The Long Road

Running through the yards, jumping over privacy fences, stone, and brick walls, around the area, I circled around and kept heading towards the forest-covered mountains. I got lucky and didn't run into any zombies or other monsters that seem very common here. I see that I'm starting to get closer to the mountain, but most likely, I'm still a few miles away. When I am far enough away that I don't think they would be able to find me, I move back to the sidewalk and slow to a brisk walk. I walk in the general direction of the mountain for another hour when I come to houses with woods behind them.

I scanned the mountain from the road to see if I could see any streets that went up, but from where I am, I can't see any. With there being more mountain on my right, I turn right and walk along the road, looking for a road that leads out of town, up into the mountain. I walk for another twenty minutes before I find a route that appears to go up into the mountains. I look around, and seeing no immediate threats decide its time to stop to eat. I don't go into a house this time, I sit on the curb next to a storm drain, set my bag beside me and pull out a can of green beans and my can opener. I open the green beans and grab a fork I picked up and eat them and drink the juice so that I didn't need to drink as much water.

When I'm done, I rinse the fork off and just leave the empty can on the road, it's not going to hurt anything. I leave the town behind and head into the mountain. The road I'm walking on is a two-lane road, at first, the road is standard, with ditches on either side, but after just a few minutes it became much steeper and had a rock wall on one side and a guard rail with a sheer cliff on the other side. I walk for another hour before running into any trouble.

I round a rather sharp corner, and on the other side, I see there was a rock slide. My only way past it is to walk over it, but that is pretty perilous. The rocks are angled steeply, go all the way to the edge of the road and cover about twenty feet of the road. The only good thing is that, with the way the rocks collapsed, there was a halfway flat spot towards the top. 'I just had to climb about eight feet to get to the flat spot. Walk across the twenty feet across, and get down without causing another rock slide and throwing myself over the edge. No pressure...'

Instead of hesitating any longer, I start climbing the rock pile. It's very steep, but I was able to find places to put my hands and feet and made it to the top. Once at the top, I face the wall and walk as close to it as I can, giving myself as much room as possible. I get a grip on the wall before every step just in case, but I still hope not to cause any rock slides by putting my weight in a weak spot.

I get about halfway across when suddenly my foot slips out from under me, sending a cascade of rocks, small and large, falling down. Thankfully I had a good grip on the wall. If I hadn't, I would have fallen to my death. Enough rock fell that there are only a few inches of rock to walk on for the next few feet, but I make it past without any significant issues. I make it the rest of the way over the rockslide. When I get off, I sit down and get a drink of water to calm my nerves a bit. 'Yet another close call, this world fucking sucks. If I ever find out who brought me here, there is going to be hell to pay.'

After resting for ten minutes, I continue following the road up the mountain. I walk for another hour before coming to a tunnel. I can't tell how long it is from the outside, but it is long enough that I can't see the other end. The terrain around the tunnel is treacherous, which means I must go through the tunnel, as much as I don't want to. I set my bag down and grab my flashlight, and set off into the darkness.

After entering the tunnel, I find that my flashlight is bright enough to illuminate the entire tunnel, as long as I stand near the center. Walking down the center of the tunnel, I see maintenance doors on either side, and I see the lights that have no power or just burnt out long ago. I walked for around ten minutes at a brisk pace before I could even see the illumination from the other end of the tunnel. As I got closer to the end of the tunnel, I spotted a problem. The end of the tunnel is completely blocked off by cars that crashed, and among the vehicles were zombies meandering around.

I counted fifteen cars, most appeared to be from the 70s and 80s, and twenty-five zombies. The vehicles wouldn't be challenging to get around, but the zombies would be another matter entirely. I left my flashlight on, knowing the zombies wouldn't be attracted to it, and observed where they were and how they were moving. Most appear to be merely standing in place, occasionally shambling a foot or two every once in a while. Others were always moving around a lot, usually as far as they could in every direction before bumping into a wall or car. There were even three zombies on top of the vehicles.

Knowing that walking on the cars would make a lot of noise, I opted for staying on the ground as much as I could. Approaching the roadblock, I find a path that goes nearly all the way through the blockage. There are four zombies on my chosen path. I will more than likely have to deal with them when I reach them. Thankfully none of them are the more active ones, I'll have to be careful not to attract any more when I put them out of their misery.

I start on my path, moving slowly between two cars, one a red AMC Gremlin the other a green Oldsmobile Omega. Both cars were rusted, their tires popped, the windows were cracked but somehow still intact. Some of the cars are so close together that it is difficult for me to slip between them. After I get past the cars, I crouch low and come up behind one of the zombies in this section. I sneak up on him successfully and kill him, catching him as he falls without an issue. I push myself up against the edge of the clearing and wait to see if anything herd and is headed my way.

I moved on after waiting a couple of minutes when nothing appeared. The next cars I had to squeeze between were about twenty more feet ahead, and there was one more zombie to kill before I got to it. I sneak up on it and kill it without an issue as well, but as it was dropping, the body slipped out of my hands and landed with a thud the other one didn't. Instantly I could hear the other zombies heading straight for me, so I booked it the only way that I knew was clear, the way I came from. I got back to the first two cars and moved between them, crouching on the other side. The zombies made it to the body, over the cars and everything, almost faster than I had made it out of the area. 'Those ass holes are fucking fast when they want to be.'

I back off a little bit in order to get a better look at the roadblock again. It looks as though all of the zombies went after the body of the one I killed, so I pick another route. I have to walk over a couple more cars, but it shouldn't be too much of an issue. The zombies make a lot of noise when they think food is near, and that should make it harder to hear my footsteps.

I move to the far left-hand side of the tunnel because the path I originally chose was closer to the right-hand side. Once I have my path planned out I take off, I move slow enough to minimize my noise level, but I move quickly enough to get me the hell out of here before the zombies are done with their feast. I climb over a car to start the path, walk another ten feet, and just barely squeeze between another two. After that, there are only two more sets of cars. I walk another twenty feet before I have to climb over three cars, close enough together that I walked from hood to hood. I was afraid that the noise of the hoods pushing down from my weight would attract the zombies, but I didn't see or hear any of them headed my direction.

The final vehicle in the way is a large bus. I climb onto the hood of the bus, and that is when I notice that it is a school bus, and it's got zombie kids in it, ten to be exact. 'holy shit.'Its the first zombie kids I have seen, and for some reason, out of all of the zombies I have seen, they are the only ones that made me think 'damn those used to be people.' I wasn't scared, just sad that their lives ended so early.

'I don't know if they are still conscious and just not in control. I have to put them to rest, which means I have to find a way to put all of the zombies in this cave down. I didn't see a way to get to the kid zombies without making a ton of noise, so I backtracked to where the zombies had already finished eating their friend. I was on top of the cars looking down on them, I really need a ranged weapon this sucks.

I moved back to the area where I killed the first zombie here, found a rock on the ground, and threw it at one of the zombies from behind the cars to see what would happen. Surprisingly enough, only the zombie I hit turned around and walked towards me. It was moving slowly, so I move into a place that I hope it will pass so that I can kill it. It does what I want, and I kill it without any issues, catching it and dragging it off to the side.

I want to repeat this process for the last twenty-two zombies. The more I kill, the more space the stack of bodies take up. I put them in different places so that they don't block the path that I wanted them to take or my hiding place. I end up needing to start taking them to the other side of the cars after about the tenth. That is nerve-racking because the zombies have quieted down, and if I make any loud sounds, they will come rushing over.

In the end, I am able to finish them all off, amazingly without any hiccups. I was glad to have that part done so that I could move on to the important part. I go to the end of the bus and find the emergency exit closed but unblocked. I stand at an angle so that I can get away, and open the emergency exit of the bus, before moving away and hiding to watch and see what they do. None of them move, just standing and sitting on the bus. I take a small rock and throw it at a window at the back of the bus from my hiding spot.

Suddenly every single one of them is moving so fast that I can barely see them. They rush to the spot that the rock had hit, even coming outside the bus to look at where it landed outside. They were moving so fast, and most stayed close together, I wasn't sure if I would be able to help them. I sat and watch them for a while. When they settle down and stop moving again, I notice that three of them are separate from the others. I take a risk and throw a small rock at one of the three, I was right when I assumed they would come flying this way. What surprised me, though, was the fact that none of them actually saw me. If they couldn't notice me, then I had a chance to help them if I could draw them a few at a time.

I wait for them to settle down again, this time they are almost directly in front of me. I have a small collection of rocks in my pocket, and I grab a small one and throw it at the car across from me to put the kid zombies backs towards me. They take the bait and rush over there, I once again wait for them to calm down before sneaking up behind them. I take out the one in the middle. As I do the other two, instead of turning on me, turn on their friend. As fast as I can, attempting to prevent them from eating the dead kid, I finish off the other two.

I move away quickly, and shortly after I'm glad I did, two kid zombies heard the ruckus and rushed over. They nearly instantly spotted the bodies of the other kids and started eating. I wasn't far away, so it only took me about ten seconds to get behind them and help them move into the next life.

At this point, I know there are only five left, I move away quickly one more time just in case and wait for a few minutes. None of them come over here, so I peak at the bus to see where the last five are. It's a little disappointing, all five of them are in the same place. 'This is going to be difficult.'

I throw a rock at them, hitting one of them, and move back into my hiding spot. They rush to the place that I was when I threw the rock, I wait long enough for them to settle down before making my move. At this point, they are sitting near a car facing different directions. I need to get them all facing the same direction again, so I do the same thing I did for the group of three and throw a rock at a car opposite from where I'm hiding.

It didn't work quite so well this time. They didn't all go for the rock, two of them had been facing my direction when I threw the rock. They couldn't see me, but when the rock left my hand, they noticed it and came rushing over. I had my knife already out, and when they got to me, I killed one instantly. The other jumped on me like a spider monkey and started biting and scratching. I managed to find its head before it could do any significant damage, but by that time, the other three had heard the commotion and came rushing over.

At this point, I had to take my own life into consideration, and I threw the body of the kid that had been on me at them, and they did something I hadn't expected. Instead of rushing for me, they stopped and started eating the one I threw at them. That gave me some breathing room I hadn't expected, so I take a moment to breathe before moving around to the back of them and finishing them in a similar way to the first three. 'thank god that's over, and I'm still alive. Those things were insane.'

I move away from the corpses and sit down for a few minutes to unwind before I continue on. After about ten minutes, I get my water out and take a drink before climbing over the bus and continuing on the road to who knows where.