Chapter 8 The Landing

"So how long till you get here again?" Brenda was going stir crazy being in her brother's small apartment all day.

A planed day in can be comfortable but siting in an apartment hearing fighting and roaring zombies outside the apartment and banging on the wall from the apartment next to yours brought back the fear Brenda felt when her mom was walking towards her to eat her. It made her antsy and uncomfortable.

"Two and a half hours now." Kristy replied and Brenda groaned.

"I will cook you a decent meal" Brenda offered to Kristy so she could find something to do.

"Thank you." Kristy was excited for food; she still had memories of how hard it was to eat in the apocalypse.

Richard and Matty sat on the couch and listened to the girls chat about food and which movies Brenda had saved on the computer for the next two and a half hours. To say they were irritated would be an understatement. They can't turn on any entertainment without attracting zombies. The house had been so quiet all day except for the banging and groaning of the zombie that lives next door that noise never seemed to stop all day.

"Welcome to Portland." Matty and Richard hopped off the couch as Kristy spoke up. She will be here in like five minutes since she was not stopping the jet just putting it in her space and falling from the sky.

As Kristy lowered the plane and followed the road into the city, she saw burning buildings it looked like the caught fire from a deferent building there were little light flames that were moving around. Kristy knew these flames were zombies and the fire would only spread more as the zombies follow the people escaping from their burning homes.

Many lights from windows were still shining this because it was seven forty-five at night when they passed out some cooking caught fire others were at the table eating and without someone turning off those lights, they would be on till the power has problems.

"Following the freeway, Passing Walmart, I see your apartment. I do not see Christmas lights! Am I at the wrong apartment?"

Kristy circled the apartment taking a second look and watching from the Walmart to the gray large complex wondering if she remembered wrong. It had been five years for her.

"No, we forgot the lights, we can hear your jet. I'll flash the lights in the living room and let me know when you see it." Matty felt like he dropped the ball about the lights.

"I see flashing lights in a window moving up in a circular pattern and… I am now falling while pulling my parachute. Yes success, floating to roof good be there soon." Kristy narrated for them so they knew what stage she was at.

Richard was nervous looking out the window but it was dark and he couldn't see anything, not to mention he couldn't see through the ceiling. There are six floors to this apartment complex and they are on the fifth. If things went as planned, she is aiming for the roof so of course looking out the window won't help but was done out of nervousness.

"Damn it is cold; I need a jacket." Kristy complained.

"Why don't you have a jacket?" Matty asked to keep his nerves down.

"I never went home when I went back in time. I have been to the grocery store and the animal feed store. I'm missing many things." Kristy just kept talking which strangely calmed them down.

Richard had the backpack with the boxes of ammo and the loaded Glock. Brenda was carrying a pot full of food for Kristy that she didn't want to get cold. And Matty grabbed the crowbar. The plan was a mad dash to Kristy. Once she broke the roof door.

"Do you know how many cars I had to search to find a blanket for baby girl? I didn't have a blanket. The only things I got from the store was everything that hadn't been moved to the shelves yet and a shit ton of ice cream and toilet paper napkins. We need more than what I got though this will last little more than half a year for the bathroom and soap supplies but maybe three months for the rest. Especially soda, we need much more." Kristy said.

"I think I know now why you got a space power now." Brenda was laughing. Kristy was a packrat.

"It's not like we can go buy them whenever we want. It has been over 24 hours. If we don't get the food, it will go bad especially the meat and cheese. Do you know how to make cheese because I don't. We do have cows though." Kristy kept blabbing.

"Maybe we should look up warehouses where these things would be kept so we don't take from the other survivors because I will be honest with you, I'm a greedy person." Kristy admitted to wanting to take all the things.

"Do we really need to go that far?" Brenda asked

"Have you thought about what it would be like to live without these things?" Kristy asked.

The wind was wiping agenst her skin she now knows why they didn't put a garden or something on the roof. The air is cold and the high the building is further up this wind up here is barely blocked by other things. Especially in this area there are only three apartment buildings built up this high.

"I lived for five years in a base where my room was the size of a closet. I literally slept with a blanket and a pillow and no mattress." Kristy's mind went back to her time at the base where she was shivering in a room that felt more like a coffin. The stiffness in her neck and back, the base didn't care she would not catch a cold as she had awakened a power. It was just to shovel more people into the base to have workers.

"While it was considered a single room it was so small and the sound proofing almost not existent that you can still hear the snoring of others at night." Kristy wondered if she should have given up her single room for one with roommates. She doesn't have to worry about getting robbed but maybe could have been warmer if she shared with a fire user. Then again, she may have been blamed for theft so single small room it was.

Kristy continued to share her experience at a base where she was in an important office job and this was her treatment they would tell her she should be content to not have roommates.

"I wore the same two sets of clothes back-to-back. Laundry was done once a month and a week between showers you were given a bowl of water to wash yourself with for the rest of the week the same water."

"Most water was provided by water power users and using it to wash instead of drink was frowned upon. Because it is exhausting to keep pumping out your powers and meditating." Kristy was sharing how gross and smelly the place was. Well, they hunt zombies and smell like sweat and rotten flesh.

"Power users are less likely to have problems with week viruses like the cold. They rarely fell sick so cleanliness was not as important to them as drinking water to maintain life." Kristy shared how the base got so bad. "There were plenty of water users to wash more often in the beginning but as the zombies got stronger the water users were not as strong as the others in defense and the ones in mercenary teams often had a harder time staying alive without specific battle buddies to watch each other back."

"With so many people dyeing every day it took a while to notice this problem. By the time they noticed the water users could not keep up the needs of the base it was too late. Not many water users chose to stay put in the base who would with the chance to have more than one power."

"Most food can't be grown. Animals are hard to find alive and when you do, they are as smart as us. So, they will attack to save their lives. I was on the brink of starving all the time, and since food does not grow without mutating, we lived off a disgusting purple oat that reminded me of maggots. And occasional nuts that were as big as a football. Oranges are still safe to eat but they are seasonal so they were a treat to find."

"The apocalypse is hell to live through. I came back to heaven with a huge space that can freeze time for my food. I just don't want to run out again." Kristy whined.

"Landed safely" Kristy said it brought everyone back from hearing how shitty the apocalypse is going to get. "Ok, I took off the parachute one second. I need my flashlight to find the door."

Kristy hoped back into the space and repacked the parachute. She needed to maintain the habit of packing these it would suck to not have one when she needed it or have it tangled in other things. Since the space won't break things but it's not very careful with where things are placed.

Kristy thought of setting more auto functions in the space to fix this but wondered if it will pull powers to complete what can be done easily on her own.

Any way place this thought aside for later. I can see my family now!

She quickly scouted the building for the door.

"Door located" Boom!

"I thought that was supposed to be quieter than a gun?" Brenda asked following her dad out the door of the apartment Matty bringing up the rear made sure to close his apartment door to keep the zombies from trying to go in there.

Bang, Bang, Bang the Glock was so loud when Richard was firing that Brenda could not hear Kristy's reply. She just had to focus on being in the middle and following her dad quickly while he cleared from the front and Matty watched the rear. Because they were moving faster than the zombies Matty didn't need to fight unless one jumped out at them from an apartment that they were passing on the way to the stairs.

They could hear two sets of gunshots now the other one should be Kristy. And she was using an automatic! 'Spray and pray.' shot into Matty's mind when he heard it and he hoped not because they are coming from opposite directions!

They turned the corner and he could see his cousin now holding a M4. She was double taping everything or should I say double firing. She sometimes missed the head but she was aiming pretty good.

Richard shot down the last zombie before getting closer to Kristy. 'He was probably nervous too.' thought Matty.

"Yay!" Kristy smiled and jumped towards them. She patted each of them on the shoulder and they popped into the space.