Great Panic
[This base is busy; soldiers are busy rallying civilians who are available for a local militia. I am sitting across a small coffee table. Across me, is Staff Sergeant Atkins, he is the one in charge of the armory. He is my cousin. He let me interview him for a project in our makeshift model of a high-school from the pre-war times. He took a sip of his black coffee before speaking up.
We are told to do our own interviews following the release of the book, World War Z. The book has become a best-seller. I am one of the many who wanted to follow the author's footsteps. ]
I was your age when it occurred. I'm not going to bother what happened the first few weeks. It was all full of lies, anyway. The vaccine, the stuff like that. I never really bothered to pay attention to it either. I just assumed it was just something to keep viewers stuck on their station, to keep ratings up. Weird thinking for a 17-year-old, but hey, I was a teenager. So, I'll just jump straight. I think it was just a week after the Battle of Yonkers.
I was at school that day, can you believe that? The U.S. Military crumbled, outbreaks were everywhere and they still wanted us to take the State Tests. Ridiculous.
State Tests? What is that?
Oh, you don't do that anymore. It's basically a test based on whatever you learned the whole year. Easy as shit at times, sometimes just too long.
I see. Please continue.
Right. I was sitting near the back and we were testing and suddenly, a huge knock- no, more like a banging came from the window. Mr. Branford, our teacher, thought it was just some random dumbass distracting others. So he opened the door. Then that's where shit just started to hit the fan. It was our custodian, he was all ragged, parts of his skin was falling off, red and black goo-thing just oozing out of his neck. He grabbed Mr. Branford by the throat and just sunk his teeth into him. That was more than enough to make the most nicest girl in our school, who didn't curse at all, straight-edge of a lady, yelled out loud, "WHAT THE FUCK?"
She said what most of us were thinking at that time. Mr. Branford was losing his damn cheek. His face was just torn off. And that was where we heard everything. We were so busy on the test, so concentrated, we didn't even notice what was going on outside. We all heard the sirens, the gunfire and the smell of smoke in the air. Can you believe that? Three damn hours of straight testing does that to you. And the moaning, man. It was scary. You think it's easy to ignore nowadays, but back then, it spooked the hell out of me. That's where the fire alarm blared and the PA system turned on. "All students, please evacuate the campus and head to your homes, seal the doors and barricade the windows." The person who said that wasn't the usual person. It sounded older. And it certainly wasn't the principal or the assistant principal for that matter.
That's also where almost as if by cue, more zombies just rushed in through the open door. That's where a friend and I rushed to close the door. Mr. Branford was dead at that time. We didn't care. We were so focused on getting the hell out of here or getting these things out of here. A lot of things went through my head at that time. And that almost killed me. I didn't hear my friend yelling at me to get a chair to block the doorway. I didn't even see that he managed to push the zombies out of the room. He probably had help, but he still did it. He was struggling to keep the door blocked using his body. I was an average person; I couldn't possibly help more if I did the same. So I pushed a table and another and another into the damn door until it didn't budge anymore. I was panting. I looked around me to see these other classmates of mine, staring at me. I had blood all over my shirt.
I didn't even realize that. They said I took a pencil and jammed it inside of the custodian's eye. How did I confirm it was true? A damn pencil with meat was on the floor. The custodian's body was next to it. It was my first kill. And I can't forget that. No one forgets their first kill.
What happened after that? You said there were others, what did you do?
We stayed inside the classroom for a day. We all shared one piece if apple. The dead were banging on the doors and we watched the city burn outside the window. This all happened in one day. No one expected it, at all. We were trapped in a classroom, on the second floor with no apparent way out. And the fire alarm wouldn't stop ringing. Then we turned on the room's television. Just in time to see the Emergency Alert System activating. Do you how fucking scary it is to hear that klaxon thing that sounded off whenever it showed new information? But anyway, it told us basically the same thing that the guy that used to be on the PA system said. "Stay at home, barricade all doors and wait for authorities to help you."
Even if that was meant to be comforting, it wasn't, man. Dude, gunfire was really loud and it was happening just a street away from us. The other guys around me were crying. The damn dead outside wouldn't stop banging on the door! We were hopeless, man. I can't exactly recall what happened next after that. We were so stupid. We spent our energy blocking one door, but we didn't realize that there's another door. Some kid made a run for it. We all yelled for him to not go, but he just did. He got pulled to the side once he stepped outside then we heard him scream his lungs out, then a gurgling sound. Then blood just ran down the floor. I told the other students to shut the hell up. We were all scared, man, no lie. I was scared shitless. And then five of them just entered the room. There were four of us in there. We had no way to fight, we didn't exactly know how to kill them yet. I didn't know that as simple as a fucking pencil through the eye could kill them. I was so stupid. I panicked, of course. Then there came more, like three more. I was running on adrenaline all that time. I didn't even care what happened to the others anymore. All I remembered was that I opened the window and jumped.
You jumped from a second-story window?
What was I supposed to do? The hallways were filled with dead bodies and God knows, where dead bodies are, the zombies were not far. In fact, it was shit full of them.
I landed as best as I could. It still ended up hurting and I ended up lying face first, but that was better. Because from above, I heard my classmates cry and then just stop and all you could hear was probably bones getting snapped. I couldn't even utter an, "I'm sorry." I just stood up and towards the woods. I didn't look back. I didn't have to. The screams and moans were everywhere. That small run through the woods was fucking scary. I was anticipating a hand or arm to just grab me and drag to the ground. I think I pissed myself. I didn't care. I just ran and ran and ran. I couldn't stop running until I reached the road. The road was a massacre.
How come?
Cars were overturned and burning, people were getting pulled out of their cars, flaming bodies walking, a child getting fucking eaten, cars were just mashed up together. I remember, seeing this one man, he was carrying a kid on his arms then I guess the kid reanimated and bit the lips off the man. I was thinking to myself, "Just what the hell is going on?" That's where a cop almost killed me.
He was aiming at me, he thought I was one of them because I wasn't moving and I was just looking around. That was totally un-human at that time. Standing in one position, looking around. I waved my hands to make sure that I was human. He only yelled "SORRY! GET OUT OF HERE! HEAD TO THE EVACUATION CENTER! IT'S SAFE THERE" before disappearing behind the scrapped piles of cars. I would've followed his advice, but I didn't where that was, so I just started moving east. I made the stupidest decision in my life. I could have gotten killed there.
Why was that?
To the east was the city, man. Even though the military deployed there would help me, doesn't mean they won't suspect me of being infected. I was covered in blood! They didn't want to take a chance. They took shots at me! They only stopped once they heard me screaming that I'm not bitten or wounded or anything. That was too close, man! Bullets snapped beside me, the ground was sparking, dude, they almost shot my head off, if I didn't hide behind this bus. When one of them finally realized that I wasn't one of them, they spoke over in a speaker system to run over where they are. If would've, if the whole place wasn't on fire. Just behind the barricade they made, were them. The zombies were quickly advancing near their position. I was over a hundred yards away, but I could still hear them screaming for ammo, reinforcements and all of that stuff. They actually could have survived that, you know? If they only knew then, how to properly dispatch an undead person. They were well organized, just... uncoordinated and uninformed. Full auto fire, c'mon. Didn't they learn anything from Yonkers? That was where I just felt the impulse to do something out of mind, but I think that's what makes me standing here today. I ran to the battlefield, ignoring the fact that I could get shot or killed by both the soldiers and the zombies attacking. I picked up this M16 rifle, pointed it up, and fired. I didn't even check if it was loaded or if the soldier I picked it up from was dead. I just wanted to kill more of them. That was the first time I fired a gun, but not the first time I've killed. That's where the soldier beside me grabbed my pant leg, making me just aim down and shoot directly at the head. That's how I confirmed to myself that headshots kill them instantly. I tried telling the other soldiers to aim for head, but no, they just ignored the puny little high-schooler who somehow acquired an M16.
I figured to myself that they won't listen, at all. And since they were so busy fighting them off, I made my move. I bent down to scavenge ammunition from the Private First Class whom I killed. I managed to get 4 magazines out before I noticed that the firing has gotten weak. I stuffed the magazines in my pockets and I just ran away. Away from that slaughterhouse. The rest is history. I stayed in my apartment, because I was living alone. Your aunt was a bitch and kicked me out of the house, so I had to live on my own. That's where I holed up for three months.
Three months? What about food, water and all necessities for living?
Dude, I was a teenager. I was a freaking hoarder of long-shelf food. As for water, I had a lot of bottled water stocked as well. Because there's just that one game that you want to play all day and night and not even go outside once. Dude, being a gaming hermit actually saved my life as well. I always took a few days if I bought a really good game back then, and I would get all the food, soda and water I could get. I didn't always finish every food or drink I bought so I just saved them. And that's what kept me fed for three months.
What about electricity? Power-grids went down almost instantaneously.
What about it? Sure, I didn't have the console gaming or the television to use, but I still had a crapload of books. My food wasn't reliant on the fridge, and for the water, it didn't matter. I blocked my only doorway out of my apartment. Cabinets, drawers and my bed. I slept on that bed. You know what? Amazingly, I was never detected by the zombies on the hallway. I never heard them try to bang on the door or the walls. I watched the city burn, and mine was left untouched for some reason. The apartment building I was on stood still, it never had any looters, attention or fires. A miracle, if you would put it that way.
The first night I was alone, after I moved everything to the doorway, I set the rifle down and put the magazines on a table. That was where, for the first time that day, I cried. I just cried. I was alone, the world was ending, all of that crap. I was scared. I was only seventeen, with no survival skills, no information about what was going on and survived only based on instinct. Instinct and adrenaline. For once, I was feeling pain, got disgusted by the already dried blood on me and had a flashback on the earlier events. I spent the remainder of the three months readings books, looking outside the window and just sleeping.
What did you do afterwards?
I realized that if I just stayed, I would die. I could have killed myself, you know? I had a gun with me and three months of solitude. So I packed everything I had to use in a small bag, took my trench coat and took everything out of the doorway. Then grabbed my father's keepsake machete, I thought I might need it in some situation. And I finally opened the door, for the first time in three months. The fires are gone and the streets are now quiet. Everything has changed.
I then stepped out and fired at the undead in the hallway. Thing was, I wasn't scared anymore. I was tired of being trapped and tired of crying. So, after spending one magazine on the zombies, I whipped out my machete and didn't regret using it. I think I managed to clear half the apartment building that day. I don't exactly know how I did it, but I did it. Thinking about it right now... I don't really know how I managed to do that. Then, I stepped out on the streets.
Same shit. Cars, bodies and small fires here and there. The only difference was, no one was around and every step I made could be heard.
Author's note: There you go, my first submission to this website. I have a lot to submit, I just need to know if anyone would actually read it. A single review will be enough.
About this: This is one of the many "interviews" I have made. My writing style on this one is clearly inspired by the style in World War Z. There will be more to come, as long as I know that there is someone who reads my work.