There were corpses everywhere; some looked fresh, while others were already bloated and rotting. Some had no visible wounds or obvious cause of death, while others seemed to have been literally torn apart by animals. It wasn't just corpses too, but trash and other debris covered the streets as well, and there were barricades and clear signs of fighting in places as well - he'd seen some bad things in his time as a cop, but nothing like this.
What the hell had happened while he was out?
Rick felt a chill that couldn't entirely be explained by his thin hospital robe, his town had always been a small, quiet and generally happy place, a white-picket fence , American Dream sort of place. How could something like this happen here?
He stopped in the street and looked around him again, it was quiet. The area near the hospital was mostly residential, with a few small stores. He should be able to hear the sound of cars driving around, people going about their day, hell even the birds weren't chirping.
He thought again about the woman who had been on the floor in the hospital, looking like she'd been eaten by a pack of wild dogs. Those... diseased(?) people locked in that hospital room, the bullet holes in the walls, the corpses spread all over an abandoned town; how could any of this be real? He must be dreaming.
Rick pinched himself on the arm, again and again but nothing changed. He closed his eyes and tried to force himself to wake up back in the hospital. Nothing happened. He was still standing in the street, surrounded by dirt and trash and burnt-out cars.
After a few minutes, he managed to pick himself back up and keep walking. Somebody had to be left alive, right? Shane must be out there right now, helping put down whatever the hell had done this, and if he was alive, he would've taken care of Lori and Carl for Rick. Shane was like his brother, if he was alive, Rick's family would be too, he was sure of it.
As he walked around the edge of the town's small park, he noticed a bicycle lying on the ground. Rick could remember teaching Carl to ride a bike, not so long ago now, and how proud he'd been when the training wheels had come off.
When he went to grab the bike, Rick heard a growl. Right there in front of him a few yards away was the rotten upper body of a woman, just her torso, arms and head... She was still moving. God... Were those diseased people in the hospital like this? What the hell could cause something like this? Nothing he had ever heard of.
The state the body was in, she must have been like this for a while. Weeks even, maybe a month. How long had this been going on, while he was unconscious in the hospital? Did the disease somehow keep them alive, despite their bodies rotting away? If their brains started to rot too, their behavious would change too. But why wouldn't they just die?
The mangled half-woman shifted, and began to slowly crawl towards him. God, he probably knew the woman, but he couldn't recognise her anymore. Who were you? Please don't let anyone he loved be lying somewhere like this. He couldn't even think about Lori or Carl, he had to get home.
Even in his atrophied, starved and dehydrated state, he was able to manage the bicycle. You really didn't ever forget, huh. It was slow-going, but faster than he would have been on foot. The streets were just as deserted in his neighbourhood as they had been in the rest of town, though he swore once or twice he saw someone move out of the corner of his eye.
Finally he made it to his family home. It had always been a comfortable place, a refuge, somewhere he could go at the end of a long day and relax with his family. He had never been so terrified to enter his house before.
From the outside at least, it looked exactly the same as always. His street wasn't as roughed up as other parts of town, it didn't look like any of the houses had been looted, but he did notice there were very few cars around - had they evacuated? The grass and gardens were all noticeably overgrown too.
Rick burst into his house, noting vaguely that his front door was unlocked, "Lori?" there was no response. The house was a bit of a mess, there was a pile of clothing on the bed, and many of the closet and cupboard doors were open - it was like someone had packed up in a rush.
"Carl?" he quickly searched through all of the rooms in the house. "Lori? Carl?" he soon realised that they weren't here. Nobody was here. For all he knew nobody had been here for weeks, months, however long he had been out.
Rick collapsed to the ground and began to sob, God please let his family be alright. "Is this real? Am I here?" he tried again to wake himself up, to no avail. It had to be a dream, no, a nightmare. This couldn't be real. "Wake up..."
Eventually, he wandered back outside to get some fresh air. Sitting on the curb, he saw a hazy figure of a man, walking down the road. Rick waved, but the man didn't seem to see him - as he got closer, Rick could see that the man was wearing a dark suit, and was walking a bit strangely - very stiff.
Rick just sat on the curb and stared as the man got closer. His head was fuzzy, still part-convinced that this was all a dream and part-terrified that it was real, he didn't notice until the man was nearly to his house that the stranger's skin tone was an unnatural grey.
"Hey, are you alright?" he finally got to his feet with his hand above his eyes to block out the sun and get a better look, he saw that the man was filthy, his eyes somehow both blank and wild. The man's slow, stiff walk sped up a little as he began clearly walking towards Rick.
"Woah, stay back. Do you have the, uh, the disease?" Rick started backing up, "Sir are you alright? Can you hear me?"
The man was even closer now, and God did he smell. He smelt of death, and Rick could tell that this man, while not torn apart like the woman in the park, must be in the same stage of the disease - the brain must be rotting away or something, because the man was stumbling towards Rick with an emotionless face.
Rick kept his distance from the man, and looked around him for something he could use as a weapon to keep the infected man away. There was a spade on the ground in what they had been planning on using as a garden, but never got around to seeding.
"Sir, if you can hear me, back off" Rick warned again, his voice breaking in the middle from disuse. Wielding the spade in a threatening manner didn't do anything to stop the rotting man's approach, so Rick wearily raised his makeshift weapon and began swinging it at the man.
He made no attempt to dodge or block, and just let the spade hit him, while thrusting his arms towards Rick in an attempt to grab on, and moving his jaw in a weird chewing motion. Where a normal man would have flinched or jumped back from the pain, this man just kept moving. Rick was half way back to his front door now, due to backing up to keep away from the guy, and he had no intention of letting this thing inside.
After a few more hits to the limbs and body did nothing, Rick let his anger and confusion get to him and finally swung for the head. The weakened, rotten flesh easily gave way to the solid edge of the spade, and unknown to Rick the skull caved in along the impact line, sending shards of bone into the brain and killing the diseased man.
The body dropped to the ground with a thud, and Rick just stood and stared.