A short story

[werepig]

Hey all,

I whipped this up one night shift at the desk. Rather short I know, but I thought I'd share.


Dead World,

I was there, when it all started, when the first one came back. I was a porter at the hospital; I was the first one to see her, the first to see her move. I was moving the body from her room to the morgue, when she came back...

After that, all hell broke loose, in only a few minutes, that’s all it took. There was blood everywhere, on the floor, the walls, hell even the ceiling. I remember people running, screaming, fighting and biting...

I remember running outside and seeing the police rushing in and fighting with the...those people. The cops tried to use stun guns, pepper spray...but in the end started shooting...

The first one I saw get shot was, or used to be and old woman. She was ripping at the neck of a nurse when the cop fired at her. The first bullet hit her in the leg. I remember the officer screaming at her to back away. All the bullet did was piss her off. She came for the cop, blood running from her mouth in thick ropy streams. He shot her in the chest over and over again, but she just kept coming. She killed the cop. After fighting with him, she tore his guts out...

I hid in the back of an ambulance for the whole night, listening to the screaming, the shooting, the dying. I stayed in the ambulance for as long as I could, but thirst drove me out. When I did leave my little safe house, I tried to stay as low and quiet as I could. A dead teenage boy was the first to see me. He was missing most of his face and chest and looking at him I knew, I knew that this, that all of this is the hand of God. In my mind, nothing else could do this, nothing, but God himself. Maybe God has just had enough of our shit; maybe he is wiping the slate clean and is going to start over with humankind.

For those first few days I hid where I could, ate what I could and ran from everything dead or alive. Some of the living people were just as if not more dangerous than the dead. If they think you have anything they want, they will kill you for it, whether you have it or not. Some people have turned into animals, or maybe they always were animals, but in this whole mess, they somehow were let off their chains.

The first dead person I killed was a man in a ruined convince store. I beat him with a snowbrush; I beat him ‘till his brains were leaking out of his skull. I kept hitting him even after I knew he was dead. I kept hitting him until I was beating wet mush into nothing. When I stopped, I felt good, very good...too good.

A few days later, I saw some men killing one of the dead. They had a dead girl nine or ten speared to the ground and were setting her on fire, starting with her feet. I did not know if the dead felt pain, but I do know those men were hoping that they do...Animals let off their chains.

I did eventually pick up a gun, a pistol from a dead police officer. I used that gun to kill three of the dead. One I killed because he had me cornered in a house. I shot him in the face, after he fell, I remember looking at his dead eyes and thinking: why doesn’t this feel wrong? The second dead I shot, I shot because she came around the corner of a house less than twenty feet from me. She never looked at me, I don’t know if she even knew I was there, but I shot her. The last dead I shot, I shot for no reason. He was an old man, probably someone’s grandpa. He had no legs and only one arm. He was barely able to move himself over a curb, let alone attack me. I saw him from a long way off and I went out of my way to kill him...

After that I hid in a house for a few days. When I needed food, I ventured out into the night. I came upon a man and a woman cutting up one of the dead. The dead man had been shot in the head. The people were peeling the ‘meat’ off his body and began roasting it over their fire. The woman saw me and called out. I was afraid to get to close to them, so I stayed behind an old car. The man walked over to me and gestured that I join them. I ran...

I thought about the man and the woman for a long time. If I could scrape up enough food to live on, then why did they eat the dead? Only animals eat their own. Only beasts cannibalize their dead...

The next day I saw the man and the woman again. They were dead, wandering looking for anything living. I knew that they had died long before they had eaten that dead man...

I knew that the man and the woman had a gun. I crept to their makeshift ‘camp’ to see if I could find it. I found the gun, a rifle and four shells, as well as some salt and paprika that were all but empty. I stood up to see the man stumbling toward me; he was close, too close. The gun was not loaded, so I beat him with the stock. He went down in a heap and turned to woman she was still a safe distance away. I put one bullet into the gun and looked up she was still far enough away I could run, I closed the bolt and looked through the scope. I actually thought of eating her...I know how sick that is, but I did. I settled the cross hairs on her forehead as she shuffled toward me, still a good distance from me. As the top of her head blew apart in a rotten cloud, I knew I was dead, still breathing, but dead just the same...

I used the remaining three shells on the next three dead I saw...

I was walking down a back street looking...for the dead. I still carried the rifle, using its blood stained stock to batter any walking dead that was unlucky enough to cross my path. As I looked for the dead one of them, found me. She bit me on the back of the neck. I killed her, but not before, she infected me...

I now know why God did this: God said in his word that he gives all men free will and we are all dead. He has just made it easier to ‘live’ the way we want to live. So now, as I slowly walk in search of the living feeling no guilt or remorse for the things I do, for doing the things I always wanted to do, all the things you want to do. You may not know you want to do these things, but you do, deep down. That is how all of humankind is. Don’t believe me? Just look around you, look around at the crime, the death of children, the waste of life, the people spending their last dollar on alcohol, the people selling their bodies for drugs, and all the people looking down on these people. Oh you’ll say I don’t look down, I’m a good person. Are you? Have you ever just once looked at a homeless man and thought: get a job you fuckin’ slob. Have you ever just once felt hate for someone who is flirting with your crush? Have you ever just once wanted to hurt someone for something they did to you? Even for one second? These thoughts are dead thoughts that lead to dead actions that lead to dead people in this dead world.

[forthewolf]

I like it. There were a few parts the grammar confused me, but I was silent reading so the words might not have sounded right cause of that, but there were somethings that could be fixed. But overall it was good. Good ending too.

[werepig]

Thank you. I know the grammar is off.

[EatenAlive]

I agree with forthewolf- some grammatical errors, but most of them are easy fixes. A couple of sentences could be reworded to be a little stronger, too.

But that aside, wow! What an awesome short story. You could definitely do more with this. I'd love to read more of it, maybe with a little more descriptions. I love your last paragraph- it says a lot about the main character's beliefs and views. Great job, please let me know if you post more!

[majorhavoc]

Ask the mods to move this to the Fiction section where it belongs, Werepig. It'll get more exposure there.