"What?!" Skylar questioned in a panic.
"Karson!" I declared as I pointed to the running figure, "That's Karson!"
"Oh my God!"
She reached for her pistol that placed on the concrete floor next to her and ran along the pool's side to the fence. She fitted the gun comfortably in between two poles of the fence and shot two shots, fired in rapid succession.
"Karson! Over here!" I yelled from my seat resoundingly as I could.
Suddenly, he turned and started to make his way over to us. The large crowd of hungry Dead behind him stumbled after him making low grunting noises that echoed over the hills. His legs hit the ground at a fast pace and he had soon made a considerable distance on them and met Skylar at the fence line. He was in a red and black flannel with a pair of grey joggers. His black converse looked beaten and unkempt with dried dirt dotting the sides. I looked to his hand to see a small Swiss army knife situated in his palm with small droplets of blood along the blade.
"Karson!" Skylar gasped, "I'll open the gate for you and we can kill the Dead from inside the fence."
"Uh, I don't think that's a great idea." He announced pointing to the front of the pool house.
Skylar's gunshots must have attracted the Dead that were gathered along the road and in the neighborhood. I could hear their growls and hisses as they trekked across the road with heavy footsteps to the fence.
"That's way too many Dead to kill from inside the fence, so meet me near the parking lot in front of the pool house!" He added. They both gave each other a short nod and went their separate ways.
"Holy shit." Skylar uttered. "Maddi, we have to go!"
"I can't walk!" I reminded.
"You won't have to. I can just pick you up like I did when I saved you from the forest, but we have to leave right now!"
Skylar paced over to the doors from the fence line depositing her pistol in her back belt loop. She threw her backpack across her back and gathered as many supplies laying around the camp as she could. I mimicked her lead and crawled to gather any disarranged blankets and sheets I could reach without messing up my left leg. She began to dislodge the chairs, tables, and umbrellas that made up the barricade in front of the doors until there was a space large enough for us to fit through. She lifted me from the ground into her arms as I held on to the mismatch supplies I could get my hands on. I wedged myself through the opening she created in the first barricade and tried to begin to tear apart the second one with haste on the main entrance. My left leg began to ache, but there was no time to dwell and complain.
I looked to Skylar who had a panicked look glued to her face. Her eyes were wide open with fear and her mouth was sealed into a thin line. There was a sudden crash and I looked back to see that the Dead had plummeted the fence to the ground and were stumbling their way to us. Adrenaline coursed through my system and my heart felt like it would burst through my chest at any given moment. Then, I turned to see Skylar's hand outstretched to me with her gun.
"Shoot while I break this!" She panted.
I took the gun willingly and turned and aimed through the cracked spaces of the broken window and then shot. It was the loudest, ear drum rattling noise I had ever heard. We weren't supplied with the equipment to cover our ears when shooting, but I soon learned to not care anymore. I would shoot as many times as I had to as long as it meant we wouldn't be getting torn to pieces in cold blood. I shot three more times, hitting them in their stomachs. By then, I became acquaint with the deafening noise as much as it was unfamiliar to me. It felt as if a switch had been turned off inside my head alongside my fear. I was in a quiet zone where all that mattered was that Skylar and I got out of here safely and could live on for as long as we could in a world like this.
Suddenly, a forceful tap on my shoulder tore me from my trance. Skylar snatched the gun from my hands and placed in comfortably back into her belt loop.
"I was trying to get your attention! We can go now." She pointed out as she motioned to the hole in the barricade.
I turned back to see the Dead start to gain on us, so I began to pick up the supplies I had placed down rapidly. Skylar raised me from the floor and pushed through the hole to Karson, who was standing at the beginning of the parking lot. He approached us and told us we had to run away from here quickly. Skylar trudged along and followed Karson's lead along the sidewalk. I glanced back to see around fifty Dead faltering behind us with daunting faces. After a while of running, we approached a neighborhood of apartment complexes.
"Where are we going?" Skylar panted.
"We are going to Jordan's house. It's around these apartments." He answered eyeing the apartments that surrounded us.
"That sophomore?" I asked. "The one who always tries to sit with us at lunch and steals Hailey's seat?"
"Yep, that's the one."
We approached a large, blue apartment with white, narrow windows assorted in straight rows. There was nothing very interesting about it, but it looked safe. Karson tried to open the door, but it was tightly locked. He then sighed and knocked with the back of his hand three times when Jordan came rushing over the threshold. His dark brown hair was a mess and his blue eyes had tired bags underneath them. He wore a white t-shirt with a navy hoodie pulled over his arms. His jeans were a dark black with tactical belt with supplies secured in the pockets pulled around the waist.
"Oh my Lord, Karson, where were you?" he pleaded as he pulled him into a tight embrace.
"I... can't... breathe." Karson mumbled uncomfortably.
Jordan's muscle mass and height was a considerable difference from Karson's, so his problem was understandable.
"Oh, sorry!" He exclaimed scratching the back of his head. "Anyway, back to my original question, where were you? I woke up this morning, but you were just gone."
"I was out looking for more supplies from other apartments, but there was a group of Dead gathered on the road that noticed me." Karson explained.
"Okay, but I thought we established not to go out on runs without one another. I was really concerned." He said.
"But everything turned out okay." Karson shrugged. "And I also got some more supplies from some houses in my backpack."
"That's good." Jordan said with a smirk. "But, who are these people?" Jordan questioned motioning to Skylar and I.
"Oh, they are some of my friends from school. I thought you might have recognized them because they used to sit at our lunch table."
"Oh yeah," He said, "I remember them... a little." He admitted.
"Wow, thanks." Skylar grunted disapprovingly.
"Hm, well anyway, when I was running from all of the Dead, I stumbled across them at the pool and they helped me out, and now we are here." He said. "They should stay with us, I don't think there is much left of their original camp because the Dead broke down the fences surrounding the pool."
"Okay, before we all get friendly, what happened to her leg?"
Jordan was eyeing my leg with suspicion and prejudgment.
