Free When They Come by Jason Sanchez Page B

prayer. She drew her gun and held it out with both hands.
     
    “Lord, let my aim hold true. Protect us in our hour of need.”
     
    She carefully lined her shot, growing more and more anxious by the second at how close the truck was getting. Margie saw the man in the passenger seat pointing his rifle at the biggest target.
     
    He was aiming at Paulie and Kara.
     
    With the driver in her sights, she fired, but she heard two shots.
     
    The truck swerved around before flipping over several times, rolling a few dozen feet.
     
    Paulie fell to the ground, screaming in agony.
     
    The rifleman in the passenger seat managed to hit his mark.
     
    Paulie was shot in the leg. Kara was able to catch him before he hit the ground. She carried most of his weight as they continued to limp past Margie, who was still stunned at what she had done.
     
    Kara was right though. Many of the ghouls that were freshly killed and, ironically enough, some of the victims of the men in the truck were beginning to come to and descend on the wreckage.
     
    Margie kept her gun on the wreckage. “Come on! We need to move!”, she yelled to Kara and Paulie. He began to get alarmed at the amount of blood he was losing; he was having a hard enough time holding in the pain.
     
    Margie stood behind as Kara, with Paulie putting much of his weight on her, hobbled by as fast as they could. With her arms getting tired from aiming at the doors of the wrecked vehicle, she began to see a shambling hoard of the undead descend on the doors. Margie heard the screams of those trapped inside as they were torn apart. She ran away, feeling like the zombies were doing a good enough job disposing of the twisted living.
     
    Margie succeeded in hearing the gunshots ripping through the flesh of the zombies, but failed to see one that made it out of the vehicle and ran off ,leaving his friends behind.
     
    “Get inside, GET INSIDE!” Kara yelled to Paulie. The mall’s doors were still open. Throwing all caution to the wind, Paulie ran through the doors, not even looking at his surroundings. Taking his actions as a sort of sign of safety, the girls followed in with him.
     
    Suddenly, the group heard the noise of glass being shattered, it sounded like a store window and something heavy falling to the ground. They heard glass being cleared and two male voices talking in the distance.
     
    “Let’s stay away from them. Who knows if they are friends of those guys outside”, Paulie whispered while grabbing at his leg.
     
    “I don’t know. The voices didn’t sound hostile”, Margie replied.
     
    “Guys, we need to find something for Paulie’s leg. It just doesn’t look good”, Kara said. “We should go to Bulls-Eye. They would definitely have something for him there.”
     
    “Alright, let’s find a directory and head over to Bulls-Eye. Maybe we’ll find something useful and maybe some change of clothes, too.”
     
    Kara ran over to a flickering directory.
     
    “Look, there are different stores here. There’s a gun shop around here, too! Let’s go!”, Kara panted while she spoke.
     
    Paulie was getting pale. His injury was worse than the group had thought.
     
    “Is there anywhere we can get some sort of first aid for Paulie? He looks real bad”, Margie said.
     
    “Guys, don’t worry. It’s nothing. Just go find something to arm yourselves with. This place..”
     
    He paused to breathe.
     
    “This place, just gives me the creeps.”
     
    Paulie coughed up blood.
     
    “Paulie…”, Margie said.
     
    “There’s no time. We need to find something that’ll help us”, Kara desperately said.
     
    The group heard heavy breathing and dragging feet behind them. Margie turned her gun at where the noise came from, but nothing.
     
    The group, with Kara carrying Paulie, proceeded into the mall.
     
    While they scampered into the mall, looking into the shops, all destroyed and emptied out, Margie began to imagine the scene where crowds of people were