The sky was white, laced with clouds. It was almost blinding – like a baby being born out of a womb. There was a slight wind to the air, and I unsteadily sat up and allowed my vision to adjust to my surroundings to see them more clearly.
I can't remember much before waking up, I must have been out cold for a long time. I stood up on my feet, and trudged along the mound next to me, shaking as I walked to get the seawater from the coast to dry. I staggered onto the road, and looked around for any kinds of familiarity. Then, I remembered.
My family and I heard news about the zombie outbreak, so we were fleeing through Chernarus in order to get ourselves to safety, but we were ambushed by the zombies. It took us by surprise, they appeared to flash in front of our car in a second and the next – they were a bloody mess on our windscreen. I remember losing consciousness and hearing panicked voices… but nothing else.
The car wreckage was no longer flaming, but I could easily identify it as the car I was travelling in. There were masses of zombie corpses lying all around it – most likely dying because of the explosion when the flames reached the gas tank. I looked to my left and to the right, for any signs of familiarity, but I didn't live in Chernarus, so I did not recognise anything nearby.
A short distance down the road, there was an army roadblock, which seemed vaguely familiar as I remembered that moments before the zombie ambush we had to identify ourselves as human and not drooling bags of zombified flesh to trigger-happy men aiming their rifles down at us. The problem was these trigger-happy men were no longer there. In fact, I couldn't see anybody, not even zombies for as far as my vision would let me see down the road. I still figured that it was my best bet for finding out where the hell I was, and where I was supposed to go from there. My walk still had a kind of 'stagger' to it, but I regained the ability to use my legs properly after a minute or so. Reaching the roadblock, I pushed past the rusty metal spikes and squeezed through the gap I made for myself. I clambered over a crate, and found myself under a small, holey tarpaulin structure.
I took a step back and even considered running the way I came when I looked down. A man, probably about my height – maybe a couple of years older than me was lying face down on the ground, in a pool of his own blood. It was quite a sight to behold, but one that I would have to get used to, now that I didn't have anyone. There was something of a silence as I stood there, looking at the man at my feet. All sorts of questions ran through my head – who was this man, how did he die, what was his story. This man had a life, over a decade's worth of stories to tell, and he cannot tell them anymore. The silence was broken, by a short burst of static. At first, I figured it was nothing and possibly just the shock, but after a couple more bursts I realised it wasn't shock, and this man had a handheld transmitter on him. Not a cell phone – more of a walkie-talkie type object.
Grimly, I hesitantly picked up the walkie-talkie from the man's belt, held down the "speak" button and spoke – my voice shaking.
"Hello… is anyone there?"
Silence.
"Hello…?" I tried again.
I was about to give up, and pocket the walkie-talkie when a faint voice spoke through it.
"Dan…? Dan is that you? Where are you?" The voice was male, deep and has a British accent. It was quite relieving to hear another voice.
"Dan is… uh… dead." I regretted to have to give such grim news to a new voice that wasn't one of a zombie's mindless groaning. There was a silence between myself and the communicator. I figured it was down to him processing the news.
"How do you know?" The voice asked.
"I'm speaking on his walkie-talkie. You think he'd just give it up?"
"Hey, fuck you! Did you kill him?"
"What? No!"
"You're fucking dead when I find you!"
"Just… calm down! I didn't kill him, trust me – I've just woke up and I don't know a thing about this place… there was this… this roadblock and I went to have a look and I found him here. You have to believe me!"
"Why should I believe you?"
"Because it's the truth! I swear!" The first 'friendly' voice I heard threatened me, so I tried to remove the panic from my voice.
"I can't believe it myself, but I think you're serious. I have to meet you."
"That's fine."
"Listen to me, though. If you turn out to be some asshole who tries to kill me, thinking they're gonna get lucky – two birds with one stone type thing you've got another fucking thing coming, you get me? If you did kill Dan I swear to—"
"I didn't kill him, trust me."
A silence once again. This time for a little longer – although he spoke again just as I was about to ask if he was still there.
"Where are you?"
"I don't know."
"Dan had a map in his backpack, and a GPS and some other stuff. Take it – he'd want to help someone else out – and at least some good can come out of him dying."
"I can't do that…"
"Why not?"
"It's wrong. That's a dead person."
"Wake the fuck up. There's a zombie apocalypse, and people are nervous. It's human nature – give a human a gun and it'll shoot any fucking thing that moves. People are killing each other, let alone zombies like it's nothing. Take his stuff – please, he'd want you to have it."
"Okay then, if you're sure. Hey, what's your name by the way?"
"Lewis. And yours?"
"Josh. My name's Josh."
I reluctantly crouched down and took of the man's backpack and placed it over my shoulders. Despite being given the go ahead it still felt wrong. There was a part of me that was uncomfortable with carrying a dead man's gear, but it died down after a few minutes.
"Okay, Lewis, I have his things."
"Right. He has a map in the backpack, as well as the GPS, get them both out and tell me where you are. Read out the co-ordinates."
I carefully unfolded the map I took from the backpack and located the grid reference and matched it to that which the GPS identified.
"I'm at…" The number which I was at I cannot seem to remember.
"Oh, I know where that is. Look at your map. Just a little bit south-west from where you are, there's a town called Elektrozavodsk. Go there. There's a church in the town you can see from almost a mile away. Just down the road from there, there is a fire station... a big, tall grey building. There's a ladder around the back of it that takes you straight from the ground to the roof. Wait up there for me, I'm going there now."
"Okay. But… what if zombies start following me, or if I run into other people and they try to kill me?"
"Keep running, and you'll be fine. Look west from where you are now – there's a line of trees on a hill. Climb that hill to the top, and if you follow it along south you will end up in the road – just next to the church. I'll keep in contact with you as much as I can."
"Okay, Lewis. And… thank you."
"Sure."
The line goes dead, and I pocket the walkie-talkie and put my equipment in the backpack. After apologising the corpse still beneath my feet, I navigate out of the roadblock, into the treeline and towards Elektrozavodsk.