The Gunslingers #3: Alex and the Arrow
From the third story apartment, all of the streets look empty. None of those things about, walking around, looking for victims. I hate it when the streets are empty. Makes me think that they’re all waiting outside my door, ready to bite into my flesh like a walking hamburger.
“Maybe you should stare out that window some more and then one of those things will pop up and you could shoot it with your cool bow.” Annie says nonchalantly from behind me. I guess I should have said our door.
“I’m sorry that I’m actually trying to keep us alive, Annie.” Her slender, pale skinned form is lying on a couch that isn’t hers, in an apartment that she doesn’t own. We don’t know who owned it before, but it’s ours now, at least until something takes it from us.
“Big whoop!” She raises her arms as if that makes her point more meaningful. Leave it to a white girl to make a big deal about something. “Thank you Alex, roommate slash Amazonian queen of the bow. Thank you for saving my life from those corpses.”
“You should be a little more grateful, I save your ass back at our place,” I knew when these monsters started attacking that my roommate would only slow me down, but Annie wouldn’t have gotten anywhere if it weren’t for me.
“You saved me from what? Getting bitten and infected? Thank you, now I get to live in fear everyday while traversing this broken world! I’d be better off rotting in the bowels of hell!” She’s standing now, another power move that doesn’t faze me. Bowels of hell, leave it to an English major to dramatize everything.
“Whatever,” I say, giving up. “I’m gonna’ try and get some sleep before we go searching for water tomorrow. You should too.”
“Of course, mom.” Man, what I wouldn’t give to shut her up.
We make it through the night without anything going wrong, but of course Annie complains when I wake her up, she says something about not having to wake up for classes anymore, says I should let her sleep. Damn right I should, I’d leave her ass if I didn’t have a conscience tellin’ me not too. Finally, she gets up off the couch, which looks a hell of a lot more comfortable than the floor that I slept on, and gets ready to go. She grabs the small handgun that she used to carry in her purse and I sling my bow across my back, and we head out.
The apartment building that we’ve been holding up in is completely empty as we make our way down to the entrance, not even a walker at the front desk to wish us a good morning. We make our way to the street and still it’s deserted. First it was full of people, then the freaks, and now nothing. They’ve all disappeared.
“Where are we going today?” Annie says, sounding board. I notice that it had been almost ten minutes without her saying anything, must be a record.
“I donno, we went down West Street yesterday, may if we head down Bank we can find some un-tapped shops.” She just nods, which also comes to me as a surprise. Maybe the grand spectrum of what’s going on around here is actually setting into her head now. I decide that this can only be a good thing, and we head out.
My years on the archery team at U of T seem to come in handy now, as I pull an arrow out of a third walker. This one was the fast kind, the kind that I dream about every night. I still remember the one that grabbed my sister and pulled her away into the darkness. I’ll never forget the look on its face, like it was grinning or something.
“Well this sucks.” Annie says, looking down at what we’ve gathered. Half a bottle of water and an Mega-Bran bar. I pick up the bottle and hold it up in the sunlight.
“At least it looks clean, that’s a plus.”
“Yeah, but…” the unmistakable sound of a shotgun blast echoes close by. We look at each other and know instantly what we need to do. Together we take off at a running pace towards the gunshot.
The scene doesn’t look promising. Outside a small butcher shop the only humans we’ve seen in days are being surrounded by a mob of hungry looking infected. A fairly well-built guy is lying on the ground, eyes shut, barely conscious. The other guy, the one with the crazy-hobo beard and glasses appears ready to take down upwards of ten infected with a single two-shot sawed-off. I pull one of the seven arrows out of the make shift quiver on my back and notch it into my bow. In my peripherals I can see Annie lift her gun with shaky hands and aim it towards the group of freaks.
“Let me take this.” I say, lowering her gun for her. She nods and watches as I let a volley of arrows take out five of the eleven monsters. The other six turn towards us and I silently curse at the fact that I have so few arrows. The things shamble towards us, slowly, but fast enough for the fear to start up in the pit of my stomach.
Two shotgun blasts echo towards us and I watch two more of them fall, four left, seems like better odds. The bearded guy puts his shotgun into a small holster attached to his belt and lunges at the group of monsters with a large machete. I assume that he’s out of shells, and decide that he can take the things down on his own. As the last infected falls to the ground, I wonder why I had never thought of a melee weapon.
“That’s taking the phrase ‘Get Medieval’ to the next level” The guy says to us as I retrieve my arrows. He shakes some of the blood and gore off of his machete and then offers me his hand. “Saul Ghoulachov, don’t worry, I’m not as Russian as the name sounds.” I take his hand and wonder why Annie is practically hiding behind me.
“Alexandria Sanders, but you can call me Alex.”
“Well met, Alex. That was some astounding aim, shame you’ve got so few shots.” He motions to my quiver and I nod.
“This is all I could scrounge up from the campus archery range.” I point to the U of T seal on the bow. “Is your friend okay?”
“Shit!” Saul shouts as he runs over to the fallen guy. “Jace, goddamn it, get up!” He violently shakes the guy, but he seems to be unresponsive.
“Here,” Annie tosses a small inhaler to Saul who promptly administers the drug into Jace’s mouth. “I found that in a pharmacy, thought I’d throw it into my purse.”
Jace’s body shudders a little and his eyelids open slightly. He makes a small sound and seems to go back to the unconscious state that he’d only briefly woken up from.
“We should get him back to the apartment.” I look at Annie when I say this, but she seems distant.
“You have an apartment?”
“Yeah,” I point to the sky. “It’s getting dark, we should get moving.”
“Good plan.”
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