Pushing Up Gravestones - Pushing Up Gravestones – Chapter 27

Best of luck guys, Ferrah silently wished the
others as her eyes tracked their departure, hopefully
we’ll see each other soon.

She
took in their profiles, just in case. Ferrah closed her eyes, the image of
their three selves branded in her mind, Denise, Tina and Rory. She exhaled,
slowly steeling herself before turning to face Joseph.

 “Ready?” Ferrah asked meeting his baby blues.

Joseph
nodded, holding her gaze before turning to head out. They walked through dark
corridors, the dim, flickering fluorescent light casting weak, yellow light.
Their ears straining and constantly alert. Joseph led, creeping ahead of Ferrah
and checking corners before continuing. Their feet made soft sounds, seeming to
echo in the eerie silence of the dark. Pit
pat pit pat. Bouncing off the enclosed walls, their feet seemed to be
calling for trouble. Pit pat pit pat.
Ferrah’s heart was beating furiously, it seemed to beat out of her chest, its boom boom felt too loud in the silence.
Ferrah glanced over at Joseph, trying to see whether he could hear it too. His
6’2″ frame beside her was moving swiftly and noiselessly, his crown of
blonde hair silently mimicking his head as he looked back and forth, silently
swishing to and fro. Ferrah unconsciously moved closer to him and almost
crashed into his back as he suddenly halted. She froze, praying that he hadn’t
seen a pack of zombies heading towards them and steeled herself for the worst.

“Ferrah,
look,” Joseph waved his hand, gesturing towards a sign that she hadn’t seen in
the oily black of the corridor.

Ferrah
breathed a sigh of relief, releasing the air she had unknowingly held in her
spooked body. Keep breathing Ferrah,
she told herself, the zombies haven’t
found you… at least, not yet. Trying to compose her furiously beating
heart she slowly breathed in and out. Come
on Ferrah don’t let your fear control you, she reprimanded herself, walking
forward slowly to peer at the sign closely. It spelled the word hangar accompanied with an arrow
pointing to their left.

 “Do you think that’s where we can find fuel?”
Ferrah whispered, hope quickly replacing the fear in her body.

“’Yeah,
that’s where they house aircraft, and I’m assuming that’s where they keep fuel
to fill up the tanks when they’ve landed,” answered Joseph quietly, his voice
echoing eerily soft, “It’s probably our best shot.”

 Ferrah looked back at the sign and then back
at Joseph. He reached out and lightly touched her shoulder with a reassuring hand.
Their eyes met and Joseph held her gaze.

 “We’ll get through this, it’s going to be
okay,” His voice was soothing and his hand felt warm on her shoulder.

Ferrah
thought that this felt so alien, this warmth permeated by the cold and terror
the darkness seemed to ooze. She nodded back at him, their eyes locked for a
moment before Joseph turned away. She felt the warmth of his hand leave her
shoulder, the cold immediately settling where his hand was. Ferrah shivered and
followed Joseph. They clung to the walls as they crept along, pushing through
the deadly silence, the walls emanated a chill that seemed to sink deep into
Ferrah’s bones. She wondered how the others were, did they manage to find the
armory? Were they being run down by a pack of zombies? Were they still alive?
Ferrah thought she could see the three of them, being chased by zombies and
being bitten, their bodies being taken by the virus, their sickly skin, their
infected bodies slowly morphing into rotting flesh…

Ferrah
shook her head, quickly dispelling her thoughts. She shouldn’t be thinking
this, especially now. Oh god, Rory, Denise and Tina, she couldn’t stand to see
any one of them desperately running away from their outstretched, grasping
hands, their gaping mouths… She shook her head again, this time more
forcefully, her red hair settling on her shoulders. She needed to concentrate,
and she needed to find fuel so they could get the hell out of here safely. Now
was definitely not the time, the thick darkness around her and the ever present
threat of zombies was a testimony to that. She couldn’t afford to lose her head
over this.

Ferrah’s
head snapped up the same Joseph’s did. The stench wafted around the corner they
had just passed and reached their noses. A warning. They both recognized that
god awful scent and knew what it signified. Zombies. Ferrah met Joseph eyes and
together they sped up, running as quickly as they could, following the signs
that pointed them to the hangar. Their feet carried them further away, but
Ferrah could still smell it. No matter how far they seemed to go the traces of
a zombie followed them. The putrid stench of death, rotting flesh and evil
intent, their stalker in this ungodly hell. She could hear their soft,
insistent footsteps following them, the darkness carrying the echo of their
quiet moans to their ears. Ferrah sped up, fear pushing her next to Joseph
until they were running side by side. Her blood was throbbing in her ears, the
terror making it easily to envision their slow, yet relentless movement towards
them. It was a picture that was firmly stuck behind her eyelids, her every
blink sending a new wave of consuming fear through her body as she ran.

“Here!”
Joseph panted, his hand reaching out to push open the hangar door and shut it
behind them.

Ferrah
leaned against the heavy door, the side of her body touching Joseph’s as they
panted, their breaths labored. 

“Shit,
we need to barricade the door,” Joseph responded, exhaling his words with his
panting breaths.

Ferrah
shuts her eyes and counted to ten to slow her pounding heart before pushing off
and finding something to bar the door with. Together they shoved heavy crates
in front of the door, desperately trying to barricade the sounds of the echoing
moans. After they pushed one last crate to block the door Ferrah slumped to the
ground, physically drained.

“I’m
going to go find fuel,” Ferrah nodded in response to Joseph’s voice, staying
where she was, trying to regain her breath.

Breathe Ferrah, breathe, in
out, in out, she
repeated it to herself like a mantra. Getting up, she moved to where Joseph
was. He was crouching before some overturned crates, pushing them around and
rooting behind it to reach the huge fuel tank behind.

“Any
luck?” asked Ferrah as she leans down next to him, bracing her hands against
her thighs, her hair swinging forward.

 Her eyes look and try to see what he was
trying to find, she mentally thanked whoever decided to build this hangar with
skylights. With some light shining down Ferrah thought she could see what
Joseph was trying to grab.

“I
think I found it, just give me a sec,” came Joseph’s muffled voice, his head
and body straining forward to reach it.

Within
moments his hands grasped a pump attached to a hose. His deft hands pulled it
out triumphantly and he turned around to face Ferrah, a smile lighting his
face. Ferrah smiled back, victory blazing through her like a pleasant heat. Finally, something is going right, she
thought. Her smile waned slowly as she realized that Joseph’s eyes weren’t
focused on her face anymore, rather something south of it. His baby blue eyes
were fixated on her breasts which Ferrah belatedly realized were too close to
his face. She quickly straightened up, her eyes noting that his gaze followed
her breasts as they ascended. Her face flushed, pink staining her cheeks as she
watched Joseph eventually raised his gaze to her face.

“I’m
going to go find a something that we can carry the fuel in,” Ferrah said
uncomfortably in the charged silence, quickly turning around and heading off,
aware that Joseph’s gaze followed her.

Ferrah
scoured the hangar, searching for a portable something to store the discovered
fuel. She eventually found what was like a larger version of a watering can. It
was made out of plastic, a handle and a hole with a cap on at the top and a
short nozzle at one end. Perfect,
Ferrah thought as she brought it back to Joseph.

“This
will definitely do the trick,” said Joseph, avoiding eye contact with Ferrah as
he began to pump fuel into the watering can.

“We
just need to wait for the others, hopefully they’ve found the armory by now and
are going to start the distraction soon so we can get out of here,” started
Ferrah, trying to fill the unnerving quiet, “I wonder if everything is going
okay for them.”

Ferrah
paused for a moment, watching Joseph finish pumping the fuel into the hole and
screwing the cap back on. She let out a breath she had unconsciously been
holding, a small smile lighting her face. This
is it, we are really getting out of here, Ferrah smiles at Joseph as he
turns around.

One
second she was smiling at him, and the next his mouth was on top of hers.
Shocked, Ferrah just stood there, taking in the feeling of his mouth moving
against hers, his hands wrapped around her waist. His soft lips were insistent
but gentle against hers and soon she found herself responding to him. What about Rory? The thought popped into
her mind but she pushed it aside, her hands twining in Joseph’s hair. It felt
too good, reassuring almost, that there was a human being here right now with her. The warmth from another human being,
blocking out the cold, and the reminiscent feeling of normalcy. It was normal
to do this, it wasn’t normal to have a zombie apocalypse happen, and it made
her feel safe.

Ferrah
was vaguely aware of Joseph lifting her onto a crate and her legs wrapping
around his waist. His hands were warm, deliciously so, slipping underneath the
back of her shirt and caressing her back softly. She half heard herself moaning
into his mouth softly, pulling him closer. Placing her hands on his chest she
started to trace the contours of his body, eliciting groans from Joseph.

Kissing
Joseph she felt him still and then emit a cry of pain, wrenching his mouth from
hers. Ferrah stared at him wondering what had happened, it was then she heard
it. Those deadly, low, guttural moans. Looking down she saw a grisly, rotting
face attached to Joseph’s leg. For a moment it all Ferrah could do was just
stare in detached shock, slowly processing the image of its body lacking legs and
anything from the waist down. Its decomposing flesh peeling off and it’s stench
wafting up to meet their noses. Distantly she realized that it must have been
one of the air force base crew, and when zombies had overrun this place this
guy had been bitten, and half eaten, before turning. Ferrah came out of her
unresponsive state when she saw the zombies mouth start to move, start to chew. Joseph cried out, desperately
trying to shake off the leeching zombie. Screaming, Ferrah jumped down next to
it and frantically tried to detach it from Joseph.

It
was as if the sight of someone she knew being attacked by a zombie created this
blazing fire of anger deep within her, she violently smashed in the zombie’s
head by slamming down her booted foot down repeatedly. Again and again her foot
struck down, exposing sickly yellow brain, it’s head spurting small showers of
brown blood, until it stopped moving. When it was over Ferrah came back to
herself, the terror that there were other zombies in this hangar, ones that
they missed, that might be out there,
replaced her boiling anger.

“Joseph!
Shit, my God, Joseph!” Taking in the bleeding wound she gently supported his
body, trying to take some weight off his injured leg.

“Are
you okay?” Ferrah asked, thinking it was the stupidest question she could have
asked right now as Joseph, within twenty eight days, would be one of them.

 “It’s okay Ferrah, it’s only a flesh wound,
I’ll be okay to walk, we still need to get the fuel to the helicopter,” replied
Joseph, determination lighting his features.

Oh my God, Ferrah realized, we still need to get the fuel to the others.
What were they going to do? Calm down
Ferrah, you’re not the one with a bite, you’re the one who’s going to get us
out of here and to the others.

“Ready
to get out of here?” asked Ferrah, trying to smile at him reassuringly.

“Yeah,
I just want to know how that zombie got in here,” replied Joseph easily
straightening up to his full height, but Ferrah didn’t miss the pain which
briefly clouded his eyes.

A sudden
noise caught their attention and they turned to the back of the building.
Zombies were pushing through a hole in the side of the building, which had been
hidden by a set of racks they had just pushed over. 

 “We need to go now,” Joseph cried as he picked
up the can of fuel and turned to her.

Ferrah
nodded and they ran out the front door, shoving several surprised zombies aside
as they bolted.

“Oh
crap, the gas!” Ferrah shouted as they ran.

“No
time,” Joseph replied as he quickly limped on.

 They turned a corner, only to meet the
silhouettes of zombies illuminated by the flickering fluorescent light. Their
moans followed them, closer and closer, as they turned down another corridor,
bursting out onto the runway. Panting, Ferrah looked back and saw zombie after
zombie pour out onto the runway, their footsteps and guttural sounds an
orchestra evoking terror that took root in her fatigued body.

Joseph
was slowing down, his breaths coming fast and labored, Ferrah didn’t know what
to do other than to give Joseph a supportive arm. They needed to keep moving.
She knew they couldn’t outrun the zombies for long and prayed with all her
waning strength that the others were coming. Ferrah looked at Joseph’s face,
stained with sweat and twisted with pain, his injured leg hobbling along trying
to match pace with his other leg. Her arm was already feeling the strain of
extra weight; she could feel her whole self drooping.

Come on guys, where are you?