Waking up with the realization that one of us might not make it was not the best feeling at dawn. I woke up second again after Jon who already studied the mapping of the city. 

When the sunlight overtook the city’s shades, we were ready to move out and go. Our adventure was just getting started.

All the difficulties we’d been through, nothing would be harder than what we would face. I knew that already for a fact after seeing the craziness of this city.

The four of us stood silently in front of the sewer gate, nervous. No one knew how to start and no one knew how to dare. The feeling was way worse than anything that you could think off.

Jon asked us one question, “Who wanna lead the way?”

No one answered, but when there was answer, the two of us spoke together. 

“I’ll do it,” Berta and I said at once.

“No, I’ll do it. I’m the oldest, I should do this,” Berta added.

I didn’t stand to debate and headed into the clandestine sewer myself. Everyone finally followed me one at a time. Jon was behind me, then Chase, and lastly Berta to look at our backs.

Jon got very agitated. “I’ve seen too many horror movies. This kind of path is where we got jumpscared.”

“This is your path,” I sneered.

But not even a drop of water could be heard. I tried to shoot every part of the sewer with the flashlight, pointing it here and there. There were so many mice, like thousands of them running from the same direction.

Oh I forgot to describe how it smelled. Can you imagine how a sewer would smell? Just mix human feces, rat feces, dead bodies’ odors, rotting tomatoes, trash, and all of those stinky shits blended together. It felt like you were walking in a cave of a human’s butt.

“I remember a scene in Indiana Jones−”

“Shut up, Jon!” All three of us yelled at once.

“Alright, sorry.”

After five minutes of walking, we arrived at a larger part of the sewer where a permanent, metal ladder was located. The ladder must’ve led us to some other building upstairs, whatever it was. The sewer itself branched into three different directions (just like in Dora the Explorer… or the Lord of the Rings). The only problem was that all three were blocked by the same metal barred gate, but was locked so we couldn’t access them whatsoever.

“We need to climb this ladder, see if it brings us anywhere.” Jon and I checked the ladder and it was just filthy, and soon, we would be grabbing them with bare hands.

“It’ll bring us to our deaths.”

“Love the enthusiastic energy, Ti,” Berta said.

I climbed first as I always did. The ladder felt so… disgusting. It was like each thing I gripped was made out of solidified human poop plastered by cow poop plastered by blood, so you could imagine how filthy it was.

A trapdoor lied above me after I climbed for approximately four minutes. My arms were getting tired, and if I plunged down, then I plunged towards the epicenter of disgust and filth.

The trapdoor could also be a problem if it was locked. And you know what? It was.

I mean, an adventure without hardness is always a boring adventure, but trust me, when you were in our shoes, you would wish it was boring.

“It’s locked,” I shouted to the folks below me.

“Shit, alright. Jon, you wanna look that up?”

Jon climbed the ladder and checked the trapdoor himself.

“It’s not locked,” he said, opening the trapdoor like using magic. “You just have to snuggle your hand through the bars and open the latch.”

This time, it wasn’t because of his big brain that saved us, but because I was too dumb to even think about that. I felt so stupid, so ashamed, but only Chase who chuckled and then we moved on.

Right when we stepped on solid ground, everything around us was yet again bleak blackness. I immediately rubbed my filthy hands on my pants and looked around. It was another basement, probably in a different building. The basement was way bigger with lots of electrical fuse boxes, diesels, pipes, and other machines I didn’t ever get.

“Where are we?” Berta asked.

“I think… the Galt House.” Jon studied the map again and nodded.

“Really?”

“Not sure, but judging from our direction, length, depth, and the size of this basement, with all of these mechanical stuff, I’d say this is the Galt House’s basement.”

“What’s the Galt House?” My voice turned out to be bigger than I thought I would sound.

“It’s the 4-star hotel behind our previous building. The good news is that we’re some few feet closer to the Riverwalk… and also we’re on a different street, hopefully not crowded by predators. The bad news would be that almost every hotel is a quarantine camp for guests who stayed, so this place can be just filled with predators crawling every inch of the way.”

“That’s not good.”

“Nope. Let’s just be careful and head away from this place. I’ll lead the way now.”

I didn’t refuse and followed Berta’s suggestion. This time, I was looking for the back, but there was really nothing to look for except the pit of darkness obliterating time and space.

Berta opened the basement door and we were then standing on a completely different room, full of shelves of goods. There were beds, pillows, sheets, mineral waters, boxes, and so many other stuff that I don’t remember, but it was definitely a storage.

No one resided there, so we moved along and exited the dark place. We stood now in a corridor; dark, horrid, damp.

“I hate corridors,” I said.

But what I hated most about that specific corridor was the wind. The wind inside an isolated corridor was never a good sign.

We passed too many rooms, hearing strange hissing sounds from almost each of them, giving me the creep. We almost didn’t talk all the way through, and when we finally got to the lobby, we ducked and hid behind a counter table.

The lobby was illuminated by the bright sunlight coming from outside, penetrating the glass windows. Also, predators jam packed the entire place like crazy. There were probably five dozens of them walking around.

“Shit! What do we do?”

“I’m thinking.”

In the meantime, I did a justified look to some of them. They looked so… fucked up… so alive yet so dead. I wondered if the person actually realized he or she was a zombie but just can’t do anything about it. That would be scary.

“According to TV shows, we can just sneak past them if we have the same smell, but I don’t expect it to work in real life. But not to worry, I have an idea.”

Jon reached for his backpack and took out a piece of black item that I couldn’t see, but when it flashed, I realized it was his pocket radio. 

“Ummm… good idea, but don’t we need that?”

“We know where we’re going, so no.”

Jon turned it on and adjusted the channel until the Three River’s automatic broadcast was played. He then cranked the volume to full, and the sound blasted through the entire room, alarming every predator to our position.

“You better throw that fast!”

Jon threw the radio almost across the room onto the floor of the other hallway. Those stupid predators fell for the trick, hurrying their hungry asses toward the source of the sound. All of them left their last positions, so our pathway became clear and unchallenging.

We strode out without thinking twice into the street outside. The familiar smell of death welcomed us out. We scanned the area for predators, but none of them were actually seen, which was a good thing, but also making us anxious. We could hear the loud hissing of thousands of predators from the next street, which is the street where we left our vehicle.

The Riverbay could be seen by our eyes. The almost green water sparkled to our eyes, glinting the light from the sun.

We arrived at the Riverwalk safe and sound, but the problem was that only a small canoe existed throughout the entire place.

“I mean, it’s better than nothing, right?” said Berta, trying to be positive.

The river was not a joke regarding waves and wind, and also, hundreds of dead people and predators floated on it. It almost felt like that climax scene from Titanic.

“We’ll take turn paddling the canoe. I’ll go first.”

Trust me when I said we barely fit the canoe. We literally cramped ourselves on top of each other, and also, the canoe was very unstable.

“This is crazy.” Chase, who feared deep water though he could swim, shivered intensely. 

“Here we go.”

I started paddling the rusty, small canoe and it was nothing like I used to do. It was very freaking hard. Three minutes passed and the thing almost went upside down. I could see Chase’s face reddened after all of this.

The canoe ramped swiftly on the floating bodies. It was insane how many people were in there. They probably fell from the bridge, but I didn’t expect that many. 

If there was fog too, that would be epic and amazingly cinematic, but really it was just blazing hot like driving a black car through Sahara.

As we navigated through countless bodies, evading thumping onto them for the fear that some of them were alive and infected, we were kinda driven away by the mighty waves, accelerating faster and faster into the wrong way. I started feeling numb on both hands so Berta took over. She paddled as balanced and as best as she could, but the river could be devastating if it wanted to. And trust me, it wanted to.

We almost reached the coast when a grouping form of bodies ramped our canoe, jingling us left. The canoe shocked itself to the wrong away and crashed another hundreds of bodies. We became more and more unstable.

And it finally happened. The canoe rolled over, throwing all of us off to the brown river. We panicked as the hectic environment took over. The waves yearned our bodies onto so many corpses. Blood mixed with water, flesh mixed with mud, we clapped and jogged, but almost nothing kept us afloat.

Only luck saved me then when I pushed myself toward the coast with the bodies. After tens of minutes of struggle, I finally stepped on the good land where Jon was coughing water from his mouth.

Berta came next, squinting and kissing the ground when she could.

But I didn’t see Chase.

Apparently the stream still imprisoned him. He sped up along with the current, so I immediately jumped back to the muddy river, pushing through dead humans to reach the boy I swore to protect.

When I reached him, he looked as blue as he could be. I drove him onto the coast with much pain and hardness, but I did it anyway.

He threw up.

I did too.

At least it was all over.

But I almost lost Chase.

At that moment I truly realized how unable I was to lose another someone. I couldn’t bear to see someone I love die by me. I just can’t.

I just can’t.

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Picture : Louisville Bridge from Pinterest