Part Ten
We were a few minutes on the road when David stopped the car.
"You drive, I'll take the gun." He said. We hurriedly got of the car and swiched positions. I gave him the shotgun.
"What's wrong?" I asked as I hit the gas.
"Maybe it was fate that I had to be the one to kill them, my parents. Maybe it was fate...."
That was weird.
***
He was bitten. He's been bitten. What should I do? Kill him. It's the only way. I can't, I need someone on my side. He will kill you.
"Frank, It freaks me out when you're quiet." David said to me, taking me out of my inner thoughts. He was sort of shivering.
"Uh, sorry about that. How's your arm?"
"How's yours?" He responded quickly. He was good at shifting attention.
Why'd he have to go back in that house? He had the right idea by getting gun. All we had to go was get in the car and drive. But no, he had to go and get himself bitten. It could've been me, though. He at least had the balls to take the risk. It's your own fault you're a coward.
"How long we been driving?" He once again asked, taking me away from my inner thoughts.
"About an hour."
He's just a kid, I can't kill him. We don't even know what turns people. A simple bite? Exchange of blood? Hell, He probably hurt his arm running away. It could've got caught in the door or something. See, now your just making up excuses. I rather that then have to kill him... Why the hell am I talking to myself like this?
"Frank! Stop the car!" David shouted.
I guess I wasn't paying attention while driving. By instinct my foot hit the break pedal, the car stopped with a screech.
"What?!" I shouted back at David. He scared me.
"A girl, up ahead."
It sure was a girl, not that far away on the road, kind of hunched over like she was tying her shoe. It must be another one of them! My foot hit the gas pedal so fast, I was ready to run the ***** over.
"No!" David yelled, but I wasn't listening this time. The car was getting closer and closer to her, she was going to die once again... but then she gave off this scream... the type of scream someone gives off when they're being chased by something, or when someone is about to hit them with their car. I hit the breaks immediately, and the car stopped inches away from her.
She sighed with relief on her face, then... "What the bloody **** is wrong with you?!" She screamed, she then started hitting the front hood with a bat she had picked up from the ground. I jumped out the car to stop her, there was no way I could afford to lose this car out here.
"Not the car!" I said snatching the bat out of her hands. At least my messed up arm was feeling better. "Who are you?"
"Who the **** are you, *******? Oh, I know, the ****er who tried to run me over!"
"I'm sorry, I thought you were one of those things.You were hunched over like one."
"I've been running all night and I noticed that me shoe was untied. It would've suck to be eaten just because I forgot to tie it." Wow, she actually was tying her shoe.
"What's with your friend? He looks terrible." She was right. David looked paler now, really sweating too.
"We just ran out of his house a while ago, we were attacked and--"
She cut me off. "He was bitten? Were you?!"
"Me? But he--"
"But?" She then pulled what looked to be a machete.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Something you shold've done in the first place." And she ran over to David's side of the car and popped his door open.
"Tell me, *****, what do you think would be faster, you swinging your arm, or me pulling the trigger?" David said, gun pointed towards this girl. She eased her machete down.
"Miss, what's your name?' I asked, I wondered how far they would go.
"Alexis."
"Well, Alexis, I'm Frank, the one in the car with the gun aiming at you is David."
"Well, David's infected, Frank."
"We don't know that for sure." I said. I really didn't want her to be right.
"Sorry, buddy, but I've seen this happen a few times today. I know what it looks like to be infected. If we don't kill him, he'll turn us."
Funny, that almost the same thing I said to David about his father. It's also funny how it all turned out anyway.
"Were you running right before you started tying your shoe?" David asked Alexis. She nodded. "Frank, Alexis, get in the car if you wanna live." He said as he fired a shot that went past Alexis. Neither of us were paying attention, but one of those things were sneaking up on us while we were talking. After David shot "it," We jumped in the car, me in the driver's seat, her in the back, and drove off.
"Where were you two headed before you almost ran me over?"
"The city to see if we could find some help. What's your story? How'd you get to this point?" I responded.
"Me and four of my friends were celebrating last night, it was my 21th birthday. We were driving around, drinking, and just having fun. After a while we had to go to the bathroom. There were no houses or anything around, the only thing around was the woods. Two of my Friends, Rachel and Adam, stayed in the car to keep it warm while Shelly, Amber, and myself headed for the woods. We were out there for a few minutes when we heard something, a moan. Then someone, something--jumped out at us, pounced Shelly, and bit her on the neck. We were screaming, trying to fight it off by kicking it and stuff, then it bit Amber's leg. Adam had gotten out of the car to see what we were screaming about when he saw the thing coming after me. It was his dad's car, so he had his dad's hunting machete with him and he swung at it and took the thing's head off. After he checked all of us, we decided to hightail it out of there, but when we got back to the road, the car was gone. That ***** Rachel had deserted us...." At that point she trailed off. I don't think she wanted to continue, or wasn't ready to continue. "I'm gonna get some shut eye. Wake me up when we're in the city." She said as lied down.
***
It was about a half an hour later when David once again broke me out of my thinking. We had just enter the city, but he was getting paler by the hour, it seemed. Hopefully there'll be some help for him. All he has had to do was hold out a little longer.
"I'm turning, you know?" He said.
"What?"
"Yeah, I can feel it inside. If I'm not killed now--"
"Stop talking about it. We're already here, in the city, we'll get you some help."
"...Tell me something about yourself, Frank. You have a family?"
"Yeah, wife and son. He's ten."
"But you seem young yourself." Alexis said from behind us, she then lifted herself into a sitting position.
"I thought you were sleeping." David asked her, never turning his shoulder to look at her. I don't think he's looked at her once since she entered the car, really.
"It's hard to do that when your life can be taken away in seconds. So like I said, Frank, you seem young yourself."
"I, uh, got my wife pregnant when we were in highschool. I turned 27 last month."
"Ok. Tell me another thing, Frank. Would you kill your family if they were bitten?" David asked while he turn to look at me. His eye were yellow, and his lips seemed blue.
"I--I don't think I'd be able to." I answered fearfully. He really looked like he was one of them now.
"You'd have to for your survival." Alexis interjected. I saw through the rearview mirror that she was staring at David with great intensity. I'm more than sure she was holding onto her machete.
"I've just never really killed anything before. I barely killed one of those things that attacked us."
It got quiet, Then David asked something that made me stop the car.
"Do you wanna start with me?"
"What? No!"
"We don't have much longer, just end it now."
I got out of the car in anger and slammed its door. I went to David's side of the car and opened the door. "Shut up! We're in the city now. We'll find some help, and that'll be that. Now get out of the car."
"But he's right, Frank..." Alexis stated as she got out of the car, also on David's side. She indeed had the machete in her hand. "...If you don't kill him now, you're as good as dead."
"No! I'm am not killing him! He's saved me a bunch of times today. At least give me the chance to try to do the same for him!"
"We don't have time, damn it! You saw how he looked. If you won't kill him, I will."
"No one is going to kill me..." David said from within the car, he never exited. I bent down to talk to him, but he cut me off. "...I once told you, Frank, that If you turned into what my mother turned into, that I wouldn't hesistate putting you down. Maybe it was fate that I had to be the one to kill my parents, and maybe it was that I was bitten.... Maybe it was fate... and I was meant to finish the job." He then aimed the shotgun under his chin.
"David, don't." I pleeded with him.
He didn't even look at me when he responded. "Two reason why I have to do this, Frank: 1) I can feel my heartbeat slowing down. ....2) ...I'm starting to get hungry." And the gun went off. David killed himself.
I was stunned. I had just watched David, someone who I started to feel like was a friend to me, shot himself in the head. I didn't move or anything, I couldn't. And like so many times today, I wanted to throw up. Alexis got the bat from the backseat where I threw and pushed me out of the way to get David's gun.
"Well, Frank, there's nothing out here. But you now what they say: It's the calm before the storm."