Two Page Shorts - Nick Venom (big ebook reader txt) 📗

of the humvee. I stood on muddy dirt, staining my military-issued boots. 

Scarecrow, meanwhile, positioned the humvee so we could escape at a minute’s notice. The back of the humvee faced the building while the front faced the road we used to reach the place. 

After moving the humvee, both Scarecrow and Frost jumped out. Scarecrow turned the humvee off to save what’s left of the gas. Soon, we’ll be running on fumes. 

“You ready?” I asked Scarecrow, who nodded at me. I nodded back in acknowledgment before turning towards what looked like the front door of the base. It had been smashed in, giving us an easy way into the building. We took our time entering the place, looking at every room as we swept through them. There were no zombies in the rooms, only corpses that had been there for a very long time.

With the ground floor checked, we moved to the stairs that went down three floors, which I could see by peering down the middle of the staircase. “We each take a floor each and return here as soon as we can,” I ordered. They nodded, moving to take their assigned floors; Frost took the second floor, I took the first floor, and Scarecrow the last. We went into our respective floors, taking our time investigating the floors.

The first underground floor that I began investing in was the dorms, which lacked light as the electricity had gone out. Countless rows of beds were stacked against the wall and in the middle of the space. All of the beds were empty, not even the corpses of zombies present. I did, however, notice some bloodstains on a few beds. I approached it, looking at it with a flashlight I grabbed from my apartment. I squinted at the bloodstains, touching them with my free hand. It was dry, but blood, especially in small amounts, could dry within hours. I could tell that it was recent blood as it didn’t match the dry blood of the corpses on the ground floor.

I turned away from the bloodstains, headed further into the floor. I found the kitchen, bathrooms, and living room area. None of the rooms held much worth as the living room was full of unimportant items, the food in the kitchen was spoiled and rotten, and the bathrooms were filled with a disgusting stench. 

“Nothing, absolutely nothing.” I thought out loud. I turned around and headed back to the beds, doing a more thorough check on them. Using my flashlight, I shined under the beds, in between the beds, and the top of the beds. Most of them were empty and useless in my search, but one of them proved to have something useful - a brown leather journal stuff in between the mattress and the bed frame and covered by the pillow, difficult to see with the lack of light.

I grabbed the journal and ripped it out of its hiding spot. I opened it, shining the flashlight on the pages. The first page read in bold letters, “PRIVATE ROBERT KIRK OF 72ND ILLINOIS INFANTRY.” 

I continued through the journal, finding most of them detailing Kirk’s normal life in Oxford Base from day one of the apocalypse to his last moments. Most of them were filled with useless information but, as I went deeper into the journal, more and more important information jumped out at me.

“Day 234: EVERYBODY UPSTAIRS IS DEAD! THE BASE IS FLOODED! WERE ALL GOING TO DIE! THEY KILLED EVERYBODY BUT US! IF YOU FIND THIS, WERE ALREADY DEAD. BLESS THE GODS AND CURSE SATAN FOR THESE MONSTERS. THEY EVOLVED.” I read out loud from the final page of the journal. I scratched my hand, trying to piece everything together. I could tell that Kirk was either very frantic or in a hurry by the way he sloppily wrote his words, even forgetting several apostrophes for his words, an example being how he wrote “were” instead of “we’re” - either way, Kirk is most likely dead. However, one thing snapped at me. Where is his body?

I shined the flashlight over the rest of his bed, but couldn’t find anything. Not even a single drop of blood on the sheets that I could find. It was as if Kirk and whoever else with him vanished without a trace.

“Damn, how do they disappear like this?” I asked myself, shining the flashlight around the room in hopes of a clue appearing but to no avail. The room, which was covered by a blanket of darkness, was empty; devoid of clues.

Without anything to run on, I decided to return upstairs and see if the others knew anything. I climbed the stairs, reaching the ground floor where Frost waited for me. “Anything?” He asked me when I arrived.

“Nothing. Not even a single corpse. I, however, did find something.” I said, showing Frost the leather journal. Frost took the book and skimmed through it, his expressions changing as he went through the pages; he started with an expression of curiosity to one of shock. 

“Woah… And you said there were no bodies?” He asked.

I nodded. “Nothing, barely any blood as well.”

Frost nodded, furrowing his brows. He stared hard at the second-to-last and final page. He read both pages with concern. “We need to take this back with us… We need to see what else is in this book, maybe something important that we overlooked.” 

I nodded in agreement. “Good idea… Oh, yeah, anything on your floor?”

Frost shook his head. “Many of the doors are damaged. I saw multiple signs of struggle as well as bullet cases, but no bodies either. There was a lot of blood, all around the same area, but no bodies somehow.”

I nodded. “Anyways, have you seen Scarecrow? He’s not still downstairs, right?” I asked him.

“I haven’t seen him, sir. Unless he went straight back to the humvee, he’s still downstairs.” Frost said. 

I nodded. “Okay… Go and start the humvee, we’re leaving as soon as Scarecrow gets here. We-” I was interrupted by the sound of gunfire and incoherent shouting. 

“Run! Get the humvee started! Zombies down here! Evolved ones!” Scarecrow shouted, sprinting up the staircase as fast as he could, limping while he did so.

Frost responded instantly, sprinting towards the humvee while I brandished my gun and pointed it down at the staircase. “Scarecrow, are you okay?”

“No!” He responded instantly, his boots stomping up the stairs. Following closely behind him were the screeches of the zombies behind him. It echoed off the walls, rushing outside and attacking me with its viciousness. 

“Damn,” I thought out loud. I backed away from the staircase, my attention focused on the threats in front of me. “I’ll cover you, get up here!” 

“Working on it, sir.” Scarecrow retorted, making it to the ground floor. He sprinted past me, his limp preventing him from running at his top speed. Even so, it was enough to get him through the building and out towards the humvee. I ran behind him, sneaking glances at the zombies behind us. It wasn’t the same ones we encountered in Chicago, but new ones. Some of them had ores fused with their bodies, some were several zombies fused together, and a few were chubby and disgusting. They resembled nothing I had ever seen, almost feeling like I was staring at Left 4 Dead zombies.

“Get in!” I heard Frost shout, attracting my thoughts and attention away from the zombies and back into reality. I pressed forward, jumping into the passenger seat as Scarecrow jumped into the backseat, struggling to close the door. 

As soon as we were all in, Frost slammed his foot on the gas. The humvee lunged forward, throwing us along it. Frost hit the steering wheel, I hit my face on the dashboard and Scarecrow grazed Frost’s seat. None of the connected hits were strong enough to shed bled, but we had small bruises at the parts affected. 

“Go! Go! Go!” I shouted before glancing at the rearview mirror. The zombies, evolved and not, were flooding out of the building and chasing after us. They growled and screeched, attracting more. The horde grew and grew until we had an army chasing after us but, fortunately, they couldn’t keep up with the humvee. Slowly but surely, the horde fell behind.

“Sir, we have a problem!” Frost shouted. I turned my head away from the rearview mirror and towards him. He pointed at the fuel gauge. “We’re almost out!” The fuel gauge was nearing the large ‘E’, meaning that we would be coming to a stop really soon. 

“Damn… how long do you think we got?” I asked.

“Uh… Maybe a half-hour at best. Not enough to get back to Grandville.” He declared. “We need more fuel.”

I nodded. “Well… let’s cross that bridge when we have to.” I turned to face Scarecrow, who was breathing heavily by this point. “You okay?”

Scarecrow shook his head slowly. “I’m… I think I-I’m dying.” He muttered. 

“What’s wrong… were you bitten?” I asked, slightly afraid of the answer. “What happened in Oxford?”

Scarecrow moved to show a large wound on the left side of his body. It was a nasty bite mark that went through his camouflage clothes and gear, leaking out blood. The force of the zombie’s bite smashed through his protective gear, effectively killing him with a slow death. He was infected.

“He’s bitten? What the hell do we do?” Frost asked, glancing at the rearview mirror. “What do we do?”

“Quiet!” I shouted. “Focus on driving, get us to Grandville,” I ordered, focusing on Scarecrow. “Okay, what happened to you on the third floor?”

“I… I found… I found a locked door down there. T-There were bodies everywhere by it. I… I opened it and… the zombies came out. One of t-them bit me…” He stopped to catch his breath before continuing. “It was one of the chunky ones. I-It bit through my gear and-” He rolled down his sleeve to show the wound in better detail. “Now I’m infected.”

“Don’t say that… we’ll get you fixed up.” I lied through my teeth. Grandville had its fill of people being bitten and infected by the zombies. However, none of them were able to survive, instead, being executed on the spot. A vaccine or cure for the virus was nowhere to be seen and since we have no contact with the government or the soldiers and scientists on Kalindo, we can’t rely on the thought that we’ll be able to ever get one. Hell, a cure to this nightmare may never arrive if there are no scientists to make the cure.

Scarecrow, who was registering my words, shook his head. He knew the harsh reality for somebody bitten. There was no cure or vaccine for the infected. His future was declared… he will be dead soon.

***

After half an hour, the humvee came to a rolling stop. The horde had stopped giving chase, lingering tens of minutes away from us, but some stragglers continued forward.

“What now?” Frost asked. “We’re still a half-hour from Grandville. There’s no way we could make it with the humvee. We’ll have to ditch it.”

I nodded. “We have all of the ammunition for the machine gun here… I don’t want to lose it all, but-” I let out a large sigh. “-let’s ditch it. We’ll walk from here.” I declared, glancing at the side mirror before getting out. I pointed my gun at the stragglers headed towards us, who were all quick-footed. They were the ones who devastated the convoy in Chicago. 

I approached the stragglers, pointing the barrel at them. I pressed the trigger, roaring through the zombies and killing them all. They were easy targets as a shot to the brain or heart was more than enough to kill them. They collapsed to the ground, deflating. 

“Sir?” Frost asked as he moved from the driver’s seat and around the back of the humvee towards me. “Scarecrow… isn’t looking better.” He whispered, making sure Scarecrow couldn’t hear him.

I nodded my head, stealing a glance at Scarecrow. His breathing was worse. He stopped responding to our questions. It was as if we