Intro: It is October and I always feel like I should do some creepy story. This is my take on zombies. The virus infects those who are compassionate and intelligent, and it feeds on the compassion. Those who aren’t so much are for some reason spared. What kind of society would that make?
I ran across the field between the buildings, keeping myself as low to the ground as I could while trying to be fast. The sound of gunshots ricocheted around the buildings. The magazine of my gun had been empty for over a week, but no one else knew that. I could keep my hand steady and bluff through my teeth. People moved out of my way. The problem wasn’t the people, it was those who could no longer be classified as such.
No one was sure where the virus had come from. Considering the scientists were the first to fall victim, I had my guesses. It had taken a few weeks for people to understand what was going on. The virus didn’t so much as eat the mind, but the humanity.
I saw a shape moving in one of the broken windows and rolled to the ground just before the bullets impacted. My time on the streets before the penitentiary had taught me well. Though no one was fast enough to dodge a bullet, I had the scars to prove it. It wasn’t dodging a bullet if you moved before the trigged was pulled.
I climbed through a broken window and made my way upstairs. The man stood at the window, his gun trained on the field outside. The butt of my gun struck where skull met spine and he crumpled. I took everything that was useful and left the empty gun behind.
Back outside I pulled out a compass and continued on my trek to the inner city. My shoes made little noise as I crept. A dark shape raised out of the grass in front of me. The man’s face was twisted, deformed from where he’d been injured. The virus slowed down the healing process, leaving wounds open and festering, through the blood remained clotted. Instead of being a liquid, blood more of welled and thickened when meeting with oxygen. Most of the time, the easiest way to kill a virus infected man was to open a hole to their heart. The blood would clot and cause a heart attack, that or in the brain. Though sometimes that just caused lack of motor control.
I brought my gun up and the man halted, his head tilted sideways.
“Move on.” The man said. “We have no business with you.”
I moved so I could look around. Despite my precautions I had wandered into the middle of one of their camps. I could see computers and electronic devices glowing faintly. The virus seemed to feed on compassion and intelligence. It seemed to do with the chemicals released in those types of situations. Therefore they had the technology, because they were the smart people. Criminals like me were less likely to be infected, but we weren’t the smartest of the bunch. I had dropped out of school when I was fifteen.
The man took a step forward and I raised my gun.
“Do you think that is going to stop me?”
If I couldn’t kill him with the first bullet, I was dead. The blood clotting was an advantage when it came to other wounds, because it kept them from bleeding to death.
“Just kill him. He isn’t worth it.”
I turned and fired. A woman sneaking up on me was thrown backwards and hit a building. She stood up, shook herself and stared at the hole in her side. A black gob dropped to the ground.
I ran, firing whenever anyone got too close. A bullet to me across the arm and I dropped my gun. I continued to run the people behind me hobbling, blood clots having moved through their bodies and ended up in their legs. I heard one of them drop, probably from a clot reaching their heart. I didn’t stop. Just when I thought I too would succumb to a heart attack, the sound of pursuit ended.
I crawled into a building and lay there gasping. With no humanity left on the planet, I realized that I might not want to actually live through the night, but I refused to let those monsters win. I would kill everyone if I needed to. Tomorrow I would make it to the inner city, and once I was there, I would take control of the humans left to their senses. From there we would stop the virus. I heard a faint noise and looked up. The man I had met at the clearing was standing over me, my gun in his hands.
“Goodbye.”
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