The story I am about to tell is not a happy one. Not only does it not begin happily, it does not end happily, and so if you are looking for something to brighten your day, I suggest you cease reading immediately.
But if you are looking for the truth, then by all means, continue.
The story starts with a girl; she is me. Don't get too attached to her, because things do not end well for her, and certainly not the way she hoped they would. There came a point in her life– in my life– in which I had come to realize two very important things:
First, I was in love.
Second, the one I loved was not among the living.
No, he was definitely not alive, but then, neither was he dead. Well, I suppose he was dead, but not in the usual sense of the word; the life within him had indeed departed, but the thing that was left behind did not cease to walk the earth.
Let me back up. Perhaps you have heard of Z-Day: that fateful day in human history when everything –anything - went horribly, horribly wrong. It started with a virus, a thing so small, so beneath the range of human sight that its true potential never seemed to really sink in. . . until Z-Day. No one knew where it came from, or why, but within twenty-four hours the virus had swept through all of London, and in twenty-eight days, had left its bloody trail swiped across the face of England.
I suppose this particular virus was not the worst way to die; in fact it killed the host within a few hours of infection – a relatively short and easy way to go. The really horrible part of the virus, then, remained for those left behind. You see, once the virus had killed you, snuffed out all traces of consciousness, it was free to take control of the brain. The result was an abomination of nature: a reanimated corpse; not alive, yet still capable of motion; not conscious, yet still having horrible animal-like urges. The virus-controlled host had only one purpose in its ghastly half-life: to spread. And to do that, it had to keep the dead infected body alive – it had to feed.
To feed was to survive, to ensure the continuation of the virus. It is spread through blood, saliva, and other bodily fluids. Once these fluids have entered your body – through your mouth or open cuts or, more often, by a bite from the infected – there is no going back. You have only a few hours to live, a few hours to distance yourself as far as possible from the ones you love, lest the corpse you leave behind rise again and be the downfall of them all.
I remember Z-Day like it was yesterday, a black mark burned on my brain for all eternity. It started with the rising of the recently deceased, crawling out of the morgues and clawing their way up through the dirt of their freshly-placed graves. I can still see it: the pale twisted hands breaking through the earth, dragging up the ghastly head with them: the eyes, blank and distant; the mouth, twisted in eerie inhuman groans. Once they had escaped – and no one was too eager to try and stop them – they spread the virus among the living.
It was frightening to see the dead haunting the streets, their inhuman moans and screeches sending chills down my spine. It was even worse to see them chase down and devour some pour soul unlucky enough to cross their path, perhaps in some last-minute desperate escape plan. Even if they were not eaten, they became infected, and had only a few hours to live before the virus did its dirty work.
The infected were the untouchable, shunned from the rest of society. Once you'd come in contact with the infected, you were no longer seen as a human being, but as something to get far away from as fast as possible. Never before have I seen families so easily broken apart, the infected deserted by their loved ones without a second thought, left alone to rot and die, and then to rise again. God forbid you told the others you'd been bitten, lest they try and rid the world of you before your time is up.
There was only one way to kill – no, to destroy – the living dead, and that was removal of the head or destruction of the brain. Never before has the world been so ugly; never before have I seen brothers and sisters turn on each other so suddenly, desperate to escape alive. Those of us who survived were not left unscarred.
I survived. The one I loved, as I have already revealed, did not. The funny part was, I never even knew him – knew him alive, I mean. Not really. He never even told me his name. After he died, and rose again, some part of me knew he was gone – that the thing in front of me was no longer the man I loved. But there was another part of me that believed I could bring him back, redeem him, find some trace of my loved one still buried within that twisted breathing corpse. How could I have been so foolish?
It was my love that caused me to not give up on him. And so, in the end, I suppose it was my love that caused the downfall of everyone I loved.
I could try and forget; I could keep my sad gruesome tale from the rest of the world and let it die with me. But one thing stops me: redemption. It was my belief in redemption that led me to try and save him. It is that belief now that leads me to write this now: the hope that some part of me can be redeemed from the sins of which I so unwittingly committed.
They told me I was wrong to try and save him, wrong and young and foolish. Now I see they were right. I will tell the story, and when it is done, you may judge me as you will.