Pushing Up Gravestones - Pushing Up Gravestones – Chapter 18

The group kept walking for what seemed like hours until they
reached the bottom of a particularly steep hill. They easily had just trekked
close to nine miles, finally reaching the edges of town. The whole group sighed
in exhaustion and frustration when they saw how high they had to climb this
time.

“Well, we might as well keep going, it might not be that bad.” Rory suggested,
although he was talking directly to Denise as she sighed the loudest.

She smiled a weary smile and nodded to herself. She supposed
he was right. They had come this far, so they might as well keep going, this
might end up being a restless night. Besides, they were too far ahead to go
back. When they started climbing, before they were even one-third of the way up
the hill, Tina started falling behind, but it was kind of understandable since
she was young and had short legs.

Rory smiled a sympathetic smile as he went over and put her on
his back, with her gladly letting him. He laughed as she stretched out and
yawned like a cat. The crew then struggled to trudge the rest of the way up the
hill until they made it successfully to the top, being rewarded with a
beautiful view of what was up ahead.

“Oh, I think I see it!” Ferrah said excitedly, jumping up and down.

She was almost as tall as Rory, so of course she saw it. Tina,
Denise and Rory looked in the direction she was pointing as they crested the
hill. At first she couldn’t see anything in the dwindling light, but as her
eyes adjusted she could see an area several miles out with a large quantity of
lights. As her eyes focused she realized they were plane runways. Sure enough,
there it was – the military base, it would take them the rest of the night to
get there at least. Rory put Tina down from his back, which turned out to be a
mistake.

“Yay!” Tina yelled as she started running ahead carelessly.

The teenagers shook their heads and laughed together as they
just walked, trying not to waste their energy if an emergency came up where
they needed to run. With the city behind them, there would probably be a lot
less zombies and they might be safe. This let them at least be a little more
comfortable with Tina running off. As they continued walking, Denise noticed
that she didn’t see Tina up ahead. She started worrying.

“Um, guys…” Denise started in a scared, shaky voice. “Where’s Tina?”

 Rory and Ferrah then
notice and started joined her as she jogged forward, looking around and
wondering how Tina could have gotten so far ahead of them so fast. As she was
running, Denise carelessly bumped into something hard, causing her to fall back
from the impact. It couldn’t have been a wall, there were no buildings nearby.
She looked up and screamed in horror when she saw a big tall man towering over
her and snickering. He was wearing what looked like a ski mask and a bullet
proof body suit. Stunned, Denise looked back, thinking Ferrah or Rory might
have seen that, but they were gone as well, which just scared her more.

“W-who are you?” she forced herself to ask, backing up slowly while shivering
steadily in fear.

 The man just gave her
an evil grin as he snatched her up forcefully by her collar and carried her
over his rough shoulder and into the dark woods nearby.

“What are you doing!?” she asked, kicking him in the chest and stomach.

In the circumstances, she was afraid he was going to take her
into the woods to rape her or kill her. He just laughed as if it tickled,
because it had no effect on his large build at all. Just as she thought she was
going to breakdown and cry, she was surprisingly thrown to the ground when they
reached the heart of the woods.

She looked and saw Rory, Ferrah, and Tina all tied up with
tape over their mouths. Tina was just a huge mess, crying and slobbering all
over herself, but the duct tape over her poor delicate mouth muffled what would
be a big disturbance to the big peaceful woods. Denise shivered in fear as one
of the other guys tied her up and taped her mouth as well. That was when she
noticed there were six other equally large guys, and all of them looked rough.
They were considerably taller than Ferrah and Rory. One man easily towered over
them, and frightened her the most.

This giant man then walked over to Rory, causing him to flinch and nearly fall
over. Denise watched in confusion, but that confusion was replaced with fear.
Denise let out a whine as the dangerous man pulled out a big and heavy pocket
knife. All was silent; the man brought the sharp knife close to Rory’s face.
This was it. A look in Rory’s eyes suggested otherwise, he must have had
something up his sleeve.

The man lifted the knife, read to plunge it into Rory’s throat as Denise let
out a low pitched whine of protest through her taped mouth. The man that was
holding her shook her roughly, but he couldn’t stop the tears that flowed down
her face. The giant man brought down the knife Rory brought up his hands more
quickly than Denise had thought possible.

The knife slashed into the rope that tied his hands. He
twisted his wrist, cutting the binding in a swift motion. Leaping back from the
surprised man, he ripped the tape from his mouth.

“Ha!” Rory yelled excitedly, happy that he timed it just right. If he hadn’t,
he would have lost a finger or worse.

The man groaned loudly in frustration as he went to the back and reached into
his bag. He wasn’t going to give up killing Rory; these men didn’t seem to care
to keep him around. Denise knew that wasn’t going to be good, but couldn’t
bring herself to do anything about it, the fear keeping her frozen.  All she could do was watch helplessly and
wait to see what happened next. Rory didn’t seem afraid, which was the most
confusing part since he was the one in danger.

The man pulled out a large machine gun, like the kind they use in wars, which
caused each of the girls to cry out in terror, still muffled by their tape.
This seemed to annoy their captors, who jabbed them painfully. Tina was a very
smart girl, and this was just too much for her little heart. She was sitting
there crying very heavily, struggling to breath. Ferrah and Denise were biting
their lips, trying to stifle their tears in front of Tina as well.

“I wanted to do this the easy way, but…” the man said as he cocked the gun.

 Fortunately for Rory,
ten years of running track and field really paid off today. He ran off at
record breaking speed, leaving the man flabbergasted with the gun in his hand,
finger on the trigger. He just groaned in annoyance and went back over to the
rest of the men, clearly not caring if Rory lived or died.

“Sorry guys!” They managed to hear Rory yell in the distance.

Tina’s crying had died down by now and Ferrah just
sighed, but it hurt Denise deeply for him to go. She sat there and moped while
dreading what these men would possibly do to them now that he was gone. They
all sat there and watched as the men seemed to be having a meeting, perhaps
discussing what they would do next.

They could try to escape, but unfortunately they had set a man
with his machine gun trained on them, and could shoot them dead if they
attempted to move. They all just sat there and watched as the men talked.
Eventually, they broke up their meeting and walked over to them. Tina gulped
hard when they reached her. Each one of them grabbed a girl while the other
three carried the bags and the guns. Denise started crying silently to herself
as they were carried away from the military base, where they were supposed to
be headed, and back into the city.

Denise eventually couldn’t take it anymore, and she broke down crying out loud.
The past two days had been too much for her, and she really just couldn’t hold
it in any longer.

“Oh, shut up.” the person carrying her snapped, showing no sympathy whatsoever.

 She attempted to follow
his command, returning to the silent weeping she was starting to master. She
looked over at Tina, who was doing the same. Denise took a deep breath,
concentrating on her breathing to calm herself. She needed to have her wits
about her if she was going to get them out of this.

When they reached the thug’s camp, it looked just like a grocery store that
they’d just boarded up and wrote graffiti on. The sight of it would make a
person with a sensitive stomach vomit right on sight. Unfortunately, Tina has a
very upset stomach, after all that crying and all the disgusting things she’s
seen. She ended up blowing chunks all over poor man. Denise and Ferrah weren’t
complaining though. Serves him and all his friends right for dragging them out
there

When they walked inside, it was just as bad, or worse than the exterior.
Roaches, rats and other creatures running around like they own the place,
clothes, women’s clothes in particular all over the place, stains of blood and
piss covered the walls that made it hard to tell that they were previously
white, and the whole place seemed to be made up of a thick atmosphere of piss,
cigarette smoke, and of course fear. They already knew this was going to be a
horrible experience.

The whole room filled with the scent of fear when what seemed like the leader
of the thug’s emerged from the ground. Gasps and screams filled the room, since
the girls were now released from the rope and tape. He just gave an evil smirk
when he saw that all of his newly captured women were afraid, just like they
should be.

Director’s Note: Lot of little things had to be fixed,
sentences that didn’t make sense, and severe inconsistencies.