Part 1
Despite the odd stories circling the media, life progressed as usual for common citizens. However, these same odd stories began making their way into the news, and that was enough to get people's attention. One of the earliest involved a man in his late thirties who was walking to his car after working a late shift. He didn't notice the lone figure in the parking lot until he was directly behind him. The police were notified when nearby residents reporting screaming and shouting, and by the time they arrived they were met with a horrorshow. The victim lay on the ground, blood rushing from a severe wound in his neck. The assailant appeared to be under the influence of an unknown substance. Police opened fire on the assailant, but to the astonishment of the officers, he seemed unfazed. Residents reported hearing dozens of shots before the night was silent again. The victim was taken to a nearby hospital where he died of his injuries.
This story shocked people, but as time passes people forget. Similar events began to unfold days later of "cannibalistic attacks." To add to the strange stories, there were reports of a sickness spreading across the U.S. All the symptoms were flu-like and thus no one was worried. After all, everyone had gotten their flu shot.
It was on a Thursday at 8:00pm when things had gotten worse. An entire county in the backwoods of Pennsylvania was put under quarantine by the U.S military.
One day all contact from this county was just...lost. No one could make phone calls to the towns within the country, and no one ever left. Before that had happened though, the news was reporting that the sickness had spread at an alarming rate throughout all of the towns with a high mortality rate. The national guard arrived, and everything that happened next was not disclosed to the public.
Across the United States similar reports were coming in. The sickness was being reported in several states. A few weeks later, reports from all over the world were coming in.
No one knew where it came from. No one knew how it spread. But things went from bad to worse when schools began to close, people began wearing facemasks, and the infected began to die. Only there was problem. The laws of nature were changing for the human race. What was dead, would not stay dead.
Thunk!
Solid steel flew through the air and sliced into cold, dead flesh with a sickening crunching sound. The silver blade sank two inches deep, cutting through the scalp, skull, and finally reaching into the gelatinous tissue of the. Brain.
One tug, two tugs, three tugs. The hatchet was released with a wet squelching sound as it was ripped free, dark arterial blood dripping from the blade. She probably used to be pretty, with her dirty blonde hair, an oval like face, and sporting a pink tank top with a unique floral design. But who she once was was gone; her lips had peeled back to reveal slimy and blackened incisors, and her eyes were now made up of a pure white film with no pupils to be seen. The iris was completely gone, making the entire eyeball to be a soullessly white color.
The reanimated corpse fell down face first on the hardwood floor, her split open forehead pumping dark red blood onto the floor. The floor was also home to three other dead bodies that had been taken care of in a similar fashion. The living room was filled with the coppery scent of blood and the sickly sweet scent of decay. But the room's only living occupant was not worried; the smell would go away if he took the bodies outside.
Aaron was a boy of sixteen years of age, had curly black hair, and had a skin tone of medium brown. His mouth and nose were covered by the black surgical mask he had found. His amber eyes scanned the room for any other walking cadavers, and his ears remained completely alert for any foreign sounds.
Three knocks came from the second floor of the suburban house, and Aaron recognized it immediately. A male voice called to him from upstairs. "All clear."
A man with short blond hair, stormy grey eyes and a police uniform came downstairs, a maple wood baseball bat in his hand.
"Good news, none of them things was upstairs, so we're contamination free up there. Seeing the mess down here, we've got some cleaning to do."
Ryan Welsh was an Atlanta police officer in his early thirties who was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, but there was little he could do about that now.
Ryan had lost all forms of communication with other law enforcement, and as far as he was concerned, was on his own.
"Help me with this." Aaron told Ryan as he grabbed one of the corpses by the ankles. Ryan stopped him and went back upstairs. When he came back down he had several bundles of sheets in his arms. It had taken them a total of ten minutes to wrap up the bodies and drag them outside to the dumpster on the left side of the house.
When they returned, Aaron sat down on one of the sofas and found the television remote stuffed between the cushions. After flipping on the TV, he switched to every news station he could think of. Nothing had changed; it was the same emergency broadcast message that appeared for possibly every situation.
Ryan frequently would call 911 to try to get ahold of someone, but each time he got the same response. The number you have dialed is unavailable. Please, try again later.
Nothing's better than the classic fuck you from the phone company.
Up until now, the news had been on 24/7, giving people tons and tons of useless information. Be sure to drink bottled water, avoid those who appear to be sick/exposed to the infection, remain indoors and blah blah blah.
But what was their answer for the dead rising to feast on the living?
Ryan was sitting on one of the living room sofas on his cell phone, most likely checking social media for any new updates in the chaos happening outside.
Ryan was disturbed by what he was seeing as he scrolled through youtube videos on his phone detailing the anarchy happening in cities and towns across the country.
SWAT forces storming entire malls filled with infected, police gunning down infected citizens in the streets, and people looting stores and rioting.
The world really was falling apart.
Aaron switched to a different channel, and was pleasantly surprised to find that every other channel was broadcasting its regularly scheduled programming.
He could seriously go for an episode of Doctor Who right now.
"How're you holding up kid?"Ryan asked.
Aaron shook his head. Despite that things were calm for now, he was still processing everything that was happening. Aaron wasn't even from Georgia. He was a kid from Philly who had come here for a class trip. As of now all of his classmates were dead with him being the only survivor. The past week had been a complete nightmare, as he had literally been going from place to place, fighting the dead.
Dead.
That's what they were, plain and simple.
"We've got work to do tomorrow. We've got little to no supplies right now, and we're gonna need some travelling equipment. Backpacks, luggage bags, clothing, anything we can get our hands on. I have a feeling that it's gonna take a while for the government to clean things up, you with me?"
Aaron nodded.
The next day was a productive one at that; Aaron armed himself with a hatchet and a kitchen knife he found in the pantry of the house, and he Ryan went out into the neighborhood to loot the abandoned homes. The outbreak had hit this suburban neighborhood fairly hard, as vehicles lay abandoned in the streets, some front lawns were littered with corpses, and on one street a fire hydrant spewed water thirty feet into the air, a result of an SUV crashing into it.
However, the neighborhood was a goldmine for loot. Aaron and Ryan had managed to find travel backpacks, medical supplies, food, clothes that fit, and anything else they would need. But to make things better, they had stumbled upon one house that held a nice surprise for the both of them.
"I haven't checked the basement yet, can you gimme a hand with the lock?"
Ryan asked. They stood in front of a door that was entirely made of metal and was painted grey. This didn't match the decor or colors of the rest of the house at all.
Aaron pulled his hatchet off of his belt and stepped forward. He swung the bladed weapon at the combination lock that kept the door sealed. The lock broke and fell to floor. "I'll head down first, watch my back."
The basement was dark, but no foreign smells wafted up to greet them, indicating nothing dead lurking around. Still, Ryan held a flashlight in one hand, and a Glock 17 in the other. As he descended down the stairs the only sound that could be heard was the groaning of wood as their feet pressed down upon the stairs. When they finally reached the bottom, the silence was deafening. Aaron looked to his left and could make out the outline of a lightswitch on the far wall. He flipped it, and the fluorescent lights above buzzed to life.
The basement had been someone's personal man cave; the carpet was dark scarlet color, there was a pool table in the middle of the room, and there was a flat screen television mounted to the wall. There were two shelves along the walls that had dozens among dozens of movies and video games. What stood out to Aaron and Ryan the most was the grey gun cabinet that stood against one wall.
They spent a total of ten minutes trying to break the lock, and they both felt huge weight lift from their shoulders when the thing finally snapped and fell on the floor. Ryan gripped the cold handles of the locker and pulled them open, revealing three long guns, two handguns, and boxes of ammunition.
The weapons in particular were two Remington 870 shotguns, an M24 sniper rifle, and two Usp .45 pistols. Aaron (who had brought an empty duffel along with him) began loading the weapons and ammo into the bag while Ryan searched the other areas of the room.
"I'm thinking tomorrow I teach you how to shoot, seeing that we've got more weapons and some ammo to burn. How does that sound?" Ryan asked.
Aaron shrugged his shoulders.
"If I plan on staying alive, I'm gonna need to learn how to shoot. So that sounds great to me."
When they returned to their house after spending the day scavenging, they set about making fortifications to the house. From within the house, Ryan and Aaron nailed planks to the windows. The second floor was a good vantage point, and a chair was placed in front of one of the second floor's windows' to use as a sniper perch.
That night, Aaron sat in an office using the computer (it belonged to the house's former residents, and with the power still on the WIFI still worked fine)
monitoring the news. The CDC was working tirelessly to get a better understanding of how the sickness worked, and stayed in close contact with all health organizations across the world to report any new findings. As of now, police forces across the state were failing to fight off the hordes of dead attacking. There was no word of what the military was doing. Perfect.
The next day, Aaron sat on the roof of an SUV, looking down the long scope of the sniper rifle he and Ryan had found the previous day.
"Remember to hold the rifle steady. Don't fear it, it's just a thing. Keep your breath steady, and your aim will be much more controlled. Do you see your target?"
Aaron nodded, as he could see the target several meters away from them. They hadn't seen many of the dead in this neighborhood, but any that they had seen had been removed from their plain of existence. The target that Aaron currently had in his sights was a woman in a dirty floral dress. She had a shoe missing, and half of her face had been chewed away, revealing the red, fleshy muscle tissue. She (or it)
Walked in slow, drunken gait.
Aaron focused his aim, and trained it on her forehead. He held his breath, and took the shot. The thing's head whiplashed violently as a jettison of dark red blood erupted from her skull. Pieces of skull fragments and brain matter were blown into the air as the bullet tore through its cranium. It fell to the ground, much more blood leaking from the wound.
"Nice shot. Most people I've seen can't even hit a moving target on the first try." Ryan told him while giving him a thumbs up.
They found a total of eight more dead to practice on, and Aaron had dispatched them with the same deadly accuracy that he had displayed with the first.
That night after dinner, Aaron laid in bed, unable to fall asleep.
He couldn't stay here. In fact, he was wasting valuable time. The world had taken an intense dip upside down, and he wasn't even home. He needed to get out of Georgia and back to Pennsylvania. Back to Philadelphia to find his parents. He didn't have a clue as to what they were going through, and Aaron needed to be there.
He was going to get home, no matter what the cost.