REBORN: ENTER INTO THE APOCALYPSE

CHAPTER SEVEN - What He Became

Ray hit the first zombie before it fully made an attempt 

A single punch punch and ut banged in the  shelving unit and brought half a crate of items  down with it unable to stand up. 

Cans flung across the floor in different direction.

Zoe recoiled against the office doorframe behind him and kept mute.

Three more approached from the checkout lanes. 

Ray moved toward them instead of waiting for them and that was the difference he made,  zombies expected  things to run but he didn't run. 

He closed the distance and hit the first one  across the jaw and grabbed the second one by the collar before it could react and drove it headfirst into the corner of the checkout counter.

He adjusted himself and looked at his hands.

He felt no pain throughout, and his hands were still.

Whatever Project X had done to him in the minutes he was unconscious on that floor, it had strengthened him. He could feel it as if it was part of him now.

He turned back to Zoe. "Stay directly behind me and move faster, don't stop moving. If I say run, you run and don't look back."

She nodded twice with rod in both hands, and she stood in behind him.

******#

They made it to the bread aisle before Ray stopped.

Five zombies scrambled between them and the front entrance. All of them turned to  the same direction, the broken glass, toward something outside and they moved in a loosed and unfocused way like they had no target direction.

Ray looked at them and thought about the Wolfe’s compound. 

He thought about standing at the edge of a sector and raising his hand and Fifty zombies stopping mid-movement and turning toward him and stoping. 

Just one simple gesture, with  complete response.

He didn't fully have that yet and he  was aware he didn't.  In his past life it took him two days into the apocalypse before he was able to know he had gained the ability to control zombies.

He decided to give it a try.

He had felt a connection in him before he became unconscious.

He raised his right hand toward direction of the five zombies in the aisle and pushed the  feeling outward.

Three of them slowed, but the remaining three kept moving.

The three that slowed turned their heads toward his direction, they were uncertain and the brutality I'm their movement had began to reduce. 

The other three kept going and they kept moving toward the entrance, completely unaffected.

Ray lowered his hand.

It was an half control and he could only control half of the zombies.

"Did you just….." Zoe started.

"It was useless ," Ray said.

"It looked like it half worked."

"Half doesn't help us." He looked at the floor. "Move up on my left. Quick!"

They moved forward, staying tight to the shelving on the left wall, away from the three he couldn't reach. 

Ray took out the first two who turned toward them fast, with no hesitation, and they reached the front half of the store with the entrance in sight.

Then Pete appeared at  the corner of third aisle.

*******

Even though he was  infected, he was immediately recognized. His size and shirt stretched across his shoulders, name badge catching the emergency lighting above the door. 

He had fully turned, his were eyes fully red, with black lines running up both sides of his neck, face swollen so badly his features had shifted.

But he was very fast and that was the thing Ray had not expected.

Zoe was the first person he lurched at, seems he still had the consciousness of what she had did by pushing him out to the corridor.

He moved toward her with a speed that had no right existing in a body that size and Zoe backpedalled hard and brought the rod up but Pete was already inside her swing radius and she couldn't get leverage and he grabbed her jacket with both hands.

Ray hit Pete from the side.

He used full force with full body, shoulder into Pete's ribs. The impact was enough to break Pete's grip on Zoe and send both of them sideways into the display stand at the end of the aisle. 

Chocolate bars and chewing gum scattered everywhere. Pete recovered faster than Ray expected, he was back upright and turning before Ray had began to stand.

Ray raised his hand again.

He pushed everything he had toward Pete, and that signal, that frequency, whatever it was that connected him to them was driven directly at Pete and for two seconds and it almost worked. 

Pete stood still for a moment. His head tilted, and his red eyes locked on Ray and the aggression in his posture dropped and he just stood there, breathinga and waiting.

Ray held it for a while.

His head began to ache and the connection was there but it was fading, like holding something wet, he pushes harder, bye unexpectedly Pete moved backwards slowly and the connection broke.

Pete scrambled forwards, this time he was faster than before.

Ray grabbed a fallen shelving bracket off the floor and swung it and caught Pete across the chin. 

Pete staggeredans fell, then Ray hit him again, same spot, and he  hit the ground but with one knee.

"Zoe go, now," Ray screamed.

She was already moving toward the entrance. Ray kept himself between her and Pete and backed up step by step, with the bracket in hand, watching Pete drag himself back upright with the slow deliberate movement of something that did not feel pain the way a person did.

Pete stood up immediately.

He looked at Ray with those red eyes and something in his appearance, whatever was left of Pete underneath the infection, looked like the same look he had when he had flung the money on the floor in front of Ray few hours ago.

 That same sad look as if Ray was still just an inconvenience.

Ray landed him another blow the third time and this time Pete remained still.

He ran and caught up with  Zoe at the entrance.

She was standing at the broken glass looking at the street outside and her face said everything before he even looked at her.

The street was bloody and gone.

It wasn't empty but  full of Infected zombies moving in every direction between the stopped cars and overturned bins, no pattern, just spread, the way water moves when a pipe bursts. 

A man was running on the far end of the pavement screaming for someone named Maya. Two zombies were on top of a car twenty feet away. 

And smoke came from somewhere close, real smoke, few yards apart and an explosion rumbled the entire atmosphere, choppers were already hovering above.

Four days early and already this.

Zoe turned towards him. Her face was bold now and her hands were no longer shaking.

She had moved past the shaking stage into something quieter and more focused and he recognised that too that  he had seen it  happen to every survivor he had ever met. 

The moment the panic closes and something harder takes its place.

"You tried to control them," she said. "Twice and I saw it."

"But I failed."

"But no you almost did."

"Almost isn't enough out there." He looked at the street. "I don't have full control yet and I don't know how long it takes to develop."

She was silent for a brief moment . "So right now you're just strong."

"Yes."

"How strong."

Ray raised up a full shelving unit with one hand and set it back against the wall.

Zoe stared at it and  then at him. Then she looked back at the street full of zombies and took one long breath and said, "Okay. I can work with that."

Ray stared at her.

She had no reason to still be standing next to him. She had a mother three miles away and a broken glass door between her and an open street and she was looking at the worst of it and saying she could work with it.

He thought about the last time, he was happy that least for now she was saved by him, just as she had saved him in his previous life.

They need to find a safe place, the supermarket was no longer safe, and he needed to go back to the hospital to see his mom and his sister Dani.

“We need a safe place to stay, Stay close," he said quietly. 

"I'm here, I haven't left yet," she said.

Ray stepped through the broken entrance first and she followed and they moved out into the ruins of the city together.