Chapter 1
September 2nd 2003 24:55 Pine Barons, New Jersey.
The dusty road ahead was covered in the cloak of the night, only to be torn away by the appearance of a single car travelling down its back. The dimmed, worn headlights of the rusty, old Chevrolet barely managed to light the path. It was a lonely night for Jack and Julia Edmunds, husband and wife. They hadn't spoken since coming off the main road, though at least a little friendly conversation would have helped to break the errie silence of the night. The dense forests, not yet exterminated by civilizaton were reminders of the horrible beauty of nature, which crowded the flanks of the road. The be quite honest, they hadn't spoken much for the last for the last couple of days. They were errily resemblant of the American Gothic painting. Their marriage wasn't the best it could have been, either. Quite often, they got into arguements over petty things, and they both though the other was doing simply to get into a fight. They had no children, as of now, though Julia was in the early stages of pregnancy, strangely enough. Jack held his hands on the steering wheel, his eyes blinking off, slowly but surely drifting off to sleep. Whild doing this, Julia sat silently, staring off into the darkness with her arms crossed against her chest. Jerry blinked off once more, his head twisting as he drifted off to sleep for a split second. "Julia, I really can't take too much more of this..Julia? Could we please pull over?" "When we reach a rest stop or something, its not that far anyway, I mean, we've been solitary on this road for," she glanced at her cheap, plastic watch "about one and a half hours now. How long can it be before we at least hit the town?" "Could we switch sides, at least?" "Shut the hell up and drive." Julia said with an annoyed tone. He obeyed. Moments later, Jack's sight line darkened, and his hands began to wobble as his need for sleep overcame him. Only when a dog lept from the side of the road did he fully wake up, jolting the car to the side to avoid it. He only got a small glance of the canine though the dim headlights, but he could swear that there was something wrong about it. Julia, taking a nap next to him, and leaning against the window of the door, jumped up and gave a slight squeek as the car swirved. Jack was a relativly skinny man, a computer programmer for a small company outside of Trenton. The company was responsible for providing other small businesses with computer programs. Things from security to accounting programs. He liked his work, but wished he had gone down the road of corperations and big business instead of mom-and-pop companies. His hair was black, combed to the side neatly and shining, though it was left stressed and damaged after the ordeal of driving for three to four hours straight. Julia was quite different, slightly chubby, she used to to push around Jerry. Her hair was long and black, still with the streaks of sun- bleached blonde from Jerry's working days in the summer, which she spent home, sunbathing and god knows what else. Julia attempted to break the silence by switching the knob on the radio. Static buzzed through the speakers, though every single one of the channels, except one. Water dropped though the one remaining channel, the only sound coming through the radio except the ruffle of labored footsteps. Though the sound was odd, it struck both of them as something much more frightening. They could not put their hands on it, but a strange vibe occored to them. Within a minute or so, Jack promptly turned it off. Finally, the yellow glow of street lights from a small rest stop emerged from the darkness. Jack looked to the sky and quickly thanked god. He turned the car into the small parking lot, and manuvered the car into a small parking space. He informed Julia that he was going to go see if any one was in the office. And so, he turned off the car and opened the door, stepping out into the warm late summer night. He stepped up on the tips of his shoes, looking inside of the brown, dirty windows. The nearly opaque glass offered no more of a better view of a room than a sheet of steel. He turned away from the windows and proceeded towards the wooden door. Jack twisted the knob slightly, and pushed in the light, worn wood door. A nearly dead, single light bulb hung from the cieling, exposed to the surrounding area. As best he could, he scanned the area with a glance. The area was torn around, yes, but other than that, there was no sign of human life. Until he noticed that note scribbled onto a piece of blank yellow paper from the phone book.
August 30th
I can barely keep myself alive. I can't even get to sleep. Everytime I try and close my eyes, I can't help but think that one of thoes...things is going to get through the door. I can barely see anything in here, and I can't leave. I can't brave the darkness. They overtook my car, and they're all over the door. I've decided what I'm going to do. I have one more bullet, I guess it's time to use it. I'm only hoping that by the time someone get's to this, the area has been cleared, or the poor bastard is going to have one hell of a night.
The note, needless to say, scared the living crap out of him. Something in his mind prayed to god that the man had simply gone schizofrenic, and shot himself in what he thought was some sort of alien invasion. After reassuring himself that it could happen, he continued to look around the room. The walls were mostly dark, as was the area around it. Jack circled the room, and at one moment, his shoulder hit the lone lightbulb, sending the light towards the farthest wall from the door. There, slumped down against the wall, lay a man with a snub-nose revolver in his hand, and a hole in his head. The greyish brain matter was at the ground below him, while the brown, flaky blood was dried up at the point where it originally scattered. Parasites already began to feast upon his corpse, as his pale face was beginning to rot, and decompose. It wasn't how he thought it would be, however. He had always imagined that decomposed corpses were sagging, and allowed veins to first protrude form the skin before the skin actually melted away. But this was different, the skin...it seemed like it was torn, almost bitten away. The sight was scorched onto Jack's retenas. Frightened out of his mind, Jack burst through the door, half ramming it and half pushing it open. The dark light of the moon hit him hard and he power-walked, still terrified, back to the car. He had then noticed Julia's side door open. Movement was pushing the car back and forth. Millions of scenarios raced through his mind. He opened the door to the car, and a pale corpse was there, laying over the seats, with Julia struggling for her life. Jack pushed the creature back, but it always regained ground. Before long, the creature stopped tearing through Julia's flesh and aimed its lifeless, pearl eyes towards Jack. Their eyes, met, and the creature crawled over Julia's lifeless body, falling onto its stomach on the asphault ground. There, Jack saw a horrifying sight..the thing had no legs. It pulled itself towards him, moaning and snarling in its insane hunger for human flesh, and he backed up in response. He ran towards the wooden door, one thing running through his chaotic mind, the revolver. He pushed open the door to once again be greated by the dilapadated darkness as before..yet the bulb had gone dark. By relying in memory, he felt around the far wall for the corpse. To his horror, the body forced its hand forewards, grabbing his arms and pulling Jack towards it. Jack used his free hand other hand to pull the revolver from the zombie's hands. He rose the revolver up to the creature's face and pulled the trigger. In one instant, the room was flooded with light, and the noisy moan of a dieing corpse. One thing ate through his mind, what happened to the last bullet of the weapon? He put the thought from his mind and checked the bullets against the moon-light. Four more bullets. He rushed out the door to meet the animated corpse. His torso pivoted and he looked around, searching for the murderous monstrosity. At his left! A hand weakly grabbed out for his leg. He looked down and pointed the weapon, yet before the bullet could escape the barrel, and he could pull the trigger, he noticed it was his wife, Julia. Her right eye was missing, and the one eye left reflected nothing of the human soul that even the most grotesque of murderers posess. It was blank...lifeless. Julia swiftly took a bite of his ankle, digging through to the hard, white bone. Jack howled in pain and fired two rounds swiftly into the back of her head. She gave a lifeless groan and fell on the side of her face. Limping towards the car, he looked around him. He gave the backseat of the car a quick inspection. He had seen too many horror movies to let that go past him. Finally, he stepped inside of the car and shut up. Yet, before the door could close, the torso thrusted its head in between the car and the door, leaving it jammed between them. He let out a single shot into the top of the zombie's head, its greyish brain matter splashing against the insides of the car. Jerry opened the car door again, pumping two more shots into the torso's back in a blood-thirsty rage. He reached in his pocket, digging around for his keys. They were not to be found. He dug around in his other pocket, with the same results. "Fuck" he muttered, rushing out of the car. By now, the horde of zombies which had conquered the nearby towns with their macabre battles has gathered by the edge of the dense forest by the rest stop. They stumbled from the brush and woods, some female, some male. Before he knew what was happening, his instinct took over, and he took refuge once more in the car.
As he was about to close the door, some sort of rabid dog leapt from its position and towards him. The sharpened fangs of the beast tore through his flesh, leaving a deep laceration in its wake. Jerry screamed in the insurmountable pain, the virus that had claimed the lives of all of the other souls here had begun to tear at him, and he could feel the reptilian instincts of the zombies overcoming him. They horded the car from all directions, opening their mouthes and attempting to snap at him while ignoring the glass. The thin pane was all that was holding them back. The zombie dog climbed onto the hood, giving a threatening growl through the windshield. The things began to rock the car back and forth, as they realised that he was protected by the shell. The frenzied bloodlust of the once human beings reflected into Jack's soul, and for one moment, he felt the taste of blood on his tongue, from his teeth biting hard down into its flesh. He had the urge for more, and the urge for the flesh that had belonged to a human. He barely fought it off, he could not last much longer. In his final moments, each memory, from his childhood, to his marriage, to his death played back in a slideshow of happy moments. His birthdays, his High School Graduation, numerous parties with friends, and the day he met Julia. But the situation was of course as dreadful and macabre as anything any man would ever see, and the playback was a reminder of that. Slowly, Jack closed his eyes and placed the short barrel of the snub-nose revolver to his temple. He hoped that once he did this, he would not become one of them, not one of the mindless monstrosities out there. He hoped for rest, nothing but rest. In this situation, clearing your skull of any and all brain matter was preferrable to being eaten alive. He fired the weapon, but no bullet was released. A second pull of the trigger and there was no improvement. The weapon was jammed, and at that time, the old glass was beggining to break under the constant stress the zombies were giving it. The glass pushed inwards and out, leaving small shards both inside of the car and out. A zombie reached its hand through the spider web of cracks in the glass, creating a large gap. The hand wraped itself around his shoulder and tugged quickly at him. Jack tried to push the bloodied hand away, but it clutched into his flesh, soon another hand broke through the gap, and another, and more until finally the entire window was shattered, except for the frame. They grabbed madly at him, snapping at each others arms in a depserate effort. Each one of them forced their nails into his flesh, and then began to pull him from the car. His body was lacerated by the frame of the jagged metal, though that was only the beginning of the pain. The zombies began to tear at his flesh, ripping it off like tissue paper. He could feel the blood beginning to spill, the warm liquid rushing over the painful areas. A zombie tugged at his ear, almost playfully at first, and then a second, more agressive tug. The ear was torn, for the most par, clean off. The zombies were having their feast on him, and his chest was torn open by the starving faces of the monstrosities. Finally, it all went dark. It was dark, yet he could feel. The pain for the most part had stopped, he no longer felt the cold, hard grip of the zombies on his flesh. A tremendous hunger overcame him, not a craving, a hunger. His eyes opened, giving a harsh, dark light upon his whereabouts. Without reason, and without any type of thought, Jack rose his torso sluggishly, giving out a long, and painful moan. Death has not come on swift wings for this acursed soul, not yet. The man-turned-zombie stood up, and the pictures of his Chevrolet ran in his mind. He walked towards the wrecked car, searching in vein for the flesh of humans. He crawled inside of the car, attempting to tear his teeth at the dull leather cushions of the seat. Only the yellow foam yealed from the bite. And so, he crawled out of the car, and walked towards the forest, looking for human flesh. The ground ruffled against his feet, and moans of dispair cried out of the forests, along with his undead comrades. Then, finally, a refugee from the undead horde which has overtaken New York was sighted by the man. He was ragged, unkempt, most likely due to the fact that he had been running from the horde for the past week. Hunger built up into Jack's reptilian mind, wanting nothing more than to tear his teeth into the man. Jack stumbled closer, keeping his arms out, ready to hold onto the man. Appearantly unnoticed, the refugee kept on walking. Jack appeared out of the myst, startleing him. The human pulled out a combat knife, such as those used in the military. Though Jack kept on moving. Fear was conquered within his mind, all he wanted was flesh. The hot blood of humankind and the sinew of a person during a hike. He approached with no fear whatsoever. The man thrust out his knife, and though Jack felt a sharp pain, he latched onto the man and tore his teeth into the human's neck. He cried out in pain and Jack gave out a deathly moan. With his juggular burst, the weakened man fell to the forest floor, giving stabs at Jack's ankles. He fell to the ground with the bleeding man, latching his mouth onto his back and tearing into the muscle. Satisfaction flooded through his body, as if being full, yet the cry for hunger still called. It was early half an hour until the man was dead, and during that time, his entire back was stripped dry by the zombie.
September 2nd 2003 24:55 Pine Barons, New Jersey.
The dusty road ahead was covered in the cloak of the night, only to be torn away by the appearance of a single car travelling down its back. The dimmed, worn headlights of the rusty, old Chevrolet barely managed to light the path. It was a lonely night for Jack and Julia Edmunds, husband and wife. They hadn't spoken since coming off the main road, though at least a little friendly conversation would have helped to break the errie silence of the night. The dense forests, not yet exterminated by civilizaton were reminders of the horrible beauty of nature, which crowded the flanks of the road. The be quite honest, they hadn't spoken much for the last for the last couple of days. They were errily resemblant of the American Gothic painting. Their marriage wasn't the best it could have been, either. Quite often, they got into arguements over petty things, and they both though the other was doing simply to get into a fight. They had no children, as of now, though Julia was in the early stages of pregnancy, strangely enough. Jack held his hands on the steering wheel, his eyes blinking off, slowly but surely drifting off to sleep. Whild doing this, Julia sat silently, staring off into the darkness with her arms crossed against her chest. Jerry blinked off once more, his head twisting as he drifted off to sleep for a split second. "Julia, I really can't take too much more of this..Julia? Could we please pull over?" "When we reach a rest stop or something, its not that far anyway, I mean, we've been solitary on this road for," she glanced at her cheap, plastic watch "about one and a half hours now. How long can it be before we at least hit the town?" "Could we switch sides, at least?" "Shut the hell up and drive." Julia said with an annoyed tone. He obeyed. Moments later, Jack's sight line darkened, and his hands began to wobble as his need for sleep overcame him. Only when a dog lept from the side of the road did he fully wake up, jolting the car to the side to avoid it. He only got a small glance of the canine though the dim headlights, but he could swear that there was something wrong about it. Julia, taking a nap next to him, and leaning against the window of the door, jumped up and gave a slight squeek as the car swirved. Jack was a relativly skinny man, a computer programmer for a small company outside of Trenton. The company was responsible for providing other small businesses with computer programs. Things from security to accounting programs. He liked his work, but wished he had gone down the road of corperations and big business instead of mom-and-pop companies. His hair was black, combed to the side neatly and shining, though it was left stressed and damaged after the ordeal of driving for three to four hours straight. Julia was quite different, slightly chubby, she used to to push around Jerry. Her hair was long and black, still with the streaks of sun- bleached blonde from Jerry's working days in the summer, which she spent home, sunbathing and god knows what else. Julia attempted to break the silence by switching the knob on the radio. Static buzzed through the speakers, though every single one of the channels, except one. Water dropped though the one remaining channel, the only sound coming through the radio except the ruffle of labored footsteps. Though the sound was odd, it struck both of them as something much more frightening. They could not put their hands on it, but a strange vibe occored to them. Within a minute or so, Jack promptly turned it off. Finally, the yellow glow of street lights from a small rest stop emerged from the darkness. Jack looked to the sky and quickly thanked god. He turned the car into the small parking lot, and manuvered the car into a small parking space. He informed Julia that he was going to go see if any one was in the office. And so, he turned off the car and opened the door, stepping out into the warm late summer night. He stepped up on the tips of his shoes, looking inside of the brown, dirty windows. The nearly opaque glass offered no more of a better view of a room than a sheet of steel. He turned away from the windows and proceeded towards the wooden door. Jack twisted the knob slightly, and pushed in the light, worn wood door. A nearly dead, single light bulb hung from the cieling, exposed to the surrounding area. As best he could, he scanned the area with a glance. The area was torn around, yes, but other than that, there was no sign of human life. Until he noticed that note scribbled onto a piece of blank yellow paper from the phone book.
August 30th
I can barely keep myself alive. I can't even get to sleep. Everytime I try and close my eyes, I can't help but think that one of thoes...things is going to get through the door. I can barely see anything in here, and I can't leave. I can't brave the darkness. They overtook my car, and they're all over the door. I've decided what I'm going to do. I have one more bullet, I guess it's time to use it. I'm only hoping that by the time someone get's to this, the area has been cleared, or the poor bastard is going to have one hell of a night.
The note, needless to say, scared the living crap out of him. Something in his mind prayed to god that the man had simply gone schizofrenic, and shot himself in what he thought was some sort of alien invasion. After reassuring himself that it could happen, he continued to look around the room. The walls were mostly dark, as was the area around it. Jack circled the room, and at one moment, his shoulder hit the lone lightbulb, sending the light towards the farthest wall from the door. There, slumped down against the wall, lay a man with a snub-nose revolver in his hand, and a hole in his head. The greyish brain matter was at the ground below him, while the brown, flaky blood was dried up at the point where it originally scattered. Parasites already began to feast upon his corpse, as his pale face was beginning to rot, and decompose. It wasn't how he thought it would be, however. He had always imagined that decomposed corpses were sagging, and allowed veins to first protrude form the skin before the skin actually melted away. But this was different, the skin...it seemed like it was torn, almost bitten away. The sight was scorched onto Jack's retenas. Frightened out of his mind, Jack burst through the door, half ramming it and half pushing it open. The dark light of the moon hit him hard and he power-walked, still terrified, back to the car. He had then noticed Julia's side door open. Movement was pushing the car back and forth. Millions of scenarios raced through his mind. He opened the door to the car, and a pale corpse was there, laying over the seats, with Julia struggling for her life. Jack pushed the creature back, but it always regained ground. Before long, the creature stopped tearing through Julia's flesh and aimed its lifeless, pearl eyes towards Jack. Their eyes, met, and the creature crawled over Julia's lifeless body, falling onto its stomach on the asphault ground. There, Jack saw a horrifying sight..the thing had no legs. It pulled itself towards him, moaning and snarling in its insane hunger for human flesh, and he backed up in response. He ran towards the wooden door, one thing running through his chaotic mind, the revolver. He pushed open the door to once again be greated by the dilapadated darkness as before..yet the bulb had gone dark. By relying in memory, he felt around the far wall for the corpse. To his horror, the body forced its hand forewards, grabbing his arms and pulling Jack towards it. Jack used his free hand other hand to pull the revolver from the zombie's hands. He rose the revolver up to the creature's face and pulled the trigger. In one instant, the room was flooded with light, and the noisy moan of a dieing corpse. One thing ate through his mind, what happened to the last bullet of the weapon? He put the thought from his mind and checked the bullets against the moon-light. Four more bullets. He rushed out the door to meet the animated corpse. His torso pivoted and he looked around, searching for the murderous monstrosity. At his left! A hand weakly grabbed out for his leg. He looked down and pointed the weapon, yet before the bullet could escape the barrel, and he could pull the trigger, he noticed it was his wife, Julia. Her right eye was missing, and the one eye left reflected nothing of the human soul that even the most grotesque of murderers posess. It was blank...lifeless. Julia swiftly took a bite of his ankle, digging through to the hard, white bone. Jack howled in pain and fired two rounds swiftly into the back of her head. She gave a lifeless groan and fell on the side of her face. Limping towards the car, he looked around him. He gave the backseat of the car a quick inspection. He had seen too many horror movies to let that go past him. Finally, he stepped inside of the car and shut up. Yet, before the door could close, the torso thrusted its head in between the car and the door, leaving it jammed between them. He let out a single shot into the top of the zombie's head, its greyish brain matter splashing against the insides of the car. Jerry opened the car door again, pumping two more shots into the torso's back in a blood-thirsty rage. He reached in his pocket, digging around for his keys. They were not to be found. He dug around in his other pocket, with the same results. "Fuck" he muttered, rushing out of the car. By now, the horde of zombies which had conquered the nearby towns with their macabre battles has gathered by the edge of the dense forest by the rest stop. They stumbled from the brush and woods, some female, some male. Before he knew what was happening, his instinct took over, and he took refuge once more in the car.
As he was about to close the door, some sort of rabid dog leapt from its position and towards him. The sharpened fangs of the beast tore through his flesh, leaving a deep laceration in its wake. Jerry screamed in the insurmountable pain, the virus that had claimed the lives of all of the other souls here had begun to tear at him, and he could feel the reptilian instincts of the zombies overcoming him. They horded the car from all directions, opening their mouthes and attempting to snap at him while ignoring the glass. The thin pane was all that was holding them back. The zombie dog climbed onto the hood, giving a threatening growl through the windshield. The things began to rock the car back and forth, as they realised that he was protected by the shell. The frenzied bloodlust of the once human beings reflected into Jack's soul, and for one moment, he felt the taste of blood on his tongue, from his teeth biting hard down into its flesh. He had the urge for more, and the urge for the flesh that had belonged to a human. He barely fought it off, he could not last much longer. In his final moments, each memory, from his childhood, to his marriage, to his death played back in a slideshow of happy moments. His birthdays, his High School Graduation, numerous parties with friends, and the day he met Julia. But the situation was of course as dreadful and macabre as anything any man would ever see, and the playback was a reminder of that. Slowly, Jack closed his eyes and placed the short barrel of the snub-nose revolver to his temple. He hoped that once he did this, he would not become one of them, not one of the mindless monstrosities out there. He hoped for rest, nothing but rest. In this situation, clearing your skull of any and all brain matter was preferrable to being eaten alive. He fired the weapon, but no bullet was released. A second pull of the trigger and there was no improvement. The weapon was jammed, and at that time, the old glass was beggining to break under the constant stress the zombies were giving it. The glass pushed inwards and out, leaving small shards both inside of the car and out. A zombie reached its hand through the spider web of cracks in the glass, creating a large gap. The hand wraped itself around his shoulder and tugged quickly at him. Jack tried to push the bloodied hand away, but it clutched into his flesh, soon another hand broke through the gap, and another, and more until finally the entire window was shattered, except for the frame. They grabbed madly at him, snapping at each others arms in a depserate effort. Each one of them forced their nails into his flesh, and then began to pull him from the car. His body was lacerated by the frame of the jagged metal, though that was only the beginning of the pain. The zombies began to tear at his flesh, ripping it off like tissue paper. He could feel the blood beginning to spill, the warm liquid rushing over the painful areas. A zombie tugged at his ear, almost playfully at first, and then a second, more agressive tug. The ear was torn, for the most par, clean off. The zombies were having their feast on him, and his chest was torn open by the starving faces of the monstrosities. Finally, it all went dark. It was dark, yet he could feel. The pain for the most part had stopped, he no longer felt the cold, hard grip of the zombies on his flesh. A tremendous hunger overcame him, not a craving, a hunger. His eyes opened, giving a harsh, dark light upon his whereabouts. Without reason, and without any type of thought, Jack rose his torso sluggishly, giving out a long, and painful moan. Death has not come on swift wings for this acursed soul, not yet. The man-turned-zombie stood up, and the pictures of his Chevrolet ran in his mind. He walked towards the wrecked car, searching in vein for the flesh of humans. He crawled inside of the car, attempting to tear his teeth at the dull leather cushions of the seat. Only the yellow foam yealed from the bite. And so, he crawled out of the car, and walked towards the forest, looking for human flesh. The ground ruffled against his feet, and moans of dispair cried out of the forests, along with his undead comrades. Then, finally, a refugee from the undead horde which has overtaken New York was sighted by the man. He was ragged, unkempt, most likely due to the fact that he had been running from the horde for the past week. Hunger built up into Jack's reptilian mind, wanting nothing more than to tear his teeth into the man. Jack stumbled closer, keeping his arms out, ready to hold onto the man. Appearantly unnoticed, the refugee kept on walking. Jack appeared out of the myst, startleing him. The human pulled out a combat knife, such as those used in the military. Though Jack kept on moving. Fear was conquered within his mind, all he wanted was flesh. The hot blood of humankind and the sinew of a person during a hike. He approached with no fear whatsoever. The man thrust out his knife, and though Jack felt a sharp pain, he latched onto the man and tore his teeth into the human's neck. He cried out in pain and Jack gave out a deathly moan. With his juggular burst, the weakened man fell to the forest floor, giving stabs at Jack's ankles. He fell to the ground with the bleeding man, latching his mouth onto his back and tearing into the muscle. Satisfaction flooded through his body, as if being full, yet the cry for hunger still called. It was early half an hour until the man was dead, and during that time, his entire back was stripped dry by the zombie.