On the Move
"Come on! Just a few more yards!" I can feel the blood pounding through me, my head hurts, a gash on my arm is screaming for death. My feet are blistered to hell and back, my vision is dimmed and dimming, like someone is playing with a slider in the back of my mind. Why the hell did it all have to go down today? Why couldn't I have gone in the first wave, just disappeared into the faceless mass of others in the now writhing horde of zombies. The effort to move will finally become too much to handle, but I feel at peace with the impending end, the final call. The fight or flight that we were on was a result of only a few days ago, the survival outpost that we were at, nicknamed Chiron.
Chiron wasn't that bad in the beginning, clean water, food, and a safe place to lay your head. It was small and quiet, operated by a handful of men and women, not to cramped. Not to bad once you got use to the conditions. The only problem was the leadership. The whole place otherwise was a fine place to be, to settle in, to make a family. The memories wash over me again, I can feel my mind slipping, slipping back to then.
It was a few days prior, the outbreak had already spread far and wide, the cities in riot mode attempting to deal with it, the military already declaring martial law in some places, and in others, the military was doing clean-up operations. The fires spread, the dead walked, the living cried, and no other soul on the face of the earth was content. It was over, contact with radio signals became infrequent, most stations left on the air were numbers stations, most that were around were automated. The shortwave radio bands were lit up, sounding like bad resistance movements from across the globe, frequencies from Paris, Hamburg, Berlin, Moscow. Each one pleading with some invisible station requesting armed support, food, or water, it never works though, the aid never comes. I was in charge of operating out one ham radio, attempting to broadcast on every channel. The same hiss of static pouring from the radio day in, day out. The last operator killed himself, a bullet through his brain, to avoid becoming the undead.
"This is station Xeno-44 broadcasting in a 5 mile radius, does any station copy?" I gasped, another radio group, and they are on the move! If I wasn't paired with another person I would have taken my bows and ran, but my buddy reported in to the camps leader, a military idiot with no common sense. "This is station Xeno-44 broadcasting in a 5 mile radius, does any station copy? Over" I had to respond, maybe they could wait, I could get a small party, me and maybe one of the women from the camp and make pace for them, get out of Chiron and live out on the roads. Supposedly it wasn't that bad, wide ranges offer supreme security, and that food could be grown if you knew what your doing. I greedily hit the hammer to send a message out. "This is Chiron, we read you 5 by 5 Xeno-44, identify your group. Over"
"We're a small band of survivors using a modified bus, we just got out of the city over the hills there and are looking for others. The radio frequencies near here have been going crazy, and it has to be somewhere else. We logged a signal that appears to be another 10 miles out east, and staying steady. Over"
"Any chance your looking for more to join the posse? Over"
"Depends, friendly or hostile? Over"
"Friendly, I need out of here. Over"
"We're logged near here, a small mall area, the parking lot wasn't packed, we'll receive you there, be prepared for a once over, we don't need infected in our group. Over and out"
I figured screw it, my coms buddy had left the room, the leader was most likely going to tell us to cut coms with Xeno-44 anyways, so I'm taking survival into my own hands. I exited an moved toward the armory section of camp. The air was thick, the heat unbearable, and as I approached the armory, shots rang out. As I approached the intersection, zed were eating at least 4 people, hard to tell when they've been disassembled by those ungodly hands. I gasped, and as they caught wind of me, they started to rise, they ungodly moans, emanating from their cold dead throats, their faces, oh god the faces again. Emotionless with pain, some missing eyes, noses, some decayed, worms crawling in and out. I vomited there, a sick mesh of stomach acid and MRE's. I grabbed my pistol, a six shot revolver, and fired into the crowd in front of me. I got 3 with mortal shots, a 2 got clipped, and I completely missed the last undead. I used my speed loader and quickly reloaded, moving for the auxiliary gate near the back of the camp. I'll survive, I'll get to that damn mobile station. I move down an ally, a gun soon leveled with my eyes. Damn, they sure get crafty don't they, a zombie now can wield a gun? I kicked out his leg, the nametag read "Davidson" I swear, he was with me in the coms area, and the worst part is he seems wholly intact, no bites, no scratches, no nothing.
Soon the horde that I had agitated was drawing in on the ally. The "Davidson" zombie on the ground started screaming, firing the rifle wildly on the ground at the others, as they descended on the thing and tore into him. The stab vest he was wearing must have kept them from getting into his intestine, but his legs and arms soon turned into buffets that the zombies were eating greedily. I rushed out the gate and made a run, the mall was close by, only about an hour run if I ran quick and ran smart. I checked a nearby house that we used to stash things, usually good guns, grenades, bottles of whisky and other contraband. I heard a cry, a small girl was in the house. My coms partner must have been hiding a person in there, he knew that was bad bad bad, but he didn't listen. I flew in the house, screaming like a demon to attract them to me, but oddly, there was only her. She was angelic looking, small, petite, a weird thing, was her skin was a soft white. I stood in awe until she screamed, and something bit me. It wasn't an undead, it was something live, like a dog or something. But what mattered was to shoot it. So I did. I grabbed her and yelled something incoherently at her, my head spinning. I moved forward slightly, stumbling. Her eyes were like full moons, staring into my soul. I told her to turn her eyes away, to look down as we moved, to keep her from witnessing what I had to do, killing undead as they got in the way of me and my goals. I was getting to salvation, I was going to survive, I was going to get to that mobile coms station. "Come on, just a few more yards." I kept telling myself that, but my feet feel like lead.
She's watching me struggle to move, so I threaten to shoot her if she didn't keep moving. I felt sick, like I was melting inside. I needed to get to cover, so we entered one of the houses on the road and I braced the door, doing a quick sweep of the 3 adjacent rooms, and she followed in my wake. I made the mistake of falling asleep. I awoke to her screaming again as undead attempted to get inside the house, I promptly dispatched the 2 and started vomiting blood. Light amounts that didn't seem that bad, most likely just stress. I became aware I was hungry, so much so that rummaging the kitchen procured nothing edible. I looked around, the kitchen had a small cutlery set, and upon looking upstairs, there were two seemly fresh slabs of meat. Not exactly fresh, but good enough for me. I had the girl stay downstairs. She seemed sickened by the prospects of food, and I wasn't wasting it on the weak. She started avoiding me on the second day when I came down for some seasonings from the kitchen, the meat was slightly putrid, but still some sections survived to be edible. By the end of the week she was too weak to move, and I was bursting point full, but still hungry, and sadly, I had finished the meat, both slabs were gone. I looked on the counter nearby, and next to a lamp, was a picture of two parents with their child. The photo seemed new, almost like it was taken just before the end of civilization. The girl in the photo was beautiful, like the last piece of cake on earth.
I walked downstairs, a grin cracked across my face, as it had been decomposing for a little while. "Hey, I know your scared, but your parents, they miss you and want you to be with them" I smile as she screams her finally energy expended, a full dinner and the prettiest dessert on the face of the earth, what a month....
Credited to Carmenpasta
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