Outnumbered (Vol. 1)

Act 2: Friends

Day 2 – 00:00; Santa Monica, CA United States:

While the guys and I drive through Santa Monica, I can see someone's figure against a building, but I can't make out who the person is. I inform Ty, and he drives us over to the person's location. The headlights from our vehicle shine in the individual's direction. The figure appears to be Cheyenne, a white American teen who has medium-length, straight dirty-blonde hair, shaved on one side, and is average height for a girl, and has a curvy-featured, attractive, but very slender body. Zombies are pouring in around her, as she sits, curled up and trembling on the ground, in the corner of a hotel building. She is crying and screaming, under a typical panic attack, probably over the end of her life. Ty drives us in close and stomps the brakes hard. The squealing of the vehicle's tires overpowers her scream, and she stops, seemingly blinded by the headlights, like a deer. We exit the vehicle and run toward her at a fast pace, and in the next second, we kill all of the zombies; five by the bashing of their heads, and three by the shot of a gun. I step before her to make sure she's okay.

"Ben? You're alive!" Cheyenne throws herself onto me, wrapping me in arms tightly, crying even harder than before. "I was so scared, Ben... I didn't know where anyone was, and I didn't know what to do!"

The moment brings back old memories of how she used to spend the night with my sister Melody and I. Sometimes she would sleep with me in my bed. And I don't mean in a weird, sexual way, or anything, either. She would legitimately sleep with me in my bed, and we would cuddle, and a few times, she woke up freaking out; shaking severely and crying. It would wake me up, so then I would hold her even tighter, and after a few minutes, she would stop and fall back asleep. We're pretty close friends. I considered dating her, at one point.

"Don't worry, Cheyenne...we're here now. I don't know how, but we heard your scream, while we were driving around looking for everyone. You're safe now."

"...'We'? Who's with you?"

Dwayne, David, and Ty reveal themselves.

"Thought that was you screaming, Cheyenne," Ty laughs, winking at Cheyenne.

"Hey. You all right?" David comforts her.

"Looks like we made it right on time," Dwayne says.

"So how'd you get all the way out here?" Ty asks.

"I rode with Kipp and Kelly after all that stuff went down at the party. Kipp said his parents owned a beach house out here, so he decided we'd all hide out there. But when we got there, Kipp left us in the bedroom, while he went to check on the rest of the house, but then after a few minutes, we heard a loud bang from in the kitchen. I was worried about Kipp, so I started to leave the bedroom to go check on him, and as soon I reached to open the door, some guys in weird-looking suits kicked the door in on me and knocked me down behind the door. I kinda blacked out for a second but when I came back to, I saw Kelly just drop down on the bed, knocked out too. The two guys didn't see me yet, so I jumped up and ran out of the bedroom and out of the house, and I thought they were chasing me, so I ran all the way to this hotel and hid in one of the rooms for a while, but they never came, so I assumed they were gone. Just as I was about to leave the hotel room, there was this really bright light coming from the city, so I went to the window in the room and watched it, and it kept getting bigger and bigger and started coming toward the hotel, so I ran and hid back in the closet. It got really bright and a little warm for a minute, but it ended really fast, and nothing really happened. So I waited for a long time, then I left the hotel but got ambushed by these sick fuckers."

"Guys in weird suits? Haven't seen any of those walking around," David is puzzled by her story.

"This is weird. I swear to God I know exactly what she's talking about, somehow. It's like when she said that part about those weird-looking guys, I got déjà vu or something," Ty states in confusion.