Salvation seemed the ideal place in the end of the world, as opposed to any other safe area; it had an endless supply of gas, electricity, hot water, food, medicine, so on and so forth. Few of the hundreds of thousands of residents suffered from poverty, hunger, or sickness. But the utopia that appeared on the outside was crumbling and rotting on its very foundations, foundations made of corruption from its law enforcers, lawyers, and judges, fascism from its leaders, pagan beliefs of worshipping celebrities and an obsession with violence of all who inhabited. This would consume all those who entered, but a man who led the way for the incorruptible forces like him would fight, not only the creatures on the outside or those corrupt, wicked figures within, but also the very city he is trying to save to avoid being swallowed by what he tried to create, a revolution.
They walked for hours; no camps were to be seen since they ventured out. The last camp they managed to join had no walls, no protective barriers, little weapons or ammo, and no planning for an attack. They didn't hush their voices at night, they never had reconnaissance missions, and they had either audacious enough or, more likely, had the moronic/misguided sense of indestructibility that led them to leave fires and lights on to keep the adults and children calm. This lured in the massive hordes, as well as several juggernauts, bloaters, ferals, and screamers, luring more and more zombies into the fray with whatever gun fire they had left and the cries of screamers and the dying people. It was a grotesque spectacle, humans being torn in half, beheaded, committing suicide in various ways, and being devoured. They only managed escape by all the ammo they had smuggled into camp and their own personal side arms. They were still followed by several hordes, but they resorted to a desperate, selfish maneuver. Knowing the poorness of the zeds eyesight, especially at night, the men threw all their wind-up alarm clocks back at the camp, luring more in and, luckily for them, away from them. They ran through the night, not uttering a word, numb to what they had seen and done after nearly 5 years of infection. Finally, one of them spoke as the sun rose above the trees in the distance, trudging through the muddy crop field they walked through, "You think it's true…that that village actually exists?" the shorter of the two asked, being around 5'9" while the other was 6'1".
"Dunno, lot of drunks and druggies back their, plus the run-of-the-mill old storytellers and gossipers." he responded.
The smaller of the two poked his tongue into his cheek, trying to hide frustration. Their eyes were bagged from lack of sleep; 12 hours on the run had a hell of an effect on the body. They were wise enough to stay out of sight of any zombie they saw in the clear, unending crop field, it had to have been over 50 miles long, or they were going in circles, they jokingly supposed. They at last reached the trees and rested in the grass beneath the shade, before the small one spoke. "Hey Alex, what's the dying quote Stonewall gave us? "Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees."" he quipped, smiling weakly.
"Zach, we haven't crossed a damn river yet." he smiled back.
They quickly lapsed into slumber, the shade remained as the sun revolved, it was the only thing that remained regular in this world. Zach was first to awake; a rustle in the nearby raspberry bush awoke him. He gripped his sheathed Buck knife, a model 119, and quietly freed the snap and drew it. A small rabbit was all that came through; he let out a light chuckle, and tapped Alex on the arm, which rustled him a little. After a few nudges on the shoulder, Alex then opened his eyes wide, looking bewildered at Zach, who pointed him towards the guest they met. The rabbit stood and stared at them, cocking its head like a curious dog at them. Zach crept toward it on all fours, one arm outstretched to stroke his first animal in years. His fingers inched closer and closer, then the bushes suddenly exploded, a yellow-skinned creature covered by a tattered t-shirt and shorts flew out, screeching with arms and clawed fingers outstretched. It landed on the rabbit, ripping it to bits with claws and teeth in a matter of moments, a one-creature piranha. Zach sprung back as it leapt from the bush, crawling backwards with feet and hands pushing him back, Alex leaping to his feet and screaming, "Feral!"
The shout got the feral off its murderous feeding and turned to some more dangerous, more filling flesh in front of it. It cocked back like a frog and leapt towards the man on the ground, pinning him and throwing its head in the air, mouth wide-open, and swung it back down, aiming to slam down on the side of his neck. But Zach managed to free an arm and slam the knife into its forehead as it swung back down, silencing it. He rolled the corpse off him and looked at Alex, who was still shaking. He wiped his face and he saw his hand crimson with feral blood. After several silent minutes, Zach still on all fours staring at the blood, he said, "We need to go, its way past noon."
They fought through the haze of just waking up and the briar patches to the other side of the forest unopposed. They saw smoke in the distance and hoped it was another survivor village, but they had seen too many times a crumbled town in ashes and blood and gore. However, they usually had supplies; one gave them their still used pair of binoculars, ammo, and their side arms. Others were devoid of all supplies, but it was a risk that yielded rewards nine times out of ten. They forged on through the forest and into the tall grass the opened up beyond the canopy, and slogged through the hot sun and humid green all around them. "We did the right thing back there, didn't we?" Zach asked Alex, attempting to break the silence.
"Our survival is what is key right now, those people would have died with or without us there, besides, they were all dead before we even left." he responded, his hand clasped around his sheathed machetes grip.
Just as their conversation ended, they heard shrieks over a hill coated with giant thistles. These, they could tell, were from humans, and they went sprinting up and over the hill. They reached the top and looked down on the horror, a man, woman, and little boy were surrounded on all sides by runners, circling around them and swiping at them. The man took out the closest ones with a nail-covered bracket, until it was ripped away and he was ripped from them too, held onto the ground and ripped in half by the group who then began dining on his remains, the tall grass partially skewing the view but not enough. The woman and child screaming was growing louder and more uncontrollable, she held the boy close and tight, he had his face buried into her stomach. The two broke from their shock and charged down the hill as the horde turned back toward the hysterically screaming pair and tore them from one another. Zach reached over his shoulder and drew a kukri sticking from his backpack as they neared, stomping, stabbing and hacking the skulls of the infected apart, but it was just too late. By the time the last of the zeds were killed, the boy and mother, they assumed, were clawed and bitten all over, the mother missing an eye and having intestines visible, the boy having the entire left side of his cheek bitten off and revealing his gums and teeth in a grotesque manner and a bit of his throat bitten off as well. Alex dropped a duffle bag he carried and unzipped it, pulling out some meds. Zach put his hand to Alex's chest as he attempted to open the bottle of morphine and shook his head. Zach then knelt by the woman and took her hand, rubbing it softly, the boy attempting to wail in fear and pain but his blood was choking him, he managed let out some screams but mostly coughs and gags. The woman turned her head weakly to face him and said, fading, "Bring my son to me, please."
Alex walked over and scooped up the boy, bringing him to his mother and laying him beside here, she immediately wrapped her arms around him and caressed his hair, the turning over spilled her intestines. Zach took off his backpack, his face a stonewall of emotionless uncertainty, and produced a Black Bird revolver. He freed the revolver's chamber and checked the rounds, two .45 caliber bullets were all that was in there, but it was enough for the job, plus he had plenty more ammo to spare. He picked his backpack up and looked at the woman, the revolver still presentingly lying in both hands, as if awaiting her approval. She merely looked the gun and closed her eyes tight and held her boy tighter to her breast, he was now breathing heavily and with much rasp and wheezing in his dying breaths. Zach took the revolver by the grip and pointed it at the woman, his grip and aim unwavering as he kept his eyes on the two and said, "It's not murder if they're going to turn, right?"
Alex sighed, turned and looked at the clear blue sky and listened to the cicadas fill the air with their incessant chatter, finally responding, "They are not people as soon as medicine can do nothing to stop the change, you are doing them and the world a courtesy, you should thank us ma'am."
She did so with a trembling in her voice, her eyes still shut and her grip on her boy still an unbreakable vise. After a few moments of silence, two shots cracked the air only a few seconds apart, sending the birds in the forest they just exited soaring. But the noise drew out something else out of the forest, something they had unwittingly ditched deeper in the forest. A tall, hulking beast now stormed towards the sound over the hill from which the bangs came, its arms swinging and fists clenched as it walked, its noseless face with sunken eye sockets and bony, sharp cheeks twisted in blind determination and fury.
Whew! I know this and the Halloween story, which I will upload shortly, are incredibly early but I just couldn't wait and I need your guys' opinions, should it continue, and if so should it go on in-between the Deadliest Warrior seasons or should we wait until the DW franchise is over with, and as always give me your thoughts, concerns, praise, etc. in the reviews and favorite and subscribe if you like. See ya!
