Infected

by modernwolfskin

"The world we knew is gone. An epidemic of apocalyptic proportions has swept the globe causing the dead to rise and feed on the living. In a matter of months society has crumbled. In a world ruled by the dead, we are forced to finally start living." This story follows the events of Penelope Trent, a survivor of the zombie apocalypse who is in search of other survivors in Arizona.

1. Chapter 1

Before the outbreak, I was living on my own with my cat and interning at a local radio station. My responsibilities included (and were extremely limited to) pulling out records to be used, answering phones, checking the station's emails, and fetching coffee or snacks for the staff. Glamorous and highly productive, right? The thing is, it was never enough for me and it wasn't the job I dreamed it would be when I got the call that I was accepted as their new intern. I wanted to be one of the hosts, picking out music for the day, talking about the latest in the news, conducting interviews with celebrities, all while having lively discussions with my co-host and providing general entertainment to the world. Waking up at two o'clock and getting to the station by four every single morning, just to get some pompous jerk his coffee, was not what I had signed on for. I was supposed to be in training to work my way up to the host of my own show, for Christ's sake. None of the listeners knew I existed, and I wanted that to change so desperately that I wished for anything, anything, to put me into one of those big swivel arm chairs the hosts lounged in day after day.

Well, one day, I finally got my wish. Though it is kinda ironic how it took a zombie apocalypse to make it happen.

I had always been one of those girls that talked among my friends about the possibility of a zombie apocalypse, especially with all the new TV shows and movies that were all the rage back when the world wasn't in complete disarray. I loved zombies. I loved the idea of them, loved participating in any sort of event featuring the walking dead, and I especially loved dressing up as one every Halloween. I read all the books and watched all the movies or shows I could find on zombies, and I had even written a paper in a sociology class based around zombies in the modern world. I think my fascination bordered on obsession, which of course freaked my closest family out and lead me to move from our cozy home in San Francisco to a tiny apartment in Mesa, Arizona. Though I miss the city from time to time, I've grown fond of the remote landscape - not to mention how much more helpful that scenery would be in the case of an outbreak as opposed to a crowded city.

Regardless of how well-versed I was in the world of the walking dead, I wasn't prepared for the outbreak to happen as suddenly as it did. Cases were popping up of people going crazy and eating each other, the first broadcasted from Florida, and it was written off as drug use. People were supposedly using homemade 'bath salts', something like meth, and it was causing their brains to deteriorate, stripping them of their humanity and developing a craving for human flesh like cannibals. I was skeptical of this, of course, but all my friends told me that my obsession had escalated, that this was just the product of idiotic people letting their addictions get the best of them, and so I let it go. I should have been more prepared, and to this day I beat myself up over it, but I don't think I could have done anything different than what the Center for Disease Control and our lovely government had attempted to do.

It didn't take long for the problems to escalate, and any fool could see that more and more 'bath salt' users were appearing all over the world. In under a year, society had completely collapsed. Shelves were emptied from any and all stores, people were being held at gun point in the streets for food or water, and it became impossible to trust the living. Those that had been killed were rising up from the streets more frequently, the disease spreading out of control, and survivors moved on so that it became nearly impossible to run into another human being without traveling for days. I stayed in Mesa, locking myself away in my apartment until the whole complex became overrun, and soon I was forced to take what I could and find shelter elsewhere. I headed to the radio station, which had of course been abandoned, but it was secure enough to keep the dead out. Over the next two years after the first sign of the outbreak, I had fought my fair share of zombies and learned to cope without the company of others. I found ways to trap them, tricks to keeping myself hidden from their sight and scent when hunting for supplies, and more than a hundred every day objects that could be used in a pinch to defend myself. I knew how to fire a gun and was adept at hitting a far off target, but I tried to avoid firearms as much as possible, as the sound usually drew more zombies to my location than I could handle.

I had run into a few survivors during a couple outings, but nearly every one tried to screw me over in one way or another. One guy had actually suggested we travel together and find safety in numbers before attempting to us me as zombie bait so he could save his own ass. He was bitten in the end. I learned fast not to trust anyone, something that was unusual for me considering how trusting and naive I had been before the outbreak, but I guess the ever-present threat of death changed people in that way. Regardless of how little I trusted people, I still missed human companionship and had put out radio signals for any survivors that happened to be listening in. Two years of living alone, surrounded by nothing but death, was enough to drive the sanest person to put a bullet in their own brain. This is where I was today.