The sun had begun to rise over the city, casting a soft golden hue over the landscape in front of us. I rested my forehead against the glass as I watched the horizon for the fifth hour in a row. The water in the harbour was eerily still, not a wave or ripple in sight.

It felt as though all of Sydney was holding its breath with us, waiting hopefully to see a blinking light, the tiniest silhouette of a ship on the skyline – anything to signal that our rescuers were on their way.

None of us had slept and we had hardly spoken, too despondent from what had happened to Eleanor. After it happened, Lea and I dragged her lifeless body into the hall of the fourth floor while Richard comforted Ash. She had been hit the hardest by the loss, having spent most of the night crying. Richard tried not to show it, but I could tell he was broken up about it, too. Lea and I were disheartened by what happened, but we were coping. Perhaps because we had only known Eleanor a few hours, or maybe we had each seen so many lives taken that we were becoming desensitized to it. Death seemed such a perplexing phenomenon.

Even with all the deaths I’d witnessed, the fact that Eleanor had been there one minute and gone the next was hard to grasp. No matter how abrasive she had been, no matter how aggressive or troubled, she didn’t deserve to die.


A flash of white light caught my eye, bringing my attention to something on the water in the distance. The morning sun was shining on it, reflecting off of it in a way that made it look like a mirage, but I knew it was no illusion.

“It’s here,” I whispered, unable to find my voice. “It’s here!” I repeated louder so everyone could hear me.
Lea and Richard jumped off the couches and stood next to me at the window, spotting it instantly, while Ash ran from the kitchen.
We stared silently as the ship sailed further and further into the harbour, in awe at the magnificent sight of it.
“There’s more than one!” Lea said as two more appeared behind it. I thought I could see at least five more ships along the horizon, but they were too far away to make out clearly.

“Time to go,” I said with a relieved smile. But I knew the real relief would come the moment I watched Australia fade into the distance as we sailed away. I used that image to push me forward, for we still had one more challenge to get through before we were safe.

We grabbed our weapons and ran downstairs. Having studied the streets from the window, we knew we had to turn right out of the restaurant, go to end of the street, turn left and run as fast as we could to the wharf. I pushed the stairwell door open and entered the restaurant, heading straight to the window to make sure the street was clear.

I peered through the crack in the boards just as Eleanor had done the day before, only to see that the street was still overrun with zombies. “Shit!”
The zombies that had converged on us in the street had dispersed, but not enough for us to make it out safely.
“What is it?” Lea asked before peering through the crack herself, answering her own question. “How the hell are we gonna get outta here?”

I looked around the restaurant, trying to find another way out. I turned to Richard. “Is there a back door here?”
“Yes,” he said before running into the kitchen. We followed him, but by the time we had caught up he was slamming the back door shut and turning to us with a pale face. “They’re out there, too. In the alleyway. They’re everywhere.”
“What do we do?” Ash asked, hopelessness all over her face.

A sudden flash of insight hit me. “Is the roof accessible?”
Richard scratched his head. “I don’t know, we’ve never been up there. Why?”
“What if we throw something off it …” I started, making up my plan as I went along. “Something that would lead the zombies away from the front door and distract them long enough for us to get out.”
“It’s worth a try,” Lea said.

Five minutes later, we were pushing the door to the roof open and running to the edge and leaning over the concrete barrier.
I stared down at the zombies directly beneath us. “This could work.”
“We just need to find something to throw down there to distract them,” Lea thought aloud. “Is there any meat left in the restaurant kitchen? That would distract them for sure.”
“We ate it all within the first week,” Ash said.
We watched the stragglers wander aimlessly around the street, some just standing still, staring at nothing.

“I have an idea,” Lea said. “But you might not like it.”
“I’m open to anything if it gets us out of here,” Richard said.
“We all know zombies crave meat, human flesh …” she paused, watching Ash for a reaction. Her hesitance to continue clued me in on her plan, and I hoped the others would be on board with it. “We could use Eleanor’s body as bait.”
Ash cringed at the idea, but nodded reluctantly. “If we have to.”
“It might be our only choice,” said Richard.

The four of us solemnly walked down to the fourth floor to retrieve Eleanor. A heavy woman, it would take all of us to carry her back up to the rooftop. Ash and I each lifted an arm while Lea and Richard carried her by the legs.

“Ready?” Richard asked. “Okay, one … two … three … Lift.”
A groan escaped my lips as I lifted, and I tried not to notice how Eleanor’s head swung abnormally, disjointed from her body. We each struggled to hold her weight and navigate the steps and turns simultaneously, making the climb agonizingly slow. I suspected we each felt a lot of guilt over what we were about to do, so I avoided eye contact, not wanting to make the experience any more uncomfortable than it already was.

By the time we pushed the rooftop door open for the second time, we were dripping with sweat. The sun had well and truly risen, and looking out over the water I could see the boats had disappeared behind the buildings in front us, meaning they were close to docking. We were running out of time.
We pushed forward, carrying Eleanor the last few steps to the barrier and exerting our last ounces of strength to lift her onto the edge. We positioned her right on the corner of the building, ensuring she would land as far away from the front door as possible.

“Ready?” I asked, placing my hands against her cold body, prepared to push.
“Ready,” they said in unison.
I took in a deep breath. “Forgive us, Eleanor.” Together, we pushed her off the edge and watched her fall through the air before hitting the ground with a disturbing crack. At least a dozen nearby zombies ran to her immediately, their hungry screeches alerting the rest, who quickly followed.

“Let’s go,” I said as I turned around, only to realize we were not alone on that roof. I let out a gasp, causing Lea to turn around to see what I was staring at. When she saw them, she froze just as I had, staring hopelessly at the zombies coming our way.

They were climbing over an arched concrete slab that separated our building from the one behind it, which I could see had a rooftop bar – and business must have been good the day of the outbreak, judging by how many zombies were climbing onto our roof to get us. They blocked the door, trapping us between them and a sixty-foot drop. Not wasting a single second, I looked at our surroundings, searching for another way out.

Ours was just one in a long row of attached buildings, all roughly the same height, giving us a level surface to run.
“We’ll have to run across the rooftops,” I whispered. “Go!”

The four of us launched into a sprint, leaping over the first brick barrier that separated our building from its neighbor.

Jumping over exposed pipes, ducking under electrical wires, and climbing through scaffolding, we were racing across the buildings like they were an urban obstacle course.

As I reached the top of the first of four gabled townhouse roofs, I slipped and slid down into the crevice, scraping the skin of my elbows on the tin. Not letting it slow me down, I gritted my teeth and kept going.

The sound of our panicked footsteps pounding on the metal drowned out the moans and shrieks of our hunters, but I knew they were still chasing us. I could feel their ravenous eyes on me.

The last townhouse was separated from the next building by a tall brick wall with a significant drop on the other side. Lifting ourselves up, we swung our legs over before awkwardly lowering ourselves down as far as we could to make the fall as short as possible.

One by one, we let go, dropping onto the next roof, landing on our backsides painfully. Only Ash was still holding on, staring down at the drop fearfully.

“C’mon, Ash!” Lea said.
“You can do it,” I added. “Just let go!”

She was hanging on tight, building up the courage to let go, when a zombie grabbed hold of her arms from the other side of the wall.

Ash’s terrified screams bounced off the buildings all around us, but her fear of the zombie was greater than her fear of falling, so she let go of the wall and struggled free, dropping on her side in front of us.

She let out another scream as she cradled her arm, and I knew she had broken it. We helped her to her feet and started to run again, aware that the wall would only hold the zombies at bay momentarily.

Richard pointed ahead of us. “There’s a fire escape!”

I looked to where he was pointing to, seeing old fire escape stairs zig-zagging down the side of the next building.

But as we got closer, it became obvious that we had one more obstacle to overcome before we could reach it: a laneway ran between the two structures, meaning we had a four-foot gap separating us from our only way down.

“No!” Ash wailed as we approached the edge, holding her shattered arm close to her chest.

I could hear the zombies gaining on us as we skidded to a stop, kicking dustings of loose cement down into the lane beneath us.

Richard held his hands on his head in panic. “We’re trapped.”

______________________

Next chapter will be uploaded on MONDAY.

Thank you so much for reading! I LOVE YOU! You guys are so damn cool :D

P.S: Looking for another story to read over the weekend? My awesome husband has just started uploading his own story on Wattpad, called Eternity's War. Check it out: @MJWildeBooks or click the external link below :)

<3