Outbreak Chapter 26

Wiggins' Apartment
Saturday March 12 12:53 P.M.
Day 1


Brendon had to get up and stretch his legs. They had all been glued to the TV in Wiggins' living room for the last two hours and things in the city were only getting worse. The epidemic had spread to nearly every part of the city and the police force had been decimated after their failed attempt to stop the spread. With the military refusing to send troops into the city it looked as if the population was left to fend for it's own. The military had enacted a no fly zone around the city after a news helicopter had flown near the military perimeter. Live footage had shown thousands of cars parked bumper to bumper at the northern edge of the city. The military had set up four foot tall concrete barriers on the roads to prevent civilians from escaping the city by the main roads and strands of concertina wire had been stretched along the perimeter to stop any runners. Mobs of civilians were standing at the barricades screaming for help but the military was refusing to let anyone out. At one point a group of civilians threw a large wood board over a strand of concertina wire and had rushed towards the soldiers unarmed. After a moments hesitation a number of the soldiers opened fire and put down all of the civilians. Brendon had heard gasps of disbelief from a number of the other people in the room but couldn't say he himself was surprised. The government seemed to have realized just how serious of a threat this was and decided to contain it at all costs. That combined with the fact that no troops had been sent into the city was enough to convince him that no help would be coming anytime soon. After the shooting news footage had shown military Blackhawks chasing the news helicopter back into the city the news flashed back over to clips of zombies pulling people out of cars, chasing people until they succumbed to exhaustion, and using sheer numbers to bash down doors and barricades.
The more he watched the more he was convinced that their current situation was hopeless. They had a degree of security being on the third floor of the building, but the glass doors on the first floor wouldn't hold long and while the barricade they had built at the front door of the apartment looked strong they wouldn't be able to live in this apartment forever with eleven people. From the chaos on the streets though he was certain that they would be swarmed as soon as they set foot outside of the building.
Brendon walked over to the balcony door and stepped outside. From here he could hear countless screams and gunshots in the distance. He could see a handful of zombies in the parking lot and beyond, as well as a male and female zombie pounding on the front door of the building down and to his left.
He was still wearing his tactical gear and had his AK slung across his chest. He pulled his suppresser from it's pouch on his vest and rotated it into place on the quick detach mount at the end of his barrel. He flipped off the safety and lined up his red dot with the head of the taller of the two zombies pounding on the door and squeezed down on the trigger. His shot entered the top of the man's head and blood splattered all over the wall beyond him as he crumpled to the ground. The female zombie next to him didn't even show any signs that anything had happened at all. She merely kept pounding on the door oblivious to his presence. He put a round through her head as well then shifted his attention to the others that were farther out. He rested the fore end of his rifle on the railing around the balcony to steady his aim and slowly squeezed off five more shots.
After the seventh zombie had fell Brendon heard a sound behind him and looked back to see Wiggins and Griffin stepping out onto the balcony. Wiggins closed the door behind them and the three stood there for a moment in silence. "So are you gonna keep that up until there aren't any left in the city?" Griffin said jokingly trying to break the ice.
To be honest Brendon didn't know why he had come out here, he obviously wasn’t doing any good by taking out stragglers with thousands of these things all over the city. “I just felt like I needed to do something,” Brendon finally said. “I don’t want to just sit in there and wait to die.”
“Who said anything about dying?” Wiggins asked. “We have the door blocked off, they can’t get to us here.”
“Will that door still hold when there are hundreds of them packed into the hallway and stairs all pushing to get in?” Brendon asked. “Even if it does how long do you think eleven of us can survive on the food we have here? We were all able to bring quite a bit, but with eleven mouths to feed is it even enough to last us a full month? What happens when the power goes out, when the water stops running?”
“I’ve been thinking a lot of the same things,” Griffin said. “This place is safe for the short term, but pretty soon we’re going to have to find somewhere that is safer to stay.”
“Well where could we go?” Justin asked, “The military is shooting up anybody that tries to leave the city, and chances are we’ll get ripped to shreds by those things as soon as we hit the streets if we don’t find a defensible place quick.”
“It’d have to be a place with more than one floor to it, stairwells would make nice choke points and we wouldn’t have to be as worried about boarding up windows and hoping they don’t break through.” Brendon said.
“We need something that can sustain this many people to,” Griffin chimed in. “Not just a good food supply, but everyday items like changes of clothes would be good for morale.”
The three of them stood there in silence for a while. Brendon began thinking of all the different buildings in the city that could fit that criteria. Finally an idea sparked in his mind. “What about the dorms we lived in back in college?” he asked. “There are only two stairways leading to the upper floors, they would be pretty easy to cover. Plus it would be pretty easy for us to disable the elevators.”
“But what about food?” Wiggins asked. “I don’t think there could be all that much food in a place like that, and the dining facility next door is all windows, we couldn’t seal that up.”
“Think about it,” Brendon said. “There are three dormitory buildings connected by tunnels underneath the courtyard. Each building has nine floors worth of dorm rooms that are above ground level and each building houses about five hundred students. If each student there even had just two days worth of food in their room on average that would feed eleven of us for...” Brendon paused for a moment to think, “a little over nine months assuming it was food that wouldn’t go bad. We’d even have day to day items like toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, clean clothes, razors, and anything else you’d need to live a halfway comfortable existence.”
“That actually sounds like a pretty good idea,” Griffin said. “Once we get the place cleared we could hold that forever, and if we could sneak into the cafeteria through the tunnels we could get our hands on even more food.”
“The Military and Naval Sciences building is pretty close to there to,” Wiggins said starting to sound convinced. “I still work as cadre there so I know where they keep all the keys to everything at. We had a field training exercise coming up soon so our supply room is filled with MREs and gear.”
There was a loud crash behind them and all three looked to the north and saw that a car had crashed into a light pole a few hundred yards away. Zombies could be seen swarming over the vehicle and even from this far away they could hear the screams coming from inside.
“It’s pretty chaotic out there right now, people are driving recklessly trying to escape these things and people are getting trigger happy whenever they see something moving, it might be too dangerous to travel right now,” said Griffin.
“I don’t know that I really agree,” Brendon said. There are still quite a few living breathing people left in the city right now so there are lots of distractions for the zombies. If we wait a few days to leave we’ll have an entire city of zombies coming after just us. I think we need to make our move today.”
“I’m with Brendon on this,” Wiggins said. “I don’t know if the others are ready to go out there again, but if the three of us all agree to leave I think the others will follow.”
The three again stood there thinking things over for a short while, but one by one they all nodded their agreement. Wiggins opened the door back up and they stepped back inside to tell the others.