The rush of dropping out of the sky never got boring. Roland fought the urge to close his eyes and enjoy the rush of air, a bad idea for multiple reasons. The biggest reason being that he was watching the kid as he flipped and spun in the air. After several seconds of flailing, the kid recovered and managed to stop flipping. He assumed the proper position and closed his eyes as he started counting. Roland could see his mouth moving, and he only got to 3 before he just reached up and pulled the cord.

As the pilot chute started to pull the main chute out, Roland leaned forward to maneuver in front of the kid. When the kid looked at him, Roland smiled and drifted back away from the kid, abandoning the proper form as he began to perform an overly dramatic air guitar in an attempt to lighten the mood. The kid looked at Roland like he was insane until the main chute opened with a snap and he slowed quickly. Roland continued to drop, giving the kid a devil horn hand sign as he fell away and rolled backward.

As Roland came out of the roll the collapsible glider that was his backpack opened and locked into position. While attached to his body by a standard harness the wings of the glider extended far out to either side beyond arm span, with a matching tail that extended past his feet. The controls for the glider were a pair of handlebars on the shoulder straps that controlled the wings and a set of pedals at the feet that controlled the tail. Roland pulled up out of the nosedive in a simple maneuver that looked effortless, but in reality, a normal human wouldn’t have the strength to manipulate the controls in this way.

As Roland circled beneath the kid a gust of wind rushed past and sent the kid tipping forwards. The kid grabbed for the handles like he was told, taking several seconds to find them before grabbing hold and pulling on them several times. He almost flipped himself backward before he figured it out and gained control. He trailed after Roland in the glider, which left a bright red cloud behind it as the flare burned. There was no chance of catching Roland, his glider was made for a quick and agile descent, while the paraglider wasn’t. As he watched it go, he saw where they were heading.

A city, an abandoned crumbling city that could only be described as the perfect depiction of a dead civilization left to decay. The grey sky that seemed to be growing darker as the morning progressed only seemed to enhance the effect, making the scene that much grander. In the same way that a sad image can also be beautiful, this view of the city had another essence to it, one that was so captivating that the kid spent several minutes just staring as he mindlessly drifted closer. Were it not for another gust of wind, he might have kept watching until he was too close to avoid crashing.

With his mind set back to the task, the kid steered the paraglider to follow Roland with little difficulty. Aside from the fall, the entire experience had been somewhat pleasant, until Roland disappeared behind the buildings on the far right side of the city. The kid had a moment of panic as he tried to spot the man who was supposed to be guiding him, or at the very least watching his back, before he caught a glimpse of Roland as he popped in and out of view. For a reason that he had not bothered to share, or just didn’t have, he circled around the entire city and was now heading toward an area on the left from their approach. The kid altered his course, trying to figure out how to turn instead of just drift to the side, but one way or another he was heading in the right direction.

He was only in the air for a few minutes, but the fear of being pushed out of the plane and then the freefall had made it seem so much longer. While he was still several dozen meters in the air he was coming in for a landing, passing over some suburbs, a grocery market, and finally what looked like a school with a church between the main building and a football field where Roland landed. Thanks to the rush of the wind, the kid hadn't heard the intense and heavy music that Roland was playing off of a speaker. It took him by surprise that Roland would be playing classical music like this, he seemed more like an alternative rock kind of guy.

Just as the kid registered that the music must be very very loud to be heard more than a mile away, the paraglider swept in and snagged on the cross on the church steeple. One second he was just soaring and the next there was a sharp tug before he fell, swinging back into the steeple and crashing into the wall. As soon as he made impact, the cross snapped off the roof of the steeple and fell, the sudden slack making the kid fall too. The kid crashed on the roof, hissing in pain, then pissing himself when he saw the cross falling towards him. He froze in terror as the cross punched through the roof above his head. Several seconds passed as he laid there, before finally rolling over and looking down into the church.

"Holy shit." The kid said with a slight chuckle. He sat up on his knees and breathed a sigh of relief until the chute caught a strong gust of wind. It dragged him off the roof, despite his struggles to grab hold of anything to stop himself. The shingles came loose easily, but the gutter managed not to give in as easily, and even then it was only for a moment before the entire thing tore off the roof.

With nothing to hold on to, the kid swung out on the partially inflated chute and crashed onto the roof of a derelict car before being pulled off and dragged along the concrete until the gust died down several seconds later. "Oww." The Kid said as he rubbed his sore thigh where it hit the car. Suddenly a stone hit his hand and his bruised thigh. He hissed in pain and was about to curse as he rounded on Roland, but he wasn’t there.

Less than 25 ft from him was a zombie that had once been a young woman. She was now gaunt, sickly white skin so pale that she blended with the faded paint of the church save for her feet and hands that were stained to a grey-brown, and the dark veins that ran across her body like some kind of spider web. Her eyes were glazed over, her mouth hung open to show her broken and mangled teeth, and she took ragged gasping breaths as she shambled forward.

The kid scrambled back away from the zombie, only to have a gust of wind pick up the paraglider again and drag him toward the zombie. The kid reached back for something to stop himself, but the only thing in range to grab was a large rock. He got a solid grip as he started sliding towards the zombie and as he closed in he threw it. He scored a direct hit to the face, but it didn’t seem to phase the walking corpse. It stumbled off to the side from the force of the impact and the zombie's programming, for lack of a better word, attempting to keep it upright, but not enough to get out of the kid’s way. He was dragged into the zombie as it staggered sideways and acted out of desperation. He planted his foot in her stomach as she tried to fall towards him, bringing both hands up to grab her shoulders as she tried to reach for him, and just as quickly as he moved to protect himself, he pushed her away.

He pushed the zombie to the side, rolling it off of him as the kid slid across the concrete. He planted his feet, tried to pull himself up, but all that did was pick himself up off the ground and give the chute just enough extra height to catch more air and lift him off the ground. The twisted cables of the chute spun him around after his feet lost all traction in the open air. His flight was not long however, as he slammed into another derelict car, his ass crashing into the windshield with a loud crunch. The kid grits his teeth and took a deep breath to recover from the impact, then realized that he was still in danger. That zombie wouldn’t stay down for long, maybe 30 seconds if he was lucky before it would be up and shambling after him again.

He tried to pull himself out of the windshield and move, but his ass was stuck. Regardless of the direction he pushed, he couldn’t get enough leverage to break the plexiglass that had somehow split and wedged between his pants and the bodysuit. He was just realizing the fact that he wouldn’t get out with just brute strength when a clambering on the hood of the car drew his attention. He pulled his legs back, opening his eyes and looking down at the zombie that was trying to climb onto the hood to get him. He kicked the zombie in the face, the blow snapping its neck purely by accident. The zombie dropped onto the hood and slid to the ground. Its brain was probably still intact, and that meant the head would continue to function for a little while at least, but with the neck broken it couldn’t move its body and was no threat unless he stepped just a bit too close. Everything would have been fine, but that wasn't the only zombie.

7 more zombies were shambling toward him, each groaning moaning and rasping in a similar fashion, but 1 was just standing still, watching him. It was as though it was processing what it was seeing instead of blindly reacting to a stimulus like its counterparts. Suddenly it cocked its head to the side with a loud crack, its glazed eyes cleared and the pupils dilated until its entire eye was black. It's head raised back upright and it let out a scream. This was not a human scream, it sounded like something else was trying to impersonate a human scream, but couldn’t quite hide its lack of humanity.

He didn't know that zombies could do that, but he was in no position to think about that at the moment. Not only were the other zombies advancing on him, but the one that screamed took 2 running steps toward him before lunging at the kid. It soared across the street in just over a second and came down on the kid with no hesitation. But the kid raised his foot and caught the jumping zombie with his foot pressed against its collar bone. He had tried, though maybe not consciously, to kick the zombie in the throat or jaw and snap its neck like the other one that came after him.

The zombie reached for him, struggling to push and claw itself closer to bite him, scratching at the pant leg of his shorts in an attempt to rip him apart. It pushed him further into the windshield as it tried to close in, and any attempt to push it off would only push him further into the car. He panicked, tried to think if there was any way to get it off him, but the others were coming and they were faster. Still shambling but much faster now, moving with a purpose. His prospects were looking grim when the kid felt the familiar tug of the parachute catching the wind. The growing panic that had been taking hold of him gave way, replaced by something else. It was the kind of decisive push to act that panic gave a person, but it was a calm and level headed version. In a second, all the pieces slipped into place, and his attack strategy solidified in his mind.

The kid leaned forward, bending his knee so the zombie could come closer, and punched it in the face with a heavy left hook. The zombie recoiled from the force of the blow, but the lack of any pain allowed it to quickly recover and bite into the gauntlet of the kid’s left arm. Just like he planned.

With the threat of the teeth occupied with the metal plates of the gauntlet, the kid reached up to his right boot and pulled the small pistol Roland had forced him to put there. He pulled the gun from the boot holster, put the barrel between the zombie’s eyes, and pulled the trigger. The body didn’t fall away, but the resistance that the kid had been pushing against suddenly stopped, and he practically launched him off the hood of the car. There was no sigh of relief or whoop of triumph, as the zombie’s falling corpse revealed 3 more flesh eaters lumbering toward him. They were even faster now, limping heavily as though one or both legs might be broken but no longer shambling as though they lacked the basic control over the body’s movements save for the ability to stay upright.

Without wasting a second, before the body even began to fall or he could realize just how close the other zombies were, he brought his arm back and slammed his elbow into the windshield. He rocked back to the other side as far as he could and slammed his left arm into the windshield on the opposite side, missing and cracking the elbow-pad against the frame, before throwing himself to the right again, slamming his arm into the windshield. Combined with the pull of the chute, the further damage he inflicted on the windshield, his momentum as he rolled to the right was enough to drag himself out of the hole.

That small victory was short-lived as he crashed on the ground and was dragged across the concrete by the still inflated chute, then suddenly he was in the air again. He just reached the conclusion that he’d been dragged through the stadium tunnel that led to the seats, and that he was now sailing over those seats, before crashing onto the field. He tried to grab at the ground and stop himself, but the wet grass and soil beneath provided no resistance to even slow him down. The only way not to be dragged around the city by that stupid parachute was to cut the cords.

The kid was just reaching for his knife when he was abruptly stopped. He looked down to see that Roland had grabbed his leg and somehow stopped the kid without bracing himself. Roland pulled the kid towards him, the chute snapping and cracking as it flopped around in the strong gusts that were blowing across the field, and grabbed the pull cord for the chute release. He pushed it in until it clicked into place, then twisted it twice before pulling again, and the chute released from the harness. The kid swung to the ground, Roland still holding his leg.

“Took you long enough,” Roland said with a sigh. He dropped the kid's foot and turned towards the gate he came through. "Sounded like you found yourself a screamer." The kid got to his feet and looked back in the same direction. He'd come in through the gate behind one of the endzones, over the remains of the goalpost that had fallen over, and had almost been dragged to midfield. On the opposite side of the field from the gate the kid entered from was another tunnel leading out to the street, with 2 ramps spreading to either side to allow handicap access to the field as well as moving of equipment. "And here they come."