The door will hold for now, but something's gonna give before too long.
The Infected's pounding on the makeshift barricade is unlike anything you've ever heard before, and it sounds anything but friendly. That thin piece of pine wood is all that separates you from the frantic scratching and guttural growls through mouths filled with blood…
You remember gunshots. Closer, bodies dropping.
Then white.
Your chest lifted, gasping. Mouth dry, sour.
White.
All there was. The tiny speck of light. You tried to reach it, hand falling short. Groggy, incoherent. Eyes a bit wider now, more white.
Your hand rose again, then froze.
I'm not dead, I'm not dead. Am I?
The cloud began to drift south just as your eyes focused on it. The stench wafted around you as a breeze picked up. There was something pressing into you lower back. Something in you left side.
Your right hand touched down on some wet and cold. Rolling up to your side, this support gave way and the pile collapsed. Sliding down the muddy pit, falling past your eyes the hand arm chest neck hair crashing. Eyes gone clear blue death staring at you. You stared at it a moment, still trying to comprehend. Finally you realized and lifted your legs, eyes darting to the countless cadavers cradling you.
You dragged yourself to the edge of that pit, over limbs spotted with chunks of rotting flesh. At the edge, you placed the sole of one foot firmly on the ground, grabbing dirt, raising yourself to your tiptoes, peering over the edge. Tall grass obstructing your view.
You turned to her company. A pit full of putrid corpses.
What had happened? What had you done?
There was a drone filling the air, the sound of a power grid.
Then a groan. Then the sound of curdling, like blowing bubbles in milk with a straw.
It was a shell of a creature dragging itself towards you.
It hissed, holding a skeletal hand out. Gaunt. Flesh become rancid. Gnawed.
The thing advanced and you hoisted yourself over the wall. The skin was splitting under the weight of its cracked skull, brain exposed, oozing. It began to heave, vomiting white mucous onto the bodies beneath it.
The sour sickness rose to the back of your throat, mouth watering. Your body buckled and the bitter liquid came forth, splattering.
It was from this vantage point that you saw how vast the grave was. Endless intertwined extremities. It took you a moment to see it on you. It had gone brown. Black. Coagulated around your ear canal, crust. The graze of hair missing, clumped.
It was a god awful cry. Like the sound of a whale calling out to other whales. Not a moan, not a groan. You remembered such a terrible sound.
It was right behind you.
And it was then you realized.
It wasn't over.