Chapter 1
The torn down house was at least a few decades old. That's how the floor boards felt if you stepped across them. It was like there was nothing beneath the boards, just a hollow space then its foundation. It was like you were walking on ice, but as you were trying to breathe steadily to try your best to keep your balance, to keep from making noise, it was futile. Even the act of breathing was against you. The air worked in evil unison with this house. It suffocated you; thick and heavy with its earthen scent, sneaking in a poignant smell of old rot under its musty odor.
Black like velvet. Fuzzy and gray. The woman's vision was clouded. Her eyes were not receiving the neuron signals from her head in time, but yet she continues to foolishly tread deeper into the house across that first room without clear sight and no precautions. The fading light behind her doesn't follow her as she slips into the pitch-black hallway, treading shakily. Poor signals, but no sound.
Moan…
She turns around with a startled gasp, eyes searching. Her breathing comes and goes in short gasps. The thud of a footstep, a stagger. There was another moan.
Suddenly the disfigured monster appears into the hallway and limps towards her at surprising speed. Her hands shaking, she raises the knife in her hand. She's done this before; remember the routine, she tries to remind herself, but then she loses focus as her mind wanders elsewhere. Despairingly, she cries out, but then she bites the inside of her lip until it hurt. Refocus. Please.
Willing herself not to give in to the fear and the creature's monstrosity, she tells herself to wait. Wait for the right moment, but with one of its eyes missing, and its skin rotten with a red luster and its constant moaning and jerking, she couldn't wait.
She charges at the monster, but as soon as she does her knife nearly slips out of her clammy grasp. The knife drops and she saves it with both hands and looks up to see the monster right on top of her, its snarls deafening.
Immediately she strikes at its head from the side with the knife, plunging it deep into its head, reaching for the brain. The impact splatters cold blood everywhere on her, from cheek to hand. The dead man goes still. She drops the corpse.
Breathing heavily, she quickly lets go of the knife as the smell like coppery blood mixed with dead matter fills her nostrils. She frantically takes off.
She flees deeper into the darkness and enters the next room, arriving inside an ornately styled kitchen. Its faded, chrysanthemum patterned wallpaper peeled in many places: above the backdoor, below the cabinets, above the sink, and there was a trickling blood stain that covered the wall next to the backdoor. There were also chairs lying haphazardly across the floor, and the fridge was left wide open. She comes and peers into the fridge, seeing its contents empty. Closing it in despair, her eyes dart towards the cabinets and she goes towards them at once, opening each one and ransacking its contents.
Food, food, she keeps thinking over and over. Hot, baked, green beans. A plate of them. Orange juice. SPAM meat. Momentarily, she wonders why that was all she was thinking about. Apples, carrots, sandwich. Where was she going before she found this house? Guns, dad, house. Depression. Her hands wrap around two cans of black beans. Hungry. Mike. Mike.
Mike.
Light barely fluttered through the kitchen window and she had trouble seeing what was inside the cabinets, but somehow she manages. She sets the cans down and searches for more. Tears escape her eyes as she does so. Her right hand starts to feel sticky from the monster's blood, her eyes become strained from trying so hard to try to see—she starts to rush in her movements, her hands now scrambling around the cabinets blindly. She wasn't safe here. She finally feels the outline of what feels to be cans, and her hands wrap around two cans, then more and more as she shoved them all into her arms. Her stomach growls and she becomes giddy with hunger. All of these cans. Her eyes adjust and she sees more cans and boxes. She tries to grab them all but then the cans against her bosom slip out and tumble all around her, clanging onto the floor and falling into the sink, metal against metal, huge, unnecessary noisy tosses—
A scream pierces the air, and standing rigid with a single can left in her arms, she stares at the doorway leading into the hallway from where it came from. A commotion starts to formulate where the snarls were the most obvious, but as she listened closer, there was a struggle underneath it all, like someone beating onto a door.
Someone else was here.
Quickly she drops her arms and the can tumbles away as she hurries towards the noise. When she reaches the scene in a small, pink bedroom, she sees the creature banging on the closet, causing the shutters to shake violently with each desperate strike.
The creature turns around, sneers at her, and stumbles towards her, reaching and reaching again, its red and green-stained nightgown's sleeves hanging down its forearms. She diverted the thing's attention, now she had to deal with it. She spots the pointed legs of a Barbie doll sticking out from under the bed beside her and picks it up and throws it as hard as she could at the dead woman's head, anything that would infuriate it even more. The doll hits the creature on its chest, not even throwing it back a step.
She frantically looks around at the floor for anything to throw. There was a baseball bat lying in the far corner, behind the creature, but she knew she couldn't reach that, so leaving her no other choice, she turns around and leads the monster out of the bedroom, beckoning it to follow her to the first room where her knife laid. The monster's growls and nasty snarls fill the hallway as she goes back. When she reaches the room, she's met with an intensely orange sunset in the open door. She sees the familiar glint of the knife, picks it up, and turns around to see the woman.
She backs away quickly, assessing where she could hit, but her shadow from the door behind her made it hard to do so. She was becoming discouraged, and tired, but then the dead woman suddenly stumbles, nearly landing right onto her. She immediately seizes the moment and stabs it in the head, dark substance gushing out. She pulls the knife out and finds that the woman had gotten her gown stuck onto a protruding board. Remembering the scream from earlier, she runs back into the hallway for the room.
When she enters the child's bedroom, the closet is slightly ajar. Who, or what, was inside, she couldn't tell, so she takes a step closer. The door moves inward. She sees tiny, tan fingers grasping the door from under it.
The sun's setting rays filter softly into the room from the curtains beside the closet, and she can see the dust swirling around in front of it. A buzzing silence settles into the room and the house. The scene felt …familiar. She feels she had seen this before. She looks to the window behind the space of the curtains. Its hinges were unlocked, and the window was open.
He left her all alone, leaving absolutely no trace of him behind. She was alone.
"I…won't…hurt you," she says softly. Tears prick behind her eyes as she keeps thinking of him and his broken promise to her. She stares at the closet door. She could feel the person in there eyeing her closely, and she wanted them to come out.
"Please, come out." A sob breaks through her, and she cries softly. "I won't hurt you. No one will hurt you. You don't need to be alone…"
The door opens ever so slowly, and light rushes in, revealing a frail child who shakes uncontrollably like a scared pup. Her eyes were wide, and her bangs stuck to her sweaty, tear-stained face. She cries, and her cries soon turn to wails, and the woman breaks down too.
The woman outstretches her arms and comes towards the child slowly, sobbing silently now. She remembers everything, everything that happened. The life before, the life then, life after and right now. Maybe he thought that she could and would forget him, but she didn't. She did not.
But maybe she will.
When the girl reaches her she hugs the girl tightly. The sun's setting colors catches her eye from the window nearby, making the curtain glow with a soft, orange hue. Day turns to night, but the nightmare never ends.
.
.
.
The skies just were not the same anymore. Its deep, spacious, unimaginable blue color wasn't there. Just the sky lied there. The rolling, beautiful hills across the blank horizon no longer were beautiful, but they were just hills covered with grass. The open country road held no inspiring hope, but only an indifferent feeling.
The scenery was no longer captivating. The captivation lied in the rabbits, deer, fruits. It lied in the abandoned, promising houses and the sharpest knives. Her eyes scoured the endless open field. The more she saw nothing, the more her heart sunk. They had to keep going.
As they weaved through the towering wheat stalks, her mind on high alert for any lurking monsters, the child squeezes her hand as she follows her. She looks back briefly at the girl to see her blink at her just once before turning her head towards the ground. There was no apparent expression, but the woman understood. They kept moving forward, searching for what, they weren't sure yet, but they just had to keep moving.
The next day, after the pair managed to hide within a wooden cabin the night before, they began to see the main road emerge in the horizon. Finally, a form of civilization and a connection to the outer world other than fields upon fields of anticipation. The woman stumbled towards it with the child in tow. She went quickly down the hill, carefully leading the child to make sure she kept up. Her knees suddenly buckled beneath her, and the child yells a little. The woman rises to her feet, feigning pain. She smiles at the child, and walks on, holding her hand.
About ten minutes into the road, they spot tent heads, pointed and colorful. They make a jog for it, but after a moment, the woman slows down, the child following. The tents are in full view now, along with an empty campfire. Something about this…wasn't right. It was early morning—the expected 'people' could have been in their tents, but it was eerily quiet. The air suddenly felt stifling, her throat tight. There was a stir within the tents—within all of them. Up ahead, she notices the messily strewn backpacks.
She grips the child's arm and runs at full speed. Anywhere but here. The snarls fill the air now. She makes it for the forest. Buzzes fill the air from the droning cicadas. The air is moist. She does her best to sidestep the undergrowth of sprawling thorns. She had jeans on, but the child did not. She looks back, gasping now. They were so fast, the monsters were too fast. Swiftly, she swipes the child up from her feet and into her arms. She puts on a full-out sprint, quickly gaining ground, but seconds later, starts to regret the decision. Her strength was quickly declining, and tears slide down her cheek. How could she be so stupid?
Up ahead she could make out a sort of underhanging, a small hiding spot small enough for a child to fit into, masked from the area. Safety. Temporary. She wills her legs to keep going for just this short distance. She prays to God to give her the strength, and she makes it. Huffing, she quickly deposits the girl into the spot. The girl was sobbing quietly, stricken with fear.
"S-Stay, here." Her chest was so tight, jumpy, stricken. She whips out her blade and faces the oncoming horde of about a dozen moaning monsters. The feeling they caused her was horrifying. Their faces weren't there, their limbs, hanging, dragging, missing. Ghastly zombies.
Zombies.
She runs towards the first one nearest her. It grabs for her wildly, and it manages to latch onto her forearm but she stabs its head with the free one. She grunts loudly, trying to free the blade from its thick skull. The next monster immediately dives for her from behind right at the split second she frees the knife. She rolls out the way and scrambles to her feet to avoid the two other zombies swinging at her. One takes her by surprise from behind once more and she automatically plunges her knife at its target frantically. Takes it out. Plunges it back into another one. Out. They were still alive, chomping their teeth, screaming. A morbidly deformed woman limps towards her, her mouth agape and dripping. A really short creature is beside her, its arm punctured with a single hole. It was a child.
A scream pierces the air, and she turns around. One of them was with the girl. Fear takes over her. "No!" She screams. A zombie latches onto her from behind but she breaks free with a newfound ferocity. "No!"
She grabs the monster's disheveled coat and flings him to the side of the hole. She raises her blade up high, but right when she does, she sees the bright, red blood stains on his rotten teeth and his mouth as he snarls and struggles, and she screams again, plunging the knife deep into his forehead. She leaves the knife and immediately turns to the girl.
The air leaves her, her eyes, still. The girl lied in a slump, her head downward. A pool of blood quickly becoming more and more around her head. "No…" the woman whispers, shaking her head slowly. "No!" Her voice escalates to a shriek. Two hands grab her shoulders from behind, the snarl right at her ear. But then, suddenly the snarl was gone. Grunts fill the air, but she does not notice.
She stares at the pooling blood. She drops to her knees and crawls towards the fallen girl, ignoring the vines in front of her, going straight through them. She cries as she carefully lifts the girl's head to find out what exactly happened. Her head was still warm, that was a good sight, but the pool of blood that now soaked through the woman's jeans and covered the girl's hair was frightening. She places the girl's upturned head into the crook of her arm. She was okay. Her face…it was intact. But that could only mean…
Her eyes dart towards the girl's arms. She quickly takes her out of the hole and rises to her feet.
She had to find medical supplies fast. She glances at the fallen monsters before her who attacked her companion, her blade still protruding out from its forehead.
The camp they saw earlier. The camp would have supplies.
"Hey, you. Drop the girl." She turns her head towards the voice, surprised to have an actual third presence near her. She was even more surprised to find that it was a man all by his lonesome. She notices the lack of snarls once more and the bodies lying strewn between them.
"Don't make me say it agin," he growls gruffly, betraying no mercy at the look of his hard expression. He had a weapon poised at her—what it was exactly, she couldn't tell. Her mind was too busy wrapped around the rapid pounding in her chest. He was ready to aim and shoot. She takes a step back from, but then she feels hot blood trickle down her thighs.
"What do you want?" Her voice was strained, but she stood her ground, holding the girl closer to her chest. She advances a step, and another. The man didn't move his body or his weapon. He also stood his ground.
"Are you fucking stupid? Drop her!" He barks out angrily.
The sharp-cutting tone of his voice, the malignancy of the situation, she could not understand. She boils with anger. Why was he here? Why was he in her way? Bing is dying, a little girl was dying. She feels her mouth twist up at the raw emotion of righteousness in the pit of her stomach. She keeps on walking towards the camp, but just as she's about to pick up her pace, the man moves. Just as he was about to let the arrow go on his weapon, she ducks down, shielding the girl and the arrow narrowly misses her head. She glares at the man and seethes.
"What do you think you're doing?" She shouts. "Don't shoot her, you f*cker! Why don't you go the f*ck away!"
He starts to aim his weapon again, and this distracts her from the girl in her arms as she starts to moan. Her eyes open, but the woman doesn't notice. The man, however, catches the change in the girl's status.
He makes a sudden move towards her and grabs the girl, pinning her to the ground. Her eyes were fully open now, bright as summer's day. He whips out his large pocket knife, bringing it back for the strike, but then the woman throws him to the side with a strong shove. Knowing nothing else to do to keep him down, she places all of her weight upon him. He was quickly winning.
He throws her to the side and turns to the child, his knife raised, but what he saw next shocked him to beyond belief. The girl was sitting up, crying, not moaning like one of those nasty things. This girl was alive. The man slowly lowers his knife.
When was she going to turn?
"Ele…" she moans. With half-lidded eyes she searches the area for something then sees the woman on the floor behind the man, trying to get up. The two make eye contact and the woman's face lightens up signficantly. She runs over to the child's side and quickly but gently speaks condolences to the child with a hand on her small shoulder, and the other on the child's grazed cheek. She scoops her up. The child was still bleeding.
"Don't move at all. Close your eyes."
Why was she awake? How was she awake? The man stares at the retreating woman's arms and who she's carrying in awestruck stupor. He shoves his knife away.
A few moments later, when all he could make out of the woman was her black hair as she went up the hill, he racks his head whether or not to go and take the child out, or to let that woman do it on her own.
He picks up his crossbow mechanism and runs after them.