Virulence Immune

~ Chapter Twenty-Two ~

Soldiers encircle the civilians as they herd them into the bus.

The infected began to appear at either end of the bus, weaving through the vehicles and climbing over them.

The soldiers opened fire, trying to reserve their ammo as best they can by means of short bursts.

When Perri made it to the door of the bus, she forced Gavin to board with Skeet first while she paused to look back.

She found herself scanning the faces of the soldiers, not completely sure why she felt the need to look for him. For Jack.

Others continued to mount the bus behind her.

Then a shout resonated above all the clamoring and Perri was shoved from behind.

A bony elbow had collided with her shoulder blade and sent her plummeting to the ground.

She stuck out her hands to break her fall and whirled onto her back once she hit the dirt.

Gaping in horror, she stared at the infected that had knocked her down.

It yanked a woman from the steps of the bus's entry and sunk its teeth into her tanned flesh—tearing arteries and tendons in her neck.

Soon, horror turned to confusion as Perri was unable to look away.

Why didn't it attack me? She wondered. Actually, now that she really stopped to think about it... they never seemed to attac—

A shot to the head sent blood and brain goop splattering over Perri, startling her enough to make her jump. Not only physically, but also had her reeling from thoughts back to reality.

The infected, that she'd been blindly staring at, flopped to the ground by her feet.

With an immediate second shot, the woman that the infected had been gorging itself on, joined it on the ground.

In the naked light, Perri was blinded by the glare of the sun.

A silhouette stepped in the way of the sunlight, but it still shone brightly around their figure.

Through her squinted eyes and blurred vision, Perri could barely see the hand that the figure offered down to her.

Her face scrunched up as she closed an eye, as the blood and brain matter trickled down her brow, and she reached blindly for the hand.

Perri was hoisted up to her feet.

"You okay?" A worried male voice spoke.

That accent.

"You're not bit?" The man added as he wiped his gloved handed over her face.

Blood and sweat stung her eye despite his efforts to wipe it away.

Perri blinked her vision back and though one eye was now bloodshot, and burned like hell, she smiled at the concerned face that peered down at her.

"I'm tougher than I look, Jack." She said.

Jack grinned for a brief moment, before the chaos, that surrounded them, caught up with him. "Come on. Let's get you on the bus." He had to yell over all the noise.

He pressed a hand against her lower back and tried to gently guide her toward the door of the bus.

His attention was piqued by a soldier's warning shout.

Many of the soldiers are almost out of ammo.

It did nothing to help ease the worry of the survivors.

The infected just kept coming.

People were being overcome with panic.

As Perri placed a hand on the edge of the bus to step inside, a man came sprinting out, knocking her and Jack away from each other.

The man ran out of the protective semi-circle of soldiers and was soon tackled to the ground by an infected. More infected joined in on the feast as the man's screams turned silent.

No one else dared to do the same after witnessing the attack. However, many feared that they would all die there on that bus anyway.

In all the turmoil, Perri found herself, back against the side of the bus, looking around at all of the dust, all of the bullets, and all the blood.

Everything seemed to fall into slow motion and the sound drowned out until it was barely audible.

Jack shot down five infected before turning to yell over his shoulder at Perri.

In her hallucination, in the ripple of broken time, she couldn't hear him properly and only saw his lips slowly mouth the words.

He turned back to face the infected and continued to fire.

More and more infected maintained an even flow, swarming around the bus to attack.

Perri twisted to look in the other direction.

There, standing behind Carter and Sgt. Bradman, was Holloway.

He had his back to the bus, just like Perri, and held his hands over his ears. His gaze flicked around the activity before him until they settled upon her.

Holloway almost seemed surprised when their eyes met.

They had both become aware of the same infected attack a soldier and take him down.

The downed soldier leaves a gap in their defensive line.

Someone shouted out a warning as infected rush toward the gap. They threw the only grenade they had left.

It bounded across the top of a car. The metallic clinking seemed to be the only audible sound that Perri could hear in that moment.

With the bang that followed, everything returned to normal speed. It became excruciatingly loud; the yelling, the screaming, the shooting.

The explosion sent blood, guts and body parts flying, yet it had only delayed the dead from attacking for a mere second.

The infected were too many. Too fast.

There weren't enough bullets to match.