The Walking Dead: Kansas City
The infection spread quicker than a blink of an eye. The death toll was bigger than nine-eleven, if the terrorist attack happened ten times in a row. At least, that is what I have been told. It isn't the infection that scares me most, but what it created. What happened to this perfect world? My perfect future is gone and will never come true. Everything is ruined because of the start of it.
Sometimes I wish I had been around to see the start of it, while other times I'm glad I was asleep. I can't remember about my past, or how I was put into a coma, but I survived 4 months throughout the plague.
CHAPTER 1: Not worth waking up to
I woke up to the sounds of gasping, and a "oh my god."
"He's awake! Hey get Doc in here!"
I blacked out. In what seemed like days, but in reality minutes, I was awake again. The cold sting of ice forced onto my forehead. I couldn't see anything, and I didn't know where I was. I started shaking terribly, and I faded back into the darkness of sleep.
This time I awoke for good. I could see, but my eyesight was blurred. After a few minutes of lying in bed and gaining my eyesight back, I sifted off my bed.
I fell to the ground and lied there for a minute until I felt strong enough to get off the ground. I pushed myself up. I was in a white room, with a small white bed. It had a bathroom, so I walked over. I tripped and fell to the ground which made a loud thud that rang in my ears. I pushed myself, yet again, off the wooden floor. I took a hold of the wall, securing my balance, and made my way over to the bathroom door. The tile felt good on my warm feet as I stepped in. I went straight to the sink and tried turning on the water.
The sink water was pushed out in a sudden burst, as if it hadn't been used in months. Once it settled down, I splashed some water onto my face and looked into the mirror. I saw a teenage boy with long brown hair, a lean tall body, dark brown eyes, and very dry lips. Toward the bottom of the mirror was a note attached reading:
"You do the 'grooming' yourself. Once you finish come downstairs. If no one is there then go outside and check around the property. If there are any blood signs AT ALL, ANYWHERE (which was underlined four times) then God help you."
Underneath the note were scissors, a razor, some tooth paste, a tooth brush, a glass of water, and some deodorant. I cut my hair, which was hard to do, but manageable, for the first time. It was now short, but not what I wanted. I took the electric razor and gave myself a buzz.
And then it hit me like a speeding train. My throat was painfully dry from thirst. I took the water and drank and drank until my throat wasn't stinging from the dryness. I turned on the sink again and put my head under the faucet. The water felt like paradise for my throat as the water rushed down it.
I then heard some glass drop from downstairs. I waited for about a minute to see if I had imagined the noise, or if it was really in existence. No other noise was made, so my curiosity got the best of me. I grabbed the scissors, still fearful of the "blood signs" segment in the note.
I turned to the wooden door, and pushed it open slightly. It made a loud creaking sound, and then I heard a rustle downstairs. I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Out of fear, I jumped back into the room and hid behind the other side of the bed. I could see the shadows of the figures feet underneath door. With a sudden burst, the door was kicked open.
"Are you awake or are you a walker?" a woman's voice said with so much force that made me afraid NOT to answer it. She had a southern accent.
"I'm awake," I replied.
"When did you wake up? How are you feeling?" but she said it not in any way showing her concern.
I stood up from behind the bed with my pair of scissors in hand.
"Just a minute ago, and who are y-"
"Good, you are fully awake. Answer my question, how are you feeling?" again, no concern in her voice.
"I'm fine, I'm very hungry." I replied.
I stared at her. She had brown hair, but all braided together in a bun sitting on the back of her head. Her hazel green eyes met mine. She was in her early twenties it looked like. She was not a very slender woman, but she would not be considered overweight. She was about my size, 5'11.
"Hungry? What sounds good to you right now?" she questioned.
Taken back by this question I replied "Breakfast."
She rolled her eyes. She walked out of the room and went downstairs.
"Well I'm not going to give you breakfast in bed, so you might as well come down," she said from downstairs.
I walked down the stair case, gripping the railings because I was still uneasy about waking up. She was downstairs sweeping up broken glass, which she must've dropped. The kitchen was just a few cabinets, a stove, a sink, a microwave, and a table. She had empty cans of fruit lying out across the table. As she threw the glass into a waste basket next to the table, she looked up at me.
"You don't know do you," she stated.
"What don't I know," I asked.
"Where were you last before you woke up in that bed?"
"I was… at…my house, in Omaha, Nebraska."
"Do you know where you are now?"
I shook my head no. Looking out the window I saw yellow blades of grass swaying with the wind.
"Some farm I think; somewhere in Nebraska, right?" I asked.
"Kansas actually. Not a farm, but a whole lot of land enclosed by a metal gate," she replied as she started walking toward me.
"You never answered my question," I said, "What don't I know."
She grabbed my arm and led me to the table. She took a can opener and opened a can of Rotel tomatoes. She opened, then, a box of graham crackers and handed both to me. I took them both, slightly unsure of what was happening, and set them down on the table. I watched as she opened herself a can and box and put a scoop of dried tomatoes onto a honey-cinnamon cracker.
She ate it, and then looked at me.
"Your turn," she said.
I looked at her wide-eyed. I looked at the "food" and back at her. She nodded her head yes, as to say "go ahead." I took a graham cracker, broke it in half, and then dipped it into my can of dried tomatoes. I took it out, closed my eyes, and took a bite out of it.
The crackle of the graham cracker and the squish of the tomatoes seemed to make a harmony noise in my mouth when I chewed.
"You should consider yourself lucky. People now a days eat less than a graham cracker a day," she informed me.
"Why."
"Do you want me to show you or tell you?" she asked.
"Both. Is this what I don't know?"
"I guess it is."
She led me through the kitchen.
CHAPTER 2: Where do they go when they actually go
The bright light of the sun stung my eyes. The dead grass felt more like straws of hay rather than the soft green that it once was. It was warm out, probably 80°F.
She led me to a steel fence surrounding the house. We walked up to it, and then I heard the noise. It was a mix of a dog barking and vomiting at the same time. A terrible odor filled my nose.
"There it is," she said, pointing to a figure 10 feet away from the metal gate.
"What the…" I could barely put into words what I saw.
"This is what you have missed while you were in a comma."
"What is it?"
"Dead, nothing else but dead."
We stood there for minutes. The gruesome figure of what was left of a man was walking toward us. His white pupils stared at us with the determination to kill. Half his face was missing. His stomach was ripped open and some internal organ was being dragged behind him, connected by an intestine. The "walker" was up against the gate, making those noises. Its hands were fitting through the gate reaching towards us.
"What does it want?" I asked.
"You, me, and any other survivors. Watch."
She took a blade out of a holster on her hip, and poked her finger with the tip of it. A small bubble of blood spurted out right when she removed the point from her finger. About 5 bars away from where the walker was, she smeared the blood on it.
The walker's eyes widened. It withdrew from the gate and walked over to it. When it approached, it held onto the gate, bent down, and stuck out its tongue. It made grunting noises as it licked. Still holding the knife, she stabbed it in the arm.
As she removed the blade, blood, which was a darker hint than that of a normal human's, followed it. The walker made a grab for her. Swiftly, she dodged the gruesome, bony hand.
"Walkers are not humans. If you stab them in the chest, they keep coming." she stabbed the walker in the chest. It made a gurgling noise, but kept pursuing to kill us, even with the fence as a barrier.
"You can cut off their legs-"
"Please don't." I commented.
"-and they will keep trying to kill you."
I stood their looking at the figure. This had better be a dream.
"Then how do you kill it." I asked.
"The only part of their body that matters to them anymore, the brain."
She handed me the blade. I looked at her, eyes filled with fear. She nodded and put the blade in my hand.
"Sooner or later you will have to kill one. Don't worry; I had the same thoughts that you are having now. It is not a person anymore. Trust me, their soul has passed; hopefully to Heaven for this fellow, judging by the cross around his neck."
I stood there, and tears began to fill my eyes. I dropped the blade and fell to my knees.
"Get up!" she screamed, "kill it or it will kill you."
"I can't!" I screamed
"Why not, it isn't alive anymore!"
"I c-c-ant. You don't understand."
"I do understand! Kill it now!"
"No!"
"Tell me why!"
"Because," I looked at her with tears rolling down my cheeks, "this one…was once my… brother."
Back in the house, the lady was preparing hot cocoa. The sky was turning red, signaling a sunset. I sat at the table, just waking up from a nap back upstairs in the white room. I sat there, with my head hidden in my arms.
"I think we need to start over," she finally said after minutes of sitting there in silence.
"Let me have your name," she said.
"Abraham."
"Abraham, I want to first apologize. I didn't know who that was, nobody does these days. This world isn't as merciful as it once was. Times are changing and people are changing. My name is Amanda, but please call me Amy."
"You can call me Abe," I said, voice still hoarse from crying.
"Good, you do forgive me, don't you?"
"It wasn't your fault."
"I should've just told you right away. Nowadays, we need to do more things right and less things wrong. There is hardly ever time for second chances."
"I realize that."
"Do you want some cocoa?" she asked.
"Yes please."
She walked over and handed me the cup. She sat down next to me. We sat there for minutes, until finally I got the courage to say what had been on my mind the whole day.
"I want to go back outside. Did you kill that walker?"
"No I didn't, but I know where it is."
"I…want to find him. Put him out of his misery. I would want him…to do the same for me, if I were one of them."
"I think that is very brave of you, Abe. Tomorrow we can look for him."
"No, not tomorrow; I want it to be tonight. The sooner the better."
"We'd better hurry then. They are stronger at night."
We both got up and headed to the door. Amy handed me the blade. The world around me was spinning. I was having second thoughts about doing this.
"There," she said.
The walker had gotten its hands stuck in the bars it was reaching through to try and grab us, earlier this morning. It saw us, or heard our footsteps. It noticed us when we were about twenty yards away.
Now, I couldn't think straight. The world wasn't spinning anymore, but it was too still. My actions were overpowering my thoughts. The walker started making those noises again. We approached it, and I held up the blade, shaking.
"Harrison…" I couldn't even say a sentence to him, or what was left of him.
"I-I-I still love you," I said as tears began to fill my eyelids once again
Then, the walker stopped making the noises. Its eyes widened, as if it almost recognized me. I put the blade down and put out my hand to touch his hand one last time. All of a sudden, it jerked and caught my free-hand. With fear, I jolted back, raised the knife and quickly stabbed its forehead.
"One more time," she said, "you can never be sure when it is really dead."
I stabbed it again and again until its grip on my hand loosened. It fell to the ground. I pushed down the tears. I fell to the ground.
"H-h-harrissson-n-n"
Amy went down on her knees and embraced me. Her hug felt warm, warmer than any blanket could have at the time. She was crying. Then, the tears fell. Both of us were crying there, on the dead grass, next to the dead Harrison. We cried there until the sun went down over the horizon.
"We have to go," she said. "They are stronger at night."
She helped me up. As we walked back towards the house, I looked back once more of my dead brother. He was in Heaven now, for sure.
CHAPTER 3: Pushing down concrete
I woke up the next morning in the white room. It was still dark outside, about 5 AM. The house was quite and subdued. I swung my feet around the side of the bed, and my head began to throb with pain. Figures, I thought, I was up half the night crying. My cheeks were crusty from dried tears.
I walked into the tile bathroom to wash my face off. I turned on the sink, and like the first day, the water shot out again. After a minute of splashing water on my face and drying off, I remembered the note. It had fallen to the floor, but this time it was lying on its back. There were some notes scribbled quickly on the back. It read:
-grab a backpack
-put in it a knife, a gun, a sleeping bag, some food, some water
-find a car with keys in it
-teach yourself to drive
-pump gasoline out from other cars
-meet us in Overland Park (the walled off neighborhood)
-Good Luck
My suspicions arose even more so then they did the first day. Who were these people? Why did they want me alive? I could hear rustling in the other room. I left the bathroom and snuck out the door. Creeping along the sides of the walls, I walked towards Amy's room. She was awake, the lights were turned on. Out of nowhere, I heard the sound of metal falling to the floor.
I could see her shadow reach down to pick it up. I went down on my knees to try and peer in. I caught a glimpse of her holding a shotgun shell. I heard her load it into her weapon and pump the shotgun. I got up.
I walked into the room.
"Everything all right?" I asked.
"Huh! Oh Abe, God don't scare me like that," she replied startled.
"What's with the gun?" I asked.
"Just…leave me alone."
She took a backpack and headed out the doorway, past me.
"Hey! Where are you going?" I said.
She didn't answer. She kept walking downstairs. I could see that her backpack was filled with bottles, cans of food, shotgun shells, and probably a sleeping bag was squeezed in at the bottom.
"Amy, answer me, please!"
"I'm leaving. I… need to find my family, dead or alive."
"Wait what? Why? Why are you leaving me?"
"You can take care of yourself! You had the strength to kill your own brother! I didn't before when I had the chance! Now it is too late!" she barked back.
"Let me come with you Amy, I can help."
"No you can't!"
"I was going to leave yesterday, until you woke up.. I have got my own problems, Abe. I don't need to babysit a kid while facing them."
"Amy, please don't go! I don't even know how to drive, much less survive in this nightmare alone!"
"Then die already! God Abe, I just… why did you have to wake up?"
I stared at her with wide eyes. The sun finally showed a sliver of light arising in the east.
"Abe, I need to do this. I might come back one day."
"How soon?"
"A year at most," she said and started to turn away.
"A year! Amy, I will never last that long!"
"You have a freakin' metal gate surrounding an acre of land! You could survive 3 years with all the food and water in the pantry!"
I stood there. I couldn't believe what was happening. All in 2 days, I found out that the world has ended and monsters now roam the streets instead of people. I met another survivor and now she is leaving me. My life has ended twice in the day.
"How long have you stayed here?" I asked.
"A week; why does it matter to you?"
"Somebody else was here before you, I know it," I stated.
"Yeah, Abe, somebody lived here until the world ended," she said sarcastically.
"No, I mean that somebody was living, surviving here before you were."
"How do you know?"
"I woke up twice during my comma. I remember hearing voices, somebody trying to help me."
"So, why would they leave here? Food, protection, supplies; this place was stocked to the brim when I got here. If they just left this stuff here they must've either been stupid, or killed."
"Or leaving to a place even better than this house."
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"They…wrote me a note. It was in the bathroom when I woke up. Didn't you see it?"
"No, I decided to leave your body where it was. I knew you were in a comma, I just didn't know if you would die or not. So, I bolted the door shut."
"Well anyway, the note told me of some place in…Overland Place I think it was."
"No, you mean Overland Park. What about it?"
"They didn't say anything other than it being a 'walled off neighborhood,'" I told her.
"Walled off neighborhood," she repeated while gazing down at the floor thinking. "Go get me that note."
I ran up to the bathroom and fetched the note. On the way back down I noticed a symbol on it. An hour glass filled with what looked like water. She took the note from me. She scanned it quickly, and then read the neighborhood part over and over again.
"If this is true, then we might have our work cut out for us," she told me.
"We. Ha, I like to hear that."
"Well, if there turns out to be nothing there, then I am ditching you."
"So we are leaving!?" I asked excitedly.
"Don't get your hopes up. We have about a 2 hour drive, not to mention on the interstate where we might have to walk through the cars."
"Walk through them? What do you mean?"
"Every major road in the U.S. is backed up with traffic. There is no way to drive around it. Walkers roam throughout these streets. And, the noise attracts them. A motor will attract all walkers within half a mile. Imagine, if by chance, that motor broke and you had 50+ walkers after you. Good luck is all I can say," she said.
"Noise, why noise?" I asked.
"What else? Walkers are not humans. They are a whole different creature. They have no feelings, except for hunger. That is what they strive for. The only major artery that matters to them is the brain. Heck, you could even cut off ones head and it would still be trying to gnaw at anything that stood on it. Eventually, though, the blood inside it does matter. It is different from human blood; a darker, thicker blood that smells worse than the walker itself."
"Why the noise, though?"
"It appeals to them. They can see you, hear you, and boy, how much would they want to taste you. Nothing more."
"Can they die of h-. Oh God." I said.
"What!?" she said.
I pointed to what I saw outside the window. The sun was rising and reflecting off the walkers piling up outside the metal gate. I couldn't see details of what the walkers looked like, but I could tell that there was a mass of them piling up onto the gate. Sooner or later the gate wouldn't hold them. More than 100 of them were shoving their way through the crowd to get to the front of the gate.
"Wow," Amy said with a sort of swag of calmness. "That's a lot of walkers. Don't worry, I bet that those gates are more solid than concrete. A speeding car wouldn't be able to knock those gates down, much less do any damage. We are safe here. This house is a gold mine for survivors."
"Are you sure? I think they could knock that over easy."
"Then think again, Abe. Walkers walk at half the speed and have half the strength that a normal person would."
"So are you telling me that two walkers are even to one survivor?" I asked.
"No, I'm saying that they are weak and that gate is strong. Just trust me on this, ok?"
"Ok, I trust you," I replied, but deep down inside I knew that trust wasn't very appropriate for a person who just tried to ditch you.
We ate breakfast, same as yesterday. However, the scavenged food went down easier than the day before now that I had this problem of the walkers outside. We sat there in silence, and every once in a while she would write some things down in a little notebook, with a little pen, then place it in her rear pocket.
"Can I see that?" I asked.
"Sure, I guess. It is nothing much, just a survival guide to living nowadays."
I held the notebook in the palm of my hand; it fit in the groove of my palm. The cover was worn out and had a blood stain on it. From what I could tell, Amy wasn't your average everyday wannabe princess. The first page was just some drawings: a horse, some flower designs, and a person's face. Amy wasn't a bad sketcher. The next page had a title that said "On the Road" and was underlined. Underneath were some tips and supplies needed. The next few pages were labeled as cars, entering houses, walkers, weapons, food, making fire, preparing water, and so on and so forth.
Then the last page was titled "Encounters with Other Survivors." Underneath were five names. Underneath were the names Freddy, Caroline, Annabel, Conrad, Trey, Shannon, and Abraham (Abe).
"Who are all of these other people?" I asked while holding up the book and pointing to the other survivors.
"The first group I was in before I came here. We got…split up. I never saw any of them again," she replied. "I had met other, but erased their names when they died, for sure. I will erase these names one day if I find out they are dead. My group was quick on our feet, and we were virtually invincible to the walkers. Each of us was skilled marksmen, with guns and bows and arrows."
"What did you plan to do, or where did you plan to go?" I asked.
"We planned, at first, to go to Washington, D.C. We then came to the realization that there would be too many walkers than we could handle. We figured, though, if we could maybe make it to the White House or the Pentagon, we would be safe. Rumors say that there are survivor bases set up all over the place. My best guess for one would be either of those two places."
"Survivor camps; seems like a vacation, don't you think?" I said.
"Nah, I'm more of the type of person who lives on their own. I never married and didn't plan to anytime soon. But I was dating someone. He ended up leaving with his family when the infection started going around, though. That was the last I saw of him," she uttered a chuckle."
"Back onto the topic of Overland Park, will we leave today?"
"Nope, but sometime this week. We need to get our rest and you need some more survival skills," she replied.
"All I think I know about a walker is that it is a disease, has no feelings except for hunger, only dies from a headshot, wants to eat my flesh, and most importantly…dead."
"You catch on quick, but not quick enough. I would give you three hours, at most, for survival time by yourself," she said with a chuckle.
"And you planned on leaving me here."
"Guess so. Trust me, by the end of this week you will be able to live on your own. Not that I'm leaving!"
"Ok good, but first, I want to take out some of those walkers piling up on the fence," I glanced over and saw them all pushing and hoping to knock over a steel fence, concreted to the ground. It was sad to think about it. All of these monsters were once people. I bet each of them had a story of how they died. How they turned. I wondered if life would ever be the same. Probably not, I though, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have to be fun.
We started to the door, when I grabbed a kitchen knife. I might as well have had one too. Outside the air felt chilling and dew had fallen over the grass that night, leaving a trail of our footprints wherever we walked. As we approached the fence, the gurgling noises grew louder. These noises, they lingered in my ears more than a gunshot does! I lied in bed last night, unable to sleep from killing my brother and listening to those noises. It filled me with a rage like none other has come before me.
My eyes began to water, my grip tightened on the knife, and I could feel the veins pulsing out of my arms. I yelled and ran at the walkers. Every step seemed to unleash even more pain locked inside of me. I took my knife and drilled it right in-between one walker's eyes. It let out a low gurgle sound, like someone choking. I pulled the knife out of its head and watched it fall to the ground. It fell with a thud and tripped the walker next to it.
More of the walkers had started moving towards my location on the fence. I waited for all of them to come, piling up to that one spot on the fence. I looked back at Amy. She was sitting on the ground now, writing something down in her book. The next walker made a grab for my shirt, its arms reaching through the fence. I was about to stab this one, the same way as the last, when I realized how much my anger had taken control of me. If there had been any walkers closer than a foot away from my first kill, they would've surely of grabbed me. This time I took a step back. The sight made me a little frightened.
Seventeen walkers massed against the fence. They all groaned that groan that I just can't stand. I needed a longer weapon, for my knife was too short. If I tried to stab the one closest to me, the surrounding walkers would grab me.
"I take it back, first I want to get some weapons," I said, analyzing my situation.
"Weapons isn't the first thing you need," said Amy. She held up and jingled her car keys at me. The noise irritated the walkers and some of them groaned a little louder.
"Learning how to be nomadic, that is your first priority. This farm isn't always going to be here, which means you will have to be on the road. I'll tell you from experience that you cant outrun a walker," she said.
"What do you mean? They are slower than molasses and I could be out of sight, at a jogging pace, within 10 minutes."
"That means every time you see a walker on the road, you plan to jog for ten minutes. Abe, I don't even think an iron man could do that. Learning to drive is your first priority. How much experience do you have with cars, and I won't take video games as an answer," she said rolling her eyes.
"I was getting pretty good at pulling the car into the garage, but that was when I could sit on my dad's lap. Other than that, nothing."
"Well that's…sad. Lessons don't start today, then. I guess I could drive down to a town about 5 minutes from here," she said while putting her keys back into her pocket.
She started walking to the driveway. I followed her. My first car that I would be driving was a green Jeep. She climbed into the driver's seat and started the engine. I hoped into shotgun.