I don't remember what it was like being alive, well, I mean more alive than I am now I guess. There's something different about all of us now and it's pretty obvious considering everyone and their brother has guns trained at our heads. It makes sense in the long run I mean we do have to eat and those with beating hearts just so happen to be our food source.
There's not a reason I can think of for that, I just started going with the flow when suddenly I was eating people and they tasted pretty good. Their brains were the best part, filling us with the memories of the person and giving us the illusion of "dreams" since apparently when we became like this there was no sleeping.
Which sucked because I'm pretty sure when I was still alive I loved the whole dreaming thing, sleeping was like my hobby. I figure the only reason I remembered that was because it was something I missed the most. That and human contact, being able to share ideas and interact on a more... intelligent level. I could remember seeing everyone looking so lively, happy, not lost and wandering like they are completely brainless, because believe me, we're not.
Or maybe it's just me?
I was always the weird one.
From what I had gathered from my wandering I was in a museum, there was no telling why, I couldn't even remember my name though I figured it started with a D or something close to that. In this "new life" of my own I had made a home in the history of music section, there was a door that led into a small room off of the main display area. It must have been an office or something back in the days of normalcy. However far back that was.
Something about how I carried myself told me I wasn't exactly very far in life when I had died, I definitely didn't feel that old anyway. The jeans on my legs were way too tight and just made me slower than I already was and a while back I had lost the cardigan I had been wearing at the time, now left with just a plain v-neck with a sticker on it I couldn't see very well. In short I was pretty sure I was either a huge douche bag or just gave off the look of it. I didn't feel like a douche bag but stranger things just happened, now I just felt kind of dead and slow, which in retrospect was exactly what I was.
Today was one of the easier days, I was wandering around the museum, staring blandly at the displays like they actually interested me when I really had no interest in them at all. It was better than bumping into anyone else, we were sort of clumsy in this state of being, which sucked because sometimes I wish they would apologize or something since I had lost my balance and fallen more times than I could count.
But since we really couldn't talk that point was kind of mute, pun intended.
I was shuffling through the hall now, the displays having bored me to another point of wandering, though this time I had a specific destination, the food court. It was weird, the habits that we had from real life that just drew us to certain things. For some reason every day at about three in the afternoon I found myself in the food court standing next to who I assumed was my best friend.
The other boy was rattier than I was, his blue plaid shirt stained with blood and dirt, shoulder torn wide open to reveal scar tissue from where he was bitten to start the change. This kid was Grade A douche bags best friend material, he seemed to work the part just well, or would have back when everything he wore wasn't messed up. The glasses on his face were shattered, and the cuffs of his jeans were rolled up just a bit to show his moccasins. What I liked about him, was that he was the only other person in this museum with a name tag, and in big blue letters was the name "JOHN EGBERT". My guess was that the bite wasn't what killed him but the beating of his head that did him in. Whenever John's back was facing you, the blood caked into his hair was enough to give away that he was beaten to death.
A person had gotten to him before a zombie did.
Honestly neither of us is really complaining, we hardly were even able to get words out of our mouth so I was sure he was just as lost about who he was as I was. We didn't really have memories, nor did we care about getting them back. Existing was just a thing for us, we ate until we didn't eat anymore and eventually we were eating again. It was a simple existence that only simple creatures could understand.
My shuffling stopped when we were standing by the food court no more than maybe a foot away from each other, nodding and grunting in somewhat of a conversation. Sometimes we spoke, but it was only words that were important to us, and we searched hard for the correct way to articulate them to get our point across. There was nothing worse than trying to tell your companion "mall" and they ended up going to a hall instead. Then you were risking a higher chance of getting yourself killed. Traveling in packs was the safest way to go, and heading towards the mall was the worst a lone zombie could trek.
On the way to the mall there was a strong chance of finding some lone people wandering, and sometimes they weren't even armed. All we knew about the mall was that there was a very strong scent of uninfected people, meaning a very large meal. Sadly, they had a way with guns and mowing us down with big vehicles and skilled gun man ship. Sometimes we were fast enough to overpower them, we certainly had the hunger behind us to get them with more force.
John licked his dried cracked lips that were quivering in the attempt to form a word, my own mimicked his, working at the word that we both had on our minds. At the same time, with this weird sort of link we both managed out, "F..ood", the corners of our lips pulling up in a mock smile. The best that we could do for having little to no emotion at all. It was nice for someone else to show something like I was, most of the time I couldn't get anything out of anyone at all and that was pretty hard for me. For a zombie I had a lot of thoughts that sort of bothered me.
Like why the hell the music section in the museum was so small when it was the only area I could stand to be in for an extended amount of time. No matter, my companion John and I were both starving and it was time to go for a food run. That meant gathering a larger group so that we had less of a chance of getting killed, sad but a completely real risk.
So after a good thirty minutes or so of gathering up a crew of waddling zombies of all ages, we were making our way out into the small town that was around our museum. Dragging our feet we passed between the small suburban houses, on the look out for people as well as Bonies which were somewhat of a totally different breed of us. See the Bonies were those of us who had completely lost our minds, all humanity that we had left was stripped from us completely. Humanity being stripped was followed by us stripping ourselves of our own skin, hence the name Bonies.
Like I assumed most of us felt, I never wanted to end up like that. My mind wandered too much for me to be able to end up like them, at least I hoped so more than anything. From the small glimpses I had gotten of my face in the surface of gleaming records I had found that I really wasn't that terrible looking. No need to look like one of them and ruin my somewhat decent face.
Oh what was I kidding, for being dirty and rotten I was pretty well off in the category of looks.
I guess that's something I carried into this life, even if I was pretty air headed now and a little bit confused as to what the hell was underneath my nails now a days, I for some reason thought pretty well of myself. There was a pretty good head on my shoulders and I was wonderful at tracking down the uninfected as well as taking them down with ease. It was as if there was a certain grace to the way I moved that must have been connected to how I was before.
It made me wish I knew what I was like.
Sometimes when we were making our ways through the little suburban town I would wonder if something could trigger a memory, if we were even capable of getting them. Maybe if I looked at a car long enough I would be able to remember if I could drive or not or maybe if I rummaged through someones things I could remember my favorite game or if I even liked video games.
Sadly I didn't think that was possible at all, I was forever cursed to make new memories that were not really that interesting. Like last week I managed to fall on a staircase while hunting down someone and my leg got stuck between the two stairs. It took me a good hour or so to get my leg unstuck, because I was the luckiest un-dead guy in the world, the person didn't come back to end me.
No matter, everything moved on and memories ceased to have meaning when your existence was solely based around eating, nothing else to really take up your time.
It took a while to gather up a group, most of them generally ignored us and some were in the process of tearing the flesh from their bones ( not a pleasant sight I assure you ) it was when we finally managed to snag a good five that we headed out. They weren't the best, and most of the time they came back with bullet wounds, but they'd have to do.
There wasn't really a reason to worry anyway, in the end if we were close enough to the museum others would hear the ruckus and come to see what it was all about so they could hopefully score a meal.
Now there we were, dragging our feet through the street of houses and breathing the smell of decay in hope of scenting something that wasn't us. As per usual, I was always the first.
"Smell th...em." Everyone in our little pack turned around to look at me, I had my head tilted back to sniff at the air as the sweet scent of living breathing human filled my nostrils and my every sense. If my stomach could growl it would sound something like a thunderstorm brewing and that's not a joke, only a few hours ago I had eaten and I already felt like my stomach was turning inside out.
The primal hunger that I felt was something that we all shared, sometimes we had issues with eating people, other times we didn't, now was just one of those times that we could care less, all we wanted was food. Sometimes when a child was involved, or maybe someone pregnant, I would avoid them entirely. My companions usually didn't have as much as an issue with that as I did.
Crash!
A trashcan was knocked over, the sound echoed through the empty street and my eyebrows shot up. It took a little bit for me to find where the sound came from, it was one of those sounds that could have been right behind you or right beside you. My eyes flicked to the side, then to the other until the sound of feet pattering behind me registered in my ears.
Lowering my head I swiveled around, holding my ground at the sight of people running across the street, a little boy frozen like a deer in headlights in the middle of the road. He must have been trying to run from one car to the other to hide with the others, but it appeared they had left him in their dust.
I didn't trust that one bit.
The kid was bait.
Before I could do something to hold them back everyone else was already bolting, going for the kid without a second thought ( did anyone else even have thoughts like me? ) the most I could do was run after them and hope to pull them back possibly. If anything I had to save my companion, I didn't want to be entirely lonely and John was worthy of entertainment at times.
Stumbling along behind the others I grabbed John's arm, getting out a "g..o", before nudging him in the other direction. The brunette nodded at me and went off, getting into a place where he wouldn't be so in the open. Luck wasn't exactly with everyone else in particular, one was shot in the head and the other two had been stabbed right between the eyes. At least they had managed to take down a few of the survivors in the process.
In the place of one of the zombies stood the little boy, a bloodied knife in hand and staring right at me. I could take a kid just fine. He was running at me, looking like he was ready to take me out and was so ready and determined to take me down. Before he was even able to make a move I had him pinned to the ground, ripping at his flesh with my teeth and hands.
I hated this part the most, even if I knew I needed to eat to survive I hated knowing that this was a kid whose life I was taking. It just drove me more to eat the brains, just knowing that I would prevent them from ending up a horrible mess like me.
Bashing his head into the ground I hit him hard enough to break his skull, pulling out the brains and shoving them into the pockets of my jeans. I'd be saving those for later, now I had to watch my ass. Looking up I saw that one was still surviving, and they appeared to be backing people into a wall who had no ammo. If they had a knife we could both take them.
Standing up I ambled my way over, stopping when I spotted a shape up on the top of the building, a girl.
Oh shit.
She was gorgeous, long black hair in thick curls going down to her waist. Wearing a forest green tank top with brown shorts, combat boots on her feet with an ammo belt strapped across her chest. My heart wasn't beating but if it had been it would be going a mile a minute. God I just wanted her to be around me. It was the weirdest feeling considering I never really wanted to be around anything but my little room and John.
There had to be a way to get to her without getting my head blasted open.
Looking around I spotted a door to the store she was standing on, a flight of stairs obvious through the glass doors. There was my ticket, even if I had to die again I'd die seeing a hot babe up close.
Making my way into the shop, I carefully climbed the stairs and got to the roof, flinging the door open with a loud crash and she turned on me, aiming the gun right for my head and we both froze. God damn she was hotter up close. Awkwardly, I rose my hands and looked off to the side, seeing a larger horde heading our way. We weren't that far from the museum, they were bound to have come sooner or later, and at this point there was no way she was escaping when more and more would just show up.
"N...ot bad." I got out, stepping forward once, thinking maybe she had a good enough heart to put the gun down, and instead hearing the sound of her cocking the gun and a glare. "More... Coming." She turned around, looking back behind her and raising a hand to cover her mouth. Something told me that she really wasn't expecting this at all, she was most likely just out for supplies like most of our victims were.
No matter, in the time she was looking out at the horde I had shuffled closer and this time when she raised her weapon to train it at me the barrel of the gun pressed right between my eyes. Her hand shook on the trigger, and her eyes were hard as she watched my raise my hands.
I brushed her hair back, smearing some blood on her, but the second I pulled back, she had pulled the trigger. My eyes shut, expecting to have my head blown off, but instead there was just a click. No more ammo. A smile threatened to curl up my lips, and I got a bit of one to show up. "Let me... Help you."
There were zombies coming up, sniffing around the roof now, down bellow, her friends were either dead or gone. However, the ones who had come up looked confused, their eyes on the girl suspiciously before they started wandering the rest of the roof. Reaching up, I placed a hand on her back, which caused her to jump and she looked over to me. "Follow", was all I said, and the shaking girl was moving with the leading of my hand.
I was going to protect her.