"Three weeks ago the world ended." Noah Fischer said. He was speaking into a handheld voice recorder. The attic he was holed up in was musty. The air was stale and everything was caked with dust. As he spoke into the recorder Noah had to pause several times to sneeze.
"I don't know what the fuck happened. I go to sleep one night and everything is fine. The next morning my god damn house is on fire and people are fuckin' eating other people." He wanted to kick something, but he didn't want anyone – or anything – to hear him. He spoke animatedly but quietly. Noah realized that he'd started to swear much more often that he had before the world had died.
"So I woke up and the house was burning. My parents were downstairs trying to call 911 but all the phone lines were busy. Not long after that, they went down completely. We grabbed what we could and got the fuck outta the house. Ever heard the expression, 'out of the frying pan and into the fire'? Well, we jumped out of the fire and straight up Satan's ass."
Noah paused. He could hear rustling outside. The roof of the house was peppered with holes that allowed sound to leak through, along with rays of sunlight. Something was stumbling through the bushes outside.
"Ah hell. Shit." Noah clicked the tape recorder off and gently set it down. He stooped over and tiptoed to an open wooden crate. He'd covered all the weak spots in the attic floor with stronger wood so he was able to move quite freely.
The crate was filled with seven handguns and three shotguns. Several boxes of ammo were also stacked in the crate. Noah had acquired this small armory over the last three weeks, looting abandoned police cars and gun shops. He had enough firepower to last him a long while. Food and water, on the other hand, was a problem.
Noah snatched up a handgun. He kept all the guns loaded at all times, just in case. The rustling stopped; apparently the beast had made its way out of the bushes. A long, mournful moan broke the silence. Noah listened intently. No other moans or growls or roars joined in. There was only one zombie out there and there was no way it could get to him. At least, that's what he muttered to himself.
Noah felt the fear gather in the pit of his stomach and slowly rise up his chest. He resisted the urge to shudder. He knew that if he shuddered his teeth would start chattering.
The zombie must have tripped over something, because there was a sudden wet thud and an annoyed grunt. Noah hoped the bastard would just get up and move on. He'd observed that zombies tended to travel in packs. Where there was one there was bound to be at least two more, but Noah couldn't hear any others.
The moaning continued, rising sharply in pitch as the zombie apparently struggled to its feet.
Suddenly, a man's voice drowned out the moaning of the zombie. "Stay down, stenchbag!" Next, Noah heard the loud crack of a gunshot and the sound of a body thumping to the ground.
Noah jumped in surprise and nearly knocked himself out on a low-hanging beam. He hissed in pain and dropped his pistol. It clattered to the wooden floor.
"Is someone up there?" The man called.
Noah's head was throbbing much too hard for him to organize a coherent thought. He stumbled a little, kicked the dropped gun. It slid loudly across the wood and smacked into the crate.
"Hello?"
Noah shook his head and managed to croak out, "I'm up here!" There were other survivors! His head cleared a little more so he yelled louder. "Up here! In the attic!"
"Come on out! We can help you!"
Noah pocketed his gun and unfolded the ladder to the garage. The garage door was open and a man was standing just outside it. He was framed by sunlight; Noah couldn't make out what he looked like. Noah squinted. He hadn't seen direct sunlight for what seemed like an eternity.
The man stepped forward as he was holstering his gun. Noah gaped at the size of the weapon, it looked like a handheld cannon.
The man smirked. "Hell of a recoil. Name's Slade. John Slade." He swaggered jokingly, apparently imitating James Bond. Slade looked more like a caveman. His hair was wild, even when tamed into a rough pony tail. A haggard goatee framed his split and bleeding lips. He seemed to be wearing two layers of clothing. His hands were gloved and not an inch of skin was showing, save for his feral face.
"I'm Noah Fischer. Where the hell did you come from?" Noah stepped forward to shake Slade's hand.
"We're hunkered down in a grocery store for now. Made camp there until we get our shit together and move on." Slade spit on the cement floor. "I was cruising back to the store from that gun shop on Blosser, saw that piece of shit zombie and couldn't resist."
"You stopped to kill one zombie? Why?"
"Believe it or not, there's not many of them in this area. And I figure one more zombie I kill now is one less I'll have to kill later." Slade grinned.
Noah shook his head. "You're insane. Thanks. I've got guns and ammo up in the attic." Noah glanced around nervously. He didn't quite believe that there weren't many zombies around. The houses in the neighborhood could a lot of them. Zombies tended to stick together. Safety in numbers, Noah guessed.
Five minutes later Noah was holding on for dear life as Slade swerved and careened down the streets in a large white van. He narrowly missed wrecked cars and burning piles of debris. There were no zombies in sight. Noah couldn't believe it. Where the hell had they all gone?
The van looked like someone had taken a sledgehammer to the exterior. Noah had noticed fingernail scratches in the paint job. To take his mind off of the crazy driving, Noah asked Slade about the damage.
"A couple days ago I got in a tough spot." Slade said when Noah asked about the condition of the van. The van bumped violently as Slade purposely ran over a dead zombie. Dead again, Noah supposed. "Had about twelve people crammed into this tin can. Outta nowhere, a mob of those dead freaks surrounded us. Started beating the shit outta the van. I could barely fuckin' move!" Slade slammed his fist on the steering wheel. Noah tightened his seatbelt. "Somehow I managed to crunch some of the bastards and get away." Slade grew quiet for a moment. "Some poor bastard in the van had a heart attack, no one noticed."
Noah let out a slow breath. "Shit…"
Slade nodded. "Shit yeah. He came back, just like they all do. Got a hold of everyone in the back, tore 'em up. Every single person was infected before I managed to turn around in my seat and blow his brains out."
Noah was hooked. "What did you do?"
Slade ignored the question, lost in his memories. "One zombie got twelve of them. Twelve. It's not fair. We can chop their arms off, blow holes in their chests, whatever. They keep on coming. But one bite or scratch from these things and we're fucked, man." Slade was slowing down. "I had to kill them all, man." He stopped the van in the middle of the road.
Noah looked around. There was no grocery store in sight. "Hey, what the fuck is going on?"
Slade shut off the van. "They screamed for mercy. One by one, I killed them. Men, women, a couple kids. It was me or them, right?"
"Slade, where is the grocery store? We can't just sit here, man! Are you insane? Those things will be all over us in about five minutes!"
"I realized something then. We are all gonna die." Slade was staring out the windshield with a blank look on his face. He was losing it. "We're all going to die. All of us. Gonna die. Everyone."
A furious scream of unfettered rage from behind the van didn't snap Slade out of it. He kept on babbling. Noah twisted around in his seat. At least seven zombies were heading for the van.
The zombie in the lead was missing an arm from the shoulder down. A splintered bone jutted out of the stump. Its face was mottled with grey and black. One of its eyes appeared to have melted. A runny white mess dribbled out of the socket. Noah was horrified to see a tree branch jutting out of the torso of another zombie. Intestines hung on the end of it.
It pointed its stump to the van and roared again. The other zombies, all horribly disfigured and decayed, roared in response. One zombie's leg snapped in half and it fell behind. It didn't seem to notice and pulled itself along the pavement like a snake.
The zombies were as fast as their deteriorating bodies would allow them to move. The walking carcasses shambled, crawled, stumbled, and ran to the van.
"Slade! Fuckin' drive!" Noah screamed. "Where's the store? Is there even a store!" Noah wished he had stayed in the attic. He had trusted a stranger and now he was going to die.
"All dead. All dying." Slade's head fell against the headrest. "I had to kill them. The kids…the kids…crying." Tears poured down Slade's cheeks. Noah wanted to puke. Slade had seemed so…so cool. When Noah first met him, Slade had seemed eccentric at best. He'd seemed to be dealing with the apocalypse fairly well, if that was possible. Something had snapped in Slade though.
The zombies were getting closer. Their cries of outrage and hunger were drawing others out of hiding. They streamed out of the buildings and from behind overturned cars. Noah began to shake. A zombie slammed itself against the passenger side window. The lower jaw was missing. A long, black tongue hung down to the zombie's chest. It pressed its face against the glass, licked it. Bloody saliva smeared the window. The zombie's eyes were intact and they bored into Noah's. Noah screamed.
More zombies reached the van.
Slade was mumbling.
Noah was fucked.