Left to the Dice
Please note: this is a story that I wrote for English class. The title came from the basis of a zombie apocalypse RPG I wrote for some of my friends to play.
I
It's coming... I know it...
Bob is sitting in his house, all alone. He is alone because there is no one who wants to live. Not one person, not his friends, not even his girlfriend believed that doomsday is coming. Having read Cell, World War Z, and books of the sort as a kid, Robert Davis has been hoarding canned food, weapons, ammunition, first aid supplies, gasoline and batteries for years. His pessimistic manner of speech and thinking drove Sheri away. It affected him in strange ways, almost as if he was bipolar: he would be at the beach, euphoric one minute, and the next he'd be spouting all sorts of "Judgement Day" crap.
When will it happen? What if it's happening right now and I don't know about? Am I going to die? What will the Feds so about it? Nothing. I mean, of course they'll try, but they can't save anyone from the end of the world. If Death wants somebody, he'll be damn sure to get them. Will I have enough? No. There can never be enough. Can't be too careful in a world filled with maniacs looking for any weak links, any cowards.
Getting up from the armchair, Bob crossed the gloomy lit sitting area and entered the kitchen, just as dark, thick curtains drawn. Opening the refrigerator, Davis looked for something to eat. Removing the half-gallon jug of milk, along with a container of deli roast beef and a head of lettuce, he thought of the irony of a prepped having fresh food.
It's almost hypocritical, the man thinks to himself. His lunch complete, Bob decides to take his meal on the porch behind his house. His left hand occupied with a peaceful of bread, lettuce and meat, his right holding the glass of milk, Bob uses his teeth to unlock the deadbolt on his two inch thick solid oak back door. Of course it'd be easier to put down either the sandwich or the milk, but Bob doesn't think like that: he wants to to do as many things as he can at any given moment in time. The storm door, reinforced with iron bars, is easily opened with one's elbow. The deck, containing no more than a small table and a chair, is enclosed by a series of wooden posts topped with a banister. A set of three stairs leads down into the yard, where an empty swimming pool sits. The grass plot is surrounded by a six-and-a-half foot high chain link fence, intended to keep other people out. This part of Savannah however, doesn't need much protection, but Bib stated that he'd "rather be safe than sorry" when he first had it installed.
Everyone knows about me, my prepping. They should see me as an example, not a joke. Yet they scoff at me when I pass, think I'm crazy. And even though I tell them that they should start readying themselves, they choose to ignore my warnings. They'll be sorry. Yes they will. When it finally happens, be it a tsunami, a robot takeover, or a nuclear war, at least Bob Davis will be ready.
II
In the basement of his townhouse, Bob is going through his nightly routine of checking the stockpile. First the food: counting out how many days he has before running out. Beans, corn, carrots, gravy, condensed milk, grits, pasta, Vienna sausages, fruit cocktail, and countless other foodstuffs in boxes, bags, and cans. All of it sat on shelves, waiting to be used, waiting for their expiration date not for some time in the future. These shelves, four feet long, three feet deep, one above the other in two columns of three, sat on two walls in the corner of Bob's cellar. In total, the shelves hold about three week's worth of non-perishable food, one of the most vital necessities in any apocalypse. Bob needs to protect this area more than any other in his house, so he has installed a sliding door and decorated it as a part of there wall. This false wall would determine any looters who manage to break in, unless they look closely enough. The catch is installed in the opposite wall, hidden behind a loose brick.
The guns come next. Two guns: an AR-15 assault rifle and a Glock-18 handgun are contained inside of locked footlocker. As Bob dials in the code (10-2-13), the lock clicks. With the storage unit open, Bob removes the guns and checks their ammunition count, oils and cleans them, and then may or may not practice with them in the backyard, depending on how badly he wants to annoy his neighbors. A third gun, a .44 Magnum, sits under his pillow upstairs, in case of a nighttime burglary. Bob has already checked that one though, and now he has to make sure these weapons are in the correct working condition. He disassemble each firearm, and meticulously applies the dark, sticky oil to each and every screw, hammer, trigger, and barrel.
A safe gun owner has a clean gun. Bob's motto might as well be stitched into a canvas hanging above the mantel. When and only when both guns are re-assembled and placed back into the case, does Bob notice how unusually quiet it has become. It is not the peaceful quiet that one would expect on a summer night, with the occasional chirps of crickets or the passing car. It is a much deeper silence, like that of the kind one would feel if they awoke at two in the morning, when no creatures move and no people stir. Instead of sitting and listening to the ominous peace, Bob dares to break the silence by turning on the battery operated radio. Static issues from the device's speakers The man's fingers find the dial and turn. He the weak signal of a local music station, adjusts the antenna, and listens. A man's voice comes over the airwaves, telling of a disturbance in downtown Savannah.
"Our local correspondent, George Ellis, is in the downtown area with an eyewitness of this strange activity. George?"
"Adam, I'm here at the home of a woman who claims she saw a man-sized creature covered in blood. The gray bipedal... thing supposedly lumbered down Oak hill Avenue towards a hot dog vendor's line of customers. The unknown creature bit a man who was waiting in line to buy a hot dog, taking chunks of flesh out of the victim's body, causing him to bleed to death. Then, the witness says the color left the man's body, and he stood up and wandered off through the park. Law enforcement..." A crashing sound is heard, followed by a strange combination of a growl, a moan, and a guttural blowing, as if someone were choking.
"George, is everything alright? George? Are you there?"
"Adam, it seems the witness's testimony is correct. Right now, a pale woman is emerging from her home, but instead of using the door, she has broken a window and is coming through that, seemingly with no regard for her health. She is stumbling, and has bite wounds on her arms and legs. She is coming this way. I am going to see if she will respond to my voice. Hello! George Ellis, from JAMS? I'd like to ask you a few questions about the reports of a gray man attacking a person today. What do you think it could be?"
More of the growling, only louder now.
"Ma'am? Are you okay? Do you need help? You broke a window; do you need an ambulance? I can get one here ri-" A scream is heard, blood-chilling, that of an animal. Chomping sounds, the clatter of bones on pavement, blood dripping. The phone line then goes dead.
"Oh no. Okay. Um... Well this concludes our nightly report. Tune back into JAMS for all the latest tunes at five a.m. This is Adam Milton signing off."
It has begun.
Robert switches off the radio, walks to his work bench and grabs some 2x4s. He climbs the-wooden staircase to the ground floor. Walking through the kitchen, Bob opens the closet door and pulls out the power drill and a box of screws. Bob begins to board up all the windows and doors to make the house look vacant. By midnight, all the openings in the perimeter had been sealed.
III
A loud thumping, followed immediately by a crash awakens Bob around dawn. He reaches under the pillow and grasps the .44 and proceeds to exit the bedroom. Peering down the corridor, Davis could tell the sound had come from the front porch. He stuck his head around the corner and saw that a pair of men and one woman had kicked down the front door.
It's only been a week. Could there really already be looters prowling streets?
"This doesn't look like the kind of place that has a stockpile of stuff. It looks deserted." That was one of the men, a tall African American fellow.
"Trust me. It's all downstairs, hidden behind a false wall." The woman's voice sounded familiar to Bob, but he didn't know why. There's only one person in the whole world who knows about the fake wall.
"Where?"
"Down there. First door on the left." At that, she points to the hall where Bob now stands. "You go. We'll look for useful stuff up here."
Good luck. I've already hidden my toolbox below the floorboards. But who is this girl and how does she know about my stockpile? It couldn't be. Could it?
When he tall man steps around the corner, Bob wraps his arm around the big guy's face, covering his mouth. Stepping out from his cover, Bob holds the .44 to his captive's head and addressed the intruders.
"Get out. Now."
"Who are you?"Turning to the woman, the man said: "I thought you said this house was empty."
She retorted: "It is. Er, it was. This is my ex-boyfriend's house. He was obsessed with the end of the world and I left him because of it. Guess he was right."
It punched Bob in the mouth. "Sheri. You thought I had turned onto one of those things didn't you?!"
"Oh my God! Bobby! I'm so glad you're still alive! Um... That's Michael; the one you have with you. This is my current boyfriend Shane. We were going to take your stuff, but since you're still alive, can we stay here for a while? We ran out of everything: even our knives broke. They were the only weapons we had."
"You thought I was crazy. To prepare. Then, when everything went to hell, the first thing you do is come here looking for my help. No. Get out and deal with this yourselves. I won't ever help you. You're no different than anyone else. Leave now, or your friend Michael here is going to have a hole in his skull, and Ill be left with a pretty red splotch on my wall."
Out of nowhere, the ground begins to shake. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Almost as if a giant were beating on a larger-than-life drum. The staccato beat of the drum grows louder and more powerful with every passing second.
As soon as it hard started, the rumbling stops, and the survivors look at each other in confusion. "What was that? We're in Georgia, not on any faults. I've got a bad feeling about this." Sheri moves towards the window, and Michael takes this opportunity to break away from Bob's stranglehold. Sheri screams and jumps away from the window.
"Oh my God! What the? Oh God Almighty."
"What? What is it?"
Before the three men can cross the room to look out the window and share in Sheri's horror, a sedan flies through the wall, crushing Shane under it's weight.
Through the gaping hole, Bob sees a huge mountain of a creature with flesh rotting off its bones. The tusks of the thing are scratched and covered in blood, hair, and chunks of moldy flesh. The former animal charges the house, and Bob reacts with inhuman speed, diving for his safe house: the basement. He locks the door, and with the finality of the deadbolt sliding into place, Sheri and Michael's pounding and pleas are drowned out by splintering wood, shattering glass, and twisting metal. After five minutes or so, the noises cease, giving way again to the suffocating quiet of the apocalypse. Bob opens the door a crack and peeks out at the upstairs. The two people who had just been alive now filled his gaze. Sheri has been impaled upon a splintered piece of door-frame, her stomach torn open by the beast's tusks, intestines hanging out like a spilled bowl of spaghetti. Michael has been buried by debris, and only his hand his visible, limp now, but once stiff and grasping for something, anything that would let him pull himself to freedom. But, the thousands of pounds of drywall, wire, and shingles have squeezed the life from his body. As for Shane, the car is only partially visible now, for most of the ceiling has come down between the survivor and the vehicle. Looking back at the other two, Bob feels good that they're gone.
That'll teach them to try to leech supplies off me. I need a truck. I need to get away from everyone, or what used to be everyone. I need money, although it won't help much, I might be able to buy myself out of a bad situation. I'm a needy person, even with all the prepping I did.
Bob's Nissan is now nothing more than a pancake, having been crushed by the monster's foot. Luckily, the silver F-150 is still parked in the driveway of Bob's neighbor, Harold Jones. Bob put his face to the glass and looked in the window.
No keys. Not surprising. Jones would probably have them with him, but how am I supposed to find one walking corpse in a country of what? 300 million? 350? That would be the easy part anyway: how would I actually get the ring from him? Forget it. Rock. Rock. Rock.
Bob sees a rock in the grass by the sidewalk. When he bends down to pick it up, he realizes it is not just a large stone.
Oh. Hello Mrs. Sherman. I didn't think I'd ever see you again.
Bob tosses the head away, and swaps it for an actual stone. Fist-sized and rounded, the rock would definitely have enough power to break the window. The glass, so fragile, yet strong enough to withstand the first blow, shatters with the second. He reaches in and unlocks the door, allowing himself access to the interior. It smells faintly of pipe tobacco, Bob notices, as he bends down to remove the panel u underneath the steering wheel. He peels back the outer plastic coating of the wires, and connects the yellow one with the black one after it has been crossed over the red one. The engine roars to life and he puts it in drive, pulling it up in front of his property.
IV
The Sun had long since gone down by the time Robert Davis had transferred his food and such to the new, working vehicle. He ate a supper of warm fruit cocktail and cold ravioli on the road, listening to a series of country songs ad he chewed.
Thank God for automatic playlists.
V
The world collapsed,
Into the dark abyss it fell.
Very few remain.
The failure of society,
The lives of those that are left,
All is left to the Dice.
Roll them once.
Roll them twice.
So many have died,
They that are weak,
Had they listened,
To Bob Davis,
Perhaps they'd still be around.
Now all that is left,
Is Chaos and Death,
The mistresses of anarchy,
And those who bathe in the misery of others.