AncilChapter 22: Hunting For Food
The night was quiet as usual with the occasional groan. The town of Arima was swarming with jumbies and the smell of rotting flesh. The jumbies moved in and out of classrooms and between abandoned cars looking for food to survive. What they did was not much different from what Sara, Saraya, Clive, Justin and I were doing. We were blindly walking amongst the jumbies in between cars in order to find food. The greasy and bloody skins of the jumbies rubbed against us and to put it lightly — it felt disgusting. I lasted a while before getting completely grossed out and vomiting all over the floor. It seemed like I triggered a vomiting chain because I heard some of the others vomiting as well.
We fished our way throughout the school and as we did so Sara directed me to the location of the car. Ever so often I would slide my blindfold down my face to see my way until we got to a desolate part of the school which seemed safe from jumbies but was infested with cars. It was the school’s main parking lot and there were so many cars that most of the jumbies, who found no use for cars just idled past.
I told the others to take off their blindfolds and I signaled them to quietly follow me under a nearby vehicle. Based on Sara’s directions I was looking for a specific car that was separated from the others by a huge fence on the other end of the parking lot. None of the cars or hover vehicles in the parking lot had full tanks or keys but we used them as cover as we crawled to the fence.
From under the cars I spotted the fence and the right automobile behind it. It was an old dirty white SUV, parked neatly in a reserved spot right outside a building with a huge rusty green iron door. Sara said she found the car during one of her morning walks when most of the jumbies were asleep. The jail cell she was in apparently wasn’t designed to keep her and her siblings in, but to keep the monsters out. In the daytime she roamed freely around the campus under the watchful eye of Barney the Cow Man. So she had quite an idea of where things were. We made our way to the fence and Sara led us to a certain part of it which had a dug-up hole below with enough space for a full-sized bear to crawl through.
“There it is,” Sara said, pointing to the car which was just there for the taking.
I smiled at the sight but something caught my attention: a word. QUARANTINE, written boldly on a big yellow sign.
“Quarantine?” I inquired.
“Big man like you and you don’t know what quarantine means,” Sara quipped.
I looked at her with my eyes frowned and said, “That’s the kind of attitude that makes me want to just leave you at the side of the street.”
Sara didn’t respond, she just urged me forward under the fence. I eyed her down, sighed then made my way under the fence. The others followed after.
I opened the car and luckily the keys were already in the ignition. I quickly turned it and the car revved on with a resounding VROOOOM! All the meters on the dashboard sprung to life in a bright flash of light. The light from the car’s headlamps was pointed directly at the rusty green iron gate
I tapped the top of the car and shouted, “Alright, everybody in!”
Clive, Justin, and Saraya, who’s faces were low,, pale, and tired-looking, got in the car very lazily and with not much energy. Sara opened the front door and was about to get in but something caught her attention while she was looking at the rusty green iron gate. I followed her eyes and saw what she was looking at. On the gate, there were some letters that were barely recognizable but I eventually saw them after walking in a little closer: “A.C.T II QUARANTINE ZONE”. There was also a weird smell coming out of it; something like wet fur.
Sara came up behind me and said, “If I were you I wouldn’t go too close to that gate.”
“Why? What’s inside there?”
Sara paused for a while then answered, “I don’t know.”
“You’re lying.”
“I don’t have any reason to lie to you Jed. I have nothing to hide. You should just trust me. Whatever is in there. It isn’t small.”
I turned to her and in the light of the car I was able to see her clearly for the first time. She looked awful; nothing like the girl I saw just a few minutes ago in the lab. Her face was pale, almost powdery, her lips were cracked, her breathing was heavier and dry and the bags below her eyes were dark purple. She was beginning to look like a jumbie and I knew that it was only a matter of time before she actually became one. I knew that I would have to either kill her and her siblings or abandon them. But looking her in her eyes I didn’t see a jumbie, I saw a human; scared and helpless. Being in the same car with them was risky but I just felt as though it was my human duty to help them find food. They were now under my charge and I had to take care of them. It’s what my dad’s voice in my head would say if he even bothered to speak anymore. I shook my head, regretting what I was about to do then said, “We should……”
Suddenly a loud bang was heard and the rusty green iron gate began to shake from a force that seemed to have come from the inside. Dust and debris that had built up over time on the gate spewed out, falling to the ground in front of us. A pulsating and paralyzing sort of fear rippled through my body causing me to lose my balance and almost fall. Sara stepped back, her eyes wide and fixed on the gate. After about three seconds the bang was heard again and it didn’t sound like it came from a small person but something or someone….HUGE!
