My name is/was Leo. Names aren't important as they're just a way to be identified in society- a society that doesn't exist anymore. I lived in a nice downtown-Seattle apartment all my life, it was enough. I'm now 34, and used to work as a sewerage engineer for the city, I was on track to building a nice life for myself out there, except for the fact that I didn't keep much contact with family or have many friends.
The city transformed very quickly when it all begun. It went from the precipice of human creation to a hellscape that the living wanted nothing to do with.
At first no one really knew what was going on. Large sections of the city, and other cities all around the country, were coming down with deadly fevers, people were dying within hours of being infected based on early news reports. I've still got no idea how this whole thing started, but it was probably brought on by ourselves. The infected dead were walking, and their primary objective was to kill everything alive, converting it to their cause. The walkers as I call them spread their infection through bites or scratches, and either one was a condemnation of death; getting shot in the head was a better way to go out than to turn into one of them. People were scared. I heard stories early on of people weeping the losses of their loved ones only to be killed by them once they turned. Hearing this, I was sort of glad in a way that now frankly disturbs me, that I didn't have anyone I cared about.
It was only a couple of days in when the power went out and I decided I'd need to leave; I packed my Glock-18, my trusty swiss, and some light food and water for the road. The events that followed my leave would define the upcoming journey I was about to undertake.
As I closed the door and entered the hallway, a bulky man dressed in black leather with alien-red-markings had just pulled the trigger on a woman down the hall. I instinctively pulled my gun and shot back at him only to graze his stomach.
"NO!" screamed a little girl as what could've only been her mother dropped to the floor.
He turned the corner and I darted down the hall after them only to find this assailant between myself and the little girl. NOW I couldn't miss. Not this time. One loud bang and he was done, falling just short of where the mother had left off.
"Will you help her?" asked the girl as I took the gun and bullets from the man's body.
I turned to look at the sentenced-to-death mother, she was shot in the upper chest and there was a lot of blood. I quickly tied the man's shirt around her to put pressure on the wound, but she didn't have much time and I wasn't going to be able to save her. I had heard on one of the last news broadcasts before the power in my radio gave out that when people died, whether they were bitten or not, they would turn unless their brain had been destroyed. I couldn't let this woman turn in front of her daughter, this couldn't end up like the people weeping in those news stories.
"I'm sorry. She isn't going to make it." I said reluctantly. "She probably has a few minutes left until…" I was interrupted by the horrid noises that started coming from downstairs, there were walkers in the building and we had to get moving.
"Listen, your mother is not going to be herself anymore in a few minutes, she is going to become a monster, and try to kill us" I continued, "you don't want to see her like that."
The sobbing went on.
"Where is your father?" I replied.
"He went away to uhhh… Vancouver with his boss" she returned.
I didn't have much of a family anymore, no one that would care if I went missing. No one to care for. I needed to help this girl.
"Let's find him then" I said.
If apocalyptic situations can teach us anything, its that they drag the true nature of people to the surface where we find out the hard-way some truths about ourselves that may have even been repressed; did I have what it took to kill, to survive, to protect this girl? Still though, I can't imagine even three years into this mess now that I would ever shoot a fleeing mother with a child in the back- that's a level of darkness that I couldn't reach. Whether I believed I could protect her or not, there was no option to leave her behind now, I had to get this girl out of this city safely.
As I reluctantly pulled her away from her mother we headed towards the fire escape; after helping her onto the staircase outside, I turned back and fired one bullet into the mother's head, she deserved to rest.
The best way to get out of the city safely was to avoid the streets, so survivors escaping would likely be on rooftops or underground. Luckily enough, we didn't run into any other humans during our escape and at least the smell of sewage was better than rotting flesh.
We descended the building quickly and reached the ground in less than five minutes, where I then pried open the nearest grate and started my descent down the rungs, reaching solid ground quite fast. I knew most of the city's sewers very well, after all, I had inspected many of these tunnels and been a part of designing the newer parts as part of my nine to five.
"What's your name?" the girl asked about 15 minutes into our sewer walk
"Leo, yours?" to which she replied, "Rose."
"Okay Rose, how do you feel about boats?"
Knowing this section of town, we headed west based on the compass on my still-alive-phone, and maybe 2 hours later pausing when we heard walkers nearby, we surfaced again near where I intended.
The docks was one of my favorite places to go in the whole city, and boating was a part-time passion of mine ignited by my father when I was young. As it had only been a couple of days since the outbreak, there were still a couple of boats unattended at the port, which likely needed keys, or parts, or something to get moving. The first one I checked seemed to be in working order, it just lacked fuel, and a key, which was likely in the port facilities building or on a body in there. I decided to leave Rose in the boat with instructions to stay out of sight and hide under the tarp in the back if someone was coming. No one would be able to start the boat and leave, so she was relatively safe. Pulling out my Glock, I opened the unlocked side door and slipped inside. It was dark, and all I could hear was a faint creaky-moaning sound coming from inside the front office.
The man that used to work here must've been infected early, since he was tied to his chair with a thick rope, something only a human could do. His colleagues knew he was going to turn so instead of doing him the honor of killing him, they left him tied up, so he would become one of them. What a horrible way to go. Luckily enough I spied a ring of keys on the floor in front of him, which was my best bet at getting this boat started. One thrust to the head later of my fixed-blade-swiss, and it was done.
"Sorry" I muttered under my breath as I grabbed the keys and exited the office.
As I returned to the boat, Rose surprised me by gesturing to two extra fuel canisters, "I found them beside that boat" pointing about 100 meters down the dock.
"Nice find" I replied. Rose was a clever girl as I would later discover, and there was no use in scolding her now for not listening, that could happen when we were on the waves.
The plan was to head north and hopefully find the right sort of people we could survive with, and in hindsight heading north was a good idea, as walkers have a hard time moving up here in the cold.
Her mother was dead, and her father was likely dead too as Vancouver was a big city no different from Seattle, but seeing as we had a boat I agreed we would look for him on the way up.
Five minutes later and we were on the water, moving away from that dreaded city and towards the only thing humanity had left, hope.