Sea of Flames

As Page and Jacob drive down the road to the burning market, the sunset sky starts becoming drenched with smoke, the smell of burning trash starting to infiltrate their noses. They can barely make out someone on a roof moving out of sight. Jacob takes the chance to pull out a pin from his back pocket and start tinkering with the cuff lock. Getting closer they can see people running out of the market, most of them covered in blood and ashes.They stop a good couple of yards away from the market and Page turns off the scooter. One if the fleeing civilians falls down onto the ground. She pulls out her gun as she hurries over to them.

"Are you okay?" She asks. As she starts to kneel down the person suddenly gets up and tries to grab her, revealing their bloody face and crazed eyes.

Page backs up, distancing herself from them.

"Shoot the damn thing!" Jacob shouts. Page grabs her pistol and shoots it in the head. The zombie stops, blood oozing from the bullet wound. To their surprise the blood quickly scabs up, and the zombie continues to crawl towards her. She shoots it again only for it to now be unfazed by the injuries.

Jacob takes off his cuffs, pulling out a shotgun from the bag and walking up to the zombie. Shooting it at point blank in the face completely decapitates it, the body going limp.

"What the fuck," Jacob mutters to himself as he lowers the shotgun.

"Put the gun down!" Page exclaims as she aims at him.

"I just saved you," Jacob argues, "So how about we head to the city so I can show you the truth?"

"No, I need to see if there's any survivors and make sure that the plane's okay so we have a way off this island,"

"If I help you go into the burning inferno and come out alive will you at least consider letting me show you the emails?"

"...Fine, but try anything funny and I will tase you,"

"I thought you liked me being funny?" He asks in a charming tone as he checks the bag, "You didn't pack air filter masks?" He asks with a raised eyebrow.

"What? Of course I did, in the side pocket," She says walking over to him and opening it up. She pulls out two masks. She pulls out the two masks, holding one out for him. He takes it and they put on the masks. Page also takes two small flashlight attachments from the bag, putting one on her pistol and the other on Jacob's shotgun. As the two head towards the flames more people emerge, many on fire, all of them falling to the floor before they can make it far. Page and Jacob make sure to keep their guns drawn as they pass by the bodies.

Within a few steps, the air goes from a humid slightly warm temperature, to walking through a dry dessert in the middle of the summer. The masks are able to defend them from the onslaught of smoke and cinders but the smell still gets through, the nasty mixture of burning wood, stone, and other things burning. They can barely see more than a couple steps in front of them outside the small cones of light made from their flashlights. The sounds of wood crackling from the heat, various animals crying out, and people screaming fill their ears, making it impossible to hear anything else.

As they get a couple feet into the market they can start to see remains of stands, the wood still burning bright red. Corpses already litter the ground, some covered in ashes already. Several injured people run around and even over each other, making it hard to tell whose infected or not. It's hard to imagine that this is the same place Page was dropped off at only moments before. They suddenly see someone chasing after a woman. The chaser's clothes are all singed, their body covered in blood and their jaws opening and closing like that of a wild animal. It takes a couple headshots from Page to bring it down.

"Did it always take that many shots to put one down?!" Page asks as she checks her clip which is already halfway empty.

"No!" Jacob replies. Even yelling, it's hard to hear each other over all the other voices of agony. They continue to make their trek through the sea of oncoming people. Getting through a wave they suddenly see another one coming, this one entirely made up of infected. Though they don't move as fast as a normal person, they move at a brisk pace. There's no way they'd be able to push through that.

"Into the building!" Jacob points to a nearby one story where the roof connects to other buildings, "We can cut across!" The two quickly make their way into the building. Inside a zombie is eating someone whose still alive, their entrails sticking out of their midsection. Jacob runs up to it, blasting it in the face. He gestures for her to follow as he makes his way up some stairs. Three more zombies appear from another room as they head up the stairs.

Jacob stops at the midway point, letting Page run past him as he slows the zombies down. He shoots the first one in the head, but the distance is somehow enough to cause his shot to only temporarily stun the zombie rather than put it down. He aims to shoot again, but decides it's a waste to shoot when not at point blank and continues up the stairs after Page. Bursting through the door Page stands on the roof looking down at all the zombies already flooding the streets down below, some of them are on fire, some seemingly unaffected while others die from the flames.

In all my years working at Terrasave, I've never actually been there when the infection started. I never thought it was, this gruesome.

Jacob meets her on the roof, closing the door and barricading the door with some boxes. He sees Page staring down at the streets below, than notices a glint on one of the roofs on the other side of the street. It doesn't take him long to realize what it is.

"Get down!" Jacob exclaims before he tackles Page to the ground, a bullet barely missing them.

Page tries to get up, but Jacob keeps himself on top of her.

"Stay down! Someone's shooting at us," Jacob states, "Crawl to the other building, use the parapet as a shield, I'll cover you," Jacob pushes himself up a bit and gets off her, allowing her to move. He checks the bag for anything ranged weapon, but there's nothing but ammo and clothes. He peeks above the parapet to look for the person shooting at them. A glint in the smoke.

As Page crawls along the parapet she hears Jacob firing the shotgun. The sound of a rifle firing feels the air, dust falling onto Page's head. Another shotgun blast, than a rifle. More dust falls onto her as the parapet takes the shot.

Are they aiming for me?!

Page can barely see that far in front of her as she crawls along the ground, Jacob soon starts to follow, occasionally getting up to fire back at the unknown assailant. Page is filled with some relief as she starts to see walls not too far in front of her. Her relief is short lived as she starts to see feet. She gets onto her back and pulls up her gun, the flashlight revealing two zombies coming their way. A couple steps and they'll be able to grab her. She starts to back up as she unloads her clip on them. It takes the rest of her clip just to put the first one down. She reaches for another magazine but remembers that all her extra ammo is in the bag that Jacob is currently carrying.

She turns around, crawling frantically at this point. It doesn't take long for her to meet up with Jacob.

"Ammo!" She exclaims. Every second gets harder to hear as the moans of the undead start to overtake the screams of the living. Jacob quickly reaches into the bag and hands her a magazine. She clicks it into her gun before aiming. The zombie is a much safer distance now, but she doesn't hesitate to start shooting. Four bullets and it goes down. Another rifle shot hits the parapet.

The two quickly continue to make their way to the other building. After a minute of crawing through smoke they reach the other building. Jacob quickly gets up and opens the door, providing cover fire as Page gets up and runs into the building. Page reaches the stairs to see that the first floor is entirely on fire, zombies and people burning alive. They have no choice but to go up. Above them another zombie roams the upstairs hall. It's quickly put down by Jacob, two more clips left in the barrel and about eight cases left in the bag.

The two go to the door and stop, both glancing at each other. It's best to assume that the snipe will be waiting for them. Jacob goes first, opening the door and looking for any cover. He's met with a grate stairway leading down this one having a ladder leading from the second floor to the ground. The smoke seems to have gotten denser, hopefully it'll block the sniper's view.

Tey hurry down the stairs, reaching the ladder and seeing all the zombie in the street. Jacob heads down first, almost jumping the whole way down as he readies his shotgun while Page climbs down. Jacob looks around them, at the street and the alley.

"I know where we are," He states, "We're not far from the landing strip, this way!" He heads down the alleyway, Page quickly following. Reaching the end they make a left, climb onto a dumpster, and jump over a fence. To their luck it's empty. They head down it and make another left leading back to the main street. The market sure feels a lot bigger now that it's on fire and full of zombies.

There's plenty of zombies in sight, but it's noticeably less denser. They must all be heading to the entrance where most of the human screaming is coming from.

Hopefully those people we first encountered are alright. They must have made it out of the town, they weren't more than a few feet from getting out of the smoke.

They both notice another glint up above.

"Of course! Come on, the strip's only a few seconds of running from here!" Jacob states as the two sprint towards the horde of zombies. Running into it, the two are bombarded by grabbing hands and loud unnatural sounding groans as the zombies try to catch their oncoming prey. Lucky the horde quickly starts to dissipate and they're able to reach the airstrip, hopping over the short fence that surrounds. The smoke is must less dense, the island's edge and the plane in sight. It's completely unharmed, the flames not reaching this part.

"The plane's safe," Jacob states, "But I'm sure you wanna check that it can run, right?"

"Yes," Page states, "And I'd like to take a quick break from the hoards of zombies and fire." The two take the chance to catch their breath, both of them keeping an eye on the rooftops as they approach the plane. They draw their guns when they start to hear screaming from the plane. A person emerges from the plane, only for something to impale them and drag them back in.

"There goes our break, and ride out of here," Jacob says as the plane starts to shake.