He fell back with the ladder into the attic where the zombies were reaching out to grab him. For a moment, he gave up on life and living, his heart broken from being betrayed twice in less than an hour.
His back hit the floor and he reeled from the impact. All around him, the zombies were jostling to reach him, and he kicked at them in panic, flailing his hands in a feeble attempt to keep them away when one of them touched something. It was a brand new chainsaw he had very recently purchased. With all the effort he could muster, he reached out to pull it towards him when he felt a zombie bite into his leg. Holding the chainsaw with both his hands, he swung it with all the force he could muster, sending a few of them off and cutting into the head of the one biting his leg. Another swing gave him some space to stand, and he started the machine. It buzzed, alive and dangerous, the sound vibrating over the whole room. The zombies began to shriek and yell and rush towards him, obviously affected by the sound the chainsaw made and in a bid to turn it off. Without waiting for anything else to happen, Kevin cut a zombie that had been rushing at him in half. More of them filled this room, all of them struggling to reach him and stop the sound, shrieking as they came close, and Kevin cut all without mercy as well, crying as he did. His leg hurt from the zombie bite, but the pain he felt did not transcend his will to stay alive. They rushed at him in increasing numbers, and he cut them all, sawing and cutting until he was almost entirely soaked in their rotting, grey blood, scores of them dead at his feet. Realising that he was far too powerful for them to finish off, they moved back while he stood defensively. Slowly, they went back through the doors they had rushed in from, leaving Kevin alive. Exhausted, he fell to his knees, switching the chainsaw off and letting it fall to his side. As he sat on the floor with a pile of zombie bodies forming a circle around him, he cried, moving himself till his back rested against the wall in the attic. There, he sat and let the tears he had been holding fall free. For a moment, his cheek hurt, and he rubbed his hand against it only to feel more pain. When he looked at his hand, there was blood on it, and he realised that the zombies had scratched his face as well, a burning cut that stopped above his right eye, another wound in addition to the bite in his leg. His thoughts went to Gina and Felix, wondering how they were feeling at that very moment, and if they were at peace with the fact that he was most probably dead, his body joining the swarms of mindless zombies ravaging the city and seeking more to join in their ranks. It felt to him that they would be happy that he was out of the picture, leaving them free to do as they wished with each other. “They will pay.” He swore to himself, standing up. “But for now, I have to survive. I cannot have my vengeance on them if I die.” Cautiously, he climbed down from the attic door and into the room below, switching the chainsaw on as soon as his feet touched the wooden floor. There, a zombie stood shrieking and he cut its head off without sparing a second thought, yelling as he did. Another one came rushing at the sound of his chainsaw and he cut that one as well. Four more came and in one angry swoop of his chainsaw, he had their heads on the floor. He soon reached his room, where he had caught his girlfriend cheating, and then he locked the door behind him. He turned around again and came face to face with three zombies, killing them in the same way he did with the others. They fell dead, the only ones in the room and he stopped, turning the chainsaw off and panting. Throwing the chainsaw aside, he went and sat on the bed, tired. He fell back on it before the image of Felix thrusting into Gina resurrected in his head, and he sat up on it again, shutting his eyes and biting on his lips. His rage filled his heart, and he wanted to take it out on anything, just right about anything. Going through the room like an angry tornado on the rampage, he kicked and broke everything in his path until he was tired, the zombie bite in his leg hurting and the one on his face itching. Like in the attic, he sat with his back to the wall, and as he did the gun he had used in killing the zombies slipped out of his pocket. He picked it up, cocked it, and pulled the trigger, but the gun did not shoot. Remembering he would have had some extra bullets, he went to the drawer that had the gun in it and searched for them. Soon, he found enough for six rounds, and he loaded his cartridge with them, picking up his chainsaw again and returning to sit in his position where he would wait for anything to happen. His eyes blinked for want of sleep, but he struggled to stay awake until he could no more, clutching his loaded gun and his chainsaw close to himself, ignoring the slimy grey blood on his body and his weapons. He did not know for how long he slept, but when he awoke there was a zombie screaming above him, its deathly mouth wide open before his eyes. Around him, even more zombies were reaching to grab him, and he yelled in panic, sitting up. Looking around him, he saw that there were hundreds of zombies around him, but none of them could come close enough to touch him. To him, it looked as though there was some kind of protective layer between him and the ravaging horde of walking, rotting corpses.“They cannot… they cannot touch me.” Kevin Santorini whispered to himself in realisation, his breath coming out in excited huffs from his nostrils. The feeling in his chest was a healthy mix of joy and wonder as he watched them try to reach him without success, held off by this barrier that even he could neither see nor understand. Now, he even dared to look them in the eyes, staring into the rotting, ashen faces. He could not believe his good luck when for the second time that day, the zombies left him alone. Still, he remained where he had woken up, convinced that there was something about that place protecting him and afraid to leave its safety. He checked the bite on his leg and saw that it had healed, leaving ashen scars. Was he dreaming? He wondered to himself, feeling the scars on his leg and pressing his fingers on them. There was absolutely no pain, no itch, and nothing to remind him that a zombie had bitten him there except for the scars, and even they seemed perfectly n
Several kilometres from the two men and their hiding place stood the Headquarters of the Institute for Health Research in Middlestown, and atop the building by that time of night stood two helicopters resting and waiting, their large silhouettes as terrifying as the monsters that roamed below. There was an emergency door below one of the helicopters, and this was where the team that had risked themselves made their entry. The door opened to a laboratory which at this point, contained a team of ten medical and scientific personnel working within the safety of the laboratory's thick walls and even thicker metal doors, while being protected by a squad of the Special Secret Forces who were heavily armed, their black clothing a contrast to all of the white in the room. A large computer screen was flashing numerical digits, and another one the same size next to it was showing images of some organic chemical combinations. Amongst the medics and scientists was a particularly bald, short m
“So what is your story?” Max asked, finishing his beer can and throwing it aside while Kevin had barely taken any sips. “Go first. Mine might be more painful.” “You think?” He asked, the smile leaving his face. “I don't even know why the bloody hell I've been trying to stay alive. It feels fruitless now.” “Vengeance.” Kevin mused. “What?” “Vengeance is the reason why I've been trying to stay alive.” “And being eaten up by those things too.” Max finished, opening another beer can. “I did not think about it before, but now I realise that there's the way they come at you, grabbing and trying to bite with their smell filling your nostrils. Like ants. Nobody will want to die that way.” “You were in the military, you said, and it shows. There's a way you make death feel poetic.” Kevin noted. He was thinking that he and Max were going to be good friends, if they would live past the night. “And the beer too.” He smiled, throwing the second can. “It wasn't exactly the military. I am,
Cautiously, Kevin picked up the crystal, grasping it tight in his hand. Once more, the glowing, paper-thin, fluorescent screen appeared before him again. ‘DO YOU WANT TO ADD THE CHAINSAW AND THE CRYSTAL TO YOUR STORAGE SPACE? TO COMMAND THE SCREEN, SIMPLY MAKE THE COMMAND IN YOUR MIND.' Kevin, unsure of how to do it, only uttered a silent yes in his mind, and to his surprise, there was a response on the screen as his chainsaw and the crystal disappeared. ‘SUCCESSFULLY STORED ⅖ ITEMS IN STORAGE SPACE. TO ACCESS THEM AGAIN, SIMPLY UTTER THE COMMAND OF WHAT YOU WANT IN YOUR MIND, OR IMAGINE IT THE WAY YOU WANT IT TO HAPPEN.’ For an artist with an imagination like his, Kevin thought this would be no problem for him. It was as the screen faded away that Max called out to him. “That zombie hit me so hard. Come help me up.” Kevin went and helped his new friend sit up, making sure to slip the orb in his pocket carefully. “What the bloody hell was that?” Max asked, panting, as the zomb
Max Johnson awoke the next morning to bright sunlight pouring all around him. He was half convinced that he was alive, until he pinched himself and felt himself respond to the stimulus. He tried to sit up, but doing so hurt his chest so bad that he fell back. Slowly and even more carefully, he sat up, managing the pains before running his arm around his chest and back, holding in the pain and feeling for any broken bones or swellings. Finding none, he decided the pain was most probably not serious and would heal eventually. Had it been a haemorrhage, he would probably not have woken up. Silently, he cursed his luck. He was in dire need of painkillers, but that was the one thing he had not scavenged with all the things he took from that house. His eyes scanned the room around him, observing with his military eye, and then he remembered the guy he had found the previous night… What had his name even been? He tried to remember. Kevin Santa… Sanctus… Santorini. He saw the man lying
It had all started three months before with the disappearance of the Q-21 Zombie Virus, as they termed it. Max remembered how it had been announced on the news that it had escaped the previous morning, a blatant lie to the public, which on the positive side, was told to make citizens self-quarantine when the first zombies who were carrying the virus began to show in the open that morning. The truth remained that the virus had been out for as long as three months, and it had neither disappeared nor escaped. It was rather stolen. Caution was taken by the Institute of Health Research in Middlestown to keep the discovery of the virus's disappearance as secret as possible. Only top heads of government organisations remained in the know, to prevent a state of panic and keep finance and business operations running all over. That was the point where the Special Secret Forces came in, invited by the institute to offer their help in answering the million dollar question. Who had stolen the
He watched in horror as they clustered around him on all sides, yelling, shrieking and making whatever horrifying sounds they could. With a yell, he started to run towards a small space they had not yet occupied in a feeble attempt to survive, only stopping when he saw that space filling up. Quickly, he took a grenade, pulled out its pin, and threw it at one approaching horde. The explosion rang out and took several down, giving Max some time to position himself and shoot, which he began when the air cleared, shooting sporadically. Realising that they died faster when he shot at their heads, he raised his beam higher and continued shooting. The zombies coming to him had stopped running now, but were only coming close, creeping, seeing that he was a danger. One by one, he stopped to shoot, killing any one that dared come close. Nothing matched his relief when they began to step back, and he took out his last grenade and threw it at them to ensure they would see he was not one to be
As Kevin sat up from his sleep, he saw the way Max fixed his eyes on him with a kind of dark look that suggested there was nothing sweet or beautiful about whatever he had on his mind. If anything, the look was meant to kill. “Morning, Max.” He greeted, trying not to look in the other man's eyes. “What a time to be alive.” “What a time to be alive, indeed.” Max repeated, looking away and affording Kevin a moment's breath. He turned and saw where the zombie's ashes remained after he burned them, and turning to Max, saw how grumpy the sergeant looked. “How bad did the zombie throw you? Still hurts?” “Quite. But I know how to carry on with it.” Kevin nodded, pushing himself backwards to rest his back against the doors of one of the kitchen cabinets so that he could keep an eye on Max. He did not like the way the other man looked at him, and he put considerable distance between themselves. What did he even know about him? Not a lot, except that he had first met the man m