Home Sick Vol. 2

Chapter 1: I'm Coming Home

I dropped to my knees and scrape them onto the cold and cracked asphalt in the highway. I catch myself with my palms and feel the rigid cracks on the road. I catch my breath for a second, not long after me hopping back up and dragging two buckets of water strapped to a dolley and slinging my duffle bag over my shoulders and sprinting around cars and jumping over them and dodging zombies left and right, occasionally shanking them with my throwing knives.

I look back every once in a while to make sure our dead weight is still keeping up. People like the ignorant pregnant woman, Clancey. The only reason we keep her around is obviously for the baby.

Then there's Johnson. A honorably discharged soldier, 46 year old man with stage 4 cancer (never told me what kind) and only has days left. We keep him around for the hospitality of another human anchor. Joeseph Jr. is an orphaned 8 year old. And we keep Joey for-- well, he's just a kid.

The rest of us guide them to temporary safety. Strong people like Zane. He was my best friend before and during the outbreak. About three weeks in the apocolyptic atmosphere, he had one of his feet cut off, to stop the infection from spreading to his body. He's grown so accustomed to his crutches, he's able to go jogging speed in his crutches. I'm blessed to still have a past-world friend... But I have one more.

Julie. She's helped me get up when I fell down. She is my friend that I need. Physical-wise, a fit and lean thirteen year old, same age as me, with her specialty being stealth, bow and arrow, swiftness, and climbing. She kind of reminds me of Ally, one of our other guides. Great at teaching weapon use, amazing skills with climbing, cardio, stealth, speed, strength, and her main weapon being a hatchet and snare traps.

Then our leader, Tyrone, who is a man we met in Atlanta. He saved my life when he found me in the streets left for dead. He was the only one who agreed to be the leader. Before this all happened, he was a mechanical engineer for land vehicles.

When we left Kentucky, we had struggled getting anywhere with so many cars blocking the roads. We tried avoiding interstates as much as possible and our car was crahed into a cluster of trees. So for the past two months, we've been walking our way home and today, I believe it may be the day we finally come home, and I have to try real hard to get there right now. Because right now, we are being chased by hundreds of zombies on the highway.

About three miles west, is my hometown, where the population of zombies has decreased extremely.

I finally catch up to Ally, who has Joe on her back. "Any ideas?" I ask quickly.

I see her glimpse across the treeline of the interstate. She starts to stare at one certain foundation. I can't tell at all what house or restaurant that is due to the thick trees covering it.

"Head for the 'Crazy Dave's Daquri Shop', now!" She barks the command.

We all took her order after Tyrone nodding his head at us, confirming her command. Its a long way away and we still have hundreds of them on our back. Though I don't see any of us dying anyways. We have been running for about 6 minutes. I think we'll last another two minutes. The closer I get to the shop, the more relieved I come to being in a temporary safespot where I can rest my weary legs after walking all night.

I knew traveling at night wasn't a good idea. Pitch black where you can't tell what's dead and what's actually dead.

I end up falling to the ground again from tripping over a corpse. At least I hope it's a corpse... I don't bother to figure out, though.

I felt pressure forced onto my shoulder, and out of habit, I grabbed the hand that was holding onto my shoulders, flipped the unknown presence, and pulled out my knife with the tip only centimeters away from the forehead. I put my knife up and see that it was just Julie trying to help me up. I let out a little nervous chuckle. "Uh, sorry." I say with a weak smile.