she's experiencing it right now. It's as if her child is being devoured by a monster a few feet in front of her, and she's sprinting towards it, her own kitchen knife in hand, making a hopeless effort to save the thing that was precious to her.
"Shoot it," he ordered.
Maybe this will put her out of her misery.
Corvus raised his carbine and centered the rogue in his scope, but, impossibly, just as he pulled the trigger, the woman seemed to anticipate the bullet's path as she staggered sideways, dodging it completely.
She forged ahead, her desperate eyes never wavering in their focus.
Corvus aimed again, and this time, his bullet hit the mark.
The zombie woman tripped and fell hard onto her face. She raised her head for one last time, staring with vacant eyes at the air in front of her.
She lifted an arm, scraping the knife's tip along the pavement as she reached out in front of herself and tried to pull her body forward. Again, as if swimming, she extended her other arm and clawed at the ground with her useless replacement for a hand.
Finally, those deep sockets that held her yellowed eyes tilted downward, and her head slumped to the ground.
The squad walked past her, each one of them sparing a glance at the woman's wasted body lying motionless in the center of the road.
Blake refocused his eyes ahead, nearing his destination with every step that he took.
They proceeded steadily, covering mile after mile and encountering a few rogues along the way, some of animal form and some of human form, many having odd features like weapons attached to their limbs. However, they were never really challenged, and never faced with more than one rogue at a time.
The concerning thing, though, was the constant sound of distant gunfire.
Nikki wasn't particularly knowledgeable when it came to rogues and the elements of life, but she couldn't help wondering why their path had been so easy. Apart from the strange sense of foreboding that she'd been feeling for days, she didn't sense the same level of threat that she'd expected to find in Portland.
I've always known he was hiding something, she thought, but now, I'm more worried than ever.
In Nikki's opinion, no matter how many trustworthy acts he carried out, Blake was not someone who could be trusted. Her depression after betraying a companion had clouded her judgement for the previous two weeks, but now that they were putting their lives on the line once again, the question "Why?" reentered the forefront of her mind.
Why are we doing this?