Opened Eyes
Chapter 10
*Melanie's story*
A/N: If you need to review, read chapter 5 before starting this.
As the accelerator responded less and less to her foot she did the first thing that her mind thought of. A dog was on the side of the road barking at the car. She swerved the car toward the animal and hit it before the car came to a stop. Plagued surrounded the car as they swarmed over the dead animal. The dog was thrown onto the hood of the car and blood splattered across the hood. The Plagued crowded around the front of the car. One of the monsters spotted her and dove at her. The windshield cracked and the beast threw itself again at the windshield, putting a small hole in it. Melanie was in shock as she saw her life flash before her eyes and she screamed as the corpse reached through the opening in the windshield, making the hole wider and wide.
Finally, Melanie came out of her daze and saw an opening on her side of the car. The Plagued were mostly gathered in the front of the car, leaving a path from the driver's side door to an alley way unguarded. An opportunity Melanie took advantage of as she threw the door open. Melanie screamed as one of the walking corpses charged toward her. Before it grabbed her she was able to duck down underneath its arms and kicked at its legs, knocking it down. The Plagued in front of the car began to realize she was there and a few of the undead, those that couldn't get close enough to the dog to feast, began to chase after her.
Running through the alleyways, Melanie realized that she just escaped Death's trap. She might see her sister again, she might live! She grabbed onto a fire escape ladder and climbed up. The ladder seemed to have taken some previous damage and was shaking as Melanie climbed up. When she got near the top it began to break loose and one of the arms that attached the ladder to the floor above broke loose. Melanie held on for dear life thinking she was about to fall into the mass of corpses below, but the one arm left held the ladder. Her arms were holding tight to a rung and her legs wrapped around a lower rung as the ladder spun around and jostling Melanie and almost throwing her off balance. As one leg came loose she did all she could to throw herself back at the ladder and in the process hit her left leg hard on one of the rungs. Her ankle twisted in a deformed way and she crawled up the ladder slowly with her good appendages. When Melanie finally reached the top she kicked off the loose arm of the ladder with her good leg and climbed through a window into an apartment as the ladder crashed into the group of Plagued below.
She spent a long uneventful week eating what remained of canned foods that she found in the house. Finally one day she heard an electronic voice coming from somewhere in the apartment. She cautiously explored the apartment, so as not to alert anything to her presence. In the back room she located the source of the noise, a Ham Radio.
"Honey, please! If you're there, talk to me!" The man's voice was desperate. "I've found a way to end this apocalypse! I'm coming home to you. Please… be there." The man trailed off, and the voice stopped.
Melanie grabbed the radio and replied to the voice, "I'm sorry, there's no one else here."
Melanie felt so sorry for the man that had lost his family, but realized that this was the world that they lived in. It had been a few months since this apocalypse had started and Melanie seemed to be getting used to all hell. After a long silence the man finally spoke again, "I guess I knew it all along, no one seems to survive. It's just a matter of time. I thought that these things might have starved by now, but it seems as though their metabolism is extremely slow as they expend little energy." The man was silent after that for a long time until, "I'm Liam, by the way. I've been studying this plague since it began thank fully I've survived up until now. I found a way to kill these things in mass!" His voice was more excited now. "A sonic boom, one that can cover long distances. It can be carried on radio waves and wipe out a cities worth of the plagued. Some military groups were using it before all this happened and they needed a very powerful one to kill humans. But, these things are practically falling apart as it is. They just need a little push. The sonic waves will go through walls and should rip the cannibals to shreds."
"What do you mean, should" Melanie queried.
"Well, this is all just math on a table and I only have acquired a very small device for putting out sonic waves. However, it has been much more effective than relying on a bullet to hit them in the head. After a few more moments of silence he invited. "I'm on my way to a military research facility. Come with me!"
"I can't, I'm badly hurt. I broke something in my leg."
"Then I'll come to you. Sorry, I don't mean to be so forward. But I am desperate to be around another human. I can't be alone any longer. I'm gonna meet up with my son soon and then we'll find you. If you find him first, his name is Arthur." The man did seem at the end of his rope. Melanie shared his desire for human companionship and agreed. She thought she might have been losing her mind. After giving him the address of the apartment that she was staying in, they exchanged farewells and broke contact.
A few days later she hadn't had any further contact with Liam, so she drove over to where Michael had said the group had been staying, assuming that Liam hadn't been able to make it. She found nothing except for a large herd of Plagued concentrated on one side of the building. She drove around honking for a while, hoping that someone would answer her. But as the hordes of Plagued grew closer to her she sped off back to her apartment.
She returned to her apartment to find the door bashed opened. Melanie pulled out a knife from her belt and quietly snuck into the apartment. She saw a trail of blood lead into the apartment and slowly followed it inside. Once inside the apartment, she noticed a few things. The couch had blood covering one of the cushions and a Plagued body was lying on the floor nearby. She heard grunt coming from the back of the apartment and she walked slowly toward the noises and saw a Plagued slamming its body against the bedroom door and two more on the ground ripping apart and eating a man's recently deceased body.
Then she heard the screams of a man hiding behind the slowly shattering door, "Matt are you there? Are you okay?!" Melanie assumed that he was referring to the dead man on the floor. She hesitated to take on three of the Plagued by herself, but didn't want to leave the man to die in there. It would also lead to her having to find a new place to stay. Finally, one of the Plagued noticed her. She had stood there taking in the situation for too long. The limping dead woman staggered toward her with a long moan that grabbed the attention of the other Plagued. The three slowly made their way toward her. Melanie needed a plan and she needed one fast. The door behind the creatures creaked slowly open and a man peeked through the small opening.
He called out to Melanie, "What are you doing? Run!" The plagued then noticed him and two turned to go after him, while the one closest to Melanie continued to follow her as she backed up toward the wall behind her. Finally, Melanie's back hit the wall and the monster lurched forward toward her. Melanie quickly dodged to her left and grabbed a potted plant nearby and smashed the creature in the head. It fell to the ground, but wasn't beaten. As it struggled to get up, Melanie plunged her knife deep into the back of its skull. Filled with adrenaline, she advanced toward the two Plagued that were approaching the retreating man. She jumped at the first one, tackling down to the ground, and drove her knife deep into the back of its skull. The final walking cadaver saw how close Melanie was and dove at her, pinning her to the ground. Straining its neck, the creature desperately snapped its jaw at her flesh, only inches away. Without warning, the creatures head flew off to Melanie's right and blood sprayed all over her body. Grateful she had closed her mouth; Melanie threw the body off of her and got up to find the man holding a large pipe covered in blood.
"Are you okay?" The man asked Melanie. He was an older gentleman, with messy white hair and a short, thick beard that stretched from sideburn to sideburn.
"I'm fine." Melanie didn't think she would ever get the hang of fighting the creatures. "Who are you?"
"Sorry, I'm Liam. We spoke over the radio." He replied. "I was with…" He cut himself off as he looked down at the torn apart body on the floor; tears were forming in his eyes. "His name was Arthur, my son. Now…" He picked up the body by the arms and dragged it over to the window, throwing it down to the street below, cursing as he did so. "Sorry, you never know when the body might get back up."
After a while of silence, they heard the moans of Plagued coming toward the apartment from down the hall. "We need to go," Aisha told him in a hushed tone. "I have a car, do you know somewhere we can go?"
He pulled his gaze away from the window and finally replied, "There is a group outside of the city with a huge wall surrounding their community, I passed them on the way to meet my son. There is a good man named Earl there that can help us and has my equipment for the Cleansing… the destruction of the plague and the cleansing of the human race. We must hurry."
Melanie pulled her knife out of the skull of the fallen Plagued she had killed and the two climbed out the window and slid down a drain pipe that barely held as they made their way to Melanie's car, and freedom.