PART ONE ~
The sound of the road rumbling along under the van vibrated through my entire body. It was a week since we'd left home on some mundane family outing. We'd left our truck behind four days ago because it was too cramped to hold the four of us and supplies. Glancing around the van, I smiled slightly to myself. It looked like we were on a road trip from the ice chests and snack packages that filled the floor space and the luggage piled in the back. If only it were just a road trip... Originally we were only an hour or so from home, but now we were maybe days. Distance wise it was technically several hours away, but it was difficult to move very far in a day.
Imagine a zombie movie, right after the plague hits hard and cities have become empty but still dangerous wastelands. That's what it felt like now. Freeways were littered with vehicles either abandoned or ripped apart, bits of corpses could be seen here and there, and any people we met fled in another direction fearing the worst. The only difference was that there were no zombies. Oh ho ho no, no zombies, that would be too easy. As any crazy theorist will tell you, thanks to the numerous zombie movies out there, zombies would never become a threat like the movies show. People know how to kill them, when to let others live or die, and how to avoid contamination or infection.
This was... similar in effect when it comes to panic and destruction, but that's where the similarities end. Instead of the walking dead, California was being plagued by... mutant monsters of some kind. Imagine a Parasite Eve or Silent Hill game where everything from dogs to people or even insects are affected. Living things, not dead mind you, would mutate and grow into hideous beasts filled to the brim with an insatiable rage, rampaging powerhouses without mercy or restraint. No one knew where it had come from and since we'd been on the road we hadn't heard news as to whether it had hit on a national scale, or worldwide for that matter. The radio was little help and the van we'd picked up didn't have one.
It was amazing how amidst all the horror someone would stop to steal a radio from a van. I mean, just take the whole thing! It's not like the police will grab you for car theft or that you'll be able to sell the thing. The world was in a free for all state, anarchy even out of the question. There simply weren't enough people in one place for it to matter... Hell, they'd stopped at a mall to pick up some awesome freebies themselves only to find out two things: one, iPhones and similar items are useless unless activated and two, malls can be a bit dangerous.
People don't flock to the places they loved in life like in zombie movies for one simple reason. Doing so is basically a death wish because places that once held a large population had an increased percentage rate for mutations. It isn't known why some beings were changed, but simple arithmetic states that it is far more likely for an incident to crop up where there are more possible victims. Everyone with commonsense realized that pretty quickly and those that didn't... didn't last long.
So rather than going straight for home, we'd just been driving where ever we could while avoiding confrontations. This isn't as easy as it sounds because even in areas that were not clogged with debris still held these creatures. Luckily there weren't usually many of them as when unchanged victims were no longer available to chase down they only had each other to kill. In most cases there's only one left by the time we'd reached it. They work quickly.
It hasn't been all bad though. I've gotten pretty damn good at killing them myself in hand to hand fights. I'd decided to join the military to make me into less of a waste and had been working out to be sure I could make it through basic training in more or less one piece before this happened. Sure, I hadn't joined up yet so had no formal training, but I was no longer a disgustingly weak little girl. After our last move I'd finally gotten serious about my choice and got fit in several weeks. After we'd run down some of the creatures in the truck we knew they could be killed the same as any other living thing unlike the monsters portrayed in movies like this.
A sign buzzed by stating "Eureka" and I smiled inwardly again, thinking of the science fiction show we'd used to watch. A town where anything possible could be invented by the geniuses who inhabited it. Heh, a town where this sort of thing could happen by accident at any time, but would be corrected by the end of the episode or in a few if it was dire enough. It was amusing to entertain the thought for a moment that perhaps that place could be real. Maybe that is where it all started after all. Hmm... If we were nearing Eureka then we'd gone farther north than I'd even been in California as far as I knew. I'd lived in Southern California all my life and had never been farther than Sacramento. Of course, my geography could be off again, it might be farther south than us... right? Now my geography was way off, through totally askew again. Wonderful. I leaned forward to ask my mother about it and noticed that we were slowing down.
More cars plugged the freeway at the top of a slight hill, so we could not see much beyond that. I volunteered to check whether it was worth pushing past or not. Diving out the sliding side door and leaping onto the roof of the van, I carefully but quickly surveyed the clotted street for movement of any kind. Seeing that it was basically clear, I slipped onto the hood and hopped over to the nearest vehicle and then onto the next, etc as I made my way up without touching the ground. Something had once grabbed my leg from beneath an abandoned car and I no longer trusted a supposedly deserted scene.
As I reached a spot with a clearer view, a catastrophic scene stretched out before me. For miles and miles as far as I could see and beyond, a massive crater sat rudely where the Eureka city limits should have been. Whatever had caused the pit wasn't obvious but what was was the fact that no one would be coming or going from that devastation, mutant or no. I leapt quickly back to the van and filled everyone in on what I'd seen. Seeing as we'd come so far north and into less familiar areas, it was decided that we'd just start heading back the way we came on a different freeway to try and reach home.
Not that there was any reason too other than to retrieve sentimental items. I'd already found some decent weaponry at a deserted road show to fill any role my shoddy display swords could have filled. I'd even gotten all kitted out with leathers and looked like a right sci-fi fantasy hero. My parents and brother were still dressed normally, if a little thicker, so I stood out. My parents each had picked up some baseball bats as protection, while my crazy brother had chosen a gardening scythe. He'd gotten rid of that and replaced it with a sword at the show though, as it had proved too heavy and unwieldy to be of any use. Not that we'd let him get a chance to try anything he chose anyway with him being the youngest. He was 16 now and pretty athletic so could probably handle himself, but if anything went down he was forced to stay in the car out of harms way. My dad and I took out anything necessary hand to hand and my mom ran over anything else. She could be surprisingly bloodthirsty when running things down.