Decimation (Ianthony Apocalypse AU)

night seventeen

chompers seen: somewhere around five hundred

chompers killed: 0

near-death experiences: 3

human deaths witnessed: 2

friends left behind: 4

When the door was forced open long before dawn, I awoke with a jerk and a soft yelp.

"Ian! Jonah! Get up! We have to go!"

The light was already on, and Ken was frantically ripping the covers off of us and grabbing our bags, throwing them at us.

"Why? What happened?!" Jonah demanded, getting up and quickly sliding on a pair of jeans. I did the same, my half-asleep brain finally awaking enough to realize something bad was definitely happening.

Before Ken could answer, he was gone, probably to go wake Henry and Lizzy.

As I quickly pulled a T-shirt over my head, I pulled back the curtain from the window and lost my breath in an instant.

"Fuck," I breathed, backing away in a trance.

"What?! What is it?!" Jonah was by my side in a second, his eyes instantly growing wide.

"'Fuck' is right," he agreed, shaking his head.

There were chompers everywhere. Everywhere. Filling the air were screams and cries and gunshots.

My first thought was to go get Anthony. And then I made the connection. He was out there. With just a knife, he was out there somewhere. He was on guard.

I didn't grab my bag. I didn't wait for anyone else. I darted out the back door, despite Martha's calls of protest.

The air was slightly cold and the moonlight was brighter than I'd ever seen it. I looked around for just a second, my breath falling short. People were running frantically, shouting names of loved ones and crying. I watched a man I'd never seen before swipe the head clean off a chomper with some sort of machete. And behind me, I heard a horrible crunch and then a scream; someone had been bit.

I ran forward despite everything, realizing I had no sort of weapon. Not like it mattered; I knew I still wouldn't be able to kill one.

I zigzagged forward, toward the edge of the woods. I called out Anthony's name as loud as I could, barely being able to hear my own voice over the chaos. I knew I was drawing attention to myself and was just asking to be eaten alive, but I didn't even care. All I could think about was the fact that Anthony was out there, dead or alive.

Whether it be the virus I had or the adrenaline rush, everything was spinning. I couldn't think straight. I was out in the open with probably fifty chompers around, and one was coming straight toward me.

I sprinted the opposite direction, right along the line of trees. Luckily, the street wasn't big, and maybe half the people had already fled, so I had a good chance of finding him. Unless he'd already left. Or he was...

I shouted his name even louder, everything aching. I had no idea what I was doing, where I was going. I'd probably just left the only people I had a chance of survival with behind, and who knew if I'd find them again. Most likely, they'd flee the second they got the chance.

I ran on, jumping over branches and logs. I'd seen two dead bodies, which, however horrifying, was actually kind of a good thing; most chompers flocked around the corpse, getting their dinner. People still screamed around me, gunshots cut through the air so loud my ears rang, and I was running in the opposite direction from everyone else.