One Day The Sun Will Shine Again
Prologue
Cold and dark. How many days had it been now? She had lost count. Time had no meaning anymore. Months, days, hours, minutes, seconds – all meaningless, useless. There was nothing to look forward to now. Each day the same as the next. Who knew if they would still be alive by sunset? Waiting fearfully until morning light, but the day wasn't any safer than the night. Midnight became a marker of accomplishment – good for you, you survived another twenty-four hours. But sometimes she wondered what the point was. The end of the world had been reduced to a competition, survival of the fittest, to see who could live longest. Had she worked hard her entire life just to be bested by the brainless dead and the awful assholes who had taunted her in high school?
It wasn't fair. Life had never been fair, but the unfairness of the end of life on earth was downright cruel. Hadn't she always done her best to be a good person? Hadn't she given ten percent of her income to charity and let people go ahead of her in line? Where were all the decent people now? Answer: cracking open skulls and ribcages to slurp up the gore inside.
Kindness was dead. Maybe it had never existed. Maybe humanity and civility were lies. Maybe this was the truth of human nature, and they were finally being punished for it.
Once upon a time she had kept a bulletin board in the kitchen, tacked with notes and reminders, school notices and photos, calendars written with multicolored ink to track meetings, practices, games, and shows. Her life had once been divided into neat little charts and perfect American apple pies. She laughed bitterly, though the zombies - the gourmands, she called them ironically, because their hunger was never satisfied - were attracted to sound. The woods could be full of them. She couldn't help herself. How foolish and trivial the minutiae of her life seemed now. How desperately she wished for those days again.
The sun was finally rising, casting its golden light over the ground. The first shadows of morn. She had been walking all evening, too anxious to stop and rest. She needed to keep moving. Activity helped keep her from thinking. The pain in her body, her hands, her head, her feet, made her forget.
She could smell her own odor: sweat and unwashed flesh, the blood stained into her jeans and shirt. Hers, his, the undead's, that man's. Her hair was a tangled mess of windblown knots and twigs. What she wouldn't do for a comb, a toothbrush, and a caramel chocolate bar.
Leaves crunched under her spattered sneakers. To her left, the bushes rustled. She withdrew her knife, and took her defensive stance (thank God for the self-defense courses she had taken since university). If she was going to die, she wanted to greet the ugly son of a bitch head-on. A rabbit appeared and scurried across her path. She laughed. If she had the energy, she'd catch that rabbit and eat it. Funny. Once upon a time, she was a vegetarian.
Once upon a time the reanimated corpses of friends and neighbors weren't cannibals.
She continued walking. She didn't know what exactly she was searching for, but she would know when she found it. The sun rose steadily in the sky, beating down of her already burnt skin. Curse her fair complexion that had once attracted the boys, the lovely pattering of freckles on her nose. Her flesh couldn't handle this environment. Next pharmacy she came across, she was raiding it for sunscreen.
In the distance a tall, rectangular shape rose. It must be huge, judging from her distance. She shielded her eyes with her hand to cut out the glare. A tower. It looked like a tower. Maybe Rapunzel was up there waiting for company. She started walking again, keeping the tower in front of her. What kind of building had a tower?
Sanctuary, she hoped. She was going to find out.