Chapter One: E Block
The moonlight peeked through the cracks in several boards that had been nailed over the ground-floor windows of a building painted in a depressing shade of grey. It was the only light that penetrated the structure's deadly silent interior. Then a small flame flicked into existence. It danced towards the end of a short rolled cigarette and ignited the ragged tip. The flame winked out as quickly as it had shot to life.
Smoke filled the space where the flames had been. The man sitting in the straight-backed plastic chair finished exhaling the smoke. He took another measured breath as he looked around the empty cafeteria around him. Empty was just one word to describe that dismal area. Another really good way to describe it was "dead."
The whole place was dead.
The cafeteria would indicate that it had once been a prison or a school in the time before. There really hadn't been much of a difference between the two establishments, as far as Clark was concerned. Still he admitted that it had been a prison. He didn't feel a big desire to look back on the time when it had been a prison.
The young man took another drag on the cigarette that probably wasn't a cigarette, judging by his steadily declining motor functions. He looked at the boards over the windows and let out a dry, bitter little chuckle. Smoke drifted out between his lips.
Cell or no cell, nothing much had changed. It still was a prison, wasn't it? Except this time the barricades weren't keeping him inside, away from the world. They were keeping the world outside, away from him.
The dead hadn't gotten through the outer walls yet. The boards were just remnants from the days when everything had just gone to shit. There had been riots and mass executions, just chaos and anarchy. Clark had finished killing all the zombies inside the walls weeks ago. Everyone else that stayed after the initial shit hit the fan had already either ran for the hills or been snacked on.
Clark was alone. He didn't think anyone had truly understood the meaning of that word in quite some time. He certainly never had until the dead stopped being dead. They had knocked the entire human race down the food chain and the entire face of the world would change because of that fact.
"Maybe it was a good thing," Clark whispered as he took a final drag off the little rolled cigarette and stubbed it out on the surface of the table in front of him.
"Maybe it was meant to be."
He knew talking to himself was crazy but the alternative left little choice in the matter. There was no one else alive. If he dwelled on that too much, he would completely lose his mind. He would just lose it.
Clark grabbed the twelve-gauge shotgun leaning against the nearest chair and stood up with a little sigh. As he stretched for a moment, Clark decided that he was going to explore the E Block of prison cells. He hadn't been down there yet after his initial sweep for walking corpses. He figured there might be some more smokeable contraband stowed away there somewhere.
Clark paused in the darkness to set flame to one of the improvized torches he had made. He had wrapped some of the standard-issue prison jackets around a plank and covered it with oil that he had found in a supply closet on the west side of the building.
Clark waited for his eyes to adjust to the torchlight before slinging the shotgun over his shoulder and leaving the cafeteria. He was rocked by an involuntary shiver as the eerily flickering flames revealed the dried blood and gore spattered here and there on the walls and floors. It was everywhere.
He averted his eyes when he could, hurrying to E Block. There hadn't been much rioting there so he knew it would be in good shape. Most of the prisoners on E Block had been taken out to the rec yard and executed after the B Block riots.
Clark had just turned onto the hallway leading into the dark depths of E Block when he realized something was very wrong. Up ahead in the distance, light glinted off cell bars. Clark froze.
Someone else was alive? Why hadn't they revealed themselves to him before? Clark's natural conclusion was that they didn't want to be seen for one reason or another. None of the reasons mattered.
Clark slowly laid down the torch on the tiled floor. He carefully slid the shotgun off his shoulder into his arms and readied it to fire. Then, with his heart racing a mile a minute, he took his first step into the E Block of Lewiston Prison.