I finished it! I know I said I wouldn't have it done in the post I made this afternoon, but I finished it! I finished my ISP! It only took four hours of typing tonight, but it's done. :)
Writing from a zombie's perspective is a lot harder than I thought...Especially when I want to give him some limited intelligence.
Sorry, be warned that this is
REALLY FREAKIN' LONG.
Anyways, here ya go:
~~~start~~~
Seth took a sip of his coffee and turned on the television. He wasn’t due at work for a good hour, and it was a mere ten minute drive. He had time. He impatiently flicked through channels, trying to find something interesting to watch.
News. Soap opera. Cartoon. News. Weather. Rerun of an action show. New. Drama. Another cartoon. News. News. Sports. And then the same news channel he had started on.
He sighed and walked the short distance to the kitchen. Looking through the cupboards for food, he heard bits and pieces of the newscast from the other room. Something about a plague. Something about the dead. A commercial for life insurance. Ah, a bag of chips. A suitable breakfast. He took the bag and his coffee back into the other room. His head was beginning to throb slightly, so he set the television to mute, and continued to watch the news. He decided that the news was better with no volume, as he didn’t really have to think about whatever tragedy the newscaster was going on about. The pictures were odd, though. Deformed people, barely looking alive. They began to show a video clip when Seth checked his watch. He was going to be late. He downed the rest of his coffee and placed his chips on a nearby nightstand for future consumption. He turned off the television just as one of the deformed people was going to bite somebody.
“Damn teenagers. Probably messed up on some new drugs,” Seth muttered to himself, grabbing his keys and a jacket from a nearby chair.
Slipping one arm into the jacket, he opened his front door with the other, and stepped outside. The sunlight momentarily stabbed at his eyes, but they soon adjusted. He rushed to his car, fumbled with the keys, and then managed to unlock the door. He sat down in the driver’s seat and inserted the key into its home. He turned it. His car made a strange noise that caused Seth to ponder whether or not a small animal had worked its way under the hood of the car.
Smoke trailed out from under the hood as Seth stepped out of the car. Cursing his luck, he popped the hood. He stared for a long moment, trying to locate the cause of his problems. Having no formal training with vehicles, he was looking for something that was blatantly obvious. Unfortunately, the problem was far more subtle than that. Finding nothing of note, and coughing, Seth retreated from the car. He checked his watch again. There was no way he could get there in time. Sighing, he walked back to his car and slammed the hood. He then started the long march to his office. He hated to leave his car in that condition, but had little choice if he wanted to keep his job.
Seth worked as an intern in an office, where he handled all of the little tasks that the others found it beneath themselves to do. Making copies, getting coffee, all of those things that businessman seem unable to do for themselves. He also did technical work with the many computers at the office, which was good, as the computers were down about half the time. The building was only a twenty minute walk, but he was already late.
As he walked, he noticed a strange silence. There were usually more people, more cars. Yet now, he barely noticed any. The only people he did see seemed to be hurrying from one place to another, apparently not wanting to spend too long on the streets. It was fairly disconcerting, so Seth picked up the pace a little, hoping that the order of office life would calm him down. Even the homeless man that usually set up camp down the street from Seth’s office was mysteriously absent from his post. When Seth finally reached his office, he hurried inside the front doors and stopped, taking a deep breath. The unnatural silence that was everywhere outside was replaced with the natural silence of the office. A smile returned to his face as he strode towards his cubicle. He greeted the receptionist as he passed; he was glad to see a familiar face after the silent streets.
Reaching his tri-walled kingdom, he sat on his wheeled throne and prepared for the day’s work. A new coffee in hand, he began sifting through junk mail. After half an hour of this, he left his cubicle to find a co-worker with which to confer about actual work. Strangely, his office was almost deserted. The only co-worker he could find was the jittering man in the corner, and he got no useful information from him. Arriving back at his cubicle, he decided that there must be some sort of flu going around. A perfectly reasonable explanation.
The rest of Seth’s time at work was uneventful. He made no further attempts at conversation with his jittery co-worker. He only got up again three times. Twice for more coffee, and once to make use of the lavatory. When his workday was complete, he slowly filed out of the office, noting the lack of the receptionist who had been present when he first arrived.
As he left the building, the sun was in the process of setting, casting an orange light over the street. Seth stood for a moment, staring at the sun as it disappeared into the horizon. As he turned away from the sun to begin his weary march home, the last of the sun’s rays faded, bathing the area in darkness. As he walked, streetlights began to turn on to illuminate his way home.
Seth thought about his office as he walked down the street. He was wondering why the jittery man he worked with was so jittery when he was bathed in darkness again. The streetlight ahead of him, as if on cue, flickered out just as he left the light radius of the last streetlight. Sighing, he continued on in the dark until he entered the domain of the next streetlight. This one seemed partial to flickering. It was then that Seth noticed the elderly woman walking slowly down the other side of the street. He smiled, happy to see somebody else on the street, but frowned when he noticed the man following her. He was trudging towards her, dragging one of his legs on the ground behind him. It looked to be broken. But as slow as he was, he was gaining on the elderly woman, who had not yet noticed him. Seth yelled a warning across the road at her, but she simply looked across the street at him and waved. She must not have heard him.
The man was almost upon her when Seth began to run across the empty street. He called out another warning, hoping that she would hear him if he was closer, but it was too late. The figure had reached the elderly woman. The man grabbed her, placing one hand over her mouth and the other over her neck. She let loose a muffled scream, but Seth was the only one that heard her.
As Seth reached the side of the street where the woman was struggling against her attacker, he stopped. He was scrawny, weak. He couldn’t take on a mugger. He looked around, trying to find something with which to even the odds. He spotted a dying tree protruding from a hole in the sidewalk, part of a failed community program to make the streets look nicer. Seth approached the tree and ripped off one of the larger branches. It broke easily, showing the weakness of the tree. But the branch would still give him an edge in a fight. He moved towards the struggle, holding the branch like a bat. The mugger now seemed to be trying to bite the woman’s arm, and was clearly overpowering her. It was only her unstoppable flailing that kept him from biting her. Seth rushed forward and brandished the branch, but the mugger took no notice of him.
“Leave her alone, or I’ll be forced to use this!” Seth exclaimed, trying to sound more brave than he felt.
Now the mugger turned towards Seth. He seemed to lose interest in the elderly woman, shoving her aside as he began to trudge towards Seth. Seth gulped and took a step back as the woman ran down the street with a surprising burst of speed. Now the mugger’s sights were set on Seth.
Before giving him a chance to mull over the predicament he had gotten himself into by helping a woman he didn’t know, the mugger lunged towards Seth. Caught off guard, Seth swung the branch weakly, and managed to catch the man in the side, but did little damage. The sudden lunge knocked Seth to the hard concrete, and he was immediately pinned by his attacker. Seth’s panicked eyes fell upon the man’s face.
Two red eyes stared down at Seth, but seemed unable to focus on him. The eyes were entirely red, one shade and consistency. The rest of the man’s face was pale, with a large gash on one cheek that did not appear to have healed properly. The man’s teeth were bared, and he looked like he was about to bite Seth, as he had been trying to do to the elderly woman.
Seth struggled, but the man seemed to have unnatural strength, and continued to pin him. His grip was tight, and his hands were very cold. It felt as though ice was pressing against his arms, and he couldn’t break free. As Seth struggled, he managed to get one knee free, and rammed it as hard as he could into the man’s crotch. The man did not even flinch. Seth quickly tried again, and again, to no avail, under the man moved his head down to bite Seth’s unprotected neck.
A sudden surge of adrenaline shot through him, and he was finally able to fight back. He pushed his attacker up, away from him, and kicked his feet up into the air, throwing the man over his own body and onto the road behind him.
The man stood again and began to move towards Seth, still dragging his leg behind him. Seth prepared to run in the direction of his house when a car sped down the road. It didn’t honk, it didn’t slow down, and it didn’t swerve, bearing straight down on the man in the road. He turned towards the car at the last second, right before it crashed into him. He flew up and over the car, and landed in a crumpled heap on the ground behind it. The car sped off, its driver apparently not caring about the man he had just hit.
Seth paused, unsure of how to proceed. Should he leave? Should he call an ambulance to help the man who had just attacked him? Seth inched closer to the body, to check on the condition of the man. When he got close enough, he realized that this was the homeless man that usually begged for change down the street from his office. A wave of pity washed over Seth as he remembered all of the times he had given the man change, and how happy he had been even to receive a few cents. Seth knelt down and pressed two fingers against his neck to check his pulse. Nothing. The man was dead. Seth sighed and started to stand. But before he could, the man grabbed his wrist and pulled it to his face. Before Seth knew what was happening, the homeless man sunk his teeth into Seth’s arm. Seth screamed in pain and kicked the man until he let go. Backing away, he stared at the man in disbelief. It simply wasn’t possible. He had no pulse. He was dead. But that didn’t stop him from starting to crawl towards Seth. He didn’t seem to be able to stand, and Seth guessed that the car had broken his other leg.
Seth didn’t wait for the man to reach him, and took off in the direction of his house. Adrenaline once again carried him forwards, as he took as many shortcuts as he could find, darting through dark alleys and hopping fences. In record time, he stood before his house, his broken car still present in the driveway. He hurried inside and locked the door behind him. Breathing in a sigh of relief, he slumped to the floor.
His wrist stung again as it touched the floor, and he was reminded of his wound, which had been forgotten amidst the running. He examined it a little more closely. The teeth had sunk in just below his hand, and seemed to have gone in deeper on the inside of his arm, with more shallow cuts on the other side. It was bleeding badly, and was beginning to turn dark. Seth decided it must be infected.
Walking to the sink in his kitchen, he wondered if he had any gauze in the house. He washed the wound out, and winced at the pain. He recalled that he had picked up a small first aid kit a few years ago, out of paranoia. Fishing around under the sink for it, he found the white and red box. He blew the dust off of it and took some gauze out, and proceeded to wrap his wrist in it. It was a little tricky to put the gauze on, since he had been bitten in the right wrist, and was right-handed, but he managed.
Seth walked back into the living room and picked up the phone with his uninjured arm, and called the hospital. He needed an ambulance, and he knew it. The wound was clearly infected, and his car was broken. The hospital was over an hour away on foot, and he didn’t want to run into any more rabid homeless people.
He was answered by an insistent busy tone. Grumbling, he hung up the phone. What would have the hospital so busy? He pondered for a moment, and dialled 911. They could send him an ambulance. Bt once more he was answered by a busy signal. This time he swore. He could understand the hospital being busy, but 911? Weren’t they supposed to have multiple operators so that nobody would get a busy signal when they had an emergency? He hung up again, and picked up to try the hospital one last time. As he dialled the number, though, the phone went dead in his hand. He stared at it in disbelief, and it was then that he realized that his hand was shaking.
Seth dropped the phone back into the cradle and stared at his hand. He noticed that it was more pale than it usually was. The odd part was that this wasn’t the hand that had been bitten. He tried to stop it from shaking, but his mind seemed to have very little control over his hand. He could open and close the fingers if he concentrated, but nothing more.
Leaving the phone, Seth walked back to the couch and sat down, still staring at his hand. Within a few minutes, the hand stopped shaking, and he regained control over it. He moved it up and down a few times, and flexed it. Everything seemed to work fine again.
Seth breathed another sigh of relief, and then realized that he was hungry. He hadn’t eaten since this morning. He reached for the chips he had left on the nightstand, and ate the rest of them within two minutes. He was still hungry. He moved to the kitchen and opened his fridge, consuming anything he could find in an effort to satiate his now ravenous hunger. But no matter how much he ate, he was still hungry. Taking a plate of mismatched food, everything he could find, Seth returned to his living room and turned on the television. Over the years, it had become an unconscious habit to watch television whenever he ate.
The news was still on. The anchorman was talking about a rapidly spreading disease that was sweeping through the country. Seth watched with slight interest while devouring a large piece of chicken. The symptoms included bags under the eyes, the anchorman told him, as well as sharp pains, increased appetite, and uncontrollable shaking. When he quoted the last two symptoms, Seth stopped eating suddenly, letting a small noodle drop from his open mouth onto the floor. Seth stared at the television intently. The anchorman continued to say that the disease was quite often fatal.
Seth quickly reached into the drawer on the nightstand and dug out a small mirror. Examining his own reflection, he noticed that he did indeed have bags over his eyes. His skin was also paler. His attention turned back to the television, which was showing clips of diseased people.
“They look like the walking dead,” Seth mumbled to himself.
When the clips did not seem to end, Seth changed the channel to another news station, hoping to hear more about the disease, and what to do if you had it. Two other channels were running clips, and a third had a coughing anchorman that looked sick himself. Another, smaller news station had a guest that was talking about zombies. Seth scoffed. He had stopped believing in that stuff years ago. But the man had caught his interest. He hesitantly lowered the remote control.
The man was ranting and raving (and swearing) about how it was no mere disease, and that the other news stations were broadcasting nonsense. Anybody bitten by a zombie was as good as dead, there was no cure. Seth looked again at his wound. It had gotten darker. It looked a lot worse. He poked at it, and felt nothing. The wound had completely numbed the area. Turning his attention back to the television, the man was continuing to say that people should lock their doors and windows, and stay inside at all cost. Or, if you’re more daring, make a break for your local mall, or some other large, easily defendable place with plenty of supplies.
Seth turned off the television, and stared at his wrist. What if it was true? What if he was going to die? He stood up, not wanting to just sit there and think about his own death. He wasn’t sure what to do, but this wasn’t it. He took two steps forward, and fell to the floor. He legs had gone numb now. He couldn’t feel them, and he couldn’t move them.
He could move his arms, but he didn’t. He continued to lie there, helpless, letting the possibility that he was about to die sink in. Maybe it was zombies. That explained the man that had attacked him, didn’t it? The man with no pulse, the man that had bitten his wrist. The man that had done this to him.
A sharp pain suddenly shot up Seth’s legs. He still couldn’t move them, but now he could feel pain from them. The pain slowly faded, and was replaced with a bitter chill. The chill started in his legs and began to spread up to the rest of his body. Within minutes, he was lying on the floor, and shivering, completely helpless.
Deciding that he didn’t want to die like this, Seth pulled himself forwards with his arms and propped himself up into a sitting position, his back faced against the wall. There must be something he could do. There must be something that could help him. Seth began to cough uncontrollably, and he instinctively raised his hand over his mouth to cover it. When he brought it away, his hand was covered in blood. He groaned at the sight of all of the blood, all of his blood, and wiped it on his shirt.
Drowsiness began to fall over him. He knew what was coming. He struggled to stay awake. He tried to think of all of the things to live for, all of the reasons that he should keep fighting. But they were slowly slipping away. He began to forget about them. He began to forget about everything. His eyes closed once, and then opened immediately. He fought it. His eyes closed again, and again they opened. But more slowly this time. He coughed up some more blood. Then his eyes closed again. He struggled to open them, but he wasn’t strong enough. His eyes remain closed. His head fell to one side, as his arms fell to the floor, limp.
After a few hours, Seth’s eyes opened again. His vision was tinted in red. Most of his mind was gone. He had retained a small amount of intelligence, but only enough to know that he had changed. It was no longer Seth, it was a monster wearing Seth like a suit. A costume, nothing more. For a moment, he felt nothing. No emotions. No happiness, no sadness, no loneliness, no lust. Then he felt something. Something overpowering. Hunger. It felt like he had never eaten. He saw the plate of food lying on the floor nearby, and lunged at it, as though he were afraid it would escape. He shoved as much of it as he could in his mouth, barely pausing to chew, and soon had consumed the entire plate. And he was still hungry. But now, all of the food was gone.
He let out an inhuman roar. Then he heard a scream from outside. A human scream. A woman, scared. Seth began to walk towards the door. But on the way, he paused for a moment, and bent down to pick something up off of the floor. It was the small mirror that Seth had used to check his reflection. Now it looked drastically different. His eyes were completely red, as the homeless man’s eyes had been. His face was incredibly pale, with spots of dried blood under his chin, and under his eyes. He must have been bleeding from his eyes without realizing it.
Snarling, Seth threw the mirror to the floor, and it shattered. He continued forwards to the door, stepping on shards of glass, but felt nothing. He left a small trail of blood from the new cuts in his foot.
Reaching the door, he had no idea how to get past it. His memories had abandoned him, his memories of how to do simple tasks like opening a door. Trying to find an immediate solution, he smashed at the door, again and again. Slowly it splintered and gave way. He was much stronger now. Now that he no longer felt pain, he could use his full force without fear of getting hurt.
Seth crawled through the hole made in his door, and looked around. The scream had come from out here. Instinct took over, and the hunt began. He inhaled deeply through his nose. He smelled life. He turned in a slow circle, inhaling through his nose and trying to pinpoint the origin of the scent. It seemed to be strongest in one direction, so he began to walk down the street, towards an old schoolyard.
He heard another scream, and his pace quickened. It was dark out, but the red tint in his vision enabled him to see better in the darkness. He would have the advantage.
A figure stepped out in front of him, forcing him to stop. The figure snarled at him, and he snarled back. He sniffed, and smelled no life on him. It was another one like him. They stared at each other for a moment, before the silence was broken by another scream from the direction of the schoolyard. They both turned in that direction, and began towards it again. Within minutes, they were at the schoolyard, but no time seemed to pass for them. Their minds were almost completely gone, and with them all concepts of time and distance. For them, everything seemed to be happening at once, with nothing in between.
They stopped and both sniffed deeply. She was close. Seth scanned the surrounding area with his enhanced vision, and saw a brighter object somewhere in front of him. He snarled to his companion, and started forward. He watched the brighter object as he advanced. It seemed almost highlighted in his vision. It was life. It was food. It was prey.
After a moment, the brighter figure noticed them, and started to move away. Seth and the other zombie began to run. They had no limit on stamina, no breath to catch. They caught up quickly.
Seth grabbed the woman as soon as he was close enough, and pushed her to the ground. She spoke, tried to reason with him, but he couldn’t understand what she was saying. The other zombie moved closer and grabbed one of her arms, and bit her. She screamed again. Seth grabbed one of her legs, and bit through her pants, into her skin. He ripped of a small chunk of flesh and swallowed without chewing. She continued screaming and flailing her limbs, trying to escape. She didn’t realize that even if she did escape, she would become one of them. Seth moved up to the source of the noise, and took a deep bite out of her neck. His bite went straight through to her oesophagus and blood poured in. She began to choke on her own blood as the two zombies continued to eat her. Now that the screams were gone, as well as the flailing, the zombies were free to eat their fill without worry. Not that they had worried before.
After an unknown time, the zombies had eaten their fill. Whereas the other food had done nothing to extinguish Seth’s hunger, feasting on the woman seemed to have done the trick. The other zombie seemed to be full as well. They left the schoolyard together, leaving behind the corpse of the woman they had just eaten.
Another unknown period of time passed. The zombies had walked for quite a while without smelling any life in the area.
A gunshot sounded in the distance. The two zombies began trudging towards it. As they walked down a quiet street, other zombies strode out to join them, falling in loose formation behind them. Within minutes, there were over a dozen of them following Seth. Most of the lights in the buildings were out, but a building down the street still had its lights on. It became a beacon for the zombies, as they walked slowly towards it. As they got closer, more gunshots fired. The zombies were unable to tell what these were, and just continued onwards, towards the source of the noise. Seth felt something hit him in the chest and knock him back, but felt no pain. He felt the point of entry with one of his fingers, and felt wet blood. He snarled in the direction of the noise that had corresponded with the hit, and continued walking. More gunshots fired, and more zombies were knocked back slightly, but not damaged.
Another shot fired, and this time the zombie to Seth’s left fell to the ground. Seth paused, as the others continued to move ahead. He knelt down beside the zombie. It was the zombie that had joined him right before he had reached the school. He pushed it, as if to wake it up, but nothing happened. He looked in the direction of the noises, and let out an inhuman scream.
The porch light was drawing all of the zombies in the area towards it. A few humans were in windows shooting at them as they approached. Most of the zombies walked straight towards the light, and were picked off easily. Seth watched as more zombies fell to the ground, and heard snarling behind him. He turned, and saw dozens more zombies stumbling and trudging forwards, towards the light. Seth stood and walked after the zombies, following them towards the light. He stopped and stood for a moment before reaching the area where all of the zombies had been falling. Looking around, he saw some dark hedges to the side of the house. There were no lights over there, and there didn’t seem to be anybody shooting out of windows. Seth walked slowly in that direction, leaving most of the other zombies to become walking targets. But before he disappeared to the side, he snarled at a few of the other zombies, and they followed him into the darkness.
Seth and half a dozen other zombies followed the side of the house to the back door, which was a sliding glass door. Seth tapped it, and it seemed sturdy. One of the zombies beside him groaned. Seth took a step back, and the other zombie stepped forward and smashed the glass, and walked into the dark house. Seth paused outside with the other zombies. The gunshots continued, and the humans hadn’t seemed to notice breaking glass. Seth followed the other zombie inside. He entered the room with the people firing guns at the zombies outside, and they didn’t notice him. They were concentrating on their targets, the dozens of zombies that still walked towards the light.
Seth walked behind one of the men and grabbed him, biting his shoulder. Another man turned and screamed, and fired towards Seth, but only managed to hit the man’s friend, whom Seth had been holding. The other zombies burst into the room and quickly overpowered the few humans that remained. They feasted on the men that had killed the other zombies, while the zombies outside huddled around the porch light, now that they had nobody shooting at them.
After Seth and the others were done eating the men, Seth smashed through the front door as he had done on his own house. He stood before the zombies outside, illuminated by the light. They turned to him. He let out another inhuman scream, and a few scattered zombies in the group replied with their own. There was silence for a moment. Then all of the zombies in the group screamed. The sound was overwhelming. Seth began to push through them, and they all fell in line behind him. There were more zombies out here than he had expected. Soon over a hundred were following him down the street.
Seth stopped for a moment. All of the other zombies immediately stopped behind him. He stared down the empty street as part of the remnants of his mind opened up. A memory hit him, and at first he wasn’t sure what it was. He recalled listening to the television, right before he had died. A man on television had told people to go to their local mall.
That was where Seth needed to go.
Seth snarled and changed course, heading down another street. The faint outline of the mall could be seen in the distance.
As they got closer, they saw other zombies in the street. More groups, some led by single zombies like Seth, others not seeming to be led by anybody. They were all headed to the mall. It was as if they had all been called towards it. The street became a river of zombies. There were hundreds of them. Thousands. All heading towards the mall. Seth’s group joined up with the river, and soon Seth was no longer leading. He stopped, and the others continued on without him, now part of the river of the undead. He looked around him and saw hundreds of empty faces. A few looked back at him, a few others that had managed to retain part of their minds, a few others that had limited knowledge of what was going on.
As he looked at the faces, he knew that this was where he belonged now. Like all of these other people, he had once been alive. He had once been human. But now he was dead. And somehow, that didn’t stop him. He would follow the group of zombies until he was killed. What else was there to do? He had no choice in the matter. The hunger was so strong. Too strong.
Seth began walking forward again, rejoining the flow of the river of death.
He knew that to the remaining humans, he was just another faceless monster.
~~~end~~~
Phew. That was a lot of work.
Until next time,
Damn straight.
~Kataron
