So this story is entirely my own. I have no idea where it is going, nor did I put any sex in it. But I did put a ton of violence and gross stuff! So if you are insulted by either lack of sex, and or homosexual advances, and or violence, and or gross things, I have no idea how you found this story in the first place. All I know is that the Internet is a strange and wonderous blackhole. If you choose to read it, it's zombie themed. But I don't know what to call the Zombies yet, so I try out a few things here. Give me suggestions, but I have no idea if I will continue. My track record for finishing stories is pretty bad.
What's Left.
"Run!" She screamed at me.
The door slammed behind Jess, and I passed her a thick metal pipe. Not a moment sooner than it was put into place, the door began to pulse forward and groan against the pipe. Sickening grunts and scratches came from the other side.
"It's overrun." I said to her, sweat rolling down my brow. "There's no way that we can get back there." She punched the door, causing the noises to flare up for an instant.
"We need into that drug room!" She pulled a knife from her belt, and looked about to do something incredibly stupid. "Cover me?"
"Jess, no!" I grabbed her arm, and pulled her towards me.
"Jake!" She shook free of me, brandishing the knife at me. "My sister is dying! Your girlfriend, is dying, and you just want to stand there, and let it happen?"
"There is no guarantee that there is anything even back there! It's been over eleven years. This place would have been raided before now!"
"Then why did we bother coming here!?" In a flurry, she tucked the knife back into her belt, and took off running down the hall. I wasn't sure if she was running from the situation, or what the door held back.
The hospital was disserted, beds pushed against doors, overturned. The mess was everywhere, making running in a straight line impossible. I could have, and should have stopped to grab some of the blankets that littered the ground, but that would have, ultimately, been a waste of time.
"Jess!" I called out through the hallway, when a door slammed against its frame beside me. Startled, I flung myself against the floor, as loud pounding noises echoed through the emptiness.
She pulled me to my feet. "You fucking idiot, let's go!" She was a touch bitch, and I looked up to her in many aspects, but she had this way about talking that let her make you feel like crap.
Rounding a corner, and arriving at the nurses' station, one of the doors behind us splintered open.
"Fuck!" Jess ducked down behind the counter, breathing heavily. Her tone changed into a whisper. "Stay down."
"I know what I'm doing, Jess..." I mumbled.
"Apparently, ya fucking don't, kid." She shook her head, and took her knife back out, passing it to me. "Take this, don't fuck it up." From the other side of her pants, she took out a long, silver pistol, and checked it. "If I shoot, we leave. Immediately. Do you got me?" She all but waved the gun in my face.
"I got you." I confirmed. My heart was racing, and my lungs couldn't get enough air.
From the other side of the counter, I heard the gentle scraping of feet across the laminate flooring. It was slow, methodical, and it petrified me. A snarling, wheezing sound that was almost a breath crept along with it. I had been trained over the years to freeze at that sound, to expect the worst when I heard it. But most importantly, to be terrified.
Jess's hand crept over to the knife in my hand, and gently, quietly removed it from my hand. In a flash, she bolted upright, and grunted as the sound of a skull crunching found my ears. The form collapsed on the opposite side of the counter. She landed back down on her butt, chest heaving. She wiped the blackened blood on her dark jeans, and handed the knife back to me. "Be. Ruthless."
She stood up, urging me silently to do the same thing. I nodded, and stood up, not looking behind me. "Jess," I began.
She turned to look at me, and raised her gun. I dropped to the ground and a shot rang out through the hollow building. "Run!" And she was off. Two steps, and I happened to catch something in the glass cabinet, left untouched. A small pill bottle, and I wondered.
Hastily, I whipped open the cabinet, and it fell off its hinges, making more noise. I heard that familiar scraping along the floor, but faster than I normally heard. It was absolutely running to the best of its ability. Scrambling through the cabinet, I grabbed the small bottle, not even bothering to look at the label.
"Ah! Fuck!" As I stabbed my finger on a shard of glass from the dilapidated cupboard. Hearing the deep breathing in to my right, I fled like the wind down the hallway, after Jess.
The hallway was deserted, no matter which way I turned. She was gone. But she couldn't have gone far. Then, a howl from behind me. It could smell my wound, and it wanted to make it much worse. "Fuck it."
I picked a direction, and ran. Jess would be at the entrance, if she didn't assume I was dead. Fuck, if she left me behind...
Opening the door at the end of the hall, I stepped into the dark stairway. It was muggy from all the years of being closed off to the world. Dust plumed up, making me cough. But I slammed the door behind me, closing me off from the light.
I felt my way around the dark room, and found the railing. One floor down, just one. Taking a step, the metal stairs beneath me rattled. I began hurrying down them as fast as I could, and then there was nothing. I fell, only a few feet, but I fell flat on my back, grunting in the dark. I bit my teeth together, at the piece of metal that ripped across my arm from the broken stairs. More blood was not good.
Picking myself up, I took out my bandana and wrapped it tightly around my arm. "F-" I began before catching myself. Tightly tied, and ready to go, I opened the door, slowly.
The hallway was clear, but I assumed that it wouldn't stay that way for long. From what I understood from the stories that they told us, once this all began, people flocked to the hospitals. Unfortunately, that was the perfect place for everyone to fall victim. Never stay in a place with too many people, it's deadly.
Grunting to my left, and I sunk to the ground. A squishing, wheeze came out of the door, just up ahead of me. There was no end to them...
Looking ahead, there was the lobby. If I made a break for it, I could make it there, then be out and clear. I took a few deep breaths to ready myself for the sprint, to psyche myself up for it.
"Ok, ok, ok!" Run for it.
But it was faster. A nurse lunged at me in her torn white gown. Fingers grabbed a tight hold of my arms, blackened from years of decay, only a few fingernails left. I threw my arms up before my face, catching her in the neck. Somehow, the white bonnet remained on her head, though very little hair still did. Her entire face was maimed, scratched, and nose broken. One eye sagged lower, seeming to pop out. Her eyes were clouded over, and white, while her rotten mouth bit at me.
This one still had a lot of fight in her, the virus enhancing her strength, while stripping everything that it meant to be human. She simultaneously clawed at my bandana, while lunging forward and trying to grab a bite of me. Her breath was rank, drooling a thick black ooze down onto my shirt.
"Fuck you!" I reached for Jess's knife. Her hand smelt the blood on my finger, and she lunged for it, forgetting all about my face. I was able to roll over on top of her back, as she snapped at my finger with gnarled teeth.
The knife made it in front of her mouth, and she began to bite down on it relentlessly. Pushing forward, the knife sliced its way cleanly through the sides of her lips as she strained to get at my finger. Her black blood fell out of her mouth, though it didn't seem to bother her. She was getting too close to my finger for comfort, and so I rolled off of her, freeing my hand.
She crawled over to me, and began trying to climb up my body towards my wounds. If it weren't for my thick jeans, I would have been infected from her craw marks. Stabbing the knife at her, she managed to swat it away from me, and it skipped along the floor. I held my breath as she reared her head to look towards the knife, and the noise it made. When she twisted her head back to me, it exploded with the sound of a shotgun.
The corpse fell on top of me, coating me in a thick layer of thick, black blood. With her inside all over me, I let my head fall backwards in relief, my arms flailing out at my sides. I blinked, and the shotgun barrel was placed against my head.
"You bit, boy?" A deep voice threatened me.
I stumbled, "No," and shook my head frantically.
"What's this?" The gun moved down to my arm.
"I fell. In the stairwell, I fell and cut my arm." I think my heart was beating faster than when I was about to be eaten alive.
"Yeah," the gun was removed from my vision, "that stairway there is out." It sounded like the shotgun was slung over the man's shoulder.
I pushed the body of the nurse off of me, and I managed to stand on weak knees. I placed my hands on them to steady them, and to catch my breath at the same time. The man was wandering away from me, both arms hung up on the gun.
"Thanks, man." I panted, before retrieving the knife.
"You owe me a shell." He said, turning slightly over his shoulder. "What the hell you doing out here anyways?" He chuckled. "Hospitals' been out of supplies for years."
"I could ask you the same question..." Then it hit me. "Fuck." I turned to try and run.
"Now, now. Hang on there." I heard the gun rise up and I put my hands in the air. "Turn around." I did. He was older than I expected him to be. Dirty blonde hair, more than a little scruff on his face, probably a week or two old. But the gun was covering most of him. "I ain't no Vulture. So you don't need to worry about that. I'll at least ask questions first, that's why I saved you. So let's be smart about this."
"What do you want?" I asked, rather worried to hear the answer.
He lowered the gun, revealing a definitive jaw line, and a big scar down the side of his forehead and temple. His green eyes seemed soft, but the way he carried himself was intimidating as all hell. A thick brown leather jacket hid who knew how many weapons, it was certainly bulky enough.
He snorted a laugh. "I wanna know what you found up there." He tilted his head, gesturing upstairs with it. He slung the gun over his back, a strap keeping it in place.
"Nothing." I said quickly.
"Well now, I know enough about people to know when they're lying." He walked over to me, standing right in front of me. I lowered my head instinctively, submissively. He grabbed my chin and forced my head to look into his eyes. "How old are you, boy? Seventeen?"
"Yeah." I answered, wishing he didn't make me look into his eyes.
"Then let's see if we can get you a few more years. What did you find?" He threw my chin to the side.
Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out the pill bottle, and meekly held it in front of him.
"Expired, you know." He took the little orange bottle from me, and read the label. He gave a little smirk, and put the bottle in the inner pocket of his jacket. "Penicillin. Might still work. Thanks, boy." He turned and started to walk away.
"Hey! I need that!" I sprinted after him, and grabbed his shoulder.
Before I knew it, I was on the ground with him on top of me, a long hunting knife to my side. He pushed a heavy hand onto my chest. "Look, boy, I respect that you've got a lot of fight in you. I bet when you grow up, you'll be a real killer. But I gotta say, you're gonna have to drop this, because I am not afraid to kill you."
"Listen, my girlfriend is going to die without those meds." This time, I found the courage to stare him in the eye. "Please."
"Heartfelt. But I think that I need it more." He raised his left sleeve, revealing a nasty, infected gash that had been stitched together with what looked to be dental floss. "Now I'm sorry about your girl, but I'm on my own out here, so I can't lose this arm. If your girl has someone to look after her, she'll do just fine."
"She's got a fever, and it hasn't gone down in days. She's going to die, you can't do this to me!" I struggled against him, but despite the wound, his muscles held me in place.
"Calm down!" He shouted at me. A growl answered the man's shout, and the pair of us looked over to where the sound came from.
A man in bloodied scrubs wandered out of a doorway down the hall. In an instant, we were on our feet. My companion slung his gun over his shoulder and aimed it at the walking doctor.
"Stand back, I've got this one." He muttered. But when four more followed the doctor, he rethought using another shot. "Scratch that, boy. Let's get outta here." When we ran, the five of the dead ran after us.
The man knew exactly where to go, dodging around corners and kicking open doors on his way through the forgotten hospital. It wasn't surprising then, when we quickly arrived at the entrance to hospital. Sunset was not too far off, making the sky that odd orange colour that enveloped everything.
While the dead were not averse to going out into the daylight, they avoided with an almost nocturnal tendency. Few could be seen out on the streets now, but with the onset of night, more of them would find their way out from wherever they lurked during the day. No matter what though, any time, day or night, it was dangerous to be out on the streets of a city. It was always better to seek shelter.
The man grabbed an old piece of a broken car, and secured the doors closed with it. "That's not going to hold them. Don't stop running now, boy." And he took off down the street. I didn't know whether or not I was to follow him, but with the darkening sky, I would never make it back home in time. The slam of a body and clawing sounds from the other side of the door confirmed that I should follow him.
A few streets over, I managed to catch up with him, breathing heavily. He sported one bead of sweat down the scar on his face. "We need to get off of the streets." I panted. He looked down at me with a stern look, as if to question how I'd managed to survive this long if this was my level of fitness and combat skill.
After a full, agonizing minute, he nodded to me. "Right, let's go then. I know a place nearby that should be safe."
We reached the place that was `nearby,' long after it was dark. He had a small flashlight that flickered every now and then that he brought out once we were safely inside a heavy metal door. "This way." He grunted, climbing a back access staircase. Up about four floors, he threw his shoulder into a door, and it slid open with a loud scraping sound. He grabbed my shoulder and pushed me through the opening.
"Hey! Watch it!" I protested, and a hand covered my mouth as I was slammed up against the wall. His other arm went across the chest, and a knee came into my groin less than gently. I whimpered.
"Shut up, boy!" His gruff face looked sternly at mine, though I was unable to see it entirely in the darkness. "Now you listen here, I've taken quite the risk in bringing you here, so you're going to do exactly what I say, do you understand me? And if not," he pushed into my chest and groin harder, "let's just say that I have other ways of shuttin' you up. Got me?" He pushed me again, and walked away, through another doorway. When I followed, he looked back at me judgingly, and slung his shotgun onto an old, dirty mattress.
I didn't dare to talk for a long time. He lit an oil lamp, and I was able to see the room, but did not dare to comment on it. It appeared to be an old office, fairly upper management if I guessed correctly. There were still a few picture frames hanging on the walls, mostly with certificates and awards. The desk had been overturned, and forced up against one of the walls, with a bit of window visible over the top edge of it. The windows were boarded up, mostly with bits and pieces of other desks, presumably from the other offices of the building.
Without speaking, he opened up a can of some sort of long expired food with a great stab of his hunting knife, which disappeared as quickly as it flashed through the lamp light.
"Where-"
"Shaddup." He cut me off.
Gathering a few piece of fibrous wood, he made a quick fire with a longer piece that he dipped down into the lamp and lit aflame. I could not figure out if this was his home or not. It seemed awfully ragged, but then again, so did he. But whether he lived here or not, he definitely knew his way around. A few camping bowls were produced, and once there were coals, he put the can in amongst them. A few minutes of awkward silence later, and a bowl of lumpy broth was thrown at me.
I ate slowly, while he drank his down forcefully, getting a good portion of it on his scruff. With some of it still in his cheek, he said grumpily, "Go ahead, if you think I'll answer."
I didn't know how to proceed, so I just went back to my original question, though I had gathered up so many more since we sat down. "Where are we?"
"Vulture nest. Killed a bunch of them and made a safe house out of what they left, `bout a month ago now." He swallowed the rest of the meal and stood up, tossing his bowl in my direction. "You ate my food, boy. You clean up."
"But, where do I do that?" I asked sheepishly.
"On the roof, there are buckets. Should be full of water. No light though, too dangerous. We're right in Vulture territory now."
"Holy fuck..." I said without thinking. Vultures, the scourges of this broken world of ours. They were merciless bands of cannibalistic scavengers. As far as I knew, they adopted the name after being called it for too long, and made a sort of gang out of it. They hunted people and the dead alike, making little differentiation between the two, except that one was ok to eat, and the other was not. The only time I had seen them was when they were carrying off a woman from our stronghold on one of our runs into the city to scavenge for food. I only remember a large black circle on the man's back, with a big yellow outline of a vulture in it. She screamed until they were out of sight, as I hid behind a dumpster, ashamed I could not help her.
"They won't come here unless you make too much noise, boy. And if they do, I'll let them have their way with whatever hole they want before I take you and them out. You got me, boy?" He sat down in the old swivelling office chair, and peeked behind a piece of black fabric that covered a hole in one of the broken pieces of wood.
"Who are you?" I asked, taking another sip of disgusting soup.
"That ain't none of your business." He said quietly. After placing the fabric back carefully, he swirled to look at me again, leaning back in the chair with his legs spread out. He put his hands behind his head and took a long look at me. "I saved you, and that should be enough, boy."
"I can't thank you enough for that. I guess I owe you one." I nodded to him in respect.
"You don't have anything else that I want. Trust me." He snorted a laugh through his nose, and his eyes travelled down the length of me, then back up to meet my eyes. The look he gave me was unsettling, I was still having some difficulty believing that he wasn't a Vulture. His eyes looked hungry, and I had just finished the last of the food he had given me.
"I'll just go clean these up then..." I hurried up with both of the bowls, and took off down the hallway, back towards the stairs we had come up.
Quietly, I made it to the roof and began to freak out. I was up there for the better part of an hour breathing in what I was sure would be the last bit of air that I ever would, without being brutally fucked then eaten. Maybe at the same time. I tried to distract myself by washing methodically in the buckets of rainwater that were, indeed up there with me, and instinctively staying low to the ground.
When I managed to get my bearings, I searched around the rooftop for something to kill him with when I made it back downstairs. Finding a loose pipe, I quietly unscrewed it the rest of the way free, and snuck into the stairwell.
I may not be the best with a weapon, but I could move quickly, and quietly. It had served me well in evading the Vultures that day they took one of us. Now, here, I would utilize it again to kill one of them. Get revenge for the one that I was too afraid to kill. Don't get me wrong, I was still petrified. He was much bigger, and older than me, and I tried not to underestimate what tricks he might have tucked away inside that bulky jacket.
The oil lamp was still on when I crept into the hallway. I left the door open to avoid it making too much of a noise in closing it. Sticking to the walls, where hopefully the floor would not creak, I made it to the office where I had left the man. My heart was beating so fast that I thought it might explode out of my chest.
The room was silent, and empty. Where did he go? Oh fuck, I thought to myself. I might as well be already dead if he was hunting me. My only opportunity was to catch him off guard.
"What are you-" I spun around and went for his head with the pipe I held in my hand. "Fuck!" He shouted, showing some vocal restraint. He dodged the first blow, and then caught the pipe in his hand at my second attack.
The pipe was ripped out of my hand and thrown into the office chair. The hand that held the pipe was brought around my back, and my face hit the floor as I grunted in the pain of falling, and in his pulling of my arm in all of the most uncomfortable ways he knew how. It hurt, but not enough to make me scream, which I'm sure he thought about. He straddled my lower back and pushed my head into the ground with his free hand.
"What the fuck are you doing, boy? What the fuck are you doing?!" he was still subdued in his tone, but forceful, and angry as ever. I could feel him breathing heavily, letting the adrenaline in his blood run its course. "What's wrong with you?" He demanded when I wouldn't answer. He forced my head into the rough and dirty carpet of the office. "Huh?!"
"Please don't..." I couldn't get all of the words out. Not the ones I wanted.
"Kill you? Fuck, boy. I wasn't going to, but now the idea seems real nice!" he pulled my arm up and I let out a grunt of pain. "I told you, I ain't a fucking Vulture." He released me, and got up off of me.
I stood up quickly to face him, but his back was to me. He had removed his jacket and shirt, and he stood there, barefooted in his worn jeans. His back was covered in scars, imperfections in his sinewy back. His hand ruffled his own hair as he struggled with what to think, and to calm down.
He turned around and stuck a finger at me, his entire body flexing, showing how little of the bulk that was contained in the jacket was really just muscle. His chest was damp, glittering slightly in the lamp, revealing hair that made it from collar bone, to beyond the belt and pants below. Not thick, but prevalent. "Now don't you ever go fucking doing that again, boy. Got me? I took a risk for you!"
"You stole the only thing that can save my girlfriend, and I'm the bad guy?" I said, remembering how I got myself in this mess in the first place.
He looked down at his arm, and stretched the skin a bit, testing the pain. I assumed that he had taken at least a few of the pills, and the millisecond flash of guilt on his face showed me I was right. I had to get back home, and to her and Jess. But it was not going to happen tonight. I dared to think what might happen tonight.
"Look, boy, I'm sorry, but it's a cut throat world out there now. I don't know your girl, and I doubt I ever will. I'm trying to survive just as much as the rest of what's left out there. Vultures, people, animals... Whatever's there. I don't have the time to care about this crap, you hear me?" Realizing he was showing vulnerability, he cleared his throat and straightened his shoulders, dropping his big arms to his side. "Go to bed, I'm done talkin'."
"On that?" I asked, gesturing with a nod to the mattress. He grumbled and sat down in the office chair, and picked up a book that he seemed to be about half way through. It was well worn, and I could only faintly see the title `Utopia' on the cover. I smiled a bit at the irony.
"What?" He shot at me, along with a stern glare.
"I... It's nothing. I mean, my brother was reading that book for school, back when there was school. I remember looking at it once, and not understanding a word of it. My dad said that it was stupid communist stuff." But when I looked to him, he wasn't paying me any attention, and flipped a page with a sour expression on his face.
With no more conversation to have that night, I resigned myself to going to sleep. I refrained from taking anything off, and instead just laid down on the mattress that felt damp, even though it wasn't. Using my arm as a pillow, I stayed awake for a long time, still scared about what the man might do if I was to fall asleep. But soon, I found it too much work to stay awake, and I drifted off.
When I woke up, I was laying on my side with the man's heavy arm holding me tight against his body. It took me awhile to realize that the hairy forearm was foreign to me, and the stiff morning wood poking into my lower back was not supposed to be there. Of course, my immediate thought was that he was raping me. I began to struggle, but a leg wrapped around my legs, and his strong arm was more than capable of immobilizing me.
"Please, no." I whispered, and he harshly silenced me. His other arm's tricep slammed down on my face, smooth from the elbow up, and a loud bang deafened me.
I was rolling around on the mattress holding my head in intense pain for some time before I realized that he was no longer restraining me. He was standing, back to me. Through his legs I could see the corpse of one of the reanimated dead. Its face was mangled, half eaten. It was oozing that thick black liquid that used to be blood from a mouth with its teeth only barely hanging on to the rotten gums. Its hands were out in front of it, like it had been crawling. I could only just see that it didn't have any legs, and upon closer examination, its nails were non-existent with only bone showing. It had crawled a long way.
I grunted, and he came rushing over, and put two hands over the hands that were already covering my ears. Our eyes met, yet his looked back and forth. "You'll be ok." He said, pulling my head next to his body. I got a mouthful of his chest hair, but his strong hands kept me there, but somehow, I felt safer, and glad to be out of harm's way, for now.
Just as quickly as he had pulled me close, he seemed to recognize what he was doing, and forced my head away. I flopped onto the mattress, as he gathered a few things into a canvas backpack. Hastily, he threw on a plaid button up shirt that he did not bother to button up, and his jacket. Slinging the shotgun over his shoulder, he thrust the bag at me.
"Let's move. The Vultures will have heard that. It's not safe here anymore." He ran out of the office, and towards the stairwell. He stopped, staring at the open door, then spun to face me. I could see the anger on his face at my mistake. I had left the door open when I was trying to kill him the night before. I held my breath in fear that the gun that never left his hand might be pointed at me.
"I'm sorry... I was scared last night, and I didn't know what to do." I rushed out. He shook his head in disgust at me. "If I hadn't left the door open, it would have bitten you when you opened it." He sucked his teeth, and fled down the stairs with me on his heels.
In the distance, I could hear the sounds of shouting, as the Vultures were mobilizing to see what the shot was so early in the morning. My eyes took time to adjust, and it was difficult to follow the man at first, being blinded and deafened slightly still.
But when I caught him up, he forced me back against a wall, with the gun to his lips to shush me. He mouthed the word `Vultures,' and I nodded.
Instinctively, I looked around the alley that we had come down. It was incredibly overgrown with weeds emerging from the asphalt. There were few possibilities of escape, except for the way we had just come, but since the Vultures were swarming around that location, it was impossible to even try to go back there. The man before me took hold of my arm, startling me slightly, but when he began to run, low to the ground, I followed without thinking. I was placing a great deal of trust in this man, and I think it was because he had saved my life twice now.
We hid behind a broken and looted car that was held up only on one side by cinder blocks. He kept a hand on my head, letting me know that it was not safe for me to look up through the dirty windows. I felt like a child, incapable of doing anything that he might find acceptable. Still unsure of how I felt about the situation, he dragged for forward again, this time across a small alley, and behind a large building.
He peeked out from behind the corner of the building to see if we were being followed, while he kept my head down below a window at chest height. My head was still hurting, but I felt as though the adrenaline was helping me to push through the worst of it.
When the window above me smashed, and a Vulture reached through, grabbing at my companion, I froze. The Vulture was a burly man with too much of a tan to be Caucasian, and wearing a hat. That symbol of the black circle with the yellow silhouette of a vulture, the one that haunted my dreams was on the breast of his winter vest that he wore, despite being mildly warm out.
The Vulture grabbed my companion and began trying to push his head down onto the shards of glass in the windowsill. The symbol starred at me, daring me to do anything to stop my companion from dying, impaled by a shard of broken glass.
"Help me!" the man gurgled, as the Vulture's hands moved down to his throat.
I went to move, but the symbol urged me not to dare. If he dies, then I am next, I thought. He has a knife. A large, hunting one.
I sprang up, startling the Vulture enough for the man to attempt to break free, but the Vulture regained composure and tried with renewed effort to kill my companion. Inside his jacket pocket, I felt the knife in a sheath, which I promptly ripped off, and drove the knife into the Vulture's right eye. The knife scrapped along the bone with sickening vibrations running up the metal and into my hands. He stopped pulling at the man's head, and simply fell backwards in a heap on the floor behind the wall.
The man lurched forward, away from the spikes of glass that had threatened his neck only moments before. He steadied himself on his knees with one hand on the ground, the other on my knee. He heaved a few quick breaths, and then turned his head to look at me. "Thanks, boy."
His knife.
I leapt through the window, taking out a few of the spikes of glass with me, and the man tried to grab me, but to no avail. I made it through the window, unscathed.
Hovering over the lifeless body of the first living being that I had killed, I wasn't sure how I felt. It seemed a surreal experience, like I had seen it in one of those movies that I watched as a kid. There certainly was a great deal of blood in all of us, though I had seen more blood come out of a head than any other part of the body I had seen bleed. As I stood there, the blood pooled around my shoes.
"Are you listening to me?!" The man whispered harshly at me. "I said, let's go, boy! Fuck the knife!"
I quickly reached down to grab it, but it would not release. I put a bloodied shoe on the corpse's chest, and I simultaneously stomped down, and pulled. Ribs cracked, and the scraping that I had felt before reverberate through the knife, did once more.
I threw myself through the window, and right into the arms of the man. We toppled over each other in a messy pile, ending up beside each other, heads sore, and leaning against the opposite wall of the alley.
"You alright, boy?" He asked me, rubbing his head and standing up. He offered me a hand, half of his shirt and jacket sliding open as he leaned down.
"My name is Jake." I said, accepting the hand that was given to me. He did not return his name, like I had hoped the friendly gesture might have done. "Your knife." I handed it to him, still covered in blood.
Taking it, he wiped it on his jeans, losing a few of the threads that held the denim together. "Thanks for this." He looked long at it, showing that he had at least some sort of emotional attachment to it, if only that he had had it forever.
He began to run before he placed the knife back into his jacket. I was unarmed again, something that had become slightly uncomfortable over the past night. I had never been unarmed since the dead began walking around the streets with us. It was not settling, and I began to fantasise that I had searched the dead Vulture for any hidden weapons.
"Where are we going?" I whispered to the man.
"Relax, I'm going to get you home."
Home? The meds. Fuck, what was I going to do? This man had saved my life, and I had saved his. In this world, that was all that there was. A series of trusting each other enough to keep your friends alive. That's how I felt towards my girlfriend, Amber. Fuck, what was I going to do? What was I going to do?
"I... Really appreciate that..." Not knowing what else to say, I followed him, although I wasn't entirely sure if I knew that he knew how to get to the sanctuary of my little enclave of people.
"Sure thing, boy." He either refused to learn my name, or simply forgot. Either way, I did not feel comfortable telling him again. If he really did forget, then that would serve me well in the future. If he was captured by the Vultures, he couldn't give me up, and if I didn't know his name, same deal. This was good.
For another hour, we were able to avoid any more search parties of the Vultures. We appeared to have outrun them for now. It would only take a few more hours on foot before we reached the enclave. Hopefully, everything would be fine with Amber when we got there. With the Vultures out of my mind, and with the pair of us heading in the right direction, I wasn't able to get Amber out of my mind. But how would I wrestle the meds from him? If there were even any left? I hadn't seen them since last night. It was troubling, but not too farfetched to assume that there were none left.
Our camp was a small compound, a modest compound of about one hundred people. We had managed to put up walls around the perimeter two years ago made of some overturned transport trucks and fencing that we had scavenged from an abandoned camp. We managed to pick up stragglers with the promise of food and shelter in return for loyalty towards our council that had more or less elected themselves.
They were five people who had escaped from one of the cities long ago into the wilderness, and began to search for a more permanent place to settle down. They managed to find a hamlet with only a few survivors, and they all integrated well together. Since then, many of us found our way there through the forests, or along the empty roads and were all welcomed.
This past year, after the walls went up, we managed to establish three fields outside of the boundaries. They were too big to put up anything but a meager fence, and any dead that managed to wander in were quickly killed and disposed of; though there were not that many. It was safe, which is why many people chose to stay.
"Here we are, grab my hand." I reached up, and took the wounded arm, and he grunted in pain.
"Hang on a minute." I said, when I was up on the small cliff that I could have absolutely reached by myself. "You have to slow down, the infection will spread faster, the more you move."
"That's an old wives tale, boy." He kept walking, rubbing his arm slightly.
"What happened to you anyways?" I skipped a few steps in order to catch up to him. "It's not a bite, you'dve been puking up black shit long ago."
"Nah, nothing like that." He slid down a rocky slope, finding himself on the riverbed that ran close to the enclave. "I'm ok."
I slid down beside him, and tripped. He caught me, and I stood up straight, and threw my arms out to my sides. "Look where we are. Who's gonna know that you might not be the alpha male that you're trying to come off as?"
"Shaddup." He spat, taking a mouthful of water from the river. "This is clean, right?"
"Clean enough. We're up river."
"Good." With another sip, he let out a satisfied `ahh...'
"Here, let me clean that." I knelt down beside him, and took hold of his wounded arm. He recoiled, stood up, and walked away. "You really should take care of that, you know."
"You're not a doctor." He grunted.
"No, but I know that that penicillin is only going to go so far, if at all. It's expired."
"And you need it."
I looked at him quizzically. Was he really going to give it to me without my begging? I immediately thought of what had changed his mind. The knife? Offering to help? Or just being through this experience together. I always felt closer to people with whom I narrowly escaped death from.
"I don't, my girlfriend does." I corrected him.
"Yeah." He hopped over a log with mild discomfort. I guess that since he was older, he had a harder time maneuvering around the larger obstacles. Honestly, it made me giggle a bit. But the man did not seem to like that too much, and pushed me over the log as I tried to pass it.
We continued on mostly in silence, until we got to the outskirts of one of the farmer's fields. I knew from standing sentry up at the town, that they would have already seen us approaching, and so I waved my hands; the signal that I was, in fact, alive.
Far in the distance, I heard the scraping of one of the trucks being loved ever so slightly to allow a person in. That was policy the groups of three or less, just let them in and see if they need help. Make no mistakes, there were snipers, and everyone in the village carried a knife after the point in which they could be trusted; after about a year. It had managed to keep out a few Vultures set on harvesting a few from the ranks of our population.
Passing through the farmland that was in desperate need of a rain, we approached the entrance, guarded by three men that I recognized as Sam, Devon, and Kasey. They did not seem too happy to see me, which made me worried for what I might find inside when I had passed through.
"Is that him?" I heard Jess say from across the street from the entrance.
"Jess!" I waved at her and she ran over. "How are you? How's Amber?' Her face turned on me, and I received a devastating blow to the face.
"You mother fucker!" She screamed at me, spitting as well. The man was in front of me with his shotgun aimed at her, but the guards had more guns pointed at him before he could even turn the safety off. "Where the fuck have you been? Huh?!" She kicked me in the stomach, sending me flailing to the side, groaning in pain.
"You left me." I managed to get out. The guards had restrained the man, and taken his shotgun, aiming it at his head.
"Left you? I didn't fucking leave you! You disappeared you little fucker! And now Amber is gone! She's fucking gone!" She kicked me again, and pulled a knife on me. The glint of silver in the sunlight widened my eyes, while the guards, my friends, looked on, doing nothing.
"What...?" I asked in disbelief.
"She's fucking dead! She's fucking dead!" Jess threw the knife at me, striking the ground where my leg had just been. "And now you have the fucking nerve to come back here?!" She was crying now, and tried to hit me with her weakened strength, taken up by sobbing. "You left me, you left her. You're a fucking traitor to us..."
"But I found – "
"Fuck you! Get the fuck out of here! I don't ever wanna see your fucking face again! You fucking took my sister! You fucking killed her, you mother fucker!" I tried to speak, but she was hysterical. "You fucking have medicine? Where the fuck were you four hours ago? Huh?!" Unable to reach me since four people had seen the commotion and were holding her back, she spit on me.
"Let's get outta here, boy." The man said calmly.
Jess raged on. "Yeah, you fucking go! You fucking get outta here! I never wanna see you again. You hear me? Shoot this mother fucker on sight! You fucking kill him the next time you see his fucking face! Let go of me!" She struggled, trying to get at me.
I managed to stand, and holding my stomach, I lurched off, back through the gate and passed through. Kasey turned to me and said "I'm sorry dude, I'll see if I can talk to her."
I shook my head to indicate that it was worthless, and turned away from him. He patted me on the back, and I held back a world crushing tear through a tensed jaw. When I couldn't manage to fight it anymore, I ran; instead of facing them all with a wet face.
I wanted to run away, and never be found. It just wasn't real. I would wake up in that shitty office after the guy was dead, since he really was a Vulture, and I would grab the meds, and bring them back to Amber, and she would be fine. I just had to wake up.
You can't die in dreams.
I ran to the river, jumped the log, and fell flat on my face.
It was ages before I bothered to move again. I laid there, listening to the water rushing over the rocks on its way towards what I thought was home. But there was nothing. I had no home anymore, cast out into this unforgiving wilderness, with only the words that she was gone. I hadn't seen anything, hell, I hadn't even really done anything. None of it made sense, and I tried to fit it together. I tried to see if from Jess's point of view, but I couldn't. It was more or less useless from that perspective. Her sister was dead. But so was the girl that I loved, and I wasn't even given enough respect to know what had actually happened.
I was numb. I hadn't let that one tear fall out, and I was damned proud of it. The tear lurked on the outskirts of my eye though, threatening to break free, sending me into a violent fit of wailing and shaking that those on sentry duty would surely hear. But fuck them. I wasn't going to give them the satisfaction of it all. They'd make a game out of it I bet. I sure as hell would have, given their predicament. I was cast out, they no longer had to feel anything for me. In this world, that was all there was. A feeling of trust, of mutual suffering, that held us all together. Once that was gone, what was left?
Nothing but death and pain. Fuck it.
I willed my arms to move, to lift me up into a sitting position. Of course, there was nothing to hold me up, so I fell forward, but this time, catching myself on my hands. They buried into the river stones, and hurt a bit. Round rocks still hurt. Remember that the next time you're in the middle of nowhere and feel like being dramatic.
I stood up in front of the river. I needed to get in, to just sit in the flowing waters, and allow it to take all this shit away from me, and hopefully, the memories too.
I stripped, and got into the water. It was cold, but it felt good on the muscles that had just recently been kicked, bruised, and had fallen into stones. Once my stomach was in, it was blissful. I swam for a few feet against the current, and grabbed onto a protruding boulder, then let the current take my feet out from under me. They wagged in the current, and it made me feel much better.
The thoughts of the events quickly passed, but the pain stayed on in my stomach, and in my heart. It was like a void that sucked up every feeling that I was having. Sadness, happiness, hunger, everything was just gone, and I felt like an empty shell of a person, just floating. Just floating.
I lost myself in the feeling of the rushing water for ages it seemed. There was nothing important, and nothing that I needed to do. It eventually was the realization that I was hungry that made me open my eyes, and take in the bright sunlight. It was well past midday, not surprising since we started the day running from the Vultures, then a few hours walking through the wilderness. An hour more of washing away the darkness in my soul, and the time made perfect sense to me.
So, soaking wet, I stepped out of the river, in a daze of relaxation. Next to where I had thrown my clothes was a medium sized flat rock that I sat down on to get myself together. Damp socks on damp feet, I learned, is not the easiest to put on. Standing up, I let my underwear slide up over my butt, and felt it cling to the water that still made my butt wet.
I sat down again, with one thought running over and over again in my mind: What was I going to do now?
"Done yet, boy?" I heard from behind me. I stood up quickly, and turned around to face the man. Embarrassed, fumbled to pick up my pants and put them on, and realizing that he could see most of me through the white, wet underwear that I wore. He was sitting on that damned log, fiddling away with his knife on bit of tree branch.
"How long have you been sitting there?!" I demanded, tucking a dirty shirt into my pants and doing them up. I felt cheated in my suffering in peace.
"Since you... Well, since you got in, really." He smirked. "But not to worry, I had other things to occupy myself on." He held up a stripped piece of wood, sharpened to a perfect point. "I was watchin' out."
I didn't know what to think. It was like he was taunting me. I wondered how much of him was watching me, and how much was watching out for us. The memory of waking up with him shirtless, arm around me, and a hard on grinding into me flooded back, and I touched my head to see if doing so might help the memory fade. What if he...
"Look, you need to leave me the fuck alone, whatever your name is." I collected my shoes that I had not put on yet, and started storming away. "I don't need protecting."
"You need a weapon though. Do you want a weapon?" He hadn't moved from the log, but when I turned, he was wagging the pointed stake at me.
Cautiously, I approached, with the feeling of his body pressed against my back weighing heavily on my decision to take each step. But, I made to him and made a grab for the stake, which he pulled away.
"I don't wanna play fucking games."
"Good, cause I hate that shit. The way I see it, you need me. You're alone, defenseless, young, and stupid enough to get eaten the second that you leave my sight." I wanted to protest, but I was feeling so poorly about myself that I just let the blow hit me. "And I hate to say it, boy, but I kinda need you too. You're a pain in the ass, and I'm going to regret this later... But I'm all alone out here too. Now what happened back there at your place, that kinda got all these things I'd put away a long time ago, it brought them right back to the surface. We've all got lots of shit to deal with in the end, and I'd hate to go through it all alone again."
"I don't wanna talk to you about this crap." I said, grabbing the stake from him and walking away.
"Course you don't." I heard him hop down off the log as I walked away from him. "But you will, eventually. One day. But hell, might as well go at it with someone, hmh? Better than being alone." He was on my heels, and I spun to face him, causing him to knock into me. Damnit he was solid. I all but bounced off. "Now, this is temporary, though. I don't need you dragging me down forever."
I thought about this business proposition for only a few moments before speaking up. "If I'm going to drag you down, might as well be there to catch you." I held out my hand, and he shook it twice. Then, looking at the sky, I nodded a few times and breathed in deeply. "We're going to need a fire, and some shelter. It looks like rain."
Hope you enjoyed. Maybe another? I haven't decided yet. Sorry to waste your time.