Outbreak Chapter 20

The others in the car must have been thinking the same thing because nobody argued when Aidan just kept driving whenever they saw a survivor. Brendon knew he was going to feel guilty about it later but right now their priority was to just keep each other alive. Tom had lucked out because they hadn't put themselves in any additional danger to rescue him, he had been in the right place at the right time.
Brendon heard gunshots to their 3 o'clock and without thinking raised his rifle in that direction and began scanning. After a moment he started to feel somewhat foolish. When he had been overseas that had been a proper reaction to the sudden sound of gunfire but as far as he knew infected people wouldn't be doing any shooting so any gunfire likely wouldn't be a danger to them.
He never was able to spot the source of the gunfire so he continued scanning the all around them as they drove. Even though the news had said the south part of the city that they were in was the calmest it was still a mess. Brendon spotted dozens of crashed cars both on and off the road. After a few blocks he started to realize that a good number of them still had people inside. Aidan had to slow down to weave between a pair of crashed vehicles giving Brendon a chance to take a good look inside. A young girl, probably high school aged, was sitting in the drivers seat of a teal car. She was still buckled in and looked normal until she spotted them and a hungry look crossed her face as she reached towards them only to have her fingers hit the window. Once her arms were raised Brendon was able to spot an ugly bit mark on her left arm. A number of the crashed vehicles must have contained people that had been bitten and managed to get away from their assailants before the disease had killed then turned them. Brendon had known that the infected weren't very intelligent but it looked like these people couldn't even figure out how to unbuckle their seatbelts and open up their car doors. There where even some who had broken out windows but still couldn't escape their vehicles simply because of their seatbelts.
To his surprise they managed to make it to Wiggins' apartment complex without any problems other than having to jump the median and curb a few times to bypass accidents. There still seemed to be more living people than infected on this side of town so most of the infected they saw were already preoccupied with other survivors. Once they were within a few hundred yards of the apartments Brendon pointed his AK-47 up into the air and cranked off four shots in rapid succession hoping Wiggins and Griffin would recognize the rapid fire as belonging to his weapon. He leaned down into the vehicle and quickly shouted out some last minute instructions. "Tom, there is going to be a rope ladder hanging down when we get there, I want you to get two of the big duffel bags on your back, lay the third one at the bottom of the ladder and climb up it while we cover you, everyone else grab one of the packs and we'll head up one by one."
As they pulled up to the apartment building Brendon saw that the parking lot was riddled with bodies, all of which appearing to have bullet holes in their heads. Brendon looked up and saw Wiggins, Griffin, and Griffin's roommate James were all on the balcony firing on infected down below. They had done a good job of keeping the infected away from the area directly below the balcony but there looked to be dozens of other infected coming from all directions, attracted by the noise of the sporadic gunfire. As they pulled up Brendon saw Wiggins toss the rope ladder over the edge of the balcony then yell something back into the open balcony door.