Unusual Happenstance 3 (continued)

The sound filled my ears with horror. There shouldn’t have been this many of them, this wasn’t the way they should have acted. Yet somehow, they seem to work together like a pack of feral dogs trying to get in. and they were succeeding. It was an arm, first, through the window to my right, smashing through and caring not for the deep cuts the plywood inflicted upon it. A face followed but that was quickly put down by Andrew with a shot through the neck, severing the spinal cord. With its fall, two more replaced it at the breach, enlarging the hole. Andrew and Esther put down as many as they could, most arrows finding their mark due to the small distance between where they were standing to the wall where the undead had staged an assault. Fighting desperately, they seemed to be on the winning side- as long as their arrows were not all spent. Realizing this, I ran to the nearest window and spying through a hole in the wood, I was dismayed. Almost a hundred of them. I had never seen such a gathering since the when they first arose in the beginning. Looking back, I knew my two new friends were fighting a losing battle. It now seemed to me they were fighting a many headed hydra, with each head slew two more took its place. Their arrows all but spent, it looked like they realized this too. To this day, their courage took me by surprise. Perhaps it was their will to live which stayed their hand from the gun. The supposed savior of man was its downfall. In the beginning, as the surviving soldiers entered the large cities, the incredible noise from each shot fired drew more of the undead in. Guns were now considered a last resort, better suited for ending your own life rather than that of the enemy. There were enough bullets in Andrew’s revolver yet the both of them seemed to ignore it, preferring to fight on as long as they could. By now, all of the arrows were used up and they were using long logs to hold back the invasion. Unfortunately at that moment, another breach was made, this time across the room, and another, and another.

I grabbed a log from the fire and started swinging madly in the general direction of the undead. I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see their bony cheeks, their bloodstained mouths and empty clouded eyes. I wish I could have become deaf too, for their groans were unbearable. Hearing it, I could have almost pitied them. They drew nearer and nearer; my log connecting with only a few heads, and without much effect. The ones I hit just fell back a little and continued pushing at each other to get to me. I suppose there could have been some luck that day; all of these corpses were in an extremely advanced stage of wear. Their ligaments dry and their muscles stiffened, they could not charge as their fresher counterparts could. Still, there were too many, and I had lost hope. I didn’t know if Andrew and Esther had survived, my back was turned to them. Too deafening the noise the undead cannibals were making till I was not sure if I heard shouts from the other two living people in the room or not. I felt a strong grip on my arm. Two hands. I risked opening my eyes and saw a set of rotting teeth about to clamp down upon my arm. I smashed its owner’s face with the log and moved backwards. The room was filling up with them now, and the smell was so awful my eyes teared and I found myself choking on my own spit. I was so overwhelmed I nearly dropped to the ground in defeat. Let them have me, I say. The pain would be momentary and I would be granted an eternity of peace. No more fear, no more running, no more hunger, no more suffering. I knelt down and covered my face with my hands, too afraid to shed any tears. My whole body was shaking and yet my mind was anticipating the moment where I could be set free from this world and the pain it brought.

I thought back, to the beginning, I had a beautiful, enviable life. I considered myself lucky. I was doing well as a writer, my book ‘The Color of Sacrifice’ selling out in bookstores around the world. I was a Pulitzer Prize winner and women adored me. My eyes however saw no one but my beautiful Anne. I was living the good life, the earnings from my book giving me a chance to live 2 lifetimes without any more work. When the Red Death struck, even as my love was torn from me I considered myself lucky. I was immune to the first generation of the virus and I survived. I was lucky I had never seen Anne’s face as she awoke from death. I was far away at that time. Long after the first wave of infection I still considered myself lucky. I was never bit, and had little encounters with the dead, safe inside the fortified community the people before me had built. After that, I still considered myself lucky, when I was discovered by these two kind people and taken in. Thinking about it now, I know that all those times before, I wasn’t really lucky. No, the only moment in my life where I was lucky was now. Where I anticipated the sweet, sweet embrace of death, knowing in a few short minutes I would feel it, and all my sufferings gone.

Hands fell upon my back, my arms and my neck. My eyes still closed, I urged them to bite into my flesh, hoping that I wouldn’t have to endure too long the ordeal. I could smell the decay in their breath. The hands gripped my shoulders and my back, jerking me to my feet. I couldn’t help but open my eyes, and I wish I had never done so. I was looking into the face of a dead man. I was looking into the face of a comrade I had abandoned, Aaron.

Unusual Happenstance 2 (continued)

I awoke, and thankfully, not glassy eyed and with a taste for the meat of man, but something much more innocent. A candy bar. A taste of a life I, no, we, had all once known and lost. Of civilization, and Sunday mornings that were just what they were, instead of the incessant struggle for survival which we had all grown accustomed to. It was at this particular moment as my mind awoke but my eyes refused to follow suit, and remained in defiant sleep that I smelled chocolate and caramel, and my ears picked up the sound of delicate jaws grinding the soft, sweet delight. I hoped against hope that what I imagined in my dreams was real and peeked, forcing my eyes to open just a little and scanned the room before me. A small flame was burning in the center of the room, the smoke drifting out of a hole in the ceiling. The walls, moldy and paper peeling were being dried by said flame. The windows were covered, allowing no light in, although it appeared to be day, through the vent in the ceiling. I assumed I was either the top floor of a high building, or a short, one story construct. A figure, to the right of where I lay on the cold hard floor, sat slowly nibbling away at that little piece of heaven. Dark was the room, the hole in the ceiling admitting few of the secrets the room held, hence the figure remained in the shadows, preventing my sight from identifying it. It sat in a way only a living man would sit, back against the wall in a lazy manner, one hand upon something sword shaped and the other holding the candy bar. It was not my savior it seemed, for this shadow was one of a large, stocky man. He noticed my attention upon him, and picked up something and threw it across the room to me. I picked up the treat as a dog would, greedily, and shoved the whole thing into my mouth barely getting the wrapper off. I swallowed, chunks still remaining, but I didn’t care. I tasted heaven, but more importantly, I tasted a chance to fulfill my burning hunger. It was mildly sweet, a lot bitterer and had a hint of sourness to it, probably due to the mould that must have grown on it. Within moments, my stomach heaved and the meager contents came spilling out onto the floor beside me. The figure in the shadows laughed, but I gave no heed to it. With my hands I scooped up what had been inside my and as I was about to drink the soup, the figure shouted and stopped me. “You can clean that up, but drinking your own puke’ll just make you sicker, man. You’re not used to the sugar yet, I guess. I’ll head downstairs and check with Esther if there’s anything else that’ll be lighter on you”. “I, I” I tried to reply him, but the vomiting had taken its toll on my throat. “It’s ok, rest first, then talk. You’re the first person we’ve seen all month that hasn’t tried to kill us yet, but I guess there’s plenty of time for that, eh?” with that the figure stood up and in the dim light I could see his features. It was indeed a very large man, as I had suspected. His skin was dark, and he had the look of a person being fat, once, long ago, and had lost a lot of it very quickly. But all in all, he seemed healthy, and didn’t have that mad, yellow gleam in his eyes as I had seen in some all too often. As he walked out of the room, he paused, “Name’s Andrew, if you were wondering”. I wasn’t. My stomach took up too much of my attention for me to pay any to anything else. Most of the soreness in my body had gone, thanks to my rest, but nothing can satisfy hunger but solid food inside the stomach. I rested my back against the wall, thinking about what had just befallen me. There I was, on the edge of a cliff, and below me, death when I was rescued by someone who had no reason at all to do so but so many to refuse me. Mankind hadn’t died out after all. And with this promising thought, I renewed my hope of a brighter future, or at least one where I could get lunch every day without fail. Trying to ever be the polite guest, I took off my tattered shirt and tried wiping my spew off the floor, exhausted as I was. My arms shook, and my fingers trembled. Never in the world before had something like this been so taxing on me. I had cleaned up about half of it when footsteps in the hallway alerted me of my host’s entrance. Just as before, in one hand he held some food and the other a crossbow pointed at my throat. This time, however, I could see that the girl who had taken me back had followed him into the room, looking curiously at me and with some apprehension. Maybe even now she doubted herself for bringing me back. She was just as beautiful as when she had found me, and as I stared at her, my eyes were drawn to hers. Beautiful wouldn’t describe it. There was something else in those eyes, not just beauty like you would have seen in a photo but something more, and it always drew you in. all at once my mind had left my self-pitying thoughts and all I wanted to do was talk to her and to know more about her. Andrew’s deep voice brought me back to reality. “Now I know staring at ester is real fun and all, but I think eating’s a lot better for you”. I was surprised, I hadn’t known I had been staring at her for so long. Embarrassed, I tried muttering a reply, but my voice still barely came out. “Here”, she said, coming out from behind him. “Here’s a bit of water. It’s not much, but it’s what we can spare”. I took it from her and drank.

About half an hour later, I found myself in a bathroom. Esther had brought me here to clean myself up after I had eaten. “There’s boiled water in that bucket over there, don’t waste it, but I guess I don’t have to tell you that”, she told me. I wandered to the mirror and for the first time in a long while I saw myself. I looked more dead than alive. The skin on my face was peeling from sunburn and cracks had formed on my dry lips with dirt getting in between them. My hair was covered in dirt too, and oily from the touch of it. I had never noticed. My eyes were sunken holes, dark circles underneath accentuated by the hollowness of my cheeks. Looking at myself, I was surprised she hadn’t killed me when we met. I looked like a zombie. Earlier I asked the both of them how they could have made such a home for themselves, away from the cannibals, both alive and dead. The roads and cities would have been teeming with the undead and everything else would have been stalked by the living. Not only that, but the reason I had never tried to stay in a house before this was that the undead preferred to hang around buildings. Maybe they could remember being alive once, tough very little of it. This was explained to me when they told me we were staying about a kilometer from the road in what used to be a meth lab. Hidden from everything, it was pretty safe, “just don’t try licking the walls”, as Andrew had told me with a smile. He knew about this place from his life before as a dealer. When the infection got really bad, he simply headed here and worked on turning the interior into what could be considered a house. There was another house nearby with a lot of food but no occupants. Most probably the previous owners had been stocking up for the infection when they caught the virus too. He found Esther while he was scavenging one day.

Sighing, but grateful for my luck, I soaked a rag in the water and started to wipe myself down. The water felt good on my skin, and I had never dared to use clean water in this way. There was already not enough to drink, while I was out there. A sudden shout came from outside, startling me and causing me to react with such force I knocked ever the bucket. So much for conserving water. I pulled on a new shirt and jumped into my old pair of jeans before running out of the bathroom. I met Esther and Andrew in the living room. Andrew was gripping the crossbow while she seemed to be trying to notch a homemade bow and arrow. Both their faces were strained. It was then I realized for the past few days while I was slowly dying outside, a group of zombies had caught scent of me and were tracking me when I was found by Esther. It was no wonder that I kept feeling like I was being followed. They had tracked our scent here, and were smashing their hands on the doors and windows, slowly breaking the thin plywood used as a barrier.

Unusual Happenstance

I feel strongly compelled to tell you, reader, of the events of the past few days, not for any reason I may have given before, but because of the pure irregularity of it. I live in a world of which many would consider strange, impossible, even. There is few people, even scarcer food and monsters straight out of a b-grade movie roaming the land. It was in this nightmarish setting that I first encountered Esther. A beautiful girl, it seemed, the hellish environment having little effect on her. Her medium length hair was tied back into a ponytail, coming to rest between her delicate shoulders and her long, lean body with legs that seemed to stretch on and on, as an endless road would. And her eyes, oh, I could talk all day about her eyes. They never seemed like eyes at all, more like a mirror surfaced lake. Deeper than you could ever imagine, but allowing no hint whatsoever as to what was within. You could see yourself in them, your fear, your exhaustion but those eyes seemed to promise release from all of your sufferings, an escape, even if for a moment. It seemed highly unlikely that any girl, of any size and shape would have survived up till now; let alone such an amazing beauty like her. When I first caught a glimpse of her in the far distance, she seemed as an angel, descending to carry my withered soul out of my crippled body and up to the stars. Lust stirred in me, for release of my pain. I had not been hydrated for days now, and had gone even longer without anything solid and filling in my poor, shrunken excuse for a gut.




My mind was spinning with the heat of the sun bearing down upon my frail existence and pain, oh the pain! I felt it in every corner of my being, deep inside of me, in my organs up to my limbs. A part of the pain could be attributed to my tiredness, my endless days of walking and running. Another was due to a bad sprain which I had presumed healed two days before. Yet, with all of this before me, I could not but help but feel of such a desire within me that it gave me renewed strength. Little, though it was as my body could spare at that time but it was enough for me to shout loud enough to capture her attention. Now the monsters around me, they do not shout, they only make low guttural noises as one would assume a dying animal might. And so, as she realized there was another human in that seemingly empty thicket, she paused. A good idea too, since there weren’t many like me who would have practiced self control. But even I, disciplined as I was in my life before the Fall found it hard to resist my animalistic thoughts. She stood there, her weapon at the ready for any sign of aggression, considering whether to abandon me to my obvious fate or play the role of a Good Samaritan and assist in my recovery. Fear gripped me, most would have simply walked away from the trouble and complication helping me would bring to them, but instead, after seemingly endless minutes of pondering she appeared to have made up her mind.




I do not know what guided her thoughts that day as any logical being would have simply walked away, and a girl like that would have had her fair share of experience in brutish men, if men they could be called. These were the sort of people who roamed the land along with the monsters, former humans who had given up their humanity to fall back on their survivalist instinct and their baser needs. They would kill another for food, supplies and sex. Women were tortured, raped and left for dead. I suspect that if I ever survive long enough I would eventually turn into one of them, something with the intelligence and cunning only a human would posses but without morals, and thinking only of myself and my needs. Still, she walked to me, slowly, with the business end of her crossbow pointed at me, her, for the lack of better words, mysterious and strangely comforting eyes searching me for any kind of threat. My fear in being abandoned receded, quickly to be replaced by another. What if the method of her survival was by being like those other men? I had no food with me, but my flesh would have sustained her for several days. I have heard stories about such horrors, whispered in my now desolate village, of people who eat their own. They are similar to the monsters that surround us but with a beating heart and mist from their mouths on a cold morning. My fingers curled around a rock, desperate and worthless. As she walked into shooting range, she noticed the feeble movements of my hands in an attempted defense of myself and a smirk tore through her face. Her beauty now brought not comfort, but fear. She walked much more slowly towards me, suspecting a trap and possibly doubting her decision to approach this seemingly helpless wanderer.




It was then, when she was standing roughly six feet away from me, and after what seemed like days of anxious silence that she finally opened her mouth. “Speak, and I might not shoot you”. Something in me told me to rejoice, for help had arrived but another told me not to trust her. There was an encounter, a few days before that I had with a group of men, three, though I suspect there were more behind the trees. Weaponless, I was forced to run for my life when threatened, barely escaping and I was not eager to repeat my previous mistake, resulting now in my injured foot. Yet, it was her eyes that drew me in, seducing me, and with so I replied her, my voice scratching against my dry, papered throat making my words seem more like whispered growls. “I won’t eat you, if that is what you mean” a slight smile creeping unexpected onto my ridiculously sun burnt face. With that, I gave myself to the cherished oblivion of slumber, passing out as I had never done in the past weeks.

Revision of the zombie

Roughly about a year ago, sapiens spongiform encephalopathy or commonly known as red death made headlines around the world as people started getting sick and dying from it. millions, of people and no vaccine could be found fast enough. There was no way you could avoid it. It was in the water you drank, the air you breathed, the people you came into contact with. Within weeks, the government died, the doctors desperately trying to develop a vaccine died, the military died, and your friends and family died. The lucky few who were immune tried to pick themselves up and rebuild the world but before most of the bodies could be buried, we found ourselves in another sort of pickle. The people we loved started coming back. But they weren't like their old selves. No, they were starving and we were on the menu. The disease sapiens spongiform encephalopathy took effect faster in living people, the faster your blood pumped, the faster it spread. It breeds inside the human body, but will survive almost anywhere damp. I have described the symptoms in my first blog post. After that, the virus mutated, gaining the ability to infect those immune. Maybe this was made possible by someone who was immune somehow getting infected. No one knows, and no one is around to find out.

An Escape

I haven't been able to get to a computer for days now. My netbook's battery died on me a few days after I found it. I'm not sure what to think anymore, with everything I've seen. When I was living at the Village, things weren't so bad. We had enough to eat through farming and we kept livestock. The undead population wasn't too bad too. Out guards kept a good lookout, taking care of anything suspicious that got into their sights. Up till now, I'm still cursing the bastard who caused all this-my friends, the people i called my family, gone. All gone. And out here, well, out here, it seems almost impossible to survive. How I did for so long, I don't know. I used to have a plan, to get humanity back on it's feet or at least to create a new community, but hopes of that are all gone. For days now, I haven't seen any form of human life, and as i walk further, I encounter more and more undead. Tine after time I escape, barely. I'm living each day more and more like 'them'. I drag myself around, nothing but food on my mind, groans and moans come from my mouth instead of words; I'm too tired to talk. I'm afraid my tongue will forget how to form words so every night I practice talking, whispering to myself in the pitch black, fearfully listening to any sound that might mean danger. I don't know anything anymore, I'm too tired. I'll come back to this computer and write a bit more later. Now, the sweet sweet thought of sleep calls to me.

My view on life in the wastes

i was searching the cars along the highway when i finally found a cigarette. Heaven..The taste of tar in my throat and rush of nicotine through my blood, clearing my head like a rush of fresh spring water through dry, cracked clay. I haven't seen a sign of life-or un-life for days now. just me, walking to nowhere looking for something i can't place my mind on. Wait-yeah, i was looking for survivors. People like me, wandering this barren wasteland. It seems that now, I have all the time in the world to spend, but none to spend on happiness.But a spark, a small ray of joy did I find when I smoked the cigarette but before, when I ran away from my village till now and what may come after, I see little hope. Hope is too small, happiness fleeting. What a sad word we live in now, where we would risk our lives and the lives of those around us for these moments.

A Bit of Luck

On the road again. The rain's pouring hard now, outside the window of the car I'm in. Or whatever's left of the car. The taste of rust fills my mouth, I was stupid to try to spend the night here. I found a netbook 2 days ago, but it's taken me 2 days to find a wifi hotspot. So, it's raining pretty hard outside. I hope this piece of junk doesn't leak. You see, every time it rains, even a small drizzle, survivors here have to find shelter. Or else we're infected. The virus can breed in human blood but that's not to say it can't survive in rainwater. Or any kind of water. Plants take in the water so I can't eat those too. I found a cart full of supplies lying next to some poor bastard yesterday. There was cat food, a few pieces of some meat i didn't touch and bottled water. Thank god, I was dying of thirst. Hunger I can manage but when I start getting thirsty, my mouth goes all dry and papery. My throat feels sticky and I can't think straight. The cat food is a blessing too. For too many days I've survived on nothing but my own spit. The supplies I brought from my village ran out, fast. When, I don't know. My memory's slipping. I guess lack of sleep and nourishment has been taking a toll on my mental welfare. Oh yeah, I killed a few dead ones some hours back on the road. I stopped at this inn thinking i could find something but all i found was a bellboy and a receptionist. With milky eyes, papery skin, and grasping fingers. Bloody nutfucks can run, and run fast. Maybe when you don't feel pain anymore you can keep going until your legs break. I bashed in the head of one that managed to grab me with a piece of metal i found and the other one I broke it's spine by pushing it out the window. I was lucky, usually more would be loitering around the building. They seem to do that, stay near buildings. I know that if I was ever surrounded by even a few of them on the open road I'd be dead. Too tired, too groggy to run. I have a constant headache and always feel like throwing up. Cigarettes help, but not too much. But they're hard to get. The only remaining cigarettes I can find are on the dead ones. Getting them is a whole different problem. And have you ever tried lighting up with only a flint stone? Either you don't or you set your hair on fire. And even a small fire attracts those things; they come running and making those sounds they make-something between a cough and a scream. Maybe they're choking on something, but it's not killing them. Unfortunately. I think I'll give you a list of my inventory now. I carry everything in a backpack i found on some small kid who wouldn't need it anymore. I have a knife, more for opening cans than killing stuff. 3 cans of catfood, a large almost empty bottle of water and some expired junkfood in a plastic bag. Pathetic. Ah, I almost forgot to tell you what happened 2 days ago. The source of the banging noise was caused by one of them in one of the rooms in the basement. I suppose it sensed i was nearby and tried to satisfy it's hunger on me. I got out of there before it broke out. The rain's slowing down now, but it's been like that all night. First hard, then soft, then hard again. I'll wait a little while for the skies to clear then get out before anything finds me. A nap now would be nice. I'm tired but a lot more afraid of what's out there. Maybe if i lie on the floor of the car...