By the time it was morning a lot had changed since the previous day but no one would realise this until the next day, the world had just gotten a lot harder to survive yet it would only affect a few people in the beginning.
William's group all woke up feeling refreshed and ready to probably kill more zombies and travel more in search of family and friends. William still had to find his parents and he couldn't leave Ban behind so his main goal was to go back home but he also knew that he had time, his parents weren't going to dissappear and Ban could look after himself for a while. Everyone else had people they wanted to try and find or at least know what happened to them, after they made breakfast which wasn't very exciting just whatever they had with them. They had the long awaited discussion...where to go first, who's family and friends to try and find first.
After an hour of talking they finally decided to head west as that's where the most people were around and it would be easy to navigate using the highway. Now they just had to deal with the last problem...the girl. She had woken up but hadn't said anything to anyone yet, she had eaten breakfast but apart from that she was still sitting where she usually was. If they were to take her with them they would need a safe way to carry her as she wouldn't be able to keep up otherwise, yet it needed to be as zombie proof as possible. The best option would be a car or the quad, the quad wasn't as safe but they wouldn't have to steal anything as they already had one. The car they would have to steal as Annabel's parents car unfortunately for some reason wouldn't start, but more people would be able to fit and they could travel faster and if they stole one why not just steal more?
They decided to just go with the cars but still bring the quad as it could travel a lot of places the cars wouldn't be able to. The next problem would be actually getting the cars, as they now had too many people to fit in a single car once they stole one. The best place to find a car would be the underground car park that was under the offices, now that the zombies had started to completely kill people not just turn them bodies were easier to find...so somebody has to have a set of car keys on them right? Well after searching all the bodies in the building they found three sets of car keys, one was for a Dodge Viper (Most likely the bosses personal car) the 2nd was for a Volkswagen Golf R, and the last was a Toyota Yaris. Now that they had the cars all they needed to do was find the cars in the car park....which would be easier said than done. They started off by assigning the teams, not everyone was going to go and they were going to go in from different points to get to the different cars. Annabel, Chloe and The Mystery Man would try get in from the inside entrance to the car park while Felix and Jack would get in via the outside entrance. That would leave William and Bear to look after the kid and make sure that the creepy group didn't come back and ambush them while they were away, it would also give William a chance to rest as he hadn't had a peaceful day since the apocalypse started and his body wasn't in the best shape after everything. While he was asleep Bear curled up with the kid and also went to sleep while the kid just sat there thinking about life and playing with Bears fur cause hey shes still a kid.
Everyone else went about trying to complete their tasks, Annabel and Chloe started talking and getting to know each other better and it turns out they actually had more in common than they expected. They both had younger brothers and were the oldest child and they liked the same genre of music and even their mutual dislike of The Mystery Man, who was just silently following behind them listening in on their conversation. Once they arrived at the entrance the two quietened and prepared to enter and look for the cars, as the walked in through the door they were immediately hit with the smell of blood and rotten bodies, the smell was the strongest that they had smelt so far in this new hellish world. It was so bad that they had to leave as soon as they smelt it in case they threw up, however The Mystery Man was unaffected by the smell and continued into the underground car park with no hesitation.
After recovering from the smell Annabel and Chloe quickly followed him in as the last thing they want is to get split up, especially considering the place they are going into...
As soon as they fully entered the car park they understood why the smell was so terrible here, whoever was unfortunate enough to be in the car park when the apocalypse started definitely hadn't made it out alive. All of the walls and most cars were completely covered in dried blood and parts of human flesh and a swarm of flies hovered about wherever you looked. Bigger chunks of people rested on smashed windowscreens and a lot of the cars had broken windows or entire doors ripped off of them, and from what they could see, the insides of those cars were even worse than the outsides. Strangely enough however there were currently no zombies dead or alive in the car park, and no sign of them leaving either. The only sign of anything leaving the car park was an unusual set of marks snaking up the exit to the outside, the marks looked like something heavy had been dragged along the ground, scoring the concrete. While looking at the marks they heard a voice coming from the other entrance.
"Oh hell no im not going in there, if I take one more step im actually going to throw up like what the fuck even makes a smell like that??" Annabel and Chloe immediately knew the voice to be Jack, which made sense as he did have the weakest stomach out of everyone present. They then heard what sounded like someone slipping, a scream and then the sound of someone throwing up, then laughter.
The two looked at each other before rushing over to the other entrance to figure out what had just happened. When they got there they saw a figure thrashing about in a pool of blood at the bottom of a ramp, with Felix standing at the top of the ramp laughing at the figure. "Oh my God Jack you did not just slip and fall in a puddle of blood I actually can't with this, Holy fuck you're gonna smell absolutely horrid. I'm saying it right now im not getting into a car with you until you shower and change your clothes." In response to this, Jack cupped a handful of blood and threw it at Felix, splattering all over the front of his clothes. Everyone froze and just stared at Felix waiting to see what would happen, as he slowly looked down at the now blood covered clothes. He then looked back up at Jack and spoke in an icy tone.
"Jack I swear to god if this doesn't wash out of these fucking clothes I'm going to find a lamppost and shove it so far up ur ass you'll turn into a light bulb. Are. We. Clear?"
Jack just let out a nervous chuckle at this before quickly standing up and moving over to where Annabel, Chloe and The Mystery Man were and hiding behind them. "Soooooo you guys see any zombies, or like the cars we are supposed to be looking for cause like I dont really wanna stay down here longer than absolutely necessary...oh and also we shouldn't leave William on his own for too long, he's got to be absolutely exhausted by now, man hasn't taken one break as of yet."
As Jack finishes saying this a very loud and dramatic sigh can be heard from The Mystery Man as he turns towards one of the slightly less blood soaked cars. "Already found one of the cars but you guys are way too loud, this is an apocalypse remember. Now go find the other two ok?"
The four of them just stared at him in silence for a few seconds before Jack spoke up. "Huh so he does actually speak interesting, and to be fair guys he does make a good point. And the sooner we find the cars the sooner I can get a shower and get this...gunk off of me so I agree with him actually."
With this the two groups separated again to look for the remaining two cars that they had keys for, the car the man had found was the Golf so they still needed to find the Dodge Viper and the Toyota Yaris. After searching for almost 20 minutes they managed to find the Toyota Yaris however unfortunately it was one of the cars with its doors ripped off and a...less than pleasant interior so it was definitely not an option. That just left the Dodge Viper but no matter how hard they searched they couldn't find it, well that was until Chloe had an idea.
"Hey guys...we're pretty sure this car belonged to the boss of this place right? Well if I owned a car like that I wouldn't exactly be happy with parking with the rest of my employees so like..what if it's not even here?" At this everyone thought for a few seconds before realising what she said was in fact correct and the car likely wasn't even parked there to begin with, which begged the question of where would it actually be parked. They quickly found a map of the parking area that wasn't completely covered in gore, and saw that there was a floor below called "VIP Parking" that had its own entrance and exit, which you had to pay extra to access. With this new information in hand they quickly left the standard car park and found the VIP entrance and went inside.
This parking area was a lot fancier than the standard, with larger spaces that had their own individual lights and most importantly, there was no blood or gore splattered anywhere. It looked like not a single person had been there since the apocalypse started, meaning it was full with expensive cars that most people could only dream of driving. The cheapest car that they could see was still more expensive than anything they had ever driven, even the military cars that The Mystery Man had driven back before he deserted. Thankfully they quickly found the Dodge Viper as it was in a row by itself, it was black with two red stripes, from what they could tell it seemed like an older model but none of them had much car experience so it was just a guess.
Opening the doors and looking inside they saw that the interior was black and red with black leather seats, unfortunately however like all Dodge Vipers it only had two seats meaning with the Dodge, Volkswagen and the quad they would barely have enough room for everyone including the dogs. However they would still now be able to safely travel as a group, as long as they could find fuel for all the vehicles.
With the cars found they decided to head back and meet up with William and the kid again and so Felix and Jack could take a shower. They also needed to decide where to travel to next, as while they knew to go West, they hadn't actually decided where exactly to go yet.