Written for thegameison_sh's Challenge 4. Prompt: "alternate universe". Clearly the best choice is a zombiepocalypse!AU.
-x-
John still has his phone. It's the only thing he's been able to hold on to in the last few panic-filled days; everything else he had to leave behind or throw away.
Most of his things are probably still in his flat, if nobody has broken in. (Not that it matters. Even if he wanted to, he has no way to go back across a city crawling with the things.) But he's holding on the phone as a reminder of when things used to be normal.
He's got nobody to call, his contacts are either dead or lost their phone somehow, yet he still recharges it every time he has a chance to. The phone's agenda helps him keep track of time. Today is Day Eight.
-x-
The hospital had been where it all started on Day Zero, the last normal day before all hell broke loose.
The girl in the cafeteria had given John his usual mid-morning coffee and told him that some of the younger med students had a panic attack earlier, claiming that one of the bodies in the morgue had got up and gone after them. John had smiled at that, because what else was one supposed to do when presented with such a tall tale?
The smile had stayed on all the way to his office, where he'd seen Mike and one of the patients attack a nurse and rip out her arm. The patient had been only a child. After that, it had been chaos.
-x-
John supposes he should be thankful he'd been in Afghanistan. With his military training and a hunting rifle acquired under circumstances he'd rather not dwell upon, he can pick them off at a distance and avoid getting splattered with foul-smelling black blood.
Now he's learned not to have any hesitation before pressing the trigger, but in the beginning it was hard not to think that the creature at the other end of the barrel used to be a human being. Children are always the hardest to fight.
His clothes are gone too, he had to get rid of them after they got infected that one time he was careless enough to let one of the things come too close. Now he's facing the apocalypse wearing some dead guy's shirt. It's two sizes too large for him and stained with dried blood.
-x-
The news stations called it the End of Times, the Apocalypse and a dozen different other things. Despite government representatives insisting that it was a prank on a large scale, reports kept coming in about dead people walking all over the city.
John watched the reports on the telly in the cafeteria, along with a few other staff members who had barricaded in with him. Nobody had any idea of what was going on. They'd tried calling any emergency number they could think of but all the lines were down.
Blocked because of too many people trying to call at once, the newscasters said as they unconvincingly urged people not to panic. John could see the fear in their eyes. Nobody believed that the situation was under control, and it didn't come as a surprise when in a few hours all stations were shut down.
Then the creatures managed to burst through the doors and John had to fight them off armed with nothing but his cane. He threw it away soon after: trying to fight them at close range turned out to be worse than useless. However he found that his limp was quite ready to disappear when he was running for his life.
-x-
Sometimes he gets texts from an unknown number. Short, cryptic messages, mostly about which zones are safe and where it's possible to get uncontaminated water. They're all signed SH.
John has no idea who this SH person is, or how he got his number. He's tried to ask but SH never picks up his calls and usually ignores his texts.
Still, their chances of survival would me much better if they manage to meet and team up. Between SH's knowledge and John's marksmanship, they might be able to leave the city and search for a place that hasn't been infected yet.
From what John has gathered, SH is somewhere on the other side of the park. He has been trying to reach him, but it's hard to move around when the streets are crawling with the things. He's getting closer though, maybe tomorrow he'll text SH and ask for his location.