Chelsea Atop The Wall (Original Short)

Chelsea sat at her post, watching the snow fall out on the abandoned freeway. The SUV packed to the brim with trained rescue guys just flew out of the gates that were promptly shut, entrapping her in her peaceful little world. Atop a twenty foot concrete wall Chelsea sat in her make shift crow's nest, watching the world below her, beyond her. Skills were bestowed upon her by her father, the last good hunter in the community meant she got duty of long-gun. Nobody took her seriously because of her age, but her targets and their constant holes where the bulls-eye should be, would command respect and often silence.

Winter had come in heavy this year, and she knew that she should be out hunting, trying to gather enough food to keep the ever-shrinking community fed, but after the helicopter went down a few hours ago, she got put on snipe duty. Her commands were easy: if it isn't alive shoot it. If they aren't from this community shoot them. No exceptions. At only 19 years of age the weight of having to take another human life was now a reality and she didn't like having to contemplate putting a living, breathing, person in her crosshairs.

Her eyes spanned the dead landscape, lingering for a moment on the black barked, leafless trees that surrounded their encampment. With not much imagination at all they looked like skeletal hands reaching up from the blanketed ground, stretching towards heaven to infect the good souls, that had left this wretched earth, with their disease and filth. Her thoughts went to her father, the summer, and having to run away while those things dragged him down and....She couldn't finish the thought. Suddenly the world around her looked like a painting that had been left out in the rain, swirls and waves distorted everything, until she closed her eyes, forcing the tears to run hot trails down her frozen cheeks.

With a gloved hand she wiped away the tingle on the tip of her nose, then checked to see if anyone saw. No one did. With her vision cleared she swept back over the desolate world outside, looking for a target. She found one. She found a few, no doubt rustled up by the opening and closing of the gate and the car that had left. The scope on top of her Remington 30-06 went to her eye, the red cross, vivid against the snow and the things, themselves, found the first head. The homemade silencer made a whisper of the shot and the slug made a mess of the zombie's head. Quickly and silently she caught the shell as it crept out of the chamber while she slid the bolt back with patience and precision. She found out the hard way they could hear a shell drop, even from twenty meters away. In a few minutes the eight dead things that had shambled out of the woods were nothing more than red smears on the porcelain white.

A row of clips sat upon the window ledge she looked out of. She didn't have any kind of disorder that made her put them in such a perfect row, but it did help to pass the time. She sipped at her barely warm cocoa and reloaded the freshly spent clip, placing it at the end and moving up the others, all filling in small indents in the snow. Boredom was nothing new. Boredom in this world, though, could get you killed. So she fought it with menial tasks, cleaning her 9 millimeter pistol and making sure the magazine ejected smoothly. She sniffed again, wiping away more tingles at the tip of her nose. She had to stay up there until the rescue team came back. It could take days.

She didn't have much room to wiggle about, but she made the effort. With a big sigh of relief as her stiff muscles had gotten just a taste of movement she settled back down in her tiny hammock type chair. She glanced at the community to her back, and all was well, it was when she looked back out to the road that surprise threatened to make her choke on her cold cocoa. There was a V formation of zombies heading towards them. At least thirty or forty of them. They didn't seem to changing course, they were coming for this community, like they probably had many others before. She slammed on the button that was rigged to an alarm system some computer guy built for them. Red lights lit the compound and hushed orders were passed along, the still community was now silently bustling for the impending attack.

The horde was a ways out, a good hundred and fifty to two hundred yards, enough to tell the numbers, but not close enough for detail. Chelsea brought her rifle up, took a deep breath and let it out slow as her finger squeezed. There was no need for stealth, now, her bolt flew open and closed like a veteran shooter. Each time her weapon jumped a head exploded into gore and red mist. A thought nagged her as she dropped her first clip and slammed in the next: 'Why are they in a V formation? They've never done that before.' Without thinking she aimed at the point at the front of the heard and what she saw jolted her: a young man was jogging ahead of the hoard, swaying left and right from exhaustion. His head was down, but there was no doubt he was alive.

Suddenly she realized this man's life was in her hands, he needed her, and if she didn't help him he'd end up just like her father. She had to do, now, what she couldn't do months ago. She had to save him. Through the glass and inch from her face she saw a rotted hand reach for his shoulder. She turned it's head into mush. She gritted her teeth and swore to herself that he would make it to these gates. Even if she had to go outside the wall and carry him. Soon other silenced rifles began to thin out the herd, dropping ghoul after ghoul, but no bullet coming near the young man. Less than 10 zombies and the young man made it to the red zone, fifty feet from the front door, and Chelsea had just spent her last bullet. She dropped her rifle against the edge of the window and ran down her tiny set of stairs.

Her snow pants and jacket made it hard to be as quick as she wanted to be, but she tried, anyways. She found herself yelling at the top of her lungs to open the door at the guard, Gary, but he wouldn't budge. She brought her pistol up and aimed it at his head, ordering him to back up. She hefted the steel bar herself and pulled it open. The last of the ghouls was down and the young man with long hair, covered in blood, his jacket torn like his pants, stood with his arms up, clouds of breath huffing out. He was trying to catch his breath, but managed, "I'm....I'm not bit! My name is M!" Chelsea didn't realize she was running towards him, towards the idea that other people were alive out there.

He dropped his pack and his pistol, which was empty, anyway and stared at her. She suddenly got very self conscious and stopped running as she holstered her own pistol, just in time to stop before him. She was a bit winded herself, but she tried her best to smile, "Hi. My name is Chelsea. You said your name is M, right?" He nodded, but his eyes kept darting over her shoulder to the other snipers that had the same orders as her, but she kept herself between them and him as she took his hand and started walking him into the encampment, his bag dragged with her other hand. "Welcome." It was the only thing she could think to say as they crossed the threshold. They were greeted with protests to another being brought in.

Chelsea could only level her blue eyes as best she could at her co-inhabitants as she spoke, "We're not animals. And we're alive. So is he. If we don't take him in then our name for this place is a lie." One by one people backed off and finally M asked her before they went on, "What's the name for this place?" Chelsea turned and could only smile as she looked up into his exhausted and stained face, "We call this place Hadley's Hope." She was confused as he started chuckling, and figured that exhaustion had caught up to him as he fell to his knees and then sat on the floor, laughing the whole time. She had to ask, "What's so funny?" He looked up at her, his eyes brimming with tears, "I found hope. In a dead world. I found hope." His smile looked so out of place, but she could only return it, in kind.