It had been two months since that original outbreak of the infected, and all efforts to stop it had been futile at best. I remember the way it started. Me and my brother had been enjoying ourselves at a café when suddenly, someone began convulsing, and then they jumped on someone and began violently attacking them. It all escalated from there and then society ended. I had been lucky to escape, as was my brother. We had begun running as soon as that man jumped. I remember that the military had just decided to leave for no apparent reason. A group of militants had tried to stop it, but they were slowing it down at best, and in the end it was all for nothing. The infection had spread like wildfire from then on. The entire city was taken in two days, but we had caught a lucky bus that was leaving town and from there on survived by town hopping until the infection had completely spread all over the world, and nowhere was safe anymore.
We became scavengers, anything that could be of remote use had an unimaginable value to us. Now, we were to chance’s mercy on whether we would make it to the next day.
“Donn, look” i said, my binoculars were fixated on an abandoned mall. “The glass is almost intact, it might have been left alone. It should have enough food for a month at least.” My brother looked at where i had pointed at and considered the situation.
“Its a big town, there are probably hundreds of zeds everywhere.” His brow knotted trying to find a good plan of action. He had always been really good at making plans for us. I probably wouldn’t have made it so far without his wit. He scanned the horizon looking for a good alternative. We had been traveling through fields for the last couple of days and our food supplies were running quite thin. basically, we were fucked if we didn’t resupply soon.
I could just feel the coast was clear, it was a gut feeling but it was a good one at that.
“Donn, we will just go in and out, quickly. Besides, you can fry any stray zed we see.” I said. Whatever the disease that had destroyed our world was, it was also a blessing in disguise, kinda. A month after the outbreak, my brother had become really sick, he had gotten a fiery fever and was projectile vomiting everywhere. I was positive he would never make it. But then one day, he got better. He had been laying in bed when he suddenly began to move around, he was complaining and then he screamed and lightning shot out of his hands. Electrical arcs were coming out of his eyes. And from then on he was able to manipulate electricity like magic. I suspected it had been the infection because around that time, we began seeing the first muties: zeds that had begun mutating. The first one we found out on a road had a disgusting growth coming out of its back and it was walking on four legs, almost as if it was being weighed down by the mass on its back. I had also acquired powers. One night, i had a nightmare where my brother was falling into a dark hole, it felt unnaturally real, unbeknownst to me, i had begun sleep talking and sweating heavily. In the dream, i was trying to reach his hand to save him from falling, but he slipped and fell in the hole, and when he woke me up, i was levitating objects around me. I had the power of telekinesis, but it strained me heavily to use it. I could barely lift a mug off of a table without breaking a sweat, anything more and i began panting. We also began encountering survivors with similar traits, however, most of them had been left physically mutated and sometimes even deformed. We never stayed with them. We didn’t trust anyone, not then, not ever.
“Ayla, if i did i would attract all zeds in a two hundred meter radius. Lets just be very careful.” He said. I could see in his eyes that he didn’t really like the idea of going. We began making our way down the hill keeping our heads low and walking silently. The air was as still as a corpse, so we had to be extremely careful about noise. Our life had always been a struggle, our parents had died when i was younger and my brother has been taking care of me ever since, even though he was barely older than me.
We had been on a hill that overlooked the small town of whiskerton, where there was a big mall on the outskirts of it. It was very convenient for us as we didn’t have to cross the town or enter it at all to get into the mall. The mall itself was pretty small compared to others, but it was still home to about ten small stores and a big supermarket. The glass doors hadn’t been broken in or forced at all, or so it seemed. Usually, we found all these big places in absolute ruins, not hard to see why as they held stockpiles of basically everything useful. The usual strategy was to break one of the doors, run away before the horde arrived, then make some ruckus somewhere else to lead them away. Once the site was cleared, whoever was scavenging had a safe passage to loot everything there. But we didn’t do that. We had learnt the hard way that raider gangs are not uncommon, and rather abundant. So making noise was not only stupid, but also a death-trap. We crossed the road and stood in front of the massive mall front entrance. Now it was a matter of being lucky enough. We went to check the doors, but they were all locked. However, there was a parking entrance close by. We made our way there with our rifles in hand, we had found them a while back. We needed flashlights and had them, but we were afraid to use them. The zeds usually stayed in a dormant state most of the time, and light easily woke them up. We took the risk and turned them on. There was nothing but cars.
After recovering from that small heart attack, we continued through the stairs that led up to the mall from the underground parking. It was dark and unnerving but there was a bit of light coming in from the roof through some glass panels. The first thing we did was move silently through the abandoned mall towards the supermarket. It was dead silent except for a very faint swoosh coming from the wind against some window probably. Being in these kinds of buildings was a requirement in the apocalypse, but that didn’t make it any easier to bear. All my hairs were on end an my eyes were darting everywhere at the same time. At one point i heard a faint creak and froze up. My brother had to nudge me on to get me to move. After the worst ten minutes of my life, we finally found the supermarket, pity it was completely pitch black.
“I hate this!” I whispered to him. I walked behind him as he led the way. Donn had a very distinct way of being afraid, he wouldn’t say a word. He could have stubbed his toe against the wall right then and there and he wouldn’t have let out a sigh. He also lowered his head and walked half crouched.
Our flashlights proved indispensable as we found and stashed food. We prioritized canned meat as it never spoiled. Another advantage was that it barely made noise. We always put paper towels in between cans so as to not have them clink with each other. We then decided to scavenge other stores. We found a hunting store and picked up some more ammo. I was using a .270 rifle and my brother was using a 30-30, two calibres that were in high supply everywhere. In that shop we also found some nice headlamps and some more camping gear like a thermos and a small butane stove.
My brother needed new shoes so we went to the shoe shop.
“I should also probably get a new pair too” i said. We were opposite in the mall from the shop when the worst happened. We heard a faint groan, and then we heard some uneven steps, like if someone were stumbling or limping.
We both stopped in our tracks and went pale as ghosts. The hair on the back of our necks raised almost instantly, Goosebumps covered our skin.
I saw the wretched beast waltzing around. Its skin was greenish, it seemed to have its left arm broken in the forearm and the bone poked out in a grotesque angle. Its cheeks were gone from probably forcefully chewing on someone. It barely had any mouth muscles, which made its jaw hang loosely open. It was wandering aimlessly, and it was standing straight in the entrance to the shoe shop. My brother tapped me on the wrist, he had reached for his metal bat and gave me the signal that he would take care of it.
There was a small half wall that had previously been used as a plant pot in between him and the zed. He was hugging cover, waiting for my signal. Zeds usually had very poor eyesight, they couldn’t see anything beyond ten meters, and luckily, i was standing about fifteen meters from it. My brother was waiting for me to give him the thumbs up, which meant the zed was facing away from him.
The monster turned around and i gave Donn the thumbs up. He silently got up, jumped the wall, and bashed the zed’s head in. My brother had learnt how to electrify his bat to deal more damage and fry the brain of the zeds, something which he did then. I saw a trail of brains and little flakes of skull fly from its head. The coast was clear for then, but we had to move quickly.
We entered the shop and looked through the outdoor shoes, we found some pairs which were our size and we took two each.
We got out of there in a bloody rush. The adrenaline coursing through my veins was making me hyperaware of everything.
Once out of the garage, we both caught our breaths.
“Holy shit. I’ve never been so tense in my life” said Donn. He gagged before recomposing himself.
“But it was so worth it. C’mon lets get out of town, i don’t want to stay here any longer than i need to” i told him. We then moved out to the fields across from where we were standing. The fields offered many advantages, mainly the lack of danger. Zeds never wandered far from where they turned, and that was usually towns and cities. Sometimes you did find strays around, but those were few and far apart.
Besides all the struggles we faced daily, we thrived in this environment. Life always found a way, and this time it wouldn’t be different. I always hoped that we would stumble upon some society that had started growing in this world of death. But it was too soon, and yet in such short time the world came to an end. Two months is really only sixty one days, but its enough for many things. A bone mending takes that amount of time. A tumour takes that time to kill someone. I was thinking of all these things while we walked through the tall grass, but i did notice something peculiar.
“Donn, look.” I crouched down and pointed at some blood drops. It wasn’t infected blood, that one was a brown shade. This blood was crimson red.
“Lets follow it, c’mon.” He said. I could tell he had tensed up.
We found more blood as well as some trampled grass. We followed it and eventually found a girl laying on the floor trying to get away, her leg was covered in blood.
“Help me, please!” She clutched her thigh, her trousers were ripped in two slits down the side of her hip.
“Were you bitten?” I asked her while my brother got some medical supplies from his backpack.
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“No, i was running from a zed when i ran straight into a window. It broke and i cut myself. The zed tripped over and impaled itself on a shard of glass.” She shut her eyes as she winced in pain.
My brother had some alcohol and sewing thread. He got on his knees, disinfected the wound as well as he could, sewed it shut and wrapped it in bandages.
“That ought to do, now don’t move.” He said.
The girl was afraid. She had very nice chestnut hair and seemed my age.
“Please, could you stay with me for the night?” She pleaded.
“Donn, we cant leave her like this.”
“I know that Ayla, but what if.”
I knew exactly what that meant. He didn’t trust anyone, that was his way of saying ‘this could be a trap and you know it’. I guess he was right, everything could be a trap. But at the same time i couldn’t just leave this girl out here to die.
“Donn, don’t be like this right now. Hey girl, what’s your name?”
“Mary, you?”
“I’m Ayla, and he is Donn. We’ll stay with you for tonight. You have food?” I asked her.
“Yes, sort off. I was scavenging in whiskerton now.”
“So were we. The mall was empty of life but full of goodies.” I sat down beside her. Donn was preparing to make a campfire.
I noticed her hands had some sort of glove on, but it didn’t seem like a glove. It was like some sort of fleshy wood.
My brother zapped a pile of wood with his powers and it burst in flames.
Mary seemed surprised, and also somehow relieved.
“I thought i was the only one.” She said.
“Only one of what? Can you also make lightning?” I asked her.
“No, i can make weapons out of myself.” She raised her hand and then a big dart morphed out of her hand. The wood looking strands contorted and formed shapes. The result was a fifteen centimetre throwing knife. “I was afraid people would think i was infected. Its very freaky.” She gave me the knife.
“Its weird. it feels heavy, like if it were actual metal.” I cut some grass stalks with it and found it was razor sharp. “My power isn’t even half as cool.” I demonstrated by levitating the knife. It was very tiring. I had asked my brother whether he also felt strained whenever he used his electrokinesis but he said it didn’t. Mary also didn’t seem to be tired by her powers.
“Its cool, why would you say it isn’t?”
“Because the heaviest thing i can lift is a milk box, and i almost fainted when i tried it. Safe to say i got the short end of the stick, literally.” I lay back and gave her the knife back.
“So you two are siblings?” She asked me.She seemed to have been affected by that question. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was.
“Yeah, exactly one year apart, our birthday was a week ago.” I said. The firelight drew shapes on her face, but more than that, it showed her eyes were glistening on the verge of tears.
“I had a brother. The day of the outbreak we had been walking down a street when we heard a commotion. Then we saw a horde of people running for their lives and instead of running with them, we hid in an alleyway. By the time the horde cleared, the second one appeared. About a hundred zeds came running towards us. I took my brother’s hand and we made a run for it, but he tripped over and i was taken away by a man before i could save him. I can still hear his screams, i can still see his face.” She began crying. “He was fighting for his life, and i couldn’t do anything to save him.” She buried her face in her hands. I put my arm around her shoulder. My brother was looking at me weirdly for that. Just from listening to her backstory my heart dropped to my feet. Poor thing, she blamed herself for that kid’s death.
“It wasn’t your fault, and besides, if you had gone back, you would have died.” I told her softly.
“And i would rather have had that happen than me surviving. I had sworn my life to his protection, and i did nothing to save him.”
“I don’t think he would want you to repent yourself over his death, i think he would want you to look ahead and live your life.” I rubbed her shoulder gently.
She wiped her face on her sleeves and seemed to recompose herself as best as she could. “Im sorry, you probably don’t want to hear someone’s sob story. Thank you for saving me. I owe you my life. I need to repay you somehow, so I’ll tell you this. There is a safe haven for survivors, and I’m headed for there. They say they have food, water, and most importantly, protection. You could come with me, we would be stronger three than two.”
Donn must have had a nerve touched by that statement. “That’s just bullshit.”
“Donn!” I shouted at him. I looked over to Mary but she didn’t seem too affected or bothered.
“Its ok, i understand it can seem a bit too good to be true, and maybe it is. Maybe they are slavers, or maybe bandits, but i don’t care. Best case scenario they are speaking the truth, worst case they kill me and i see my brother again. Its all the same to me, i don’t care.” She really did seem done with life, she couldn’t have cared less. This is something i find quite confusing, life is the most valuable thing to us but some people take other’s life or their own almost effortlessly and i cant understand why. I don’t know if i should feel lucky that i don’t understand it as ive never wanted to take my life, or maybe I’m a psychopath for not understanding it. Whatever the case is, i don’t know why.
“Donn, do you ever bloody think before speaking?” Speaking of psychopaths, my brother was a prime example of one, he was almost completely devoid of sympathy it seemed.
“Ayla, we aren’t going there, and you cant convince me otherwise.” He said. He was sitting opposite to us, he was cooking some canned meat on a small pot with some broth.
“Donn, I don’t care if you don’t trust her, but I do. We are going with her, unless you have some better place to be at. And besides, we’ll scout the place out before we go in.” I gave my brother the ‘you cant change my mind and I will give you a hard time if you try to’ look and he shut up. “Mary, so where is this place?”
“About a hundred k’s north from here, I think. The guys over the radio said they were located at White Wall with forward outposts in close proximity.” She said.
Donn seemed to want to enter the conversation, this time in a less rude way. “We can probably get your wound treated properly at one of those outposts. So we take you to one of them, and us two leave. Got it, Ayla?” He stared me down, the disrespectful little shit. i was going to complain, but Mary chirped in to alleviate the tension.
“That sounds great, i appreciate the help” she smiled at me, she had a rather pretty smile. Perfect teeth with a small chin that made her look innocent and na?ve, even though she had lived through pain like few people know of.
“Ok i think its about bed time for us. Ill set up a tent, you rest your leg.” I got up and headed for my backpack, my brother did the same thing, just as i had planned.
We were far enough from her where she wouldn’t hear us. We were unpacking our tents.
“Donn, what the fuck is wrong with you?” I asked him.
“What do you mean what’s wrong with me? I’m trying to save your skin from going on a hippy trip with some suicidal bitch. Ayla, do you ever use your brain? Its a trap! Specifically a trap for people like her who have lost everything and cant bear the guilt of taking another decision by themselves so they have others make it for them and they travel to a place like the one she tells of, but wait, what’s this? Oh well will you look at that! Now you’re a fucking slave!” He was explaining it angrily. My suspicions were confirmed, he was a psychopath.
“And your solution is to just leave her bleeding out on the floor? How can you look at me with a straight face and mean that!? You’re fucking crazy.” I hurried to try and get away from him, but he grabbed my hand and sat me down again.
“Ayla, I know you want to help her, and so do I. I don’t want to just abandon her, I want to help her just like you, but you’re going at it from the wrong angle. You cant let her go to that place. She is determined to go there, and she seems to have taken a liking to you. We will head north but you must do all you can to change her mind, if not, we are leaving her and that’s final. Got it?” He looked me dead in the eyes.
“But--”
“Ayla. Got it?”
“Yes Donn.” I answered meekly. We continued with the tents, we liked to put them far from our campfire just in case a zed wandered towards the flame and also because it was the middle of summer and boy was it bloody hot.
We argued a lot lately, it wasn’t hard to see why with all the stress we were submitted to every day. Nevertheless, i had a feeling he was right. Sure, going with Mary to that so called safe place was just asking to be backstabbed by them, but in my eyes, helping that girl came first.
I heard him sigh. “I’m sorry for shouting at you, its just that sometimes you make me worry about whether you realize what we are living or not. You need to see that your actions are reckless and dangerous.”
“And I’m sorry for calling you a psychopath, repeatedly.” I put my hand on his.
“...over the course of several weeks...” He continued my sentence for me.
“Yes, maybe. But you have to admit you come as a bit of a cold guy.”
“I thought girls liked cold guys, you said so yourself.” He was toying with my hair.
“Well I’m not just any girl. I’m the girl who can easily kick your ass” I smirked at him.
“Sure thing kitty fierce paws.” He said. I then remembered something from my childhood. The name he had said was that of an old tv cartoon we would watch, rather i forced him to watch. It was about a superhero kitten, very cliché I know. I was about five years old and I aaalways dragged him to watch it with me. I felt safer with him. For my birthday he even put in the effort to make my decorations themed according to the show, which I then found out he had done by himself. It was one of those things you wish never changed, just like the lack of wrinkles on your skin, or the world prior to the outbreak. It brought a tear to my eye to feel the nostalgia that show brought to me.
“I had forgotten that show, my favourite cartoon. How’d you remember?” I asked him .
“Because one of my best memories is seeing you at your birthday party, and seeing the face you had back then. You had such a bright smile, it just stuck with me.” He said.
We stood in silence for a bit, we were at a loss for words. It eventually became uncomfortable. “Lets just go to sleep.” I said. I made my way back with Mary, she hadn’t moved
“Hey, you think you can walk?” I asked her. She didn’t seem to have heard us argue, or hid it really well.
“Yeah, but could you help me get up?”
“Sure” I went up to her and offered her my hand. She took it and I pulled her up.
She struggled with the wound, so I had to help her walk. We made our way to the bushes where my tent was, my brother had already gone inside his.
Mary got her sleeping bag from her pack and i just slept on the tent floor. We then lay down.
“Hey, i know you two were arguing about me back there, i could hear it. I don’t want to bother either of you, so if you want me to I’ll just continue on my own. You’ve already done so much for me, i wouldn’t want you to do more because i can’t make it up to you.” She said
“Oh no, I want to help you, and so does my brother, he’s just a bit like that. But don’t worry, we want to help you.”
“Thank you.” And I could tell she didn’t want to talk any more.
No rest for the wicked, or the damned. The dead walked the earth and the living made themselves scarce. The tables had turned and now the zeds ruled the world. Perhaps it is only a matter of time before they organised. Who knows.
Anyways, the zeds are unlikely to ever make any important advancements because they are dumb as rocks. They only have thoughts for one thing, and that is flesh. However, with all the new mutants, some of them have shown enhanced problem solving capabilities, such as door opening skills and tool using. They weren’t too abundant, specially compared to the normal zeds. But they were becoming more and more present. Under a biological standpoint, the infection was a miracle come to earth. It was highly mutative, and all mutations guaranteed the bare survival of the subject. But of course that was bad for us. The infection made a couple Calisto effects: specific phenotypes of a species that become the next step in that species evolution. This idea had been theoretical before. But with this new disease it had become a pretty common occurrence. Sometimes we found nests of zeds with a different coloration, sometimes they had hardened skin, other times they were all freakishly strong. It was only a matter of time before they replaced us in the earth. But there was a very odd thing about them, well, odder than everything else. These nests of zeds with similar phenotypes couldn’t have evolved from one zed because zeds didn’t reproduce. It seemed as if when one of them developed a very good mutation, it rapidly spread with the other zeds in close proximity, almost as if they were being reinfected with a new disease. It truly was bizarre this pathogen. It also stands to reason that the same thing happened to us, the people with powers. Those had been my thoughts as I drifted off to sleep, they were usually like that. Mary had also fallen asleep, no wonder. She had had a very long day of bleeding out and being in pain, it figures she would be tired.
