Day: 365

Zombies killed: 70.000

From the top of the tall building, whose the first 50 or so floors were generic offices, but the last ones held great luxuries and the top floor was basically a suspended mansion, I watched the empty town.

There wasn’t a single thing moving thru the streets but some doves and some animals that escaped the disaster from a year ago somehow. The interior of every single building, house, vehicle, shop, and even sewers, we had explored everything, we had effectively searched for and found every single zombie that one day roamed free in that city; save for supper mutated ones who stalked the Happy Shrimp bases; collected all of the place’s resources, became the king and queen of the then ghost town. I could barely believe the number of eliminated brain-eaters on my spreadsheet. I could barely believe that that day really came, that my twin sister and I were just one step far from the safety of society and the goods and benefits it offered.

I could barely believe how unhappy and afraid that made me feel.

“Bro?”, Morgaine called, approaching me from behind and taking my hand. She was wearing only a black robe almost transparent under the daylight. It was almost as if to purposefully show to me what I would be loosing in succeeding in letting that desolated place behind. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah...”, I held Morgaine’s hand tighter. No, my twin sister’s hand. Yes, my twin sister’s hand. If things went smoothly, in just a few more days, that is all we would be again, siblings, not more. “Just going thru the plan again.”

“Don’t bother too much, then, everything will probably fail and both of us will die anyway”, I could do nothing but to smile. I never saw myself as an optimistic person, merely trusting in the numbers and chances, but in that relationship that was the paper I ended up filling in my own way. “So… maybe we don’t need to go ahead with it?”, Morgaine asked, and there was sadness in her voice. “Maybe we can just stay here? We have enough food to experiment with planting, and an entire city of other things. Even an army of zombies isn’t a problem to us now that we have so many guns and know how to use them!”

I wanted to agree. My mouth was already open and the word stuck in my throat. But I couldn’t:

“What if we get sick? We’re not doctors, even with all the medicaments and right tools, we can’t really tell what we would have” I swallowed the word and my wishful thinking. “Besides, nothing lasts forever; someday our clothes will wear out, our weapons will break and buildings will fall apart. Even if we gave our best, someone can’t know everything. We wouldn’t last much longer just for ourselves. Even if we did well until now, it’s because we have access to a town of resources, but even this will spoil, rust, break and rot someday”, it was… a bit harder to keep the sorrow inside, however, and my voice was shaken when I concluded.

“…Hm, you’re right. We can’t just stay here forever”, my twin sister agreed. And I feared the moment I would have to let her hand go… But I did it anyway:

“Come on, let’s deal with the Happy Shrimp faction”, we still had some enemies to kill.

From our spot, I could see the tall and thick concrete wall of the forest mansion. In a year, the numbers of people nor their equipment, attitude or even the layout of the place had changed. Even the few dozens of creatures who stood close; by the bushes and trees, keeping their eyes on the guards tirelessly, waiting for a chance to break in while hiding from the bullets; I made sure to keep alive and let the people inside the mansion think that the city outside was still turned upside down.

“Nothing changed; let’s stick with the plan”, I lowered my hand and took the binocular off my face, storing it again. And coming back to the old and ragged camp, where a bear corpse laid down, immobile and shot dead. A pair of plastic bags were still on the ground, tore apart, their content long eaten and destroyed. “Are you ready?”

“Well, it’s not really an elaborate plan, so, yeah: explode and shoot. I’m ready”, Morgaine answered, finishing with part of the explosives we had found in the police station back then. We, however, had changed. And we were about to charge against our last and the most dangerous enemy we had until that point.

Of course, in the last few months, in between exterminate the last few hundred of zombies, and having fun by looting and making love in every public space possible while we could, I kept checking over the Happy Shrimp faction just to make sure that my first impressions weren’t as wrong as one could guess; by the sheer amount of people who the only faction besides my twin sister and I threw over its walls and to a hungry horde of extremely mutated creatures, I was sure of their evil nature.

I could dive into the forest with intend to kill another man and, yet, keep my mind in easy; I took the explosive, then prepared, from Morgaine and dashed towards the mansion.

The zombie that turned to me too late had its skull cracked open and its brain matter scattered all over the dirt and grass by a single swing of the small mace, that I quickly stored again, holding the shotgun with both hands. Confirming the wall, its guards, and the right distance before me, I opened the lighter, ignited the wick of the explosive and threw it against the concrete barrier before hiding behind a tree.

Someone over the walls approached the point where the TNT fell and was burning and hummed a question that I couldn’t really understand, covering my ears. Then, the guy screamed and tried to run, but it was already too late: with a deafening burst that ignored my helmet and the fingers in my ears, the explosion shook the forest, cracked the ground, send mixed parts of what once was a wall and a man to the skies, and covered a great area with dust.

I couldn’t listen properly, but I knew that Morgaine had started to shot from the back, nor could I see thru the dust curtain, but it was obvious that the Happy Shrimp guards, after a year of easy patrols and a safe distance from boring just slightly-mutated zombies, were at least a bit surprised.

But the enemies this time weren’t dumb brain-eaters, huge bears, or even special zombies, but people, smart, well equipped, in big numbers and ready to kill, people; I tried to put myself in the most advantageous position possible, but a fast surprise attack was the best I could do, the option of the long but never-ending fight I used to put for the hordes of undead until that point not effective anymore, those guys able to just call for reinforcements or run away; I couldn't relax.

So, still inside the dust cloud, having already jumped over the pile of concrete debris and invaded the mansion garden, as soon as I let my eyes fall over someone, a staggering wandering man in black holding loosely a weapon by his side while holding his head, I shot, without thinking twice or stopping to walk. The guy fell in his back; he wasn’t firing at me, but was still alive, and so I dashed to the fallen guard, pressed the barrel against his unprotected throat and pulled the trigger.

Cleaning the blood out of the shield of my helmet, my hearing started to come back, I finally able to listen to the immense confusion over the walls, guards questioning with screams how many enemies there were and from where we were coming from while shooting, apparently, randomly. I advanced to the mansion, exploded the entrance with a shotgun blast and my twin sister warned me that someone seed to call attention to this, but the others seemed to be as deaf as I was just a second ago, if not more. Maybe the fingers in the ears and the helmet wasn’t just ignored by the sound of the explosion, after all.

Then knowing that someone would be coming for me, I invaded a room just by the side of the entrance, confirmed I was alone there and turned to the entrance again: I didn’t need to count to three before someone showed up, and I wouldn’t be able to count to one even if I wanted before I discharged three bullets against the helmet and gas mask reducing the head inside of these to nothing before it even fell, immobile, to the ground.

Without allowing myself to stop and reload my gun, though the wish was almost unbearable, I run to the second floor, knowing that in any other case, I wouldn’t be able to proceed, but to freeze in fear and under the perspective that those opponents could end me with a single finger movement, if they had a good enough aim.

Fortunately, the guy who I came across in the second floor didn’t have a good enough aim, or really thought that the motorcycle helmet I wore was just this and not improved by a proper bulletproof material by Morgaine; I felt like someone had hit my head with a hammer and before I knew I was facing the ceiling and with my back on the wood floor.

I still had the memory of the first man I killed fresh in my head, though, and even if I couldn’t really bring my pulsing head up and see to where I was aiming, I pulled the trigger and shot, and shot again and again and again, until there was no more kick from the gun. Letting the shotgun behind, I rolled on the ground and to a room by my side, where I leaned on a wall, feeling blood running from my forehead and turning one of my visions red. I draw out my magnum just in time to bring down another guard coming up from behind my position just a second ago and from the stairs; normally my aim sucked, but even I had luck from time to time, and the fire found precisely the black glass eyes of the gas mask, forcing out all the gory content behind the equipment in a gush.

Only when listening to the guy who shot me screaming behind the wall, when I started to look for other passages in the room I was, I noticed the beheaded soldier on the ground close to the shattered window. I thanked my twin sister silently and, came back to the corridor, when I saw a guard struggling on the floor, screaming in pain. And for a moment I didn’t know what to do; nothing I had ever killed screamed like that.

Then I pointed my gun and shot; telling myself repeatedly that while I never had, those guys did.

I listened before seeing to what was in the next and last room:

“Captain, I don’t fucking care about your fuck pots! I NEED YOU HERE NOW!”, a shaken voice screamed at… shooting at the lock and kicking the door open (after my twin sister confirm that there was no guard waiting for me inside), I saw, a phone. The guy in the robe from before (still wearing it) shrinking in the corner of the room.

I walked towards the frightened man, when a zombie threw itself over me; don’t expecting more armored opponents inside the room I left my guard down: the creature's teeth merely broke on my armor, and soon all it could do was press its bleeding gum on me. In the heat of the moment, while the man in robe started to curse me and cheer for “his” zombie, I fired on the creature's belly, the bullet separating the thin and skinny upper from the lower half with easy, before my mind got into place again and I exploded the thing’s brain, for the disappointment and sheer despair visible all over the face of the man in a bathrobe.

I walked to him again, but this time without being disturbed, having no more zombies tied to the walls covered with hardcore BDSM toys; even if Mogaine was still shooting outside, she didn’t warn me of anyone else coming in. I lifted the skinny guy from his place on the corner with easy and a single hand, many of the weapons I used over the last year being heavier than him, but or height still had a clear difference, him being way older than me.

“I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you! So, don’t blow my head up, okay...?”, The man in a bathrobe talked before I could say anything. “I know every single fucking dirty secret of the Nice Day Happy Family; Seafood Company, seriously! Just take me back to your headquarters and I’ll tell you everything and even lend the right documents, hu… You’re with the Smiling People We Care About You; Fishes and Water Things Industries… Right?”

I slowly shook my head from one side to another, in negation, more in awe than trying to scare the man in the robe even more.

“Fucking shit fuck… Uh… The activists? Pro-zombie life?” I looked to the undead I had just shot, but this didn’t seem to be a good enough answer neither: “Well, I don’t judge you, seriously! I believe you truly care about zombies, even if you end up... killing so many of them…”

Finally, I sighed and replied:

“I’m just a survivor who’s a bit pissed with you guys feeding living people to the undead over the port.”

“A survivor, you say? So, you want a job? I mean, we don’t let you aside because we wanted, you didn’t need to take revenge on me! I promise, if you just get to the port and scream that you want to work, we will take you in without thinking twice… I mean, we’ve been recruiting every single survivor we came across in this city.”

“Yeah, ‘employing’ and then throwing them away once they’re tired, like scum, to the brain-eaters?”

“Oh, well, you see? In the first place it’s not ‘throwing away’, it’s ‘forever dreamy vacation’, and, second, the thing is, I know everything there it is to... Well, I won’t say ‘everything’, because it would be a lie, after all I’m just a man, but, basically, every topic that may come up in my life, and I can tell with 100% certain: this is just the best method there will ever be, and any attempt of study in hope of getting things better is purely idiotic. Believe me. I mean, you can go after the answer, but it’s a loss of time, because I already know eve- I am a specialist in a large variety of fields, and what I just told you is definitely right.”

“…So, you’re just sure that there’s no way to, like, things may not be like you say? That people don’t need to be throw to hungry zombies? Can’t we… make a proper investigation?”

“No need, my fried survivor. So, about that not-killing-me-and-getting-a-job thing…?”

“Bro… You already… both of us already seen what they do, again and again. You don’t need to confirm it even one more time. Soon, more soldiers will be here and we won’t have the surprise element anymore”, though the voice was filled with interference and radio noises, I still could feel its gentleness thru the walking-talkie inside my helmet.

My twin sister didn’t need to tell me that; I knew it already.

I knew it already, but then it was even harder than finish the guy whose limbs I, accidentally, amputated. The man I was holding didn’t have a gun, but a face that wasn’t covered in slimy putrid flesh.

But, like I did with the screaming guard from before, I held my breath, hardened my grip on my gun, lifted the barrel…

And pulled the trigger.