5
I did it! I made it out of there! This new place is good, and it's isolated, and it's got food! I'm going to eat. Then I'm going to get to work on making this place more secure. Then I'm going to get some rest. Somebody had already started on some fortifications here, now I'm going to finish them. There's also a hell of a lot of blood, blackened and dried, not only in the entry way but spread throughout the house. Oddly there are no bodies or, thankfully, zeds. Whatever happened here it took place possibly months or more ago. The place is abandoned now. More later.
Ok, I feel better than I have in a long time. It's abso-fucking-lutely amazing what a meal and some decent sleep can do for someone. Before I continue with what I remember with the rise of the Scarlet, I want to tell you how I got out of the tool and die shop.
There was nothing special about the shop, it was a standard set-up. Offices on the second floor, loading dock and machinery on the first. The loading dock had a sturdy metal roll-up door and although it bowed inward and shook and moved with the weight of the zeds trying to gain entry, it held quite nicely. There was a propane fueled Hi-Lo and an assortment of chain hoists and tools, as I suppose there is in every machine shop.
Until the fire started, I didn't think of any use for the Hi-Lo besides driving it out of there. That would be suicide, most of the zeds can still shuffle along quick enough to catch up to a slow moving Hi-Lo. I have to say though that they do seem to be slowing down. It's about god damned time too. After almost a full year they're finally starting to show some signs of true decomposition.
There was a small window, the old fashioned kind operated by a little hand crank, at the top of the stairs facing the burning buildings to the west. It wouldn't open more than a crack and the glass was the opaque kind that you couldn't see through. I used a sledge hammer I found in the shop below to bust apart the window. At the time I was mainly interested in just having a better view of the spread of the conflagration. It only took a couple of good whacks from the sledge to knock the window out.
The undead bastards immediately started converging on this side of the building. There were a bunch of them here already, but now they were just piling into the area. Their hearing isn’t very good but they were already close enough to hear the window being shattered from the other sides of the shop.
(I have to comment on something though, as long as I’m writing. The zombies in the movies always either moaned or hilariously shambled around muttering “Brains...” In reality though, they never uttered a single intentional sound. Occasionally they will bump into each other, forcing putrid air out of their lungs and past whatever is left of their vocal chords, making a sound that’s an odd cross between a sigh and a whimper. The multiplied chorus is completely unnerving when they group up in a “herd”, packed close together and in large numbers. Combined with the foot dragging, they sound like some huge beast thrashing around in agony in the dirt and whining in its death throes. I guess in some way, that is exactly what is happening.)
I got pissed at the abominations and started throwing pieces of the window down at them. The pieces just bounced off, of course, and I started looking around for something heavier to drop on their heads. In a rage I started to destroy the surrounding wall, hoping to get a whole block of the construction masonry to come apart to crush some skulls. It wasn’t working though, the sledge was just busting off fist sized pieces. I dropped the heavy hammer as the blaze swelled rapidly, engulfing almost the whole of the building that was merely ten to fifteen feet away from me.
Downstairs I found iron and steel and brass rods and bar stock. Not quite what I was looking for. The rods were approximately a half an inch in diameter and about twelve foot long. I briefly thought about making a spear with one of the pieces, but then something else caught my attention. There was a propane canister rack where the Hi-Lo was parked.
The full canisters were heavy enough by themselves to crush a zeds head by throwing it down on them from above. As an extra added bonus, I knew they could explode. I didn’t have any idea of how to make that happen, nor could I find any flares or something to attach to them. I figured that I could toss them into the inferno raging next door, and that the flames would be hot enough to cause the canisters to fail and release a nice fireball. It was dangerous, bordering on insanity. I really knew nothing about if they would actually explode, or for that matter, how big the explosion(s) would be. There were six full propane tanks and I dragged them to the upstairs landing, setting them under the gaping hole in the wall where the window used to be.
It took no time at all before the building wall opposite me started to catch. The zeds seemed oblivious to the fire with some getting so close to the heat that the rags they wore started to smoke. I had to be sure my plan would work so I waited until the most opportune moment to toss those babies into the voracious crowd of undead below me.
The smoke started to become as thick as water and I could start to feel the heat of the flames. Small flames started to grow on some of the zombies hair and clothing. It wasn’t my plan to simply catch the horrors on fire, they would burn for some time before they stopped moving. Not to mention the fact that a flaming zombie horde is much worse than a normal zombie horde. The fire next door by itself may or may not light this building on fire, but a flaming zombie horde sure would. I wanted to blow a hole in the herd that I could run through and escape to freedom.
I went and quickly gathered my backpack and few possessions I brought with me, adding a few tools from the shop to it in preparation for whatever happened next.
Back upstairs the outside paint started peeling and I crouched under the partial wall to stay out of the majority of the heat. A couple of the zeds were actually alight now, but it seemed they didn’t burn well for some reason (There was some kind of waxy coating they developed, or at least it appeared so. I never actually wanted to get close enough to one to give it a physical examination). After a brief few minutes I could hear the supports and ceiling of the structure across from me about to give way. Now is the time I thought.
I nervously heaved those propane canisters through the jagged hole in the wall and prayed they didn’t go off until I got to a safe place (not knowing how big the explosion would be and also hoping that it wouldn’t collapse this building on my head), if they even went off at all.
I was able to run and hide behind a huge CNC machine in the shop and as I was wondering how long it would take for them to explode, they went off. I heard the structure next door collapsing, followed by multiple explosions. They sounded huge to my ears as pieces of rubble and flaming debris wafted down around me.
I got up quickly, more than worried, and made my way through the ruins as fast as I could, hoping I didn’t just sign my own death certificate. I initially was thinking I would have to go back up the stairs and risk jumping out the cavity I made in the wall, but when I got there, the wall was gone. The wall was gone not just by where the window used to be, but the whole west wall was gone. Small flames started up inside the shop and bright red embers were falling all around, both inside and outside the collapsed wall. The smoke was thicker the closer I got to the outside. I didn’t see any standing zombies as I ran outdoors, through the burning wreckage, but there were pieces of them. I ran. I ran as fast as I could. I looked behind me at the horde that I knew now was recovering from the shock-wave and detonations. Most were struggling to stand upright, having been packed so densely together they must have fallen like dominoes. A shit load of them were on fire, which pleased me to no end. The surrounding area was practically zed free, the ravenous undead had been driven by their hunger towards the Tool & Die shop where I was holed up. There were a few stragglers here and there, but they were much slower and clumsier now so I had no problem out running them.
My luck was good that day. I found a dirt bike right out in the middle of the road, just waiting for me to claim it. It started on the first kick and I drove it, off road, away from civilization. The bike ran out of gas on me on some dirt road. Only God knew where I was now, but it seemed clear. Following the lonely, now slightly overgrown, two track road, I came to this place. I cased it out from a distance and slowly, hesitantly, made my way towards it.
I’ve got stuff to do. I’ve spent more time than I thought I would writing this out. It does seem to be helping me though, so I’ll continue the next time I get a chance.
6
Everybody was traumatized to some extent from what had just happened. The madness that swept the animal kingdom was finally waning. People the world over were just starting to timidly poke their heads out from their homes, like scared rabbits (I don‘t even know if there are any rabbits left) from their earthen burrows. Just because a lot of the population wasn’t personally attacked by the marauding parasite controlled critters, didn’t mean they didn’t suffer loss or know terror. Children especially, were terrorized by what they saw on TV. Added to this, many were also in mourning over a beloved family pet that had to be put down or were frightened to death about going outside. The media was in full swing of their over-coverage, of course, endlessly showing animal attacks again and again. The twenty-four hour looping of some of the more violent and horrendous videos were only broken up by speculation and baseless accusations. The Army and National Guard units were still conducting sweeps in the more inaccessible parts of the nation, while trying to effectively quarantine the most remote and unreachable wildernesses.
The food chain was broken, and the natural order of things was truly screwed up. Nobody had any idea of what Mother Nature was going to do next.
I remember watching a particularly disturbing video in which a whole colony of prairie dogs was ripping the flesh off of a herd of cattle. The cows, which had for thousands of years been bred for docileness and timidity, seemed confused and unable to react to this new threat. The image of the fear and agony of these poor victims stays with me even now, creeping into my dreams.
I remember coming to the realization that our food supply was also dealt a heavy blow. Farms were abandoned and the countryside was quickly de-populated. In areas where the animals outnumbered people, the people fled to the urban areas. Even though the initial threat was on the decline, most people didn’t want to go back out to the country until this had completely dissipated. There was talk of the government actually forcing people back to the farms. The U.S. was the bread basket of the world before the parasite and now whole states were without any living livestock. Produce was rotting in the fields. Once crowded chicken and turkey farms were open fields of decaying meat, having been ravaged by maddened squirrels, rabbits, cats, etc.
Famine wasn’t the only thing we had to look forward to, oh no, there was more coming. The predators, those that survived being attacked by what used to be their prey, would start coming in force into the urban areas. A second wave of animal attacks was rushing towards us like a freight train (and we were tied to the tracks). Wolves, coyotes, bears, eagles, hawks, wolverines and every kind of animal that used to feed on the smaller animals were going to starve and they would do the only thing they could, they would add mankind to the menu. For the most part, people didn’t (or didn’t want to) think about what the near future held in store for them, although everybody knew. But that was still in the future, and that was what was going to happen if the Scarlet fever hadn’t reared its ugly head. The Scarlet saved us from an agonizing slow death and granted us a quick and violent one.
When the Scarlet fever first appeared, it showed up as small freckle like, blood-red spots all over the body. Everyone knew this had to be connected to the parasites somehow. The government and CDC were trying to keep as close a lid as possible on it. Looking back, I’m absolutely positive they knew what was happening, and what was going to happen. I’m also absolutely sure they had no idea how to treat it though, otherwise they would have and they would still be alive today (maybe). Maybe it didn’t matter. The CDC admitted that it was indeed a reaction to being infected with the parasite. In the beginning they (and every government on earth) tried to calm the populace, telling us that it would quickly pass and it would be ok. No other large mammal they said (and they were right in this), reacted to this in any other way than a mild cold or flu. They guaranteed that now that they knew what they were facing, that they would shortly have a cure. Top scientists were working day and night they said.
People were clearly on edge. Tempers were short and anger flared easily. Myself, I just put it down to all the stress people were under lately. Fistfights, brawls and a slight increase in the murder rate ensued. Completely understandable for what we were going through. It got so much worse though.
As the parasitic infection grew in its new hosts, the little red freckles became larger and larger. As the parasitic infection grew, people started acting more and more like the infected animals that had plagued them previously.
The people who were obviously suffering from the infestation openly started to hate the small percentage of us that were immune. It got to the point that everyone who got into my cab, upon seeing me, went into a spit flying rage at me for no reason at all.
When I watched some wild eyed, scarlet speckled teenager with a knife chase an older woman into rush hour traffic on Colonial Drive I decided I was done driving a cab for awhile. The teen’s eyes were a deep blood red (almost black), I remember it clearly, there was no white left. The panic-stricken woman was chased into traffic and got hit by a passing motorist, who I’m sure didn’t see the terrified woman at all. As the poor woman was thrown by the impact and lay in the middle of the street, the teen ran over to her and just started stabbing the injured woman over and over again. I don’t even think she was conscious, thankfully.
I was even more surprised when the driver of a new Cadillac gunned the motor of his car and proceeded to run the teen down. The sound of the teens head busting open on the front grill was sickening. The Caddy just drove over him, dragging him about a hundred yards down the road and never stopped, he just drove away like nothing happened.
I wasn’t making any money at all anyways so I decided to keep a low profile until this shit worked itself out in one way or another.
I once again retreated to my apartment, watching what I could stand of the news channels, but mainly sticking to reruns that had nothing at all to do with what was happening outside.
I remember the night they declared martial law nationwide. It was the same night I heard my apartment manager beating on my neighbor’s door demanding the rent which was apparently only a week late.
“Open the God damned door and pay me my rent mother fucker!” were the first words out of his mouth.
I peeked out the small window in my door, pushing aside the privacy curtain to view the skinny, frail looking manager. His face was half covered in blood red blotches.
The manager was just pounding on the door with both fists screaming obscenities. I knew this was not going to end well.
“Get the fuck away from my door asshole.”, was my neighbor’s reply. It came out more like a growl than spoken words.
I knew my neighbor. He was over six feet tall and easily weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. Normally he was a nice, easy going guy that got along with practically everyone. If he wanted he could crush the manager’s skull with his bare hands and I feared that that was exactly what he was going to do.
“You’re a week late and now you owe me a late fee fuck head. Get out and fuckin’ pay me right now or get the fuck out right NOW!” he yelled. The manager’s blood-shot eyes had a crazed look to them as he beat so hard on the door that his knuckles were bloody.
“You want me out you little douche bag? Go ahead and evict me then you little piece of shit.”, was my neighbor’s reply.
From there things just got worse and I won’t bother to write what they said to each other. It wasn’t like I was the only one who heard them. People were poking their heads out of their apartments, (and all of them had red blotches clearly visible on whatever skin wasn’t covered) some adding to the chaos by yelling at the two to shut the hell up. Somebody must have called the cops because shortly sirens were heard in the distance, quickly getting nearer.
Police involvement was my neighbor’s breaking point I think. He was on parole for gettin’ drunk and assaulting someone pretty badly in a bar fight previously and I knew he thought he couldn’t win and that he was going to jail. It didn’t help my neighbors frame of mind one bit that the manager was crazily laughing at him now and taunting him, saying he was going to toss all of his shit out on the street as soon as the cops took his ass away.
The door to the apartment whipped open then and in the blink of an eye my neighbor had a shotgun pressing into the stomach of the apartment manager. My neighbor was wearing only boxers, sweating like a pig. His skin was so covered in those blood red blots that it appeared as if his skin was naturally scarlet colored, broken by white freckles.
With the shotgun pressing so hard into his stomach I thought it might actually spear him and come out his back, the manager was backed up into the hallway wall opposite the apartment door.
There were no more foul words spewing from the manager’s mouth, as he was completely silent then. My neighbor was also silent as I knew he was trying to figure out how to control himself and not pull the trigger. The cop car pulled up just outside the main entry way to the apartment block, the blue and white lights flashing inside the hallway. My neighbor looked to the door where the cops were sure to enter momentarily, then he looked back at the manager.
The roar of the shotgun was deafening in the enclosed hallway. I backed away from my little window real quick then as the cops came in guns drawn. The last thing I saw as I recoiled from the shotgun blast was the utter disbelief shown in the manager’s eyes as he tried to hold his guts in, which were spilling out from both the front and the back.
It turned into a shooting gallery then, like something from the old west. Multiple shotgun blasts and the sharp sound of police issue nine millimeter pistols rent the air. There shortly came the sound of automatics, with their distinctive, repeated quick-fire echoes as others joined in the murderous fray. I jumped in my shower, hoping that any errant bullets would be deflected by the metal bathtub.
After about half an hour the gun shots stopped. The sound of my TV, which I had left on one of the twenty-four hour news channels, was only marred by distant shots, screams and the occasional siren. I lay there wondering how long it would take for the Scarlet fever to run its course and if I could ration my food to outlast it. After an hour or so I heard the National Security Advisor issue martial law nationwide.
I knew they were hoping that the discipline instilled in the members of the armed forces would be enough to overcome the parasites insidious emotional control, but it was not to be.
At first it seemed to be working. Shoot to kill orders and strict curfews put a damper on the insanity that threatened to over-run the nation.
For a few days anyways. Even the members of the military were only human though. They just started mass murdering everybody they saw as their skin turned beet red. Then they turned on each other.
Someone once said that there were only three things that nature used to keep man’s numbers in check. Famine, Disease and War. War because as man had no natural predators, he had to be his own. Nature was harsh and brutal, but it had decided that seven billion plus people were too many.
The last news I heard (the television and cable stations blinked off one by one) was that this parasite was a man made, bio engineered creation. The CDC showed proof positive that DNA from three separate deadly organisms had been spliced into this parasite. Mother Nature had not evolved it. Two of the bio-engineered gene strands were identified, but the third strand was an unknown. The third strand was a very specific thing that targeted the nervous system for some reason, but they had no real idea how it was supposed to help the parasite or what it specifically was meant to do. Fingers were pointing at North Korea, and almost as a final fuck you, North Korea launched a full scale nuclear attack on South Korea, obliterating Soul, Pusan and a number of other cities, even launching a few nukes at Japan before they crossed the de-militarized zone and literally slaughtered everyone in their path.
Pakistan and India went to war, they also quickly used nuclear weapons. Israel and most of the Arab nations went directly to nuclear war. Russia and China exchanged a limited number of nuclear weapons. Genocide and war became the norm for nations as all sense of humanity left all of humanity. War raged in the last few days in the sky, on the seas and on land. In the end I don’t think it mattered who the men with the weapons attacked, as long as they could sate their blood lust. The only thing that stopped them was when the parasite finally ended up killing its host.
Then things went quiet. Like being in the eye of the hurricane. Quiet and still for good twenty-four to forty-eight hours.
That’s when the dead, in their billions, started to rise.
7
It's been a couple of days since I last wrote in this journal of mine. I can't begin to tell you how much better it feels not to be hiding in some random building with a multitude of ravenous undead trying to get inside to devour me alive. I personally haven’t felt this good since before this all began, over a year ago. Concealing myself and my every move, with nothing to do but wait for the seemingly inevitable, made time just crawl along at a snail’s pace. For the past three days I’ve been passing the time, which has been flying by, fixing up the place and cleaning it.
About this place though, it has some real good features about it. It’s sturdy, well built and isolated. The only real way to get here is down a now partially overgrown dirt road. Until you get to the drive way itself, you can’t even see the house. The lack of visibility isn’t due to the thick growth of the surrounding wooded area, although now in late summer that would normally be the case, it’s due to being in a natural depression. Its sits on a small plateau in the middle of a huge, almost bowl like hollow. The roof of house and attached garage sits far enough below the upper ridge that even in winter, when the leaves have fallen and the lush vegetation has died off, that it still can’t be seen from the surrounding area. About ten feet below the plateau, upon which the house sets, there’s a lake. I think there’s a natural spring that feeds it, as the lake actually feeds a little creek that runs off into the woodland. There’s a little dock here, and a row boat, and there’s actually fish in it. I think this building had been originally built before electricity and water were even invented. It has been expanded and obviously upgraded a number of times, but its origins are still observable, here and there. The pantry is also, surprisingly, well stocked.
There’s also some things that kinda worry me about this place though. I actually spent two full days cleaning the gore and blood from this place. The blood trails start in pretty much every room and they all converged in the kitchen. There’s an old style pump that can be used when the water main is out (which it is) next to a large double sink and a largish butcher block. I’m hoping that somebody came back here during the height of the madness and found some scared animals had taken refuge in the place, and that whomever it was (person or persons) took the opportunity to do some hunting. Meat is really a rare thing now. I’m not sure, but some of the dried blood looked like it was layered on top of each other, like the killing had been dispersed months apart. The butcher block, a thick hard wood slab, was covered in the dried gore and shows signs of repeated use. Smaller blood tracks went through the back door, across the dock to the lake itself. I guess if I really want to know what was butchered here, I could swim down to the bottom of the lake and look for the bones. I don’t really want to know that badly though.
I keep getting this feeling to just take what I can and get out. I’m sure it’s because I feel that this is too good to be true, what with the experiences of the last two years coloring my mind. I keep trying to tell myself that eventually luck would finally favor me, that eventually I would have to find a safe haven, but it still feels to me like this place is somehow haunted.
Enough of that for now. Tomorrow I’ll resume my telling of what happened. Today I’m going to go fishing. I’ve seen a couple of nice ones jump out of the water and I’ve got a craving for some fresh fish. It’s been so long since I had any real meat, let alone something fresh. Wish me luck.
8
It was my old friend hunger that made me leave my apartment. Until I found this place, hunger had been my constant companion. Always was I hungry, always I had to ration every scrap and morsel of food I found.
Even though I knew of the scene that lay just outside my doorstep, I wasn't prepared. The first thing that hit me was the smell. It was the scent of rot and death. Inside my apartment it hung in the background but it wasn't overpowering like it was when I opened the door. I don't know if it was the strength of the smell that assailed me and made me involuntarily retch or the sight of my door and the surrounding wall. My door was covered in the blood and pieces of my neighbor’s brains, dried and stuck firmly to it. Thankfully I hadn’t much at all in my stomach, or it all would have come out instead of the thin dribble that did. What did come out landed right smack dab on what was left of my neighbor’s head.
I had never really seen death this close up before, and the puke reflex had bowed me over, bringing my own face that much closer to his. What was left of his head was flattened, being just his face, lying there like a mask with a small hole in the forehead. Everything else that wasn’t his face was, I suppose, splattered all over the walls and my door. I remember I had to force myself to close my eyes and regain my composure before I could continue. Now though, neither the sight nor the smell bothers me.
There were footprints in the blood, both coming and going through the scene, as if people didn’t care at all. The apartment manager’s body was gone, along with the shotgun that killed him, but to where I had no idea. I didn’t care to linger but before I left the apartment I remember I made sure to lock my door. I never made it back to my old apartment, nor do I have my keychain anymore.
I carefully stepped my way outside and was grateful to be outdoors where the smell of death wasn’t so cloyingly thick. The gray, muted quality of the light drew my eyes skyward. Dark heavy clouds covered the sun and the whole part of the sky. Pieces of ash and soot fell down like rain. The world was burning and I could smell it.
There was a dead cop lying in the parking lot. Whether he was one of the police that responded to the altercation between my neighbor and the manager I don’t know. I do know that he had been shot in the neck and bled out soon after just by looking at him. He was clearly dead and I about jumped out of my skin when I saw his fingers flex and twitch. It didn’t help at all that the cop spasmed as I was checking for his weapon. I didn’t know at the time if it was rigor mortise or my imagination or what. Now I know that it was the parasites regaining control of the body. There was no weapon though, somebody had gotten it already.
I made my way over to the side parking lot thinking I would just get in my car and drive to Wal-Mart. Yeah, I nervously laughed aloud when I saw it. It was crushed under a big yellow school bus that had somehow ended up laying on its side across the top of the row of cars. So much for that.
My stomach growled, urging me to walk to Wal-Mart if that’s what it was going to take.
My apartment complex wasn’t really that far from Wal-Mart. It only took me about 20 minutes to walk there. As I was walking I don’t remember seeing anybody or anything moving, except for the occasional corpse twitch. I do remember thinking that even if I had my car it would be worthless anyway. Autos and trucks were strewn around the roads and every intersection was an accident scene. Traffic signals were still changing from red to green and I caught myself actually reflexively waiting at one of them until the pedestrian crossing light flashed that it was legal to cross.
The Wal-Mart parking lot looked as though a major riot had taken place there. Burned out cars and trucks, a military troop carrier (I think it was a deuce and a half, the kind with the canvass covering the rear bed), a fire truck and two police cruisers were interspersed with decaying bodies of every age, sex and color.
The inside of the store wasn’t any better. Every once in a while one of the dead would twitch and I hurried around the store getting what I could.
I had grabbed a camping backpack, one of the nicer ones that I would have never have been able to afford before. After gathering a bunch of other items from the camping section I made my way to the food isles. It was there, while I was stuffing Spam and chili and whatnot into my new backpack that I realized I was going to have to carry all this weight around with me as I had no car. I was lost in concentration, trying to decide what I wanted to carry with me on this trip, as I thought for sure I could make my was back here again, when I heard a mechanical click behind me.
“Stop right there...,” said a distinctly female voice.
There was a hard edge to her voice and I slowly turned to face her.
“Put your hands on top of your head, nice and slow, or I won’t hesitate to kill you.” She said it nice and calmly, like she had said it more than a few times already.
The barrel of an M16 was in my face so I decided to comply with its owner’s wishes. She was looking me over and I knew she was scrutinizing my face and skin for those tell-tale red marks to see if I was one of the infected. I was doing the same to her, noting that she could barely be out of High School, if she had even graduated yet.
“Lift up your shirt and turn around. Show me you’re not affected and you can live.” Her voice was steady and I had no doubt she wouldn’t hesitate to murder me if I didn’t do as she said.
“Ok, good...,” she said as I finished turning around for her.
“Now drop your weapons to the ground nice and slow...One fast move...,” she said as I interrupted her.
“I don’t have any weapons.” I stated nervously.
“What? Bullshit. Who the fuck walks around anymore without a weapon?” Anger was starting to tinge her voice and the M16 was being leveled into a firing position.
“I don’t...I been in hiding ‘til the shit blew over, now I’m just hungry...,” there was a pleading tone in my voice as I tried to talk her out of shooting me.
“Turn around and place your hands on the shelf. I’m going to give you a pat down and if I find a weapon on you you’re dead. If you don’t submit you’re dead. Do ANYTHING I don’t like and you’re dead.” Her voice was flat and monotone.
Not wanting to be dead I let her give me a pat down. I could tell that it seemed incredible to her that someone would actually be running around the apocalypse unarmed.
Her stance changed a bit then, and I could tell she relaxed a bit, which made me relax a bit.
“Where the hell have you been hiding? The shit hasn’t blown over, it’s getting worse dumbass.” She looked at me as if I was a retarded, red-headed step-child.
“What do you mean worse, the streets and the whole city’s fuckin’ empty except for the corpses.” I thought there was some insanity lurking in the girl yet.
“Yeah, the corpses...You seen any of them twitching on your leisurely stroll here?” Her eyes narrowed as she spoke.
“Well, yeah, so what?” I replied. As I had stated before, I had no idea of what that twitching and spasmodic flexing was from. For all I knew it was completely natural.
“So what?” she asked in reply, and then let out a little dark laugh.
“That means the dead will rise shortly. That‘s so what.” The words came out of her mouth with the sharp ring of truth to them.
It was clear that she believed what she was saying, but I thought she had lost her mind and started to back away, slowly.
“It’s ok, just stay calm and let me go.” I carefully picked up my backpack and continued to put some distance from her, slowly backing away.
Her eyes went cold as steel then and she raised the rifle and sighted down the aisle towards me.
I didn’t know what to do so I spread my arms wide and stopped walking backwards from her to show her I had no weapon or intention of harming her.
“Get down dumbass!” She yelled at me.
That’s when I felt the presence of someone behind me. I instinctively started to drop down like I was ordered as I turned to see who had crept up on me.
It was a close thing too. This horror that used to be a human being had started to grab me close and I could hear its jaws bite the air where my head was just a moment before.
I felt the hairs on my head swish as the bullets from the teen’s gun whipped past me. The gunfire was loud enough to partially deafen me. Three shots to the undead things chest and shoulder knocked it back and flat on the ground. The slugs didn’t stop it though, and now I was scrabbling back towards the person who I was previously backing away from. I swear the girl couldn’t be more than nineteen years old by the look of her, but she easily stepped over me and put a couple of rounds into the nightmares face until it stopped moving again.
“C’mon dumbass, we need to get the hell out of here before more show up to investigate,” she told me, with a snarl on her lips.
That’s how I met Jannie.
The light is fading now and I don’t want to waste any of the candles I have left, so I will continue again tomorrow.
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Topic: A Journal found after the Zombie Apocalypse (Read 6115 times)