Zombies II: Inhuman

Evolution like Lightning

Michael blinked and looked around. They were gone. The pack of dead creatures which had nearly managed to surround him intent on making him their next meal was nowhere to be seen. His heart was thundering in his chest and he reached up to touch the fresh sweat dripping from his hair as it began to sink in. The dead weren’t the only thing that was missing. Everything around him had changed.

He’d been standing on his front porch trying desperately to get back inside his own barricaded house with the supplies he’d looted from what remained of the local grocery store. The dead had followed him home and had been closing in. All he could remember was thinking he’d never get the locks undone in time and that he needed to just drop everything and run. Now he stood in the middle of a city street as barren and dead as the ones in his hometown with skyscrapers looming above him.

A woman’s scream ripped him from his confusion as she rounded the street corner and came running into view. Her clothes were ragged and it was clear the end of humanity hadn’t been as kind to her as it had to him. Here in the city, or wherever the hell this was, it must be harder to survive than just being boarded up in your own house alone. Five of the dead creatures, two women and three men, came bounding around the corner after her. Blood and drool flew from their snarling mouths as they closed in on the woman.

Michael had no weapon. He’d dropped his .38 on his porch along with everything else as he’d fled still he couldn’t just stand by and watch her die. He screamed what he hoped sounded like a battle cry and charged the dead things, punching the lead creature in the face.

As his fist made contact, two things seemed to happen at once. The creature’s head exploded in a burst of bone and brain matter and time seemed to slow down. Michael watched in awe and horror as the blood appeared to float in the air until it finally began to feel gravity pulling it to the street. The other creatures and the woman were barely moving. Michael knew he must be going mad but stayed focused on the task at hand. By whatever miracle the lead creature was dead but there were still four more and only one of him. He spotted a tire rod lying amidst the litter covering the street and ran for it.

Snatching it up, he returned to the creatures. None had moved more than a few inches at best. Driven by an instinct to stay alive and a growing frustration at not understanding what was going on, he tore into them, pounding each in turn until the things were barely nothing more than standing piles of bloody pulp. When he stopped moving all five collapsed to the ground. The woman didn’t look relieved though. She stared at him as if he were a demon who had appeared out of thin air and screamed again.

“It’s okay I am not going to hurt you,” he said as he tried to calm her down.

“What the hell are you?” she gasped.

“My name is Michael,” he whispered moving closer to her. She stood there sobbing as she continued to stare at him. He took her in his arms both to comfort her and himself. It’d been so long since he’d seen another living person. He didn’t feel her knife slide up through his ribs until it was too late. He looked down at the growing red stain on the front of his t-shirt.

He heard her scream something like “die you freaking monster!” in slow motion for what felt like an eternity as she twisted the knife blade deeper and deeper until he fell and the darkness embraced him.