“Get off me, son of a bitch!” I howled to him and the vacant stare suddenly came to life. He opened his mouth, bearing his teeth to me and leaned forward, but instantly stopped and pulled back to take another look at me. Behind him, I was beginning to see the horde of at least thirty or more gathering closer.
I was done for. There was no doubt about that this time… my life was over with. I had said that so many times thus far, and seriously thought it was going to happen. But now I had absolutely no doubt. This time I was going to die.
Several more gunshots echoed out of the school. The young man who was still holding me loosened his grip and backed away. I immediately pointed the gun directly at his face and cocked the hammer. If I was going to die, then I would take as many of them with me as I could. But there was something in his eyes that haunted me, killing all the anger I had abruptly. I removed my finger from the trigger, and performed the stupidest move in the history of the world, I lowered the pistol. It nodded to me, and once again, as before, they simply turned and scurried off toward the front of the complex leaving me completely unharmed. I fell against the wall and slid earthward more scared than I had ever been in my life. My heart beat so fast that I expected it at any moment to just explode and I’d slide sideways into deaths waiting arms.
“Holy shit,” I announced. “What the fuck is going on?” I asked.
I was at a complete loss for words. I couldn’t for the life of me understand what was going on or why the undead had left me alone, only to be attacked moments later by something, whatever the hell it was, far more sinister than the undead. This thing seemed to have intelligence, like it knew what it was doing. It hunted in packs like wolves, and it could run as quickly as any man. The thing that had grabbed me wasn’t dead either. It was very much alive like I was… so what the hell was it?
I thought I knew what fear was. Thought I had tasted it several times before in the past, only to come face-to-face with a truth that I didn’t like. Everything I had known before and felt would be nothing now compared to this new thing.
The rain felt good falling on my face, as I sat there slumped against the wall trying to figure things out. Several times during my thought process, I could hear the beating footsteps of those new things, as they sprinted by and only glanced at me until they disappeared from sight, yet not one of them stopped to attack me or even gave me a second thought. It was as if I didn’t exist to them.
The truth stared back at me from sunken dead sockets.
I got to my feet and without a single glance for safety; I shot off toward the West and eventually ran into the main road. From there I followed it for about a mile before finding an abandoned car, which I threw myself into and started, although I was sure there would be no keys in it or it would be out of gas. I was wrong on both accounts.
Driving silently through the small town, my mind continued to wonder down paths I was frightened to admit even existed, places I didn’t know anything about. It was a futile exchange to cover the facts that I was all too familiar with… but wouldn’t admit out loud.
The lights of the small town faded slowly behind me as I raced into the darkness. I ran with the lights on, as the idea of safety no longer meant anything to me. I had faced down a horde of new things and was still alive. So what difference did it matter whether I embraced safety wholeheartedly or lived as recklessly as I could? The reality of it all was as obscured as a figure through shattered glass – formless and without any detail. There was no such thing as safety, there never had been. It was all just an illusion created to make the fact that we had no control over anything, easier to swallow.
I turned down a dark hilly road and spotted the bandage over my wound. As I drove a great many things became clear. I started to question why I was even fighting to survive. Why I was trying to regain some form of control from a situation that held no control to begin with, or even further, why I was trying to recover the tattered shreds of my dignity with no one left to see it.
A small group of undead shuffled onto the road about one hundred yards in front of me. I slowed the car until I was within ten feet of them and got out. They turned my direction and started advancing slowly. I pulled the SBR into my shoulder and fired at them, oblivious to the fact that I was screaming at them, telling them to die, cursing them, and cursing myself, until the last one fell. I dropped the rifle on the hood of the car and walked over to where they now lie.
Looking down at them I was filled with empty hope. The world we had all known and took for granted was now gone and no amount of guns or bombs against the undead would change that and bring us back our humanity. Tomorrow would be the same as today and the only thing that would ever change was the amount of the undead. They would grow while we died out. How ironic I thought to myself.
The rain picked up and I returned to the car.
Life was now the minority. WE were now the minority.
Under heavier rain I pulled the car into the Ex’s driveway and got out. Nothing appeared to have been touched since my last visit, so I grabbed my things and hurried inside through the garage door, shutting and locking it behind me. I made a quick sweep of the house for either undead or other survivors, finding the master bedroom door slightly ajar. Apparently the little girl within had found a way out, or something had found a way into where she had been. The house was clean, so I made myself comfortable.
After the can of juice and two power bars had been devoured, I wondered into my Son’s room and sat on his bed. The sheer brutality of the truth, as well as my coming fate, held no further contempt and I fell apart. All that I had to continue would be destroyed at one point or another, either by me or something else. What I had been focused on to the point of blindly racing forward, was all in vain.
The unthoughtful tempest raged on, building as the unaffectionate hours passed away.
I slipped into the awaiting arms of sleep, tired beyond belief and broken. The past week’s events filled my brain, aching like a migraine, but were soon dispatched by the painkillers I had taken before lying down. The ease flooded over me and even though the bed was to firm and the pillow was too fluffy for my taste, I drifted off to sleep with the short rifle in my right hand, lying across my chest, and a picture of my Son in my left hand. As sleep claimed me, the picture slipped from my hand and fell to the carpeted floor.
Lightning flashed and thunder violently trembled the earth to its core.
The shadows peeled across the front yard, crossing the side of the house and coming to rest at a single window. More appeared and they used each other as a make-shift ladder to better peer into the window at the stranger on the small bed. They made no noise in their task, using the cover of the falling rain to mask their movements. Their heads darted in the direction of each new noise, pretty much as an animal would do when stalking its prey. Listening at everything around them, using the night as a fellow weapon to aid in their advance upon the unsuspecting.
When they were unable to get the window open, they moved on to the next and so on, until they came to the battered garage door, where they entered and tried to open the door unsuccessfully. The darkness concealed who they were and with each bolt of lightning they would scatter into the nearest hole of shadows to keep from being detected by anyone.
Unaware of what was just outside the house, as I was fast asleep. I found myself in a dream, or what had to have been one considering I was nowhere near the town I lived in, let alone in my own home. I was sitting on the couch, Kember was playing in the floor next to me, my wife was busy cooking something in the kitchen, as the program I was watching was abruptly interrupted by the local news action team. They were speaking on the matter of a new virus that had formed in a different country, I’m not sure where as I really wasn’t paying any attention, and how it had made its way to the states in just a few days.
There was a member of the CDC on hand answering the questions of the young reporter and I was about to change the channel when the CDC member suddenly grabbed th
e camera and looked directly at me. “You’ve been bitten you stupid son of a bitch!” He shouted. “Why else would those things not rip you apart… unless you were becoming one yourself!”
I flipped to another channel only to have the CDC member cut into view and shake his head. “Do you honestly think changing the channel is going to silence me? Well, do you?”
I immediately changed to another channel. Once again, he was back. “Why else would a six year old little girl bite you and then later while getting supplies at a gas station you suddenly begin to feel strange. Your heart begins beating in an unpredictable manner, you’re sweating profusely, and then, even better, you pass out. Do you not find that just the slightest bit odd, or even out of the norm?” He stated to me. “Well?”
The Reporter now appeared and asked the CDC member what I should do, as if trying in some weird way to help me.
“There’s nothing he can do to help himself, however, there is something you can do to help those around you,” he added.
“And what’s that?” The Reporter asked.
“Shoot yourself,” he said with a devilish grin. “Shoot yourself in the fucking head!”
The camera then panned back to the Reporter. “Well there you have it, Brandon. You can’t save yourself, but you can save those around you by blowing your brains out. Back to you Jan.”
I turned the television off and could feel the anxiety racing through my body. My hand started to hurt, and then begin to throb. I raised my sleeve to see that the bite mark was gone, as was the flesh that had once been there, exposing my bones. Fear filled me from head to toe and it was that very moment I noticed that the Reporter and the CDC Member were now standing in front of my television set looking back at me with grins.
“What the fuck do you people want from me?” I yelled to them. “Leave me alone!”
The Reporter continued with her piece. “And there you have it, Pamela. Mister Ellis appears to be either oblivious to the truth or just too much of a coward to do the right thing.”
The studio personality, Pamela piped in. “I’m guessing he’s a coward, I mean anyone that leaves their own wife to die in the middle of the kitchen to save their own ass, kind of narrows it down.”
The CDC Member moved over and sat beside me on the couch. He stared at me for several long minutes, as if we were long lost friends catching up over a beer. He shook his head a few times and pointed toward my arm. “You’re one of them now, you know that, right?”
“No I’m not!” I screamed. “I’ve seen what they do and that’s not me! I’m still human and that’s final!”
He smiled. “Well, to make you feel a little better. You are correct… sort of.”
“What do you mean, sort of?” I asked him. “They eat people for God’s sakes. I don’t do that shit… there’s nothing wrong with me!”
“Is that so?” He asked and instantly grabbed my hand. I fought to get him off of me, but he was stronger than I was.
“Get off me you crazy bastard!” I screamed, still trying to break free.
He pulled the bandage out of the way and the bite mark, which had begun to heal the last time I looked at it, was now infected and each tooth mark could easily be seen.
“Are you so sure about that now?” He asked me and loosened his grip. I jerked my hand away, got up and crossed the room to put as much distance between us, holding the wound as though it were bleeding profusely.
“Why do you think they didn’t eat you?” He asked, no longer on the couch, but now standing directly behind me. “Because they don’t eat their own, that’s why.”
I spun to find him glaring at me with such hatred in his eyes that I could feel the heat like I was nearing an open, and extremely large, flame. Grabbing me once again, he lifted me off my feet and slammed me hard into the wall. I heard the boards and studs groan from the force, as my back also felt it.
“Does this look familiar to you?” He asked. “Do you remember them doing this to you?”
I tried to block the memory from the school complex out of my mind.
“You do, I can see it in your eyes,” he stated and let me go. “They won’t always be so nice, you know. Eventually they will figure you out and when they do… you’ll be fair game, just like the others. Pretty little lambs until the wolves arrive…”
I collected myself and began to answer when I noticed that there was no one in the living room but me. Kember was still playing near the end of the couch, my wife was still in the kitchen, and I was standing against the opposite wall looking directly at the couch where all of this had first started.
“What the hell is wrong with me?” I asked.
Somewhere within the house, with lightning flickering through several windows and casting shadows to dance at random, something turned the door knob to find it locked. The turning continued a few moments, until a single hand burst through the hard stained glass of the door, a large shard of glass stuck between the index and middle finger. Not a single release of pain careened through the dark house. Only the sound of the raging storm made any noise.
The door lock was unlatched and the door was slowly pushed inward. A barrage of lightning jumped into the dark house, throwing shadows at random and darkened figures began to form, patiently glaring into the realm before them.
Thunder rumbled and tore hard across the sky.
The End.
If you’ve enjoyed this story and would like to see how things wind up for Brandon, Kember and the many other characters I have forgotten to mention, as well as all of the crazy shit that could possibly go wrong with the world at its utter end… then please stay tuned for the third book in the Day One series. Coming soon.
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Day One (Book 2): Choices Page 19