Just another Survivor
Group: Members
Posts: 24
Joined: November 13, 2004
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I was reading a lot of Lovecraft when I wrote this so mind the fancy talkingness please lol
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Four Shots in the Bedroom
It has been twenty-two hours since it all began and I am writing to you these last desperate words in the thin glimmer of hope that you will stand alive to read them. I may be here for some time but I fear I am already insane and want to pour as much of my mind onto this page as I can before I descend any further.
Its just me and little Jimmy Peterson now. He was taller than me but the name stuck. The kid would be closing on his graduation if today were still of the norm. Eighteen and four months, for Christs sake, only eighteen. I saw even younger still, but theyre on the other side now. Behind the dresser and the door and those old rotting boards. Is that what my very humanity has come to depend on? Not my hard work at the paper-presses or my strict diet and jogging sessions but a pathetic pile of pine? Theres always my pistol, but there are only eight cartridges left on me and after that it might as well be a stone cast at the crowds.
I kissed my beloved wife good-bye for the day before leaving the front door and making my way to the automobile this morning. Her frail structure leaned against my larger frame and my arms wrapped all too easily around the girth of her torso while we pressed lips. I turned to the door and popped my hat over my small bald-spot and before closing the door, took one last look at the three cute freckles under her right eye and finally headed down the old stone path to the driveway. Another day at work making money to buy the food she cooked so skilfully and with such love every morning. My son, my wonderful boy, was already on the bus with the other bright little tokens of youth on route to school. The last thing I said to him was that his fly was open. I can only guess how he remembers me now, where ever he is.
Calmly cruising between the other men and women on the roads of the quiet town, I soon arrived at the large parking lot of a local paper and found a vacant slot to park the vehicle. I soon found myself at my desk in my office going over articles with a fine tooth comb fixing the simple but ever numerous errors on their otherwise fine literally craftsmanship.
Hours rolled by and lunch soon broke my work period. I chatted with the water-cooler gang and ate my dry ham sandwich before deciding to drop her a call. She seemed surprised and pleasantly touched as I almost never called whist at work, but it was brief. Something was in the air that reminded me of her, maybe one of the secretaries had a similar perfume, but whatever it was, it reminded me of how my life had turned out just as I always wanted it. Trouble in school and brushes with the law were behind me and now my life was like a lucid American dream, everything I wanted was there and perfect. The sky was overcast as I gazed out the tall picketed windows, but even the dull grey glow of the sun was empowering.
It was then that the offices erupted in a panic. Everyone was streaming around like a burning hive of bees. Word had spread fast from the radio to person to person and finally to me that the city was subject to hundreds of mass-murderers that were growing in number and the city was in a state of emergency. Everyone had one thing on their minds; get themselves and their loved ones out of harms way. Before I was told the news my wife fell to the last thing on my mind but now I had an uncontrollable urge to walk all over my colleagues to get home and cradle her. If the school hadnt sent my son home by then we would rush to the schoolhouse and pull him out of his small desk before his teachers lecturing.
I fought and shoved the pathetic fearful worms out of my way, but I too was shoved to the side, and the ones shoving were shoved themselves. The continuous fluid crowd forced itself here and there but in the end no one made any personal progress over the others and we all poured down the stairs at the same pace as we started. Despite the futility we tried constantly and cursed each other violently and hatefully to get out of each others way.
I ran to my car as fast as my old but fit stilts would propel me and fumbled to insert thin metal into the lock and open my car to me. As I pulled out and cut off my own boss to the exit of the parking lot, receiving an angry burst of his horn in retort, I found the main roads to be a dangerous obstacle course no Drivers Ed could prepare me for. Cars swerved left and right, crossing over to the left side of the road and back without a care for regulation, eighteen-wheelers turning on a dime and rolling over, fire hydrants blown clear off their piping; pandemonium.
As I closed on my home I ran into the murderers. They looked more like a large pack of drunkards fresh from a bar fight. They limped across the street swinging their arms like whips bashing the panicking citizens in their heads and backs with a strength that seemed painful to both parties. What jolted my heart further was the sight of their loose-necked heads clamping down on the legs of the helpless as they tried to crawl away. Closing these ruthless animals consumed everyone in eyesight.
As I pulled into the driveway my eyes widened at the sight of one of these persons skulking out of my front door and dragging his feet across my front lawn. I ground to a halt, tearing my uniformed grass out of the soil behind my wheels, and hit the man with my front grill. It was then that I got a clear look at one of the murderers. His lanky frame slid up onto the windshield and I locked eyes with the man. They were shallow and empty and starred through me into infinite space as if I were nothing. It reminded me of my grandfather as he sat on his couch dead, his eyes still open but seeing the darkness of the abyss. I jabbed the door open and slid my legs out to stand up when I fell out carelessly in shock that the man was still alive. He slowly crawled to the side and collapsed onto the lawn with me, grasping at the tuffs of green to close the gap with me.
I scampered away and forgot all about my home and my beloved wife. I ran down the street at full force and tackled one of my neighbours to the ground as he came into my path and as I looked over my shoulder at him, I saw his neck torn out by the guiltless jaws of one of those soulless killers. I stopped only at a familiar voice that called me out by name. It was Old Man Peterson. I stopped in the middle of the street, surrounded by corpses and killers and starred at this single body still standing. He split the darkness of his front door with his muscular structure planted firmly on his front porch, shotgun in hand. He waved me in and I ran into his home in his comforting shadow.
As I entered the dark, tobacco mist and waited for my eyes to readjust, I was startled by a shell he fired into the chaos before following me in and closing the door. He urged me to help him move a large table from the dining room to the front hall and tip it over onto the thin wooden door. The yellow box of light on the living room floor was blocked by the silhouettes of the murderers as they smeared their empty faces across the glass. There were hundreds, thousands maybe. I could hear them slapping their limp hands against the back doors, the front doors, the windows, the wall, everywhere. They were trying to get in. Peterson returned to the living room and shook me from my trance. He told me not to look at their faces for too long and to try to forget theyre people. Forget theyre people? I recognise some of them, my neighbours, the mailman, that bored cop that wanders downtown, they were my friends and acquaintances. Why are they of all people, helping kill so many? Some of the members of the crowds were not in a fine condition either. Large gashes and cuts riddled their soft supple flesh and stained their tattered rags in a crimson that tightening my throat to a gag. Some were even torn inwards by what I can only assume to be bullet holes. There people should all by common sense be dead. It was then that I realised they were. The horrible wounds, the blank glassy eyes, they were dead. But why were they killing, why were they eating, why were they still moving and acting at all?
Peterson squeezed my shoulder till it hurt and looked me in the eyes. He told me again to stop looking at them and called his son over. I had met him before, a young lad finishing up his courses and preparing to graduate from high school and hopefully get into a good college or university. He wanted to be an electronics technician, or he did the last time we spoke. In his hand he had a large stack of random wall panels and floorboards, and a small cardboard box of nails. We quickly darted around the dark house and, trying not to look at the things on the other side, boarded up the windows as they shook violently before us.
When we finished, Peterson handed me a small handgun and quickly told me how to aim, load and reload the weapon. I was probably a terrible shot but we never commented on such a trivial thing. We sat on the couch and huddled around the radio and waited for the whining and scratching of the speakers to give way to audible speech. Peterson turned the dial clockwise and counter- but only found different pitches of static. The television was no different as the cable line was hit by a careening car that tried to dodge pedestrians running across the street in terror. In trying to save a life he took his own and cut off our link to the media. Peterson, being a tech buff, bought a newer set without the now-obsolete bunny-ear antennae.
Adrenaline surged through my twitchy hands as my heart jumped at the sound of broken glass. They had got through two of the windows already but the wooden boards still held them out. I looked at the cold steel in my hand and focused on the glimmering contours, trying to forget their human faces making such inhuman expressions. The faces constantly flashed back into my head, overlapping the shape of the gun as they barked and moaned outside. At times they sounded rabid and furious like wild dogs scratching at the fence as intruders pass by their territory, and others gave long, low, drawn out shrills like a wounded horse laying on its side. Whimpering and yelling, groaning and yelping. I almost didnt notice when Peterson found a station still on the air.
The radio announcer listed safe havens over and over to make sure people just tuning in would hear of one close by, but they were all too far to bother trying to reach. On the eleventh repeat he excluded, among several, the old schoolhouse and tagged on at the end a note that the havens not listed were reported to be overrun. I knew he was dead. The passing of baseballs in the backyard and kissing of foreheads in the glow of the nightlight were cut short in an instant without any compassion or second thought like the head of a snake found in the garden. The announcer said those words with such cool and professionalism it made me want to panic for his sake. He deserved at least that from me, his father who wasnt there to keep him safe. Peterson and smart-but-weak James looked at me from a brief moment before glancing down and then to the radio, embarrassed to be caught wanted to see the look on my face. I couldnt blame them for wanted to see how I took the news. Id want to know if Peterson had lost his James.
The announcer then stopped in mid-sentence and reported that a development came in from some authority we could only assume was scientific and was worth believing. The murderers were in fact dead but were brought back to mechanical motion by some substance they carried that revived their cells. Apparently brain cells decayed too fast and they only retained very basic instincts that they follow without question. They didnt know if it was some chemical or living microbe that restarted the reactions, but it transferred through bites and blood and blood contact through scratches and slashes. Survivors of these attacks will rise once they die and any wounded from these skirmishes should not be trusted. Luckily none of us were attacked yet. I thought about my son at the lost safe haven of his school. Not only was he probably dead, but he was probably out killing with them. He was probably eating living people until they rose with him; he was something I could barely comprehend, but he was not my son anymore. He may have my genetics, and may have passed through my beloved wifes fair canal, but he wasnt my son. I tried to focus on the gun again.
It was then that I heard a long strained creak followed by a thud coming from the back door. Peterson bolted up and ran to the kitchen to find three of the boards were on the ground and a series of bruised and bloodied hands were protruding out between the wooden planks and snapped their wrists in a futile attempt to grab us, but we stood too far back. The last few boards that remained still held them outside but they were flexing and squeaking as they ravished them. The smart Jim cautioned that some of the windows boards were giving way as well. That was when his father and my friend began to panic on us. We all panicked but the two of us seemed much calmer and composed after we finished sealing up the entrances and his new found rage could only be called panic when I compare it to our states of mind. He lunged the two barrels of his shotgun in between the boards and the yearning claws that now tore at his arm, and fired one barrel and then the other before withdrawing it and grasping his cuts.
Before he could bandage his arm a dark shape past by the side door. As I spun around I could see two of them were already in the house. Peterson told us to run and I followed Jimmy up the stairs towards the bedroom when a small but heavy entity latched into my back. I slowly thumped up each step one at a time leaning into the walls and its weight pulled down on my spine.
As I ran through the door and collapsed into the middle of the room, Jimmy closed and locked the door and dragged a large Victorian dresser in front of it. I felt its teeth clasp down on my shoulder through my shirt and tear out my muscle. Both Jimmy and I screamed frightfully and he pulled the thing off me from behind as I swung around with the pistol and fired four shots quickly into its brittle chest and tore out its vile tainted blood. As it fell into the middle of the room and lay still, I collapsed into the corner. It was as far away as I could get from the thing. Jimmy held himself against the wall and slowly slid around to the opposite corner and we both sat down, starring at it between us. We could hear them edging their way up the stairs now. Thumping and crashing again the locked door. The room was filled with the sounds of their agonised wails and mumbling that filled me with disgust for their presence. We wer4e safe but I couldnt stand hearing them out there making those ungodly sounds, their sounds were inhuman, no living thing for that matter could make such ghoulish grunts and groans. What also left us uneasy was seeing this leaking slab of meat before me filling the air with a ferrous musk.
As I looked deeper at it there, the more human it became. The long piercing claws became fragile fingers on a delicate hand. The torn rags resembled blouse and pants, and the murderous, fiery face that once disturbed us with its savage rage now sat idle with its eyes half closed and its mouth idly open. Its torn and lacerated flesh bled out onto the carpet and it was evident that it had died twice, once by them and again by me, from the different set of wounds. The jagged oblong strips of missing skin and muscle contrasted with the small, depressed holes from my handgun. This vile construct of flesh and bone was once a young woman. She had a small delicate frame that stood a little shorter than mine. There was an odd gravity to her that brought me closer. I held my breath and stepped into the cloud of iron that surrounded her with that horrible smell and looked at her face before truly losing my mind. The realisation stole from my heart the will to resist, not that there was anywhere to go. On her pale face were three cute little freckles beneath her cold sightless eye.
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Feel free to comment, I'm not adding anything on.
This post has been edited by Bluehawk on July 22, 2005 02:25 am
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Fours Shots in the Bedroom, Loss, Paranoia, Insanity and zombies.
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