A Dark Day: Part IX

I don't know how long I've been standing here just staring at these things eat but its long enough for me to realize that these things can't stay alive.....or um, unalive for much longer. Not one zombie will be left standing. I look around the room for some sort of weapon but there's no luck. The closest thing to a weapon I found was a bucket. What the hell am I going to do with a bucket? I walk to the room across the hallway. Nothing in here but a pile of these bastards in the middle of the floor. The stench of death is a lot worse in this room than the others. Probably because these sons of bitches are just lying here rotting on top of one another. I scan the room quickly and I notice a mop leaning against the wall in the corner of the room. I walk over and grab it then break off the bottom, creating a spear-like weapon. That's about as good as its going to get right now. I start walking out of the room when I hear a noise coming from the pile of zombies. I turn back quickly and prepared to attack. I breathe a sigh of relief when I notice that it was just a body that slid down from the top of the pile. Fuck man, that scared the shit out of me. I turn back to walk out again and I run right into one of the zombies that was chained up. I quickly push him back before he grabs a hold of me. How the hell did this happen? Behind the zombie coming towards me I notice the other two shuffling their feet in my direction too. I take a few steps back to get my distance and this undead sack of flesh raises its hands to grab me and that's when I notice that these fuckers chewed their own thumbs off. That's how they were able to get out of the chains. She was right, they are getting smarter. I stab the zombie right in the head and it falls to the ground like a ton of bricks. The other two come following behind and the block me into the room. I pull my wooden spear out from the zombie's head and start walking back towards the corner of the room. The two zombies stop and look down at their fallen "comrade" and start turning around and shuffling away. They're scared. They're scared to die.....again.

A Dark Day: Part VIII

She attacks me and pushes me back against the wall. All I can do is hold her back while she tries to claw at me. This woman went from zero to crazy in a snap. I guess deep down she knows that no one is coming back for her. She's a sad, pathetic woman with too much hope. I quickly grab one of her arms, slide under it and push her face first into the wall. She tries to turn her body around to get to me but I continue to keep her still and away from me. "Calm down! What the hell are you doing?!" I exclaim. She squirms loose from my grip and jumps onto me knocking us both over a desk in the room. She starts trying to bite at me but I stop her every time. She's acting like a damn rabid dog. I'm holding her head back and I can see the rage in her eyes. I grab a handful of her hair and ram her bloody stump of an ear right into the side of the desk. She screams of agony continue to get louder and louder as I keep ramming her head into the desk. She grabs her head in pain as if she's about to rip it off of her shoulders. Blood starts to gush out of the wrapped up wound and as she screams and we tussle on the floor the chained up zombies begin to moan and yank on the chains. I get up to my feet and grab her from the back of her lab coat and yank. Maybe a little too hard. She flies back and I lose grip of her coat and she falls at the feet of the chained up zombies. She barely makes it to one knee when one of the zombies grabs her and sinks its teeth into her shoulder. She let's out a painful scream and the next zombie grabs her arm and takes bite. "No! No! No!" Is all she screams, as if the zombies understand or if they would even want to if they could. I just stand there and watch as they tear her body apart and rip flesh from her piece by piece. Each of the four zombies now have a piece of this woman and each have flesh hanging from their decomposed mouths. Now she's nothing more than a memory.....almost like she never existed. All that's left is a half of her torso and a whole lot of blood. I realized just now that I never knew her name. I think I'll call her Mrs. Cunningham.......I really liked Happy Days too.

A Dark Day: Part VII

As we walk down the long corridor its looking less and less like a hospital and becoming more and more like a slaughterhouse. I look to my right and see nothing but bodies hanging from meat hooks. I look to my left and see piles upon piles of bodies on the floor. Their chests ripped open as if they had been picked apart by vultures. I continue to push this bleeding woman down the hallway. I can start to hear a faint voice. As we continue to walk the voice becomes more and more prominent. "The Pastor!" the woman says. I grab her and cover her mouth with my hand and lean up against the wall as I make my way closer to the voice. I reached a doorway to the room that the voice was coming from. All I kept hearing a was a very southern accent and he was preaching, like he was preaching to a mass amount of people. "Follow me to salvation! I will guide you to the promised land! Give your body and soul to me and I will show you the way!" The voice continued to say. As I peeked in, the room was completely empty. No one in sight whatsoever. I let go of the woman's mouth and walked into the dimly lit room. The voice was coming from a small radio in the room and sounded like a continuous loop. I turn off the radio and start to hear moans coming from the dark end of the room. I flip a light switch and see four zombies chained up against the wall. They lay their eyes on me and being to moan and groan viciously like I'm prime rib. These zombies look different than the others. They almost look malnourished, well I guess as malnourished as a walking copse can get. Its like they've been starved. "What's going on in here?" I ask her. "We have to run tests on them. All kinds of tests. This one in particular is a starvation test. We are trying to see how long these things will continue to exist without any kind of nutrition." She explains. "How long has it been?" I ask. She walks over to a clipboard and looks over some of the papers. "Its been five days." She says. "You mean these things could possibly starve and die off and this'll all be over?!" I ask. "Possibly but its only been 5 days. Further testing is still needed. For all we know these things could go on forever without eating a single thing since they have no working internal organs at all." She tells me. "And this Pastor guy, some rouge Jesus freak?" I ask her as she goes through more paperwork in binders. "The Pastor is the man that's going to save this world with his research. He is going to cleanse the world of all of its impurities and rebuild the world to the way it SHOULD be. We will repopulate the world and the children I produce will be pure." She tells me with an insane look on her face. Its almost as if she has been trained or brainwashed to repeat her little speech. I go ahead and decide to ask her the million dollar question while she's looking through more paperwork. "If he's going to save this world and protect you to continue life here then where is this asshole?" She stares down at her binder for a minute and then drops it to the floor. "What's wrong? Strike a nerve?" I ask her. She then looks at me, let's out a blood-curdling scream and charges at me with nothing to lose.

A Dark Day: Part VI

I let her go and have her choose her own destiny. For a moment she has a look on her face like she's going to do something stupid but then that quickly turns to the realization that she would die if she did. Deep down even the most confident and strong willed individual is scared to die. I remember being five years old and me and my dad going into town to get sour gummy straws. He was the bravest and strongest man I've ever known. There was nothing that he was afraid of. We crossed the street back to the car that day and all I heard were tires squealing and felt a shove that threw me right across the street. When I looked back I saw my dad, on the floor and laying in a pool of blood. I ran to him and the look on his face is one that I would never forget. My dad, the bravest and strongest man I had ever known was scared, scared of death. He said nothing at all. The look was enough. Even being five years old I just knew that everyone was vulnerable. No one was stronger than death. Slowly but surely I looked on as my fathers light went out.
The woman throws me the keys. She made the smart choice. I unlock all my chains and walk over to her. "Come on" I tell her as I help her to her feet. I take her over to the table she was at earlier. There is a decomposed arm on the table with pins and needles in it. Looks like she was doing some tests. I grab a few gauzes and some tape out of the cabinet above and apply them to her wound. She's as good as new now, well as good as a woman with her ear chopped off can get. "They are getting smarter" she tells me as we walk out of the room cautiously. "What the hell are you talking about?" I ask. "The Pastor has been studying them since the outbreak first became apparent. They are getting smarter. They retain a bit of their old life apparently and build on that. Its like muscle memory, if you do things a certain amount of times then you'll never forget how to do them. This is exactly what's happening here but on a larger scale. Didn't you notice that they were suddenly gone when you decided to investigate the area outside of your trailer? They were stalking you, just like an animal stalks its prey. They were waiting and in hiding until you were your most vulnerable." She explains. I still don't understand how that could happen. I look at her confused but intrigued. "How long have you been in that trailer?" She asks me. "For about 14 days I think" I tell her. "That's 12 days too long. They know you, your habits, your patterns. You're lucky you're still alive right now." She says.

A Dark Day: Part V

With my eyes closed shut I can still feel how close the person is. I can feel a hand being waved in front of my face and a nudge to my side with a foot. I open my eyes slightly and suddenly become aware and alert when I see a scalpel in the hand of the person standing over me. I have to "play dead" so to speak. At least for the moment. I can hear the jingle of keys so I'm guessing I'm going to be moved somewhere. My left hand becomes free from the chains and that's when I make my move. I open my eyes and within that instant I grab the scalpel from the persons other hand. In the same motion I yank on the persons arm realize I'm looking at a woman. I pull her close to me and put the blade to her neck. "What the fuck do you want with me?!" I ask her with a low growl in my voice. "We are studying them. We need to put a stop to these things." She tells me. I press the blade harder to her neck and a small amount of blood comes exposes itself. "Let me loose" I demand with the same low growl in my voice. "The Pastor wouldn't be pleased if I did that. We need living tissue to complete the study and well, your the only survivor we've seen in 24 days." She explains. "I don't give a fuck who The Pastor is but you better let me loose or I'll slice your neck wide open! From ear to fucking ear!" I exclaimed as I pressed a little harder into her neck. "Go ahead and do it." She said ever so calmly as she throws the keys to the chains across the room. "My death would be minuscule compared to all the people we could save." This woman is completely insane! She knows just as well as I do that there is no one else left around these parts. Who knows if the rest of the world is the same way? I'm not going to let these people use me as a damn lab rat. I just need to get to those keys. "Are you going to get me those keys?" She nods her head no. "Your not afraid to die are you?" She nods her head no again. "I'm going to make you hurt then." I wrap the chain that's connected to my right hand around her neck. "Are you scared?" I ask her. She nods her head no once more. In one quick motion I slice her left ear right off her head. So quick that it looked like a magic trick. Blood starts to pour out like a running faucet all over me and all I can hear is her screams. I let a few minutes go by then I tell her "I'm sure your no stranger to surgery and blood loss. Your probably feeling kind of dizzy right about now from the blood loss. If you get me those keys then I can help you stop the bleeding. If not then you won't make it out of her alive even if I let you go. Take your pick."

A Dark Day: Part IV

Its been 27 days since the outbreak. The only way I know is by counting sunrises and sunsets and making tallies. It gives me a somewhat sense of normalcy. Still there seems to be no end to this. It just keeps getting worse and worse. Something seems different today though. I can sense it even sitting in this tin can of mine. The air seems too calm out there, almost like everything has stopped. Usually I can hear the moaning of those bastards every so often, but right now I don't hear a thing. I stand up and take a look out of one of the vents.........nothing, absolutely nothing. I grab my machete and look out a few of the other vents. Nothing. I'm going to have to check this out. I walk towards the door with my machete ready and unlock the door. I push it open with my foot and back up. I have to wait a while just in case. Again, nothing. As I glance out the trailer I see..........emptiness. What the hell is happening? All I see is dirt blowing in the wind. Did these things get scared away by something? Maybe they ate the whole population already and now they're slowly dying off. Maybe all of this is over and things can slowly go back to normal. Wishful thinking. I look from my right to my left and I see a baseball bat coming my way..................shit.

I wake up from my nap dizzy and seeing double, not to mention the throbbing headache. Where the fuck am I? This room that I'm in can only be described as possibly a run down operating room but I can't be sure. I can see a vague outline of a person across the room standing with their back to me and messing with something on a table. "Hey!" I yelled at the person. I get up and try to walk to the person but quickly realize I'm chained to the floor by my hands and feet. "What the fuck are you doing?!" I demanded as I pull on the chains. The person turns slightly but ignores my question. "Let me go! You can't do this to me!" I start yelling. I keep trying to get myself loose but I'm not having any luck. Whoever this is acts like I'm not even here, like they can't hear me. As I look around the room I can see old blood stains on the floor. Not too old but old enough to stain the concrete. I'm starting feel dizzy again, I think need to sit back down for a minute. I plop myself on the floor and I can feel my eyes starting to close. Don't pass out. Don't pass out. I won't make it out of here if I do. My body slowly slumps to the side and I hit the floor. This can't happen. I've lasted this long. Stay up. Come on. My vision gets blurry and my eyes continue to try to keep themselves open. The person is walking towards me now. All I see is black calf-high combat boots getting closer and closer. I'm losing this battle. I need....to...stay...al......

A Dark Day: Part III

"As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil". Those are the words I keep reciting to myself as I drag this guys' carcass out of my trailer and across a field. I didn't need this body stinking up my camp and attracting more of those bastards. I had to get it as far away as possible. As I'm dragging this guy by his legs I look down at his head, or what's left of it, bump across rocks. I can't help but think of who he belonged to. I mean, did he have a family? Where are they? Was he traveling alone? None of that really matters now. Just another casualty of this epidemic. I can hear them coming now. I think they can smell the bloody flesh. I let go of his legs and start heading back to camp. I have to move fast but not too fast. I can see the trailer from here....more or less about 200yrds away. I look back at Curly, yes, I named him Curly. No one should die without a name and plus, I like The Three Stooges. I can see one zombie come out of the grassy field nearby. One turns to two then turns to four then to eight. I try to not look back but I can't help it. Its like watching one of those nature documentaries where the animal is ripping apart its prey. Just to see them doing what they're doing with no remorse....its eerie to think what this world will become. As I turn back around I bump right into one of "them". It tries to take a bite of my shoulder but I move right on time. Without skipping a beat I grab the back of its head and make it dive straight to the ground breaking off the bottom of its jaw in the process. I'd like to see that thing try chewing on someone now. As the zombie gets up off the floor I go for a swift kick right across its head. It falls limp to floor. Great, my boots are bloody now. I continue to walk back to camp. "As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil"