The Wicked

Problem

As I watched the three guys walk down the street, I quietly cursed to myself for not fighting more to keep him here. Him, the man that I still didn’t know his name. The thought of that only frustrated me, and I had to refocus on the task at hand. I had to find a way to safely expand this fence to the other house. I had Longshot here to help me if I ran into trouble, and Shiny if it was too much for him, but being that I didn’t really trust anyone but him, I felt extremely uncomfortable.
        “So when do you want to start?” Longshot said, walking up behind me.
        “As soon as possible. I need something to distract me.”
        “From what?”
        “Life.” I replied dryly. The fact of the matter was, keeping busy was the only way I could seem to keep my sanity. Everything I knew and loved, including my son, had been taken from me. And now this ordeal with him, I wasn’t about to lose him to some stupid scouting mission. There was nothing I could do about it though; so I had to distract myself. Building that fence, even if I didn’t want to, would be temporary relief.
        The snow had finally stopped falling from this morning. The sun had just barely broken over the tree line of the forests on the hills. The trees gave an effect of long, bright streams of light peeking over the lining and through the leaves. The streams reflected and danced around and off the snow and made almost a celestial glare. The temperature was well below freezing and everyone was in jackets. The gardens were nothing more than dirt that, every day, gets plowed, towed and a thin layer of mulch thrown across. They weren’t even really gardening, rather keeping the soil loose and warm so that they would be ready come the spring seasons.
        I took a quick inspection of the fence around the house. The posts, I assumed, were about a foot in the ground. The wires were crossed in an ‘X’ formation from post to post. Barbed wire lined the top of in. over the front of it was some razor wire. I wondered for a minute if this fence would be enough to hold off anything that wanted to get in here. A tangled wire fence would probably be a better defense than a neat fence such as this, because the infected would get tangled up in it. It would just be a better set up in keeping the infected out, I thought.
        Longshot and I decided to walk over to the other house that was already half surrounded by a wooden picket fence. “So tell me about yourself.” Longshot said walking next to me as we left out of the gate. I remained silent. “Ooookay. Silent type, I see. Your name is Atris?”
        “Yes,” I said flatly.
        “That’s a nice name. Where did you live before here?”
        I was silent for a moment before speaking. “Somewhere,” I finally said with an exasperated sigh.
        “Oh. I see.” There was an awkward silence after he said this. “Look, I’m just trying to be friendly here. If we’re going to work together, then we have to learn to get along and trust each other.”
        “I don’t trust anyone.”
        “Except your no name friend that you so fondly love.”
        Hearing this made me grit my teeth, and I veered around with my fist hitting his face. “Don’t you dare talk about him!” I shouted spitefully.
        He got back up in a daze, holding his cheek that was cut and bleeding. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude about it.”
        “Yeah, well it came across that way.” I said, rolling my eyes.
        “Wow, Atris is it, yeah, you’re going to have to lose that little temper of yours if you don’t want to get eaten alive. You probably just attracted the whole neighborhood with that yelling of yours.” He said sardonically.
        As much as I wanted to punch him again, he was right. Yelling at him was probably not the smartest thing I had ever done. “I’m sorry. I’m just really protective of him is all. Look, let’s just focus on the task at hand. Okay?”
        “Yeah. Let’s do that.” He said, wiping away the blood on his cheek.
        “Is your cheek alright?”
        “Yeah, it is. You can punch hard for a girl.”
        I looked at him, slightly offended. “What’s that suppose to mean?”
        “Nothing, nothing at all.” He said with a slight chuckle.
        We were walking on the sidewalk around the house, inspecting it for any intrusions of infected inside when I suddenly saw his eyes widen. “Look out!” As he said this, he grabbed my shoulder and threw be down just as one of the infected jumped out from a dark corner, narrowly missing me. He lashed out at Longshot, but was returned with a blow to the head from the butt of his rifle. The infected fell to the ground in a daze, but was quickly on his feet again. Longshot took his gun and hit the infected again, but this time it grabbed the gun and wrestled it from him, throwing it in the street. I got back up and kicked it in the knees as hard as I could. I could hear bone crunching as his legs bowed backwards, and it fell to the ground howling furiously. Longshot then took the opportunity and ran up to it, grabbed it by the head and neck, and broke its neck. It spasmed and its body fell, limp. It didn’t move, but it’s eyes still looked at us and it continued growling. Longshot retrieved his gun from the road, and, in a second, finished off the infected with one precise shot.
        “Thank you.” I said finally.
        “It was nothing. I just didn’t know they knew how to grab objects like that. That was completely unexpected.”
        “Yeah, or that he would still be alive when you snapped its neck.”
        “Well that I did expect. I had done that before. All it does is paralyze them, but their brain is still alive or something so you have to take them out by other means.” Both of us were silent for a moment. “Thanks, by the way, for the help. That was smart thinking, taking out his knees like that.”
        “Yeah.” Just as I said this, from around every corner, came more infected. Longshot cursed.
        “They must have heard my gunshot and that one howling. We need to get back to the house.”
        We turned to run, but before we could, they cornered us against the fence that the previous one had just jumped out from. I began to panic. There was no way out. All I could do was scream.