The street was empty, cracked and torn; I stood on a roof gazing across the horizon. The scene would’ve looked unusual pre-outbreak. I took out a filthy book, I had salvaged it from a burned out building. Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche; oddly fitting I thought. I opened the book carefully, and stared at it’s insides, they might as well have been the original language, either way they meant nothing to me. I sat there and thought about the last 20 years.
It all happened when I was 17 years old, quicker than everyone assumes. I was sitting on my ass one day, my dad had been sick for days and I had thought nothing of it, but I heard his heavy footsteps coming near my room which made me suspicious; He knows not to come in here. I could hear moaning, a sickly wheezing that you hear from hospital patients or the old, close to death codgers you sometimes see lying in wheelchairs. Then a fierce pounding on the door, the flimsy thing barely held through and after two hits there was a hole big enough to see it looked like he died.
I’d always been nerdy enough to know if something looks dead it probably is and so I grabbed a blunt wooden handle of a shovel, there was no shovel attached but I liked the irony anyway. When he finally broke through I hit him in the head as hard as I could. There was a splatter of blood and an angry shriek from the thing that once raised me, he kept coming so I hit him again, it hit him in the eye this time, and once again blood shot from the orifice, his face was broken and bruised and covered in blood. After one more hit the thing toppled onto me, he weighed a ton but with effort I forced his cadaver off me.
I slowly walked down the hallway and looked into my parents room, what I saw there still burns in my memory. My mother was lying in bed, but it was quite obvious she was dead. I got closer and took off the covers, I retched at what I saw, she had been split open and her half eaten organs were spilling out, the look on her face was one of both horror and heartbreak. Out of respect I covered her back up, and checked the living room to see if my sister was still alive, I failed to appreciate the irony that she was. She sat there in a pile of herself, crying in a little ball; she looked at me but all her eyes showed was fear.
I put the bloody stick down and held out my hand “Its okay Sara, I’m here, I’m alive.” I said it calmly, trying not to traumatize her further. ”let’s get out of here Sara, out of this awful house” slowly she put out her hand, and we walked out of that house into the ensuing chaos. There was screaming, crying, and a lot of running, all those plans I made, all the friends I tried to find only to see them completely ripped apart or completely brainless and trying to kill me. I lost Sara in those early years, I turned my back for a second and all I could hear was her screaming. I killed the zombie……but she was bitten….a day passed, she turned and I knew what I had to do.
I had always thought the zombie apocalypse was going to be fun, but zombies are hard to kill, and they travel in packs. I went to the mall and looted a sword out a shop that didn’t need it anymore and after that I’ll admit it was a bit more fun. I tried guns but it was too hard to find ammo, too much noise. But then I became partial to using my bass on the little bastards, that proved the most satisfying and strangely my bass hasn’t broken to this day.
Four years had passed when I found Chris, he was the one friend I hadn’t tried to find, it was too far away, he lived two cities over in Seattle. “Chris!” I yelled excitedly, he saw me and his face lit up “Duuuuuuuude!!!” he yelled back and we ran at each other and hugged….shut up….I missed him. “You survived?” I asked him surprised as we were walking down an empty street “I stole a katana” he responded, briefly taking it out to show me “ah of course you did” I said with a half-smile. we took cover in a store and we sat around and started bullshitting like we usually do.
I looked up from the book, closing it carefully, taking in the scenery. “Hey Chris” I said “yeah?” he asked “where are we?” “Oh my god you don’t remember?” he said appalled “sorry, I am a little high” I said with a grin, my old deflection doesn’t work much anymore, Chris sighed “we’re in Lakewood, hopefully passing through” “yeah we are don’t worry, wanna get going?” “Sure let’s go.” And we both climbed down the ladder, one after the other. we started to walk down the main street, sun burning my eyes in it's intensity.
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