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Dominckmagas' Story
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
PRELUDE
I had nowhere to go. I backed into the corner. There were at least twenty of them steadily advancing on me. I raised my gun and fired into the crowd.
BANG.
BANG.
BANG.
One fell and was replaced by two others. They were getting closer. I’d seen what they did to my girlfriend, Nicky. I saw them tear her apart, saw her live long enough to see them stick their filthy, rotten hands through the skin on her belly and claim their gruesome prize. Her screams still echoed in my head, piercing at first, then gradually residing, but not actually going away for quite a while. It took her a long time to die. Thankfully, she passed out from the pain before long, but it just took her so long to stop moaning in pain. Nicky had saved me, provided a diversion while the ghouls had feasted on her, temporarily abandoning their hunt for me while they feasted on their easier prey. Now, all that Nicky had died for, her saving me, meant nothing, I was going to be devoured by the mouths of this vicious horde. I was screwed, except that I had one more option available to me. I shakily raised my revolver to my head. I was about to pull the trigger when one lurched forward to me, arms extended, I withdrew the revolver from my temple and shot a clean hole in its skull. It fell over, very dead. I shoved the barrel into my mouth, feeling the heat from my last shot, and savoring the lingering taste of cordite and of the steel pressed against the roof of my mouth. I wasn’t shaking anymore, not nervous. I knew I would see Nicky soon. I would see my whole family. Smiling at the advancing masses, I mumbled, “Try and kill me now.” I pulled the trigger.
CLICK.
What? That wasn’t supposed to happen, I looked at my revolver, and hastily shoved it back into my mouth. The undead were growing closer to me, so close actually, that I could smell their rancid flesh. I pulled the trigger again, convinced that it had misfired.
CLICK.
CLICK.
CLICK.
Panicked, looking own the barrel of the gun, I fired it several more times in rapid succession.
BANG.
I missed. In my haste and panic, I had allowed the barrel to slip out of my mouth and was looking down into it instead. The recoil from the gun sent the bullet flying harmlessly wide, burying it into the brick behind me, spattering me with chips of the wall. Now, the zombies were practically on top of me. In my desperation, I had slid down the wall and was now sitting. The zombies closest to me threw themselves at me, and I had no choice of escape. I was condemned to the same fate as Nicky.
RINGRINGRINGRING.
What? The zombies slowly lost their form and the hallway I was in started to fade to black. Soon, I became and incorporeal form, and then was gone.
CHAPTER 1
I slowly opened my eyes, stunned at the sudden brightness. My alarm was ringing beside me, so I swung my hand over and shut it off. I sat up in bed, stretching and yawning. I should really stop watching those zombie movies I told myself. I looked over my shoulder to the other side of my bed. Nicky. There she was, safe and sound, nestled under the warm covers of our bed. Of course there weren’t any zombies. Just a dream. I blinked the sleep out of my eyes and yawned again. I bent over and kissed Nicky on the forehead, and she rolled over and groggily opened her eyes. She smiled at me and closed her eyes, content to remain in the warm bed for a little while longer. I got up and donned my robe. I then proceeded to head to the kitchen for a coffee and a bowl of Cotton Candy Flavored, Caramel Covered, Chocolaty Sugar-O’s. As I grabbed the milk out of the fridge, I switched on the T.V. we had in the door of the fridge. As I walked to the front door to get the mail, I heard the newswoman say something about an outbreak of African Rabies. When I returned with the paper and a stack of bills, another reporter was talking about a group of hunters that had gone missing nearly a week ago. They switched to a video of the search. There were searchers everywhere, and every other person carried a hunting rifle of some type. There were even two members of the state law enforcement with assault rifles. I just passed it off as it being coyote season or something. It showed them coming upon a blood-drenched boot sitting in a patch of dried blood. They must have been attacked or something or he must have messed his foot up pretty bad. It was around that time that Nicky waltzed in. She took one look at the gruesome picture and shuddered.
“Wow, things sure are messed up nowadays,” she exclaimed “With all of these people going missing and getting sick and stuff.” She walked over to me and hi-jacked my coffee behind my back while hugging me as a diversion. She slid away, a sly grin on her face, as I reached for my coffee. She leaned against the counter and took a sip, feeling the caffeine course through her. Luckily, I had planned for this exact scenario, for it had happened many, many times before. I pulled another coffee out from behind me and gazed at the paper.
“You think that’s weird?” I said to her, “Wait ‘till you hear this. Some guy in Mexico has been arrested for killing 13 of his neighbors. He was found on his rooftop with a shotgun. His neighbors were lying around his house, dead. He killed them all with headshots. There’s more. Apparently, he had bite marks all over him. He died on his way to the hospital. Wow. That’s odd”
“Well,” she exclaimed, “At least it’s not happening here, right?”
“Right.” I replied. I finished my coffee and headed to the bathroom to have a shower. While showering, I reflected on last night’s dream. I couldn’t even imagine having something that bad happen to Nicky. I loved her, I really did. I made sure to tell her that as often as I could. After I got out of the shower, I put on an old shirt and some stained jeans. I also grabbed a hoodie. I passed Nicky on the stairs.
“What’s with the old clothes? Don’t you have to work today?”
“Yeah, but we’re going paintballing.”
“Really? You never mentioned it to me.”
“Oh, it must have slipped my mind. Anyways, Geoff thought it would build teamwork skills or something.”
“Your boss wants to have an office full of computer nerds, not that you’re a computer nerd, of course, to go outside and play paintball?”
“Yeah, that’s about it.”
“Then why do you have a sweater? It’s like 85 degrees out!”
“It lessens the impact, so that the paintballs don’t hurt as much.”
“Um, ok. Well, honey, see you.”
“I love you Nicky, see you later.”
“I love you too Mark.” I gave her a kiss, picked up the keys to our Jeep, and headed out of the door. I walked down our gravel driveway to our Jeep. It was an older one, and not one of those city ones. This one was a real all terrain vehicle. It had big, thick tires, a reinforced chassis, fog lights, metal plates on the bottom to avoid snags, a snorkel for the engine, and re-inflating tires. It also had a winch on the front. This was a man’s vehicle. Nicky and I both loved everything about the outdoors. We loved camping, hiking, swimming, rock climbing, kayaking, everything. We actually met each other while climbing Devil’s Tower. We instantly hit it off and had a few drinks at the local bar. That was 7 months ago. Now, we lived together. We had bought the Jeep to go with our love for adventure. Many times in the past few months had we loaded it up with climbing gear, our kayaks, or camp gear, and gone on a little adventure. Unlike many people with off road vehicles, we actually used ours. I hopped in and backed out of the driveway. I could hear my dog, Sasha, barking at the noise of the car as I backed out. She was a 9-month-old pit bull-shepherd that Nicky and I had purchased. She was like our baby, and was the nicest, most gentle dog, despite her rather aggressive lineage. I waved at Nicky, who was standing at the window, and drove off. We lived on acreage in the country, only 30 minutes from the city. I was originally from a smallish city in Alberta, Canada, but moved to Seattle to pursue my ambitions of becoming a graphic artist. While driving into the city, I saw two ambulances racing past. Farther down the road, I saw them stopped at a car. I didn’t want to hold up the cars behind me, so I just continued driving.
CHAPTER 2
When I finally arrived at the address given to me by my boss, I found that it was an abandoned apartment/office building with a field in the back. The field had many wooden and tire obstacles strewn around it. I parked my Jeep and walked to the office. I found my co-workers and boss waiting for the rest of the people to arrive. I sat with some friends and made some small talk. One of them was reading something on his Blackberry.
“Whatcha’ reading, Steve?” asked Aaron, a friend from R&D.
“Wait till you hear this guys. I have a friend who works as an emergency dispatcher, you know, sending out ambulances and stuff. Well, he says that earlier today, a report of a wrecked car on the side of the road was called in, so he sent out some ambulances. When they got there, they found the car in the ditch, engine running. There was a dent in the front bumper and the hood, and the windshield was cracked. He said it looked like the driver had hit something, but there was no blood on the hood. He told me that there was a LOT of blood inside the car though. So now, the driver’s missing. Weird, huh?” We all nodded our agreement. Finally, the rest of the people arrived. We were split up into teams, given the ground rules, and then sent to the equipment booth. It was to be a straight up team death-match. The first team to loose all of its players would lose. Our first match would take place in the building. My team walked into the building’s east entrance, and the other team walked into the west. We were to start on the blow of the referee’s whistle, which he said he would blow in ten minutes. I took refuge under a desk against a wall on the second floor. It had a missing shelf so that you could see through it without being seen. There were a few filing cabinets lying around, so I stacked a few up in front of the desk to provide cover. I had tried to distance myself from my team, so that they wouldn’t give my position away, but Steve had followed me and took refuge across the room by an open door.
I looked at my watch. It should be ten Minutes just about… TWEEEEEEEET! now.
I sat quietly in my spot and waited. We didn’t see anybody for the first 15 minutes or so, until someone crept through the door directly in my line of sight. I glanced over to Steve, but he didn’t notice him. He was walking straight at me. I didn’t know how accurate my gun was, so I didn’t want to chance missing him, and giving my position away. I let him come closer. Suddenly, there was a scream and the floor above us, probably Rob and his paintball grenade gone very, very bad. The guy in front of me looked up at the noise, and that’s when I took my shot. I smoothly pulled the trigger twice quickly, and two purple spots appeared on his neck. A hit. He dropped his gun in a mixture of pain and surprise, and looked around, not knowing where I had shot him from. He then sat down on the floor and started coughing violently. By this time, Steve had noticed him and thought him hurt. He rushed over and asked him if he was OK. At that time, another person came through the same door and spotted Steve, with his red armband. He raised his gun and lined him up in his sights.
SPLAT!
A paintball exploded on his hopper. He turned his gun towards my hiding spot and unleashed a torrent of paint balls. Before he could shoot me though, I shot him twice in the face, effectively blinding him by coating his mask with paint. That’s what you get for not going down the first time I thought. Him and his buddy held their hands up in defeat and sulked out of the room. I looked at Steve with a I just saved your sorry butt look. He nodded his head to me and returned to his hiding spot. We heard many shots throughout the building, but it wasn’t until ten minutes later that I saw my next opponent. He had walked through the door behind Steve, somehow missing him, and was coming for me. I don’t know if he saw me, but he had his gun raised and was looking carefully into the shadows under the desk where I was. I had my gun pointing through the missing shelf, and was in the wrong position to shoot him. If I tried to move my gun around, he would see me and shoot. As I was pondering my fate, my guardian angel made a phone call… to Steve.
RingRingRing.
The guy turned around upon hearing Steve’s phone. I saw Steve’s face behind his goggles. His eyes were so very wide. The man started unloading on Steve, and even after he was hit, he kept shooting. That made me angry. I quickly and silently hopped up and ran over to him. I put the barrel of my gun to his neck. Upon feeling the icy coldness of my gun, he stopped shooting.
“Mercy” I whispered into his ear. It was one of the rules, if you could get close enough to an opponent, you could opt for a mercy kill, taking him out without shooting a bullet. Any wise opponent would accept, for they were almost certainly out. This wasn’t a wise opponent.
“Screw you!” He said as he spun around, gun leading. Or, at least he tried to. Upon hearing him say that, my anger for what he had done to Steve bubbled forth. I shot him five times, point blank in his neck. He just growled and kept turning, so I tripped him. When he was sprawled on the floor, gun having slid away, I raised my gun, and placed a shot right between his eyes. “You’re out!” I declared to him. At that time, the ref blew his whistle. I didn’t even know he’d been watching.
“GAME OVER!” He yelled. Steve and I had been the last guys on our team, and the other guy was the last on his team. I had won the game for my team with just 11 bullets, all of them hits. My opponent took off his mask. It was Geoff! My boss! All I could think was 'OHCRAP-OHCRAP-OHCRAP!'. Instead of his expected response, he laughed, shook my hand, and congratulated me on a game well played.
"Where'd you learn to shoot like that?" He asked
"I mustn't have told you, I lived in Canada for most of my life, and I hunted a lot."
"Oh, cool. I love the hunting up there."
We walked outside to see the rest of the guys sitting on benches, having some drinks. There was Rob, covered in purple paint, our team’s paint color, confirming my suspicion about the grenade. We played quite a few more games that day, my team usually winning, and me always being the last man standing on my team, usually the last man standing, period. I drove home that night feeling proud about myself. I didn’t even hear the radio announcer talking about the rash of killings in the town that day. When I got home, I showered, sat down with Nicky, and watched our favorite movie, Night Of The Living Dead.
CHAPTER 3
The next morning when I went to work, Bob, Steve, and Joe, weren’t there. I thought nothing of it. I just figured that they went drinking last night and were too hung over for work. Things continued as normal for the next few days. The guys still hadn’t come to work. Must’ve gotten really sick, I thought to myself. On Saturday morning, I sat and watched a Roadrunner marathon with Nicky and Sasha. We sat on the couch in our PJ’s for a few hours, eating cereal and sandwiches and watching cartoons. It was times like those that I realized how much I really loved her. I went to the store that afternoon to pick up groceries and some camping supplies for our trip later that month. On the car ride home, I heard on the radio that joggers have started to go missing. The lady warned people not to go out at night and to go with another person. When I got home, I had a long talk with Nicky about the rash of killings and disappearances. I was worried for her because she often took the dog for long walks at night, and I sometimes did too. We both had concealed carry permits, but we didn’t have any small guns, we only had and old 30-06 hunting rifle that my father gave to me, and an old Mossberg 500 that we found in the basement when we moved in. The next day, we went down to the local gun shop. I purchased a Para-Ordnance (I’m still partial to Canadian-made products) Nite Hawg, which is chambered for a .45 round, while Nicky purchased a Taurus PT22 BGR, which uses a .22 round. We bought 500 rounds for my gun, and 1000 for Nicky’s. the next day we took the guns to a shooting range to get the feel of them. We shot about 150 rounds each, and by that time, we were both quite comfortable with our weapons of choice. During the next week, things started to get a little more chaotic. More people started missing nationwide, and the number of murders involving head shots increased dramatically. It was on the night of July 4th, that everything changed. I had taken Nicky to a fancy restaurant, giving the excuse that it was my birthday and also Independence Day. I knew the real reason. As we walked into the restaurant, I placed my hand in my pocket and felt the little box that contained the one thing that might change my life forever. After our dinner I had something to say to Nicky.
“Nicky, you know that I love you, right?”
“Of course I do”
“Well, all these crazy things that have been happening the last week have made me think about what’s really important in my life.”
“What do you mean Mark?”
“I mean that I’m about to do something that terrifies me more that that time we went bungee jumping in Morocco.”
“You were quite scared in Morocco.” She laughed.
“I just wanted to ask you. Nicky?” I stood up, walked over to her, and knelt down. Her eyes started to tear up. I think she knew what was coming. I pulled that little box out of my pocket, and opened it as I started talking again.
“Will you marr-”BOOOOOOOOOM!!
CHAPTER 4
A huge blast rocked the table and cut me off mid-sentence. A women screamed. Everybody looked out of the window. A huge fireball engulfed a fuel tanker in the harbor on which the restaurant was stationed. As we watched, a second explosion rocked the tables once again as a huge tongue of flame shot out of the top of the boat. Burning figures started jumping off of the side of the boat, some just shambling off of the side, falling into the water. None of them surfaced. We were evacuated from the restaurant. As we ran from the building, I grabbed Nicky’s hand. She spun around to face me. She looked beautiful in her long silver dress and her red hair done up in a bun behind her head. She had been out in the sun quite a lot recently, so a few freckles covered the bridge of her nose, only enhancing her beauty. I looked deep into her eyes and pulled out the box again. I knelt down. Her eyes started to well up, a few people around us stopped to look at us.
“Nicky, I love you more than you can imagine, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?” I opened the case to reveal a modest ring. Her hand went to her mouth as tears flowed freely down her cheeks.
“Yes. Of course I’ll marry you.” People started clapping. Nicky looked around, embarrassed. I looked only into her eyes, unaware of the people around me, or the sound of sirens in the distance, or of the oily smoke that hung in the air. At that moment I knew only her. I slid the ring onto her delicate finger ad stood up. I drew her into a passionate kiss, holding her, and spun around sweeping her off of her feet and spinning her around. Then the police had to shoo us away because it was dangerous. Foolish. I knew that in her arms, I could never be harmed, and I would never allow her to be harmed either.
CHAPTER 5
Our wedding was to be in a month, except that we never had it. The world didn’t hold together that long. The morning after the explosion, we watched the news. The previous nights explosion was passed off as a gas leak on the boat and faulty machinery. Nicky and I were not stupid people. We put the pieces of the puzzle together. We both came to the same conclusion. Something very bad was happening, and it was happening now. Over the next few days, we stocked up on water, food, ammo, and anything else we could find. We encountered our first zombie a few days later, when I heard the dog barking late at night. I took my pistol and a spotlight and headed out. We had a little rabbit pen that we kept all of the rabbits we found in. We had about 13 rabbits. There was only one left when I got there, and it was in the hands of a hunched over person. I shined my spotlight into its face and shouted at it. It looked up at me. It was terrifying. Half of its face had been ripped away, exposing the teeth and tendons. One eye was missing. Its face was covered in blood, both old and new, and bits of fur. It absentmindedly raised the squealing rabbit to its mouth with grimy, bloody hands.
“Put the rabbit down!” I yelled at it. It brought the rabbit closer. I shouted my command again. Nothing. I fired a round over its shoulder. The sudden noise shocked it. It then proceeded to eat the rabbit alive.
“Oh my…” That was all I managed to say as I threw up all over my boots. I walked towards it. As I drew closer it dropped the rabbit, raised its arms up and headed towards me, letting out a soft moan.
“STOP!” I yelled at it with a firm voice.
“You’re trespassing on my property. If you proceed any closer, I will shoot you. I'm warning you.” It just kept coming closer. I repeated my command again, and it kept advancing. I put another round over its shoulder. It didn’t even flinch. I put a round through its leg. It didn’t even stumble. It got closer and closer. I started to back up. I put three rounds into its chest. It fell over. I was panting from the adrenaline rush. I’d never shot anybody. I rushed over to see if he was alright. Before I could get to him, he sat up and gazed at me. There was no way that any person could have survived that. He got up and continued on towards me. I aimed for his head. I turned my face away, eyes squeezed shut, and pulled the trigger. The loud report of the pistol and the sound of something falling over were the only sounds around. I opened my eyes. It didn’t get back up. That’s when I figured it was a zombie. I dragged it to a ditch a few hundred yards away and buried it along with the gloves I had been wearing. I went into the house without telling Nicky what had happened. The next day, the news station on T.V. announced the creatures identity. Zombies. They had a military commander onscreen telling us to shoot them in the head. As he was telling us what to do, three flaming zombies advanced on him and dragged him down before he could pull out his gun. The camera shook as something struck the person holding it. It fell at a perfect angle to reveal the cameraman being devoured by 2 ghouls. That was one of the last T.V. broadcasts.
CHAPTER 6
That was three months ago. Now, Nicky and I are living in our homemade stronghold with 4 other survivors. There’s Kurt, Angie, Maggie, and Dion. Kurt was one of the military’s special task squads during the zombie clean up. His squad was killed and now he’s living with us. We rescued him from his undead squad mates about three days after I killed my first zombie. We took all of their weapons, equipment and ammo, and we burned the corpses. Angie is 24, a few years younger than Nicky and I. She rescued Kurt and me when we were walking by the local Wal-Mart. We had been overrun by zombies, when they started getting picked off. It was Angie, she had been holed up in a nearby house, when she saw us. She was the unofficial sniper of our group. Then there’s Maggie and Dion, who are married. A fire caused by an explosion at a gas station had burned down their house. They were heading out of town on foot when they came upon us. We gratefully accepted their company. Dion was a very accomplished mechanic, carpenter, and had helped us build and fortify our stronghold. Maggie was a tailor and her father was a gun maker so she is a valuable asset to our team.
We had two more people with us, Will and George. They were killed during one of our excursions into town. We had been walking to a gas station to get fuel for our car and for our generators. It was still in the first stages of the outbreak, so we were slightly under prepared. I was walking with Kurt (we hadn’t met Maggie or Dion yet, George and Will. While walking down a street, a zombie came out behind our group. It started following George, since he was in the rear. The zombie silently approached George. I had turned around just in time to yell out a futile warning before the zombie struck. It must have had a punctured lung, for its ribs had been poking out of its chest at a strange angle. That would have explained how it had been so silent. Te bottom half of its jaw was missing, leaving the face in a permanent half-smile. That would have normally left the zombie without a mode of attack, but this zombie had other natural weapons. One of its arms was broken and had a sharp, jagged piece of bone sticking about six inches out of the remaining part of its arm. It lunged at George with its bone-spear and impaled him in the lower stomach. Kurt raised his gun and shot the zombie clean in the face. He was about to shoot George too, so that he wouldn’t turn into a zombie, when Will stopped him.
“Let me do it. He’s my best friend.”
“Kurt, I think we should let him,” I replied “Let’s go and give him some privacy so that he can say some last words.” Kurt nodded his head in agreement and handed Will a pistol.
“You know what you have to do.” Will nodded his head gravely as he took the pistol from his hands. We walked around the corner to give him some privacy. George was coughing and sputtering. We heard Will whisper something, and as we rounded the corner, he was out of our sight.
BANG.
The sound echoed through the streets. We decided to give him some time with George’s body when-
BANG
A second shot rang through the air. Kurt and I looked at each other and dashed around the corner to see Will, lying there beside George with the pistol in his hand, smoke still rising from the barrel. The smell of cordite still lingered in the air. Both had clean holes in their heads. The pressure must have gotten to him. After killing his best friend, he turned the gun upon himself.
CHAPTER 7
“Oh my.” I said, “I barely even got to know them.” Kurt said a short prayer for them, and then we did the necessary task of taking their gear.
“We should get going;” Said Kurt “The noise of those shots will draw them from all around.” In my shock, I hadn’t even thought about that. We started to jog back to my vehicle, which we had left at the edge of the city, not wanting to chance taking it in, when we saw a Wal-Mart that, miraculously, appeared not to have been looted.
“You know, we are running low on batteries,” I suggested to Kurt “Maybe we could stop in?” He nodded his agreement. We proceeded to the store. We had to break a window to get in, for the doors were locked. A few minutes later, we emerged from the store with bags of batteries, ammo, and essential goods. We turned the corner to find a huge hoard of zombies that had been brought to us by the noise of the window breaking. We turned around, just to find more zombies blocking our path. We were surrounded! As we looked for a way out, a muffled crack was heard, and a zombie fell. Two more shots rang out, and two more zombies fell, breaking a hole in the ring. We heard a shout.
“Over here! Run to my voice” We didn’t wait to question our savior. We ran towards the voice. As we were running, I noticed a door to a building open up ahead of us. We dashed for the door. When we got inside the building, we noticed a small-ish woman with a bolt-action police sniper rifle. Judging by the look of the place, she had been holed up there for a while.
“We need to get moving, quickly. Do you have a vehicle?”
“Um, yes,” I replied to her “It’s about a ten minute walk away.”
“Good, because they will be coming here soon. Help me gather some stuff.” We obeyed her and gathered up as much useful stuff as we could carry. By this time, we could hear the moans and bangs on the front door. Whey had arrived. We followed the woman to a back door. We then took all of the supplies and made a dash for my Jeep. On the drive home, she told us he name was Angie. I informed her that we had a fairly secure shelter just out of town. That’s how we met Angie.
CHAPTER 8
Now, a month or so later, things were looking good. We had enough food to be comfortably fed for quite a while, we had water, and we had found plenty of solar generators to power some of our equipment for quite a while. We had also scrounged enough fuel to power our gas-operated generator for some time. Things were good. We all knew the dangers of a zombie attack, and were all veterans of many conflicts. The trouble was, we hadn’t seen any zombies for quite a while. We were used to seeing few zombies, for we tried to be as quiet and inconspicuous as possible. Inevitable, a few stumbled onto our property. They were always dispatched quickly and efficiently. The strange thing was, we hadn’t seen one for nine or ten days. This was unheard of. There was a problem with that though, we were getting lazy. We started being less cautious. We would leave exterior lights on more often, whereas they only used to be used in case of an emergency. We let our defenses fall, that’s why we didn’t hear the noise. At least the others didn’t. On night, I was just sitting, taking my turn watching the perimeter, when I heard, or thought I heard yelling. I passed it off as a trick of the wind, or of some unfortunate survivor being routed from his hiding spot by some ghouls. When we took a trip into the city the next day, what we found surprised us. Dead bodies everywhere. Seeing as how the dead had been walking lately, it wasn’t strange in that sense. It was strange in the sense that all of these dead bodies were perma-dead. Either they all had gunshot wounds in their heads, or their heads were decapitated. As we were walking through the scattered corpses, we noticed some that seemed out of place. There were about ten that we saw that all had leather vests and motorcycle gear. Kurt walked over to one by the curb and flipped him over. Kurt reverently bent over and picked up something shiny. When he turned around, we saw that he had a sword. Not just any sword, but a katana. “What’re you going to do with that?” questioned Maggie
“I think I might use it, maybe, just maybe.” He replied snidely. He walked back to the dead biker and retrieved a sheath and four grenades. He belted the sword to his hip. We proceeded on to a house where we had stockpiled goods. We didn’t want to leave any of the stuff in an obvious place, where it might get stolen, so we had stashed as much as possible in an abandoned house. When we got there, we had Dion guard the door, and as we entered the house, we found a bigger surprise. All of our stuff was gone! Spray painted on the wall was the word Thanks! Someone had stolen our stuff.
CHAPTER 9
At that moment, we heard a gunshot. Dion must have encountered a zombie. We peered out of a window just in time to see Dion’s body crumple. Shocked, I looked farther along the street. I saw a man on a motorcycle shouldering a rifle. He spotted us, grinned, and pointed a finger in our direction and shouted a command. Almost as soon as he said his command, I heard a great roar. Around the corner came at least fifty bandits, all riding motorcycles.
“Oh, crap,” I proclaimed, “We have to leave. NOW!” I grabbed hold of the others as we head to the back door. By this time, we could hear the motorcycles, and they were very close. We ran down the alley in the direction of my parked Jeep. We scrambled along the alley, running full speed. Kurt called for us to wait.
“Wait! What do you mean wait?” I yelled at him
“Just wait!” he yelled back at me. I waited. Kurt picked up a flat rock, pulled the pin out of one of the grenades, and placed it grenade on the ground, and the rock on top of the safety lever. He then ran to catch up with this. We all had an idea f what he was doing. He passed us while we were still looking at the grenade.
“You should be running.” He warned. We began running, finally understanding the full scope of his plan. We resumed our mad dash down the alley, hearing the motorcycles on the other side of the house. They must have figured out that we ran away by now I thought. About fifteen seconds later, we heard the bandits enter the alleyway. We ducked behind a house to see the effectiveness of Kurt’s booby trap. The first few bikes passed the rock, which was tilted so that we could see the grenade and they couldn’t, when one bike clipped the side of the rock. We saw the rock slide off and the safety lever flip off of the grenade. The next few bikes sped past, unaware of the danger below their feet. Then, an explosion rocked the alleyway. Everywhere within a five-yard radius was engulfed in flame and shrapnel. The force knocked the ones who had passed the explosive over. The alley quickly filled with dust. We then made a break for the Jeep. Within five minutes, we were at the Jeep. We all loaded into the vehicle. We sped off out of town. Unknown to us, a lone rider sat behind us at the end of the road. He spoke something into a radio, then raised a rifle and put his eye to a scope.
CHAPTER 10
CRACK!
“What the-“ I said, then I saw Maggie slump over in the seat beside me. A crimson stain blossomed on her shirt, right over her heart. She was dead. Angie yelled and twisted around in her seat. She brought her rifle up to bear. She took aim and squeezed the trigger. There was a bang as the rifle shot flame out of the barrel. The bandit fell over backward, quite dead. Our Jeep sped towards our fort. When we got there, Nicky, Kurt, Angie and I piled out of the vehicle. We all grabbed Maggie and hauled her off into the fort. We got our bug out bags ready, and we waited. We wanted to see if they would pursue. They didn’t come that day, or the next day. We soon thought they had just forgotten us, until the night, six days after we had escaped the city. We saw a red glow on the horizon. As I watched, at least two hundred motorbike-riding bandits rode towards me, all with torches. Some of the first ones fell prey to our traps, most of which were just early warning systems for zombies. Flash bangs were triggered throughout the crowd. Some bikes fell over, tossing their riders. Those didn’t do any serious damage. About a month ago, we found a dead military convoy. We had scavenged explosives, which Kurt had set up for us. Those did more damage. The claymores sent riders and bikes flying through the air, aflame. Some bikes exploded, adding to the devastation. We had some buried drums of crude oil we had found. They were rigged to blow on the push of a button. I waited until they passed them before detonating them. Kurt, Angie, and Nicky had just crested the stairs and were almost beside me as the drums detonated. Great walls of flame and dirt rose into the air, turning the night into day. Some more bikes fell to various other traps, including trip-wired grenades and the like, but it didn’t slow the main force. There were still about one hundred-fifty bikes that hadn’t even breached our established perimeter, and all of our traps were gone. We had killed a total of fifty or so bikers with all of our traps. There was no chance of killing the rest. We rushed down the stairs. The rest of the bikers cautiously picked their way through the smoldering wreckage that littered the bare ground between the edge of the trees and my home. We all grabbed our weapons and bug bout bags. Then we left. We escaped into the trees behind what had been our home. We ran to the top of a ridge about a mile from our former home. I peered through my binoculars.
“You guys might want to take a look at this,” I sighed as I passed the binoculars to Nicky “They’ve taken over our base.” Nicky let out a resigned sigh as she peered through them and passed them on to the others. I had seen the bandits patrolling the walls of our fortress, they had taken it as their own. After we had all taken a good look, I asked the question that everybody had been thinking.
“Do you think I should detonate it?” I asked. Everybody nodded. I pulled a small remote control from out of my pack. I flipped open a cover for a switch. I flipped the switch, arming the detonator. I then gingerly placed my finger on the trigger and squeezed. A tear ran down Nicky and Angie’s face. Kurt and I watched in silence. The detonator made a faint beep, and about one second later, we saw the place explode. There were multiple explosions, each one destroying a part of our home. The place that had sheltered us, that had protected us for so long. We had prepared for this eventuality. We had rigged our diesel and oil tanks with the rest of the explosives we had. In the room were all of our leftover grenades, ammunition, and also all of the explosives that we had scavenged, but not knew how to use. They all went off. C4, grenades, artillery shells, and thousands of rounds of ammunition. They shot off into the sky like macabre fireworks. The massive shockwave and wall of sound finally hit us. It knocked all of us back a step. That night, we slept under a tree in sleeping bags, now having full realization that things could only get worse.
CHAPTER 11
The next morning, we all awoke to the grim realization of our situation. We had no shelter. We took stock of our supplies. We had four pistols with two extra twenty-round magazines each. Kurt and I each had an assault rifle, each with two extra thirty-round clips. Nicky carried the 30-06, and she had a drawstring bag with forty extra rounds. Angie carried her sniper rifle with fifty extra rounds. I carried the Mossberg 500, and I had a pouch with 25 shells for it. Kurt still carried his katana. Each of us had a combat knife we had taken fro dead military personnel. We each also had some food and water in our bags, and general camping and survival gear. We knew that we had to find a semi-permanent place for us to stay. We had a quick breakfast and then talked about our plan of action.
“I think we should stay in the forest,” Said Kurt, voicing his opinion “There’ll be less zombies there.”
“I don’t know, Kurt. We need to establish a permanent dwelling. For that reason, I think we should go into the city. As for the zombies, we haven’t seen any in over two weeks! I think that they may have moved on.”
“I agree with Mark,” exclaimed Angie “The city seems to be our best option for supplies, shelter, and overall security.”
“I don’t know, Angie,” Nicky objected, “There might be more of those bikers in the city. It could be dangerous.”
“It’s not like we’re any strangers to danger,” Kurt interjected, “I’m rethinking my opinion, I think that the city might be our best bet.” I nodded approvingly. We all looked at Nicky. We weren’t going to force her to do anything. We would discuss it until we all came up with a suitable plan.
“Yeah, I guess the city's the best plan.” She reasoned.
“Perfect!” I grinned, “We’re all in agreement then. To the city it is!” We packed up our stuff and started heading for the city. Along the way, we encountered our first zombie in quite a while. I dropped him quickly. We then spotted a couple more. They were dispatched efficiently.
“Where are they all coming from?” Angie questioned. Another few came at us and were dropped. Suddenly, a large force emerged from the forest and converged on us. There were hundreds. They surrounded us, cutting us off. The circle closed in. I blasted a few rounds from the shotgun into the crowd, opening a crack in the circle. We ran through the gauntlet of ghouls, yelling. Split fingers and cracked nails brushed our skin and grabbed hold of our backpacks and weapons. We dropped our stuff and dashed out of the crowd. We ran towards the city, occasionally turning and firing into the crowd with whatever weapons we had left. Nicky had dropped her rifle, Kurt and I had our assault rifles stripped from us. All we had left was our pistols, my shotgun, and Angie’s rifle. Things didn’t look good.
CHAPTER 12
When we finally reached the outskirts, we were quite tired and it was getting dark. We spotted a row of small apartment buildings and rushed towards them. We were quickly running out of ammo. As we were running down the street, an arm reached out of a sewer grate and grabbed onto Angie’s ankle. She fell. Hard. We heard the crack as her forehead connected with the pavement. We turned to see rotten arms pulling her towards the grate. Her head lay at a sickening angle, suggesting a broken neck. Nicky screamed. As we watched, Angie was pulled through the large grate with the sickening crack of bones and the sound of ripping skin. Her gun was pulled down with her. We turned away and ran, unable to watch. Angie was lucky, it was a quick death. Ours wouldn’t be. We approached the door. It was locked. We tried kicking it in, to no avail. I finally turned my gun to the door. I blasted the lock with the shotgun. Nothing. I had two more bullets. My spare shells were lost in the crowd. Nicky and Kurt fired into the nearest zombies with their pistols. They soon were out of ammo. I gave my pistol to Nicky, and a magazine to Kurt. I fired one more round into the door. Nothing. This was my last round. I blasted the lock, barrel flat against the door. The door shuddered and swung in. By this time, Kurt was out of ammo again and Nicky was sure to have very little left. Nicky and I rushed inside.
“Kurt!” I yelled, “Get in here!” He turned and looked at me with a forlorn gaze. He pulled his sleeve up to reveal a bloody chunk missing.
“I’m infected,” he said, drawing the katana, “You and Nicky get inside and barricade the door, I’ll buy you some time.” I looked at him, and clasped his wrist in mine.
“You’ve saved Nicky and I many times before. Thank you.” I closed the door and Nicky and I barricaded it. We then ran up the stairs.
“OW!” yelled Nicky behind me. I turned to see her lying on the stairs, her leg twisted at an impossible angle. I placed her arm around my shoulder and carried her to the roof. We arrived just in time to look over the side to see Kurt make his last stand. His first few swings were straight and true, popping heads off. Soon he started to occasionally miss the neck and hit them in the shoulders and arms. He kept swinging. He held his own for a surprisingly long time. Soon, though, the katana was not going all the way through the necks. It was getting dull. It was never meant to cut through so much bone. The next time he swung it, he severed one particularly rotten zombie’s neck and his momentum carried the sword deep into the chest of another. He kept a firm grip on the katana and gave a herculean tug, but the sword was embedded in the zombie. The rotting corpse fell onto Kurt, knocking him over. Without the continued assault, the zombies poured over him. We saw Kurt’s face between zombies. He mouthed Goodbye and reached down. He was smiling.
BOOM
CHAPTER 13
He had primed a grenade. We were thrown back onto the roof by the concussive force of the explosion. When we looked back over the ledge, we saw the zombies had been blown back too. They pulled themselves up and advanced on the door. We could hear the banging on the door, and soon, we heard the crack that indicated that the grenade-weakened door had been breached. We heard them shamble up the stairs.
“Come on,” I urged Nicky, trying to pick her up, “We can jump onto the next building.” She smiled and shook her head. She gestured to her violently broken leg as a single tear rolled down her cheek.
“You’ll be OK,” I assured her, “Come on.”
“It’s more than that,” She admitted. She rolled her sleeve up to reveal a nasty bite, much like Kurt’s.
“Just shoot me.” She grabbed my hand, and forced her pistol into it.
“I love you.” She quietly said to me. I knew I had to do it. There was no way she could escape, and I wasn’t about to let her be eaten alive. I kissed her, closed my eyes, and pulled the trigger. A choked sob escaped my throat. Zombies started pouring onto the roof. I placed the still-smoking barrel to my temple. I’d see Nicky, Kurt, Angie, Maggie, Dion, Will, George, and everybody else soon enough. The zombies advanced. The pistol was hot against my skin. I slowly pulled the trigger, preparing to seal my fate. Right before the trigger clicked, I swung the gun away from my head and blasted the closest zombie away with my last bullet. I leaned down and quickly kissed Nicky. I looked at the zombies. I guess I’d see my friends and Nicky later. Their times had all come, but it wasn’t yet my time. I threw my pistol at the nearest zombie, turned, ran towards the building adjacent to the one I was on, and jumped. It wasn’t yet my time.
The End
PRELUDE
I had nowhere to go. I backed into the corner. There were at least twenty of them steadily advancing on me. I raised my gun and fired into the crowd.
BANG.
BANG.
BANG.
One fell and was replaced by two others. They were getting closer. I’d seen what they did to my girlfriend, Nicky. I saw them tear her apart, saw her live long enough to see them stick their filthy, rotten hands through the skin on her belly and claim their gruesome prize. Her screams still echoed in my head, piercing at first, then gradually residing, but not actually going away for quite a while. It took her a long time to die. Thankfully, she passed out from the pain before long, but it just took her so long to stop moaning in pain. Nicky had saved me, provided a diversion while the ghouls had feasted on her, temporarily abandoning their hunt for me while they feasted on their easier prey. Now, all that Nicky had died for, her saving me, meant nothing, I was going to be devoured by the mouths of this vicious horde. I was screwed, except that I had one more option available to me. I shakily raised my revolver to my head. I was about to pull the trigger when one lurched forward to me, arms extended, I withdrew the revolver from my temple and shot a clean hole in its skull. It fell over, very dead. I shoved the barrel into my mouth, feeling the heat from my last shot, and savoring the lingering taste of cordite and of the steel pressed against the roof of my mouth. I wasn’t shaking anymore, not nervous. I knew I would see Nicky soon. I would see my whole family. Smiling at the advancing masses, I mumbled, “Try and kill me now.” I pulled the trigger.
CLICK.
What? That wasn’t supposed to happen, I looked at my revolver, and hastily shoved it back into my mouth. The undead were growing closer to me, so close actually, that I could smell their rancid flesh. I pulled the trigger again, convinced that it had misfired.
CLICK.
CLICK.
CLICK.
Panicked, looking own the barrel of the gun, I fired it several more times in rapid succession.
BANG.
I missed. In my haste and panic, I had allowed the barrel to slip out of my mouth and was looking down into it instead. The recoil from the gun sent the bullet flying harmlessly wide, burying it into the brick behind me, spattering me with chips of the wall. Now, the zombies were practically on top of me. In my desperation, I had slid down the wall and was now sitting. The zombies closest to me threw themselves at me, and I had no choice of escape. I was condemned to the same fate as Nicky.
RINGRINGRINGRING.
What? The zombies slowly lost their form and the hallway I was in started to fade to black. Soon, I became and incorporeal form, and then was gone.
CHAPTER 1
I slowly opened my eyes, stunned at the sudden brightness. My alarm was ringing beside me, so I swung my hand over and shut it off. I sat up in bed, stretching and yawning. I should really stop watching those zombie movies I told myself. I looked over my shoulder to the other side of my bed. Nicky. There she was, safe and sound, nestled under the warm covers of our bed. Of course there weren’t any zombies. Just a dream. I blinked the sleep out of my eyes and yawned again. I bent over and kissed Nicky on the forehead, and she rolled over and groggily opened her eyes. She smiled at me and closed her eyes, content to remain in the warm bed for a little while longer. I got up and donned my robe. I then proceeded to head to the kitchen for a coffee and a bowl of Cotton Candy Flavored, Caramel Covered, Chocolaty Sugar-O’s. As I grabbed the milk out of the fridge, I switched on the T.V. we had in the door of the fridge. As I walked to the front door to get the mail, I heard the newswoman say something about an outbreak of African Rabies. When I returned with the paper and a stack of bills, another reporter was talking about a group of hunters that had gone missing nearly a week ago. They switched to a video of the search. There were searchers everywhere, and every other person carried a hunting rifle of some type. There were even two members of the state law enforcement with assault rifles. I just passed it off as it being coyote season or something. It showed them coming upon a blood-drenched boot sitting in a patch of dried blood. They must have been attacked or something or he must have messed his foot up pretty bad. It was around that time that Nicky waltzed in. She took one look at the gruesome picture and shuddered.
“Wow, things sure are messed up nowadays,” she exclaimed “With all of these people going missing and getting sick and stuff.” She walked over to me and hi-jacked my coffee behind my back while hugging me as a diversion. She slid away, a sly grin on her face, as I reached for my coffee. She leaned against the counter and took a sip, feeling the caffeine course through her. Luckily, I had planned for this exact scenario, for it had happened many, many times before. I pulled another coffee out from behind me and gazed at the paper.
“You think that’s weird?” I said to her, “Wait ‘till you hear this. Some guy in Mexico has been arrested for killing 13 of his neighbors. He was found on his rooftop with a shotgun. His neighbors were lying around his house, dead. He killed them all with headshots. There’s more. Apparently, he had bite marks all over him. He died on his way to the hospital. Wow. That’s odd”
“Well,” she exclaimed, “At least it’s not happening here, right?”
“Right.” I replied. I finished my coffee and headed to the bathroom to have a shower. While showering, I reflected on last night’s dream. I couldn’t even imagine having something that bad happen to Nicky. I loved her, I really did. I made sure to tell her that as often as I could. After I got out of the shower, I put on an old shirt and some stained jeans. I also grabbed a hoodie. I passed Nicky on the stairs.
“What’s with the old clothes? Don’t you have to work today?”
“Yeah, but we’re going paintballing.”
“Really? You never mentioned it to me.”
“Oh, it must have slipped my mind. Anyways, Geoff thought it would build teamwork skills or something.”
“Your boss wants to have an office full of computer nerds, not that you’re a computer nerd, of course, to go outside and play paintball?”
“Yeah, that’s about it.”
“Then why do you have a sweater? It’s like 85 degrees out!”
“It lessens the impact, so that the paintballs don’t hurt as much.”
“Um, ok. Well, honey, see you.”
“I love you Nicky, see you later.”
“I love you too Mark.” I gave her a kiss, picked up the keys to our Jeep, and headed out of the door. I walked down our gravel driveway to our Jeep. It was an older one, and not one of those city ones. This one was a real all terrain vehicle. It had big, thick tires, a reinforced chassis, fog lights, metal plates on the bottom to avoid snags, a snorkel for the engine, and re-inflating tires. It also had a winch on the front. This was a man’s vehicle. Nicky and I both loved everything about the outdoors. We loved camping, hiking, swimming, rock climbing, kayaking, everything. We actually met each other while climbing Devil’s Tower. We instantly hit it off and had a few drinks at the local bar. That was 7 months ago. Now, we lived together. We had bought the Jeep to go with our love for adventure. Many times in the past few months had we loaded it up with climbing gear, our kayaks, or camp gear, and gone on a little adventure. Unlike many people with off road vehicles, we actually used ours. I hopped in and backed out of the driveway. I could hear my dog, Sasha, barking at the noise of the car as I backed out. She was a 9-month-old pit bull-shepherd that Nicky and I had purchased. She was like our baby, and was the nicest, most gentle dog, despite her rather aggressive lineage. I waved at Nicky, who was standing at the window, and drove off. We lived on acreage in the country, only 30 minutes from the city. I was originally from a smallish city in Alberta, Canada, but moved to Seattle to pursue my ambitions of becoming a graphic artist. While driving into the city, I saw two ambulances racing past. Farther down the road, I saw them stopped at a car. I didn’t want to hold up the cars behind me, so I just continued driving.
CHAPTER 2
When I finally arrived at the address given to me by my boss, I found that it was an abandoned apartment/office building with a field in the back. The field had many wooden and tire obstacles strewn around it. I parked my Jeep and walked to the office. I found my co-workers and boss waiting for the rest of the people to arrive. I sat with some friends and made some small talk. One of them was reading something on his Blackberry.
“Whatcha’ reading, Steve?” asked Aaron, a friend from R&D.
“Wait till you hear this guys. I have a friend who works as an emergency dispatcher, you know, sending out ambulances and stuff. Well, he says that earlier today, a report of a wrecked car on the side of the road was called in, so he sent out some ambulances. When they got there, they found the car in the ditch, engine running. There was a dent in the front bumper and the hood, and the windshield was cracked. He said it looked like the driver had hit something, but there was no blood on the hood. He told me that there was a LOT of blood inside the car though. So now, the driver’s missing. Weird, huh?” We all nodded our agreement. Finally, the rest of the people arrived. We were split up into teams, given the ground rules, and then sent to the equipment booth. It was to be a straight up team death-match. The first team to loose all of its players would lose. Our first match would take place in the building. My team walked into the building’s east entrance, and the other team walked into the west. We were to start on the blow of the referee’s whistle, which he said he would blow in ten minutes. I took refuge under a desk against a wall on the second floor. It had a missing shelf so that you could see through it without being seen. There were a few filing cabinets lying around, so I stacked a few up in front of the desk to provide cover. I had tried to distance myself from my team, so that they wouldn’t give my position away, but Steve had followed me and took refuge across the room by an open door.
I looked at my watch. It should be ten Minutes just about… TWEEEEEEEET! now.
I sat quietly in my spot and waited. We didn’t see anybody for the first 15 minutes or so, until someone crept through the door directly in my line of sight. I glanced over to Steve, but he didn’t notice him. He was walking straight at me. I didn’t know how accurate my gun was, so I didn’t want to chance missing him, and giving my position away. I let him come closer. Suddenly, there was a scream and the floor above us, probably Rob and his paintball grenade gone very, very bad. The guy in front of me looked up at the noise, and that’s when I took my shot. I smoothly pulled the trigger twice quickly, and two purple spots appeared on his neck. A hit. He dropped his gun in a mixture of pain and surprise, and looked around, not knowing where I had shot him from. He then sat down on the floor and started coughing violently. By this time, Steve had noticed him and thought him hurt. He rushed over and asked him if he was OK. At that time, another person came through the same door and spotted Steve, with his red armband. He raised his gun and lined him up in his sights.
SPLAT!
A paintball exploded on his hopper. He turned his gun towards my hiding spot and unleashed a torrent of paint balls. Before he could shoot me though, I shot him twice in the face, effectively blinding him by coating his mask with paint. That’s what you get for not going down the first time I thought. Him and his buddy held their hands up in defeat and sulked out of the room. I looked at Steve with a I just saved your sorry butt look. He nodded his head to me and returned to his hiding spot. We heard many shots throughout the building, but it wasn’t until ten minutes later that I saw my next opponent. He had walked through the door behind Steve, somehow missing him, and was coming for me. I don’t know if he saw me, but he had his gun raised and was looking carefully into the shadows under the desk where I was. I had my gun pointing through the missing shelf, and was in the wrong position to shoot him. If I tried to move my gun around, he would see me and shoot. As I was pondering my fate, my guardian angel made a phone call… to Steve.
RingRingRing.
The guy turned around upon hearing Steve’s phone. I saw Steve’s face behind his goggles. His eyes were so very wide. The man started unloading on Steve, and even after he was hit, he kept shooting. That made me angry. I quickly and silently hopped up and ran over to him. I put the barrel of my gun to his neck. Upon feeling the icy coldness of my gun, he stopped shooting.
“Mercy” I whispered into his ear. It was one of the rules, if you could get close enough to an opponent, you could opt for a mercy kill, taking him out without shooting a bullet. Any wise opponent would accept, for they were almost certainly out. This wasn’t a wise opponent.
“Screw you!” He said as he spun around, gun leading. Or, at least he tried to. Upon hearing him say that, my anger for what he had done to Steve bubbled forth. I shot him five times, point blank in his neck. He just growled and kept turning, so I tripped him. When he was sprawled on the floor, gun having slid away, I raised my gun, and placed a shot right between his eyes. “You’re out!” I declared to him. At that time, the ref blew his whistle. I didn’t even know he’d been watching.
“GAME OVER!” He yelled. Steve and I had been the last guys on our team, and the other guy was the last on his team. I had won the game for my team with just 11 bullets, all of them hits. My opponent took off his mask. It was Geoff! My boss! All I could think was 'OHCRAP-OHCRAP-OHCRAP!'. Instead of his expected response, he laughed, shook my hand, and congratulated me on a game well played.
"Where'd you learn to shoot like that?" He asked
"I mustn't have told you, I lived in Canada for most of my life, and I hunted a lot."
"Oh, cool. I love the hunting up there."
We walked outside to see the rest of the guys sitting on benches, having some drinks. There was Rob, covered in purple paint, our team’s paint color, confirming my suspicion about the grenade. We played quite a few more games that day, my team usually winning, and me always being the last man standing on my team, usually the last man standing, period. I drove home that night feeling proud about myself. I didn’t even hear the radio announcer talking about the rash of killings in the town that day. When I got home, I showered, sat down with Nicky, and watched our favorite movie, Night Of The Living Dead.
CHAPTER 3
The next morning when I went to work, Bob, Steve, and Joe, weren’t there. I thought nothing of it. I just figured that they went drinking last night and were too hung over for work. Things continued as normal for the next few days. The guys still hadn’t come to work. Must’ve gotten really sick, I thought to myself. On Saturday morning, I sat and watched a Roadrunner marathon with Nicky and Sasha. We sat on the couch in our PJ’s for a few hours, eating cereal and sandwiches and watching cartoons. It was times like those that I realized how much I really loved her. I went to the store that afternoon to pick up groceries and some camping supplies for our trip later that month. On the car ride home, I heard on the radio that joggers have started to go missing. The lady warned people not to go out at night and to go with another person. When I got home, I had a long talk with Nicky about the rash of killings and disappearances. I was worried for her because she often took the dog for long walks at night, and I sometimes did too. We both had concealed carry permits, but we didn’t have any small guns, we only had and old 30-06 hunting rifle that my father gave to me, and an old Mossberg 500 that we found in the basement when we moved in. The next day, we went down to the local gun shop. I purchased a Para-Ordnance (I’m still partial to Canadian-made products) Nite Hawg, which is chambered for a .45 round, while Nicky purchased a Taurus PT22 BGR, which uses a .22 round. We bought 500 rounds for my gun, and 1000 for Nicky’s. the next day we took the guns to a shooting range to get the feel of them. We shot about 150 rounds each, and by that time, we were both quite comfortable with our weapons of choice. During the next week, things started to get a little more chaotic. More people started missing nationwide, and the number of murders involving head shots increased dramatically. It was on the night of July 4th, that everything changed. I had taken Nicky to a fancy restaurant, giving the excuse that it was my birthday and also Independence Day. I knew the real reason. As we walked into the restaurant, I placed my hand in my pocket and felt the little box that contained the one thing that might change my life forever. After our dinner I had something to say to Nicky.
“Nicky, you know that I love you, right?”
“Of course I do”
“Well, all these crazy things that have been happening the last week have made me think about what’s really important in my life.”
“What do you mean Mark?”
“I mean that I’m about to do something that terrifies me more that that time we went bungee jumping in Morocco.”
“You were quite scared in Morocco.” She laughed.
“I just wanted to ask you. Nicky?” I stood up, walked over to her, and knelt down. Her eyes started to tear up. I think she knew what was coming. I pulled that little box out of my pocket, and opened it as I started talking again.
“Will you marr-”BOOOOOOOOOM!!
CHAPTER 4
A huge blast rocked the table and cut me off mid-sentence. A women screamed. Everybody looked out of the window. A huge fireball engulfed a fuel tanker in the harbor on which the restaurant was stationed. As we watched, a second explosion rocked the tables once again as a huge tongue of flame shot out of the top of the boat. Burning figures started jumping off of the side of the boat, some just shambling off of the side, falling into the water. None of them surfaced. We were evacuated from the restaurant. As we ran from the building, I grabbed Nicky’s hand. She spun around to face me. She looked beautiful in her long silver dress and her red hair done up in a bun behind her head. She had been out in the sun quite a lot recently, so a few freckles covered the bridge of her nose, only enhancing her beauty. I looked deep into her eyes and pulled out the box again. I knelt down. Her eyes started to well up, a few people around us stopped to look at us.
“Nicky, I love you more than you can imagine, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?” I opened the case to reveal a modest ring. Her hand went to her mouth as tears flowed freely down her cheeks.
“Yes. Of course I’ll marry you.” People started clapping. Nicky looked around, embarrassed. I looked only into her eyes, unaware of the people around me, or the sound of sirens in the distance, or of the oily smoke that hung in the air. At that moment I knew only her. I slid the ring onto her delicate finger ad stood up. I drew her into a passionate kiss, holding her, and spun around sweeping her off of her feet and spinning her around. Then the police had to shoo us away because it was dangerous. Foolish. I knew that in her arms, I could never be harmed, and I would never allow her to be harmed either.
CHAPTER 5
Our wedding was to be in a month, except that we never had it. The world didn’t hold together that long. The morning after the explosion, we watched the news. The previous nights explosion was passed off as a gas leak on the boat and faulty machinery. Nicky and I were not stupid people. We put the pieces of the puzzle together. We both came to the same conclusion. Something very bad was happening, and it was happening now. Over the next few days, we stocked up on water, food, ammo, and anything else we could find. We encountered our first zombie a few days later, when I heard the dog barking late at night. I took my pistol and a spotlight and headed out. We had a little rabbit pen that we kept all of the rabbits we found in. We had about 13 rabbits. There was only one left when I got there, and it was in the hands of a hunched over person. I shined my spotlight into its face and shouted at it. It looked up at me. It was terrifying. Half of its face had been ripped away, exposing the teeth and tendons. One eye was missing. Its face was covered in blood, both old and new, and bits of fur. It absentmindedly raised the squealing rabbit to its mouth with grimy, bloody hands.
“Put the rabbit down!” I yelled at it. It brought the rabbit closer. I shouted my command again. Nothing. I fired a round over its shoulder. The sudden noise shocked it. It then proceeded to eat the rabbit alive.
“Oh my…” That was all I managed to say as I threw up all over my boots. I walked towards it. As I drew closer it dropped the rabbit, raised its arms up and headed towards me, letting out a soft moan.
“STOP!” I yelled at it with a firm voice.
“You’re trespassing on my property. If you proceed any closer, I will shoot you. I'm warning you.” It just kept coming closer. I repeated my command again, and it kept advancing. I put another round over its shoulder. It didn’t even flinch. I put a round through its leg. It didn’t even stumble. It got closer and closer. I started to back up. I put three rounds into its chest. It fell over. I was panting from the adrenaline rush. I’d never shot anybody. I rushed over to see if he was alright. Before I could get to him, he sat up and gazed at me. There was no way that any person could have survived that. He got up and continued on towards me. I aimed for his head. I turned my face away, eyes squeezed shut, and pulled the trigger. The loud report of the pistol and the sound of something falling over were the only sounds around. I opened my eyes. It didn’t get back up. That’s when I figured it was a zombie. I dragged it to a ditch a few hundred yards away and buried it along with the gloves I had been wearing. I went into the house without telling Nicky what had happened. The next day, the news station on T.V. announced the creatures identity. Zombies. They had a military commander onscreen telling us to shoot them in the head. As he was telling us what to do, three flaming zombies advanced on him and dragged him down before he could pull out his gun. The camera shook as something struck the person holding it. It fell at a perfect angle to reveal the cameraman being devoured by 2 ghouls. That was one of the last T.V. broadcasts.
CHAPTER 6
That was three months ago. Now, Nicky and I are living in our homemade stronghold with 4 other survivors. There’s Kurt, Angie, Maggie, and Dion. Kurt was one of the military’s special task squads during the zombie clean up. His squad was killed and now he’s living with us. We rescued him from his undead squad mates about three days after I killed my first zombie. We took all of their weapons, equipment and ammo, and we burned the corpses. Angie is 24, a few years younger than Nicky and I. She rescued Kurt and me when we were walking by the local Wal-Mart. We had been overrun by zombies, when they started getting picked off. It was Angie, she had been holed up in a nearby house, when she saw us. She was the unofficial sniper of our group. Then there’s Maggie and Dion, who are married. A fire caused by an explosion at a gas station had burned down their house. They were heading out of town on foot when they came upon us. We gratefully accepted their company. Dion was a very accomplished mechanic, carpenter, and had helped us build and fortify our stronghold. Maggie was a tailor and her father was a gun maker so she is a valuable asset to our team.
We had two more people with us, Will and George. They were killed during one of our excursions into town. We had been walking to a gas station to get fuel for our car and for our generators. It was still in the first stages of the outbreak, so we were slightly under prepared. I was walking with Kurt (we hadn’t met Maggie or Dion yet, George and Will. While walking down a street, a zombie came out behind our group. It started following George, since he was in the rear. The zombie silently approached George. I had turned around just in time to yell out a futile warning before the zombie struck. It must have had a punctured lung, for its ribs had been poking out of its chest at a strange angle. That would have explained how it had been so silent. Te bottom half of its jaw was missing, leaving the face in a permanent half-smile. That would have normally left the zombie without a mode of attack, but this zombie had other natural weapons. One of its arms was broken and had a sharp, jagged piece of bone sticking about six inches out of the remaining part of its arm. It lunged at George with its bone-spear and impaled him in the lower stomach. Kurt raised his gun and shot the zombie clean in the face. He was about to shoot George too, so that he wouldn’t turn into a zombie, when Will stopped him.
“Let me do it. He’s my best friend.”
“Kurt, I think we should let him,” I replied “Let’s go and give him some privacy so that he can say some last words.” Kurt nodded his head in agreement and handed Will a pistol.
“You know what you have to do.” Will nodded his head gravely as he took the pistol from his hands. We walked around the corner to give him some privacy. George was coughing and sputtering. We heard Will whisper something, and as we rounded the corner, he was out of our sight.
BANG.
The sound echoed through the streets. We decided to give him some time with George’s body when-
BANG
A second shot rang through the air. Kurt and I looked at each other and dashed around the corner to see Will, lying there beside George with the pistol in his hand, smoke still rising from the barrel. The smell of cordite still lingered in the air. Both had clean holes in their heads. The pressure must have gotten to him. After killing his best friend, he turned the gun upon himself.
CHAPTER 7
“Oh my.” I said, “I barely even got to know them.” Kurt said a short prayer for them, and then we did the necessary task of taking their gear.
“We should get going;” Said Kurt “The noise of those shots will draw them from all around.” In my shock, I hadn’t even thought about that. We started to jog back to my vehicle, which we had left at the edge of the city, not wanting to chance taking it in, when we saw a Wal-Mart that, miraculously, appeared not to have been looted.
“You know, we are running low on batteries,” I suggested to Kurt “Maybe we could stop in?” He nodded his agreement. We proceeded to the store. We had to break a window to get in, for the doors were locked. A few minutes later, we emerged from the store with bags of batteries, ammo, and essential goods. We turned the corner to find a huge hoard of zombies that had been brought to us by the noise of the window breaking. We turned around, just to find more zombies blocking our path. We were surrounded! As we looked for a way out, a muffled crack was heard, and a zombie fell. Two more shots rang out, and two more zombies fell, breaking a hole in the ring. We heard a shout.
“Over here! Run to my voice” We didn’t wait to question our savior. We ran towards the voice. As we were running, I noticed a door to a building open up ahead of us. We dashed for the door. When we got inside the building, we noticed a small-ish woman with a bolt-action police sniper rifle. Judging by the look of the place, she had been holed up there for a while.
“We need to get moving, quickly. Do you have a vehicle?”
“Um, yes,” I replied to her “It’s about a ten minute walk away.”
“Good, because they will be coming here soon. Help me gather some stuff.” We obeyed her and gathered up as much useful stuff as we could carry. By this time, we could hear the moans and bangs on the front door. Whey had arrived. We followed the woman to a back door. We then took all of the supplies and made a dash for my Jeep. On the drive home, she told us he name was Angie. I informed her that we had a fairly secure shelter just out of town. That’s how we met Angie.
CHAPTER 8
Now, a month or so later, things were looking good. We had enough food to be comfortably fed for quite a while, we had water, and we had found plenty of solar generators to power some of our equipment for quite a while. We had also scrounged enough fuel to power our gas-operated generator for some time. Things were good. We all knew the dangers of a zombie attack, and were all veterans of many conflicts. The trouble was, we hadn’t seen any zombies for quite a while. We were used to seeing few zombies, for we tried to be as quiet and inconspicuous as possible. Inevitable, a few stumbled onto our property. They were always dispatched quickly and efficiently. The strange thing was, we hadn’t seen one for nine or ten days. This was unheard of. There was a problem with that though, we were getting lazy. We started being less cautious. We would leave exterior lights on more often, whereas they only used to be used in case of an emergency. We let our defenses fall, that’s why we didn’t hear the noise. At least the others didn’t. On night, I was just sitting, taking my turn watching the perimeter, when I heard, or thought I heard yelling. I passed it off as a trick of the wind, or of some unfortunate survivor being routed from his hiding spot by some ghouls. When we took a trip into the city the next day, what we found surprised us. Dead bodies everywhere. Seeing as how the dead had been walking lately, it wasn’t strange in that sense. It was strange in the sense that all of these dead bodies were perma-dead. Either they all had gunshot wounds in their heads, or their heads were decapitated. As we were walking through the scattered corpses, we noticed some that seemed out of place. There were about ten that we saw that all had leather vests and motorcycle gear. Kurt walked over to one by the curb and flipped him over. Kurt reverently bent over and picked up something shiny. When he turned around, we saw that he had a sword. Not just any sword, but a katana. “What’re you going to do with that?” questioned Maggie
“I think I might use it, maybe, just maybe.” He replied snidely. He walked back to the dead biker and retrieved a sheath and four grenades. He belted the sword to his hip. We proceeded on to a house where we had stockpiled goods. We didn’t want to leave any of the stuff in an obvious place, where it might get stolen, so we had stashed as much as possible in an abandoned house. When we got there, we had Dion guard the door, and as we entered the house, we found a bigger surprise. All of our stuff was gone! Spray painted on the wall was the word Thanks! Someone had stolen our stuff.
CHAPTER 9
At that moment, we heard a gunshot. Dion must have encountered a zombie. We peered out of a window just in time to see Dion’s body crumple. Shocked, I looked farther along the street. I saw a man on a motorcycle shouldering a rifle. He spotted us, grinned, and pointed a finger in our direction and shouted a command. Almost as soon as he said his command, I heard a great roar. Around the corner came at least fifty bandits, all riding motorcycles.
“Oh, crap,” I proclaimed, “We have to leave. NOW!” I grabbed hold of the others as we head to the back door. By this time, we could hear the motorcycles, and they were very close. We ran down the alley in the direction of my parked Jeep. We scrambled along the alley, running full speed. Kurt called for us to wait.
“Wait! What do you mean wait?” I yelled at him
“Just wait!” he yelled back at me. I waited. Kurt picked up a flat rock, pulled the pin out of one of the grenades, and placed it grenade on the ground, and the rock on top of the safety lever. He then ran to catch up with this. We all had an idea f what he was doing. He passed us while we were still looking at the grenade.
“You should be running.” He warned. We began running, finally understanding the full scope of his plan. We resumed our mad dash down the alley, hearing the motorcycles on the other side of the house. They must have figured out that we ran away by now I thought. About fifteen seconds later, we heard the bandits enter the alleyway. We ducked behind a house to see the effectiveness of Kurt’s booby trap. The first few bikes passed the rock, which was tilted so that we could see the grenade and they couldn’t, when one bike clipped the side of the rock. We saw the rock slide off and the safety lever flip off of the grenade. The next few bikes sped past, unaware of the danger below their feet. Then, an explosion rocked the alleyway. Everywhere within a five-yard radius was engulfed in flame and shrapnel. The force knocked the ones who had passed the explosive over. The alley quickly filled with dust. We then made a break for the Jeep. Within five minutes, we were at the Jeep. We all loaded into the vehicle. We sped off out of town. Unknown to us, a lone rider sat behind us at the end of the road. He spoke something into a radio, then raised a rifle and put his eye to a scope.
CHAPTER 10
CRACK!
“What the-“ I said, then I saw Maggie slump over in the seat beside me. A crimson stain blossomed on her shirt, right over her heart. She was dead. Angie yelled and twisted around in her seat. She brought her rifle up to bear. She took aim and squeezed the trigger. There was a bang as the rifle shot flame out of the barrel. The bandit fell over backward, quite dead. Our Jeep sped towards our fort. When we got there, Nicky, Kurt, Angie and I piled out of the vehicle. We all grabbed Maggie and hauled her off into the fort. We got our bug out bags ready, and we waited. We wanted to see if they would pursue. They didn’t come that day, or the next day. We soon thought they had just forgotten us, until the night, six days after we had escaped the city. We saw a red glow on the horizon. As I watched, at least two hundred motorbike-riding bandits rode towards me, all with torches. Some of the first ones fell prey to our traps, most of which were just early warning systems for zombies. Flash bangs were triggered throughout the crowd. Some bikes fell over, tossing their riders. Those didn’t do any serious damage. About a month ago, we found a dead military convoy. We had scavenged explosives, which Kurt had set up for us. Those did more damage. The claymores sent riders and bikes flying through the air, aflame. Some bikes exploded, adding to the devastation. We had some buried drums of crude oil we had found. They were rigged to blow on the push of a button. I waited until they passed them before detonating them. Kurt, Angie, and Nicky had just crested the stairs and were almost beside me as the drums detonated. Great walls of flame and dirt rose into the air, turning the night into day. Some more bikes fell to various other traps, including trip-wired grenades and the like, but it didn’t slow the main force. There were still about one hundred-fifty bikes that hadn’t even breached our established perimeter, and all of our traps were gone. We had killed a total of fifty or so bikers with all of our traps. There was no chance of killing the rest. We rushed down the stairs. The rest of the bikers cautiously picked their way through the smoldering wreckage that littered the bare ground between the edge of the trees and my home. We all grabbed our weapons and bug bout bags. Then we left. We escaped into the trees behind what had been our home. We ran to the top of a ridge about a mile from our former home. I peered through my binoculars.
“You guys might want to take a look at this,” I sighed as I passed the binoculars to Nicky “They’ve taken over our base.” Nicky let out a resigned sigh as she peered through them and passed them on to the others. I had seen the bandits patrolling the walls of our fortress, they had taken it as their own. After we had all taken a good look, I asked the question that everybody had been thinking.
“Do you think I should detonate it?” I asked. Everybody nodded. I pulled a small remote control from out of my pack. I flipped open a cover for a switch. I flipped the switch, arming the detonator. I then gingerly placed my finger on the trigger and squeezed. A tear ran down Nicky and Angie’s face. Kurt and I watched in silence. The detonator made a faint beep, and about one second later, we saw the place explode. There were multiple explosions, each one destroying a part of our home. The place that had sheltered us, that had protected us for so long. We had prepared for this eventuality. We had rigged our diesel and oil tanks with the rest of the explosives we had. In the room were all of our leftover grenades, ammunition, and also all of the explosives that we had scavenged, but not knew how to use. They all went off. C4, grenades, artillery shells, and thousands of rounds of ammunition. They shot off into the sky like macabre fireworks. The massive shockwave and wall of sound finally hit us. It knocked all of us back a step. That night, we slept under a tree in sleeping bags, now having full realization that things could only get worse.
CHAPTER 11
The next morning, we all awoke to the grim realization of our situation. We had no shelter. We took stock of our supplies. We had four pistols with two extra twenty-round magazines each. Kurt and I each had an assault rifle, each with two extra thirty-round clips. Nicky carried the 30-06, and she had a drawstring bag with forty extra rounds. Angie carried her sniper rifle with fifty extra rounds. I carried the Mossberg 500, and I had a pouch with 25 shells for it. Kurt still carried his katana. Each of us had a combat knife we had taken fro dead military personnel. We each also had some food and water in our bags, and general camping and survival gear. We knew that we had to find a semi-permanent place for us to stay. We had a quick breakfast and then talked about our plan of action.
“I think we should stay in the forest,” Said Kurt, voicing his opinion “There’ll be less zombies there.”
“I don’t know, Kurt. We need to establish a permanent dwelling. For that reason, I think we should go into the city. As for the zombies, we haven’t seen any in over two weeks! I think that they may have moved on.”
“I agree with Mark,” exclaimed Angie “The city seems to be our best option for supplies, shelter, and overall security.”
“I don’t know, Angie,” Nicky objected, “There might be more of those bikers in the city. It could be dangerous.”
“It’s not like we’re any strangers to danger,” Kurt interjected, “I’m rethinking my opinion, I think that the city might be our best bet.” I nodded approvingly. We all looked at Nicky. We weren’t going to force her to do anything. We would discuss it until we all came up with a suitable plan.
“Yeah, I guess the city's the best plan.” She reasoned.
“Perfect!” I grinned, “We’re all in agreement then. To the city it is!” We packed up our stuff and started heading for the city. Along the way, we encountered our first zombie in quite a while. I dropped him quickly. We then spotted a couple more. They were dispatched efficiently.
“Where are they all coming from?” Angie questioned. Another few came at us and were dropped. Suddenly, a large force emerged from the forest and converged on us. There were hundreds. They surrounded us, cutting us off. The circle closed in. I blasted a few rounds from the shotgun into the crowd, opening a crack in the circle. We ran through the gauntlet of ghouls, yelling. Split fingers and cracked nails brushed our skin and grabbed hold of our backpacks and weapons. We dropped our stuff and dashed out of the crowd. We ran towards the city, occasionally turning and firing into the crowd with whatever weapons we had left. Nicky had dropped her rifle, Kurt and I had our assault rifles stripped from us. All we had left was our pistols, my shotgun, and Angie’s rifle. Things didn’t look good.
CHAPTER 12
When we finally reached the outskirts, we were quite tired and it was getting dark. We spotted a row of small apartment buildings and rushed towards them. We were quickly running out of ammo. As we were running down the street, an arm reached out of a sewer grate and grabbed onto Angie’s ankle. She fell. Hard. We heard the crack as her forehead connected with the pavement. We turned to see rotten arms pulling her towards the grate. Her head lay at a sickening angle, suggesting a broken neck. Nicky screamed. As we watched, Angie was pulled through the large grate with the sickening crack of bones and the sound of ripping skin. Her gun was pulled down with her. We turned away and ran, unable to watch. Angie was lucky, it was a quick death. Ours wouldn’t be. We approached the door. It was locked. We tried kicking it in, to no avail. I finally turned my gun to the door. I blasted the lock with the shotgun. Nothing. I had two more bullets. My spare shells were lost in the crowd. Nicky and Kurt fired into the nearest zombies with their pistols. They soon were out of ammo. I gave my pistol to Nicky, and a magazine to Kurt. I fired one more round into the door. Nothing. This was my last round. I blasted the lock, barrel flat against the door. The door shuddered and swung in. By this time, Kurt was out of ammo again and Nicky was sure to have very little left. Nicky and I rushed inside.
“Kurt!” I yelled, “Get in here!” He turned and looked at me with a forlorn gaze. He pulled his sleeve up to reveal a bloody chunk missing.
“I’m infected,” he said, drawing the katana, “You and Nicky get inside and barricade the door, I’ll buy you some time.” I looked at him, and clasped his wrist in mine.
“You’ve saved Nicky and I many times before. Thank you.” I closed the door and Nicky and I barricaded it. We then ran up the stairs.
“OW!” yelled Nicky behind me. I turned to see her lying on the stairs, her leg twisted at an impossible angle. I placed her arm around my shoulder and carried her to the roof. We arrived just in time to look over the side to see Kurt make his last stand. His first few swings were straight and true, popping heads off. Soon he started to occasionally miss the neck and hit them in the shoulders and arms. He kept swinging. He held his own for a surprisingly long time. Soon, though, the katana was not going all the way through the necks. It was getting dull. It was never meant to cut through so much bone. The next time he swung it, he severed one particularly rotten zombie’s neck and his momentum carried the sword deep into the chest of another. He kept a firm grip on the katana and gave a herculean tug, but the sword was embedded in the zombie. The rotting corpse fell onto Kurt, knocking him over. Without the continued assault, the zombies poured over him. We saw Kurt’s face between zombies. He mouthed Goodbye and reached down. He was smiling.
BOOM
CHAPTER 13
He had primed a grenade. We were thrown back onto the roof by the concussive force of the explosion. When we looked back over the ledge, we saw the zombies had been blown back too. They pulled themselves up and advanced on the door. We could hear the banging on the door, and soon, we heard the crack that indicated that the grenade-weakened door had been breached. We heard them shamble up the stairs.
“Come on,” I urged Nicky, trying to pick her up, “We can jump onto the next building.” She smiled and shook her head. She gestured to her violently broken leg as a single tear rolled down her cheek.
“You’ll be OK,” I assured her, “Come on.”
“It’s more than that,” She admitted. She rolled her sleeve up to reveal a nasty bite, much like Kurt’s.
“Just shoot me.” She grabbed my hand, and forced her pistol into it.
“I love you.” She quietly said to me. I knew I had to do it. There was no way she could escape, and I wasn’t about to let her be eaten alive. I kissed her, closed my eyes, and pulled the trigger. A choked sob escaped my throat. Zombies started pouring onto the roof. I placed the still-smoking barrel to my temple. I’d see Nicky, Kurt, Angie, Maggie, Dion, Will, George, and everybody else soon enough. The zombies advanced. The pistol was hot against my skin. I slowly pulled the trigger, preparing to seal my fate. Right before the trigger clicked, I swung the gun away from my head and blasted the closest zombie away with my last bullet. I leaned down and quickly kissed Nicky. I looked at the zombies. I guess I’d see my friends and Nicky later. Their times had all come, but it wasn’t yet my time. I threw my pistol at the nearest zombie, turned, ran towards the building adjacent to the one I was on, and jumped. It wasn’t yet my time.
.VX |
Latest page update: made by .VX
, Sep 24 2008, 12:40 PM EDT
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About This Update
Clearing up a couple of punctuation errors, will fix the rest later.
- .VX
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| Started By | Thread Subject | Replies | Last Post | ||
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| johnshorst | nice! | 2 | Mar 6 2010, 11:26 PM EST by Freelancer47 | ||
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Thread started: Mar 6 2010, 9:43 PM EST
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| Destructakor | Sick | 1 | Feb 8 2010, 11:46 PM EST by Carnack | ||
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Thread started: Feb 8 2010, 9:03 PM EST
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That story was awesome dude! That was a very good, but sad ending. It was really cool and kept me interested throughout the whole story. Good job.
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| Andrew1602 | Wow! | 1 | Jan 28 2010, 2:53 AM EST by dominickmagas | ||
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Thread started: Nov 16 2009, 5:47 PM EST
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Wow! That was very well written. Congrats! I also like how you ended on Chapter 13; unlucky 13. My only critique is that the story seems to be a bit rushed. You hurried to the point; it could have been longer. But, beyond that, I loved it! The cliffhanger was very good. Great job!!
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