Hunter. That's what they called me. They hated me, loathed me, longed to see me dead. But I was smarter than them, faster than them, stronger than them. I always won. This is my story, of infection, hatred and death.
I used to be one of them, used to be human. I have no real recollection of my life before the infection. I only remember jogging home one day in my blue tracksuit, tape around my thighs and forearms so that I could run faster and then suddenly I was being grabbed from behind, I struggled to break free but stopped when a pair of teeth were stabbed into my neck. The pain was unbelievable. I writed on the floor in agony, desperate for the pain to stop and to either die or get better very quickly. I passed out eventually.
When I awoke, my mouth was dry and my throat sore. My vision tinged with orange. My hands felt strange and when I looked down, they were claws! I shrieked and stumbled backwards, horrified at this unexplainable change that had happened to me. I roared and ripped at my clothing, pulling shreds of cloth from my arms and legs, tearing off my shoes when I found that my feet had clawed nails as well. I scrambled on the floor, terrified of myself, when suddenly, a very tall, muscly man appeared in front of me and said,
"Stop, you shouldn't be afraid, we have been blessed with these transformations so that we may cleanse those who are not blessed with powers such as ours."
I slowly and warily got to my feet and examined him: he was well over seven feet tall, his arms and torso were huge! There was so much muscle that his lower jaw had been absorbed into it, it was a wonder he could speak! He held himself upright with his arms, his legs didn't look as if they could support him on there own. He had a sparse covering of brown hair on the top of his head, wore a pair of blue jeans that looked strained on his legs and had long since lost his shoes when his feet had grown along with him.
"Who are you? What are you?" I asked, still standing a good way away from him incase he should attack me.
"My name is, or was, Dylan. I am a tank, you are a hunter. What is your name?" He had a deep grumbly voice, I didn't know whether this was his voice before the infection or if that had been changed too.
"I...I...I don't know." I answered truthfully, unable to recall even my name, this infection was truly terrible. "How is it that we can talk? And what the hell is happening? What has happened to me?" I was desperate to know why I had been transformed into this... demon.
"We can understand each other, but to any survivors, they will just hear noise. What's happening is Green flu has struck the nation. You have been transformed through a hunter bite, and being non immune, you have been infected." He said it so simply, he made it sound like an everyday occurence.
"Wait, I.. I remember hearing the news taking about some sort of flu, is this what it does?" I mentally shuddered, imagining how many millions of people must have been transformed by this infection. "So what am I supposed to do now?"
"We will turn the rest of the non immunes in this miserable place, and crush any survivors who try to stop us." He began to walk away on his knuckles, like a gorilla, before I called out to him.
"Wait! What do I do?" I was still unsure of my purpose at the moment, all I knew was that he was going to infect people and kill those immune.
"You wanna know what to do? You hunt. You kill. You feed. You find survivors with guns, you run." Saying that, he bounded off, the ground rumbling under his mighty footsteps.
For a few moments, I simply stood stock still, contemplating what Dylan had just told me. Could I bring myself to kill human beings? I used to be human. Used to be. I got my question answered when a girl screamed behind me.
She was small, her hair was dishevelled and her dress was torn. Her makeup had run down her face where she had been crying. She looked at me, terrified. She began to walk slowly backwards, saying "No, no, not one of you."
So there were more 'hunters' as Dylan had called me.
My instincts kicked in and I dropped to a crouch on my hands and feet, growling and snarling quietly at the girl. I crept forward, my snarling growing louder as she began to sob harder. She tripped over a stray brick and started scrambling backwards on her hands and feet.
"NO! YOU KILLED JENNY AND NOW YOU WANT ME! DON'T YOU, YOU BASTARD!" She began to scream hysterically and sobbed harder than ever as she scrambled around on the floor.
I continued to creep forward, letting my hunter instinct what to do. I snarled loudly when she screamed at me and she just cried while I readied myself. With a blood curdling scream, I pounced forward and onto the girl, who screamed louder than ever. I stared into her bright blue eyes, and saw pure terror etched on her face. Without thinking, I raised a claw and began to tear at her stomach, relishing in the cries of agony and the blood that poured out of her with equal strength. Eventually, I grew tired of her screaming and lowered my face to her throat, taking it in my teeth and jerking my head upwards. She gurgled slightly and then lay still.
I howled loudly, triumphant over my first kill. I began to feast on her organs, still warm with her coppery blood. It ran freely from my mouth while I slurped her blood from her throat, then I tore out her heart and swallowed it before getting up and walking away from the now cold corpse of my first hunter kill.
I found that no matter how much I walked, or ran, I never seemed to tire. Soon, I began to get a tension in my legs, and my steps almost became hops. I crouched and let my instinct take over again. I crawled forward rapidly, and with a sudden screech, leapt into the air! I was at least thirty feet high! I yelped when I started falling back to earth, and was relieved when I touched down as lightly as if I had merely hopped a couple of inches. I was amazed at what I could do now I was a hunter. I began to sprint and jump every so often, growling happily to myself when I jumped in the air, dug my claws into a building, and used it to propel myself higher.
It seemed, that no matter the height, I was able to take the landing like it was nothing. My legs were definetely strengthened by my transformation into a hunter. I had noticed that the sunlight hurt my eyes a lot, so I pulled my hood up over my head and found I could see better.
I began to feel hungry, leaping from building to building had left me almost starving. I raised my head and sniffed the air, catching a whiff of meat. I shrieked and leaped toward the smell. It was coming from an old abandoned shop. I crept into the darkness of the shop and growled. When I growled, the store lit up like a christmas tree, I continued growling and the store stayed lit up, but only in mine or any other infecteds, eyes. Any human would see nothing but darkness.
I went to the back of the store and found the source of the smell, meat. I tore open the packet and devoured the raw meat hungrily, eating eight or nine packets of bacon as well. Once I was satisfied, I left the store and saw a map rolling along the floor. I ran and stopped it with my foot, picking it up so I could find out where I was.
The map title read: Norwich City, England. I was in England? Then suddenly, I remembered.
I lived here! I had a house in a village called Frettenham, a wife as well I thought to myself. I was glad that I could remember these things, but they meant little to me now. I threw the map onto the ground and perked my head up at the sound of gunfire and screaming. I leapt towards the sound, following the rooftops so I coudn't be spotted. I soared to a grey, rusting building and stopped at the ledge of the roof.
Looking over, I saw four humans, three male and one female. They were all brandishing guns and fighting back dishevelled and pale infected. These were what I came to call common infected. The humans, or, survivors as Dylan had said, were faring quite well against the commons.
From behind me came a dry, hacking cough, I turned around and came face to face with a tall man wearing a purple V-neck shirt, blue, torn jeans and some black converse shoes. His face and left arm were almost entirely covered in obscene boils! Only his right eye was visible, there seemed to be seven tentacles hanging from his upper throat and face. One very large tentacle was hanging from his mouth and his shoulders were entirely covered in small spores that were releasing putrid, green smoke.
He limped to the edge of the roof and looked back at me before saying,
"Hang on, the girl's mine." He looked back to the street below and uttered a loud scream before the tentacle hanging from his mouth, which I now realised was a tongue, flew out of his mouth and latched onto the girl shooting in the street below. It only took a second for it to wrap around her throat like a deadly scarf before she was being pulled towards the roof we were perched on.
"Guys, smokers got me!" She shouted to her teammates, the boy at the back, who was rather small and timid looking, turned and raised his rifle to his head. The 'smoker' in front of me gave a small grunt of displeasure and continued to reel his tongue in and start dragging the girl up the wall. As she was raised about five feet off the ground, the timid boy opened fire, hitting the smoker square in the chest, causing him to explode into a cloud of dark green smoke that had the most horrible stench.
I yelped and jumped backwards when he died, almost tripping over my own feet and tumbling over the other edge of the roof. I heard the gir scream and drop to the floor below me while the others rushed to help her up.
"Boomer and jockey!" Shouted one of the bigger looking boys, he was clutching an auto shotgun to his chest and firing at a grotesquely obese zombie that was waddling down the street toward the small group. He was immensely fat and was covered in moving and pulsating boils. He gurgled and groaned as he approached the survivors. Because of the tall boys short range gun, he couldn't hit the 'boomer' as they called it. I didn't know why they called it a boomer, but I was sure I was about to find out.
He stopped to reload and the boomer waddled faster than ever toward him and the other survivors, when he was within seven feet of them, he pulled his head back, and vomited all over the boy at the front.
There was a giant roar as the common infected focused on the boy covered in the green substance, it took them mere seconds to rip him into little pieces and resume attacking the others, who, witnessing their friends death, had shot the boomer in its grotesque stomach.
As the bullet pierced its stomach, it exploded in a shower of gore and bile, taking out several common infected with it. Then remembering the now dead boy had shouted jockey, i saw at the other end of the street, a small ginger haired man in torn shorts with a unched back, cackling insanely and sprinting towards the girl. As it neared her, it launched itself into the air and landed on her shoulders, wrapping his arms and clawed hands around her face and using his weight to drag her back towards the hordes of common infected still attacking her friends.
Eventually, the jockey stopped trying to pull her towards the commons and simply tightened his hands, effectively crushing the girls head and letting her crumpled body fall to the floor.
The jockey ran back and grabbed the smaller boy, pulling him awat just like he had with the girl.
Seeing my chance, I leapt from the top of the roof I was on, shrieking as I did, and landed on the last boy. He looked at me in pure horror, and tried to push me off as I started tearing at his stomach and face.
When he was dead, I leapt back to the roof I was on moments ago and surveyed the area. The jockey was long gone, having claimed his prize already. Bodies, infected and survivor, were scattered everywhere and there was enough blood to fill up a swimming pool. I felt the ground rumble and saw Dylan slowly walking down the road, still on his knuckles.
"Dylan!" I shouted, desperate to talk to him after having noone to talk to. When the only people around you who can talk are likely to kill you, it's kinda hard to have a conversation.
"Hello!" He called back in his rumbling voice, he started walking towards the building I was on, as he neared the bottom I dropped down to his level, not minding that it was a thirty to forty foot drop.
"How've you been?" I asked, even though it had only been five minutes or so since he had told me about the infection and what I was supposed to do.
"Good, I just caught a survivor round the corner. Tore him to pieces." He chuckled and flexed his right arm, the misshapen muscles moving as he did so. "What about you?"
"I killed a girl earlier and one of the boys here." I pointed to the bloodbath around me, the lower half of the boomer was lying upside down on the pavement, its legs wobbling slightly in the wind.
"Wow, you did well for a newly turned." he said approvingly. He patted me on the back with his hand, causing me to fall to the ground under its massive weight.
I stood up and wiped the dust from my sleeves before saying "What about you? Have you found anyone to kill yet?"
"Not yet, they seem to be smart, every time I try to get to them, they feel the ground shake and run off to hide." He growled and punched the floor in anger, causing me to fall over again.
"Sorry, still haven't got used to all this strength."
"It's ok, I haven't gotten used to my capabilities either." I chuckled and picked myself up again.
"Well, I have some business to attend to, I'll try and catch up with you soon, dont get shot or anything." I nodded to Dylan and turned around, leaping twenty feet down the street and continuing to leap until I came to a small village on the outskirts of the city. There was a sign at the side of the road that read "Welcome to Frettenham".