The rumbling was light, distant, definitely a truck, and sounded a lot like a diesel engine on its last legs. It was slow based on the sound from afar, but certainly headed in this direction. Peering through the small slits between the boards nailed to the windows in his house, Matt squinted, panning to the left and the right, looking for the rumbling.
He could see the brightness of the sun, causing him to squint further and his pupils to shrink down to tiny pin holes. The sunlight in the thick air made his vision hazy, causing him to blink several times and wet his eyes. "Nothing," he said in a whisper.
As he continued to peer through the slits, he took note of the houses across the street from him. "There was Mr the BA's house, which used to be a bright yellow with a perfectly manicured front lawn and half-sized white picket fences his wife made him put up. To the right of Mr Ba's house was Josh's house.
Brown brick with dark green shutters. Looked a lot like one of those restaurants that one would always see on TV. To the left was Jim's home.
Single father of three, widowed at an early age. Nice two-story home with a soft blue color, twocar garage. Overall, a well-maintained home.
Lots of neighborhood parties held at Jim's house, front yard and back. But that's when Matt saw it on the second floor. Second window from the right.
He thought he saw a glint like someone with a mirror flashing and bouncing the sunlight at him. Matt looked again, hoping to see it again. And as he cocked his head to the left and then to the right, the glint had gone.
He let out a deep sigh, then breathed in just as deeply. Now all three houses were looking worn with garbage strewn everywhere. The wind moving the trash from one house to the next.
The lawns were all dead. Cars layered in thick dust. The mailboxes rusting away.
3 years. Three very long years. That's how long he'd hold himself up in his house.
No electricity, no running water, no food, nothing. Initial reports of the plague surfaced in Ukraine. CNN had a small by line at the bottom of the screen, but that was the extent of it.
Over the week from the initial report, the disease, if you could call it that, had spread to Italy, France, Germany, Norway, and Britain, and then headed east towards Russia and China. By the end of the week, reports were nearly non-stop, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Stay in your home," barks the newscaster.
Reports indicate the viral infection moving quickly. Doctors and scientists recommend that you stay in your home and do not travel. By the second week, the infection had finally hit North America, surfacing in Mexico, then into Texas, and straight up into Canada.
News reports showed retail stores across America with barren shelves, empty and void from any food and water. News reports showed the outcome of having this plague. People stopped being people.
That is, they looked normal at first. But then you looked closer. It was obvious.
the grayish skin, sunken eyes, and a very mechanical robotic nature to their walk. And those infected never spoke. They just walked, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly towards any people that were not infected.
No violent motive, no weapons, no blood, just drawn to uninfected people. Matt and his wife Sarah had run out to the nearest Home Depot upon hearing the first reports. They stayed together because they knew in a small town where they were from, things could get nasty.
They purchased as many boards as their Ford pickup truck could hold. and before getting home stopped at one of their three local grocery stores to stock up on food and water. Upon returning home and unloading the boards, Sarah decided to make one more trip to the grocery store and buy as much as she could.
While Matt stayed behind and began to board the house up. As Matt was finishing up the front of the house, he couldn't help but look around to stop and breathe for a moment. He noticed how his neighbors were still mulling around, gossiping about the plague, kids running across the lawns over the sprinklers.
He observed what he'd worked his entire life to achieve, the American dream. The honking of the horn broke his dreamlike stance, and Matt looked over to see that Sarah had returned from the store. The bed of the pickup truck filled with food and water.
He quickly set aside his hammer and began to immediately unload the truck, taking in as many of the items as his arms could hold. Sarah in close pursuit. After all the items were loaded, Matt continued boarding up the house.
Climbing up the ladder towards the second floor, he felt as if someone was watching him. "Hey, uh Matt, do you have a moment? " asked Jim.
"Yeah, Jim. What's going on? " Matt responded hesitantly as he looked down from the ladder.
"Look, well, do you think that infection's going to get to us? " Jim, think about this for a second. It's crossed an entire continent and an ocean.
There's no reason to think for a minute that it won't come to us. I just want to be safe. Okay.
Well, um, Matt, I'm not asking for a handout or anything, but I wanted to know if I could ask you a favor, Jim said meekly. Matt looked down at Jim from his ladder and saw what he was afraid to see. Jim, a hulking man, single father, about to beg for his children's safety.
without allowing Jim to utter a word," Matt replied. "If it gets here, bring your kids quickly. Don't think, just run over to the house.
" Jim looked up at Matt and took a deep breath and nodded, and Matt went back to hammering the boards. Perhaps it was in Matt's good nature, the need to do the right thing. As both Mr Bay and Josh asked the same thing shortly after Jim's request.
Of course, Matt responded the same. He couldn't let people die. That evening, the news reports were all that were left on the TV.
All other airings and shows were cancelled. In fact, the local Fox station was the only channel working. The virus was moving swiftly and based on the maps would be in Oregon and the rest of the West Coast probably by morning.
River Grove was closer to the West Coast, but at the speed the virus was moving would be in the town before anyone knew. Matt grabbed Sarah as she curled up closer to him and knit blanket over her and both of them nodded off on the couch. The screeching of tires and a loud crash is what startled Matt and Sarah awake.
Christ, what the hell was that? As Matt leapt off the couch and ran to the front window. Through the slits, he could see that a truck had plowed through Mr Ba's perfect little fence and into the family room, his house.
Holy crap, Sarah, you're not going to believe this. Turn on the lights. yelled Matt.
Sarah stumbled around, still groggy, heart racing, and flipped on the switch for the living room. Nothing. She grabbed the remote to the television and jammed the onoff button repeatedly.
Nothing. The same happened again and again. Kitchen lights, refrigerator, microwave, computer, nothing.
The power was gone. Sarah ran to the kitchen faucet and turned on the water. The glass she was holding trembling from the overwhelming anxiety running through her bones.
Nothing. The water was out. It was here.
Matt's heart raced faster as he grabbed his baseball bat and flung open the front door. He immediately looked around up and down the street. It was completely silent.
"Where's the driver of that truck? " Matt mumbled to himself, cautiously looking at the bay's home. Matt took a step off the porch and began a slow walk towards it.
A female voice was screaming for someone to get away from her. Matt, now in full sprint, ran to the bay home. He peered inside the large gaping hole left by the truck and found a pool of blood underneath him.
He looked over to the side and felt sick to his stomach. Mr Bay, in his ever vigilant manner, stayed in the kitchen the night before while his wife slept. The man driving the truck had no idea that Mr Bay was there.
And that was exactly where Mr Bay had been sitting when the truck flew into the house, struck in the back with the full force of the truck. The truck crushed the chair, and Mr Ba's head had violently flung off from the impact. He never knew what hit him.
Matt found Josie screaming, using a mop handle to keep her distance between herself and the thing or man or whatever you want to call it. It kept reaching out to her, wanting to grab her, flicking his tongue out, trying to taste her. Matt leapt towards the two and held his bat in a swinging stance.
Hey, hey, you. Hey, stop right now. Turn around and stop right now.
So help me, God. I'll swing at you so hard that I'll take you down. Stop right now, Matt yelled as affirmatively as possible.
Whatever it was, it wasn't stopping. It kept going. And with that, Matt swung.
The bat landed squarely on the shoulder of the man, causing him to tumble to the ground. While on the ground, it moaned and began to straighten itself upright, but this time grasping at Matt. Matt knew based on the new reports that he cannot allow it to touch him.
No blood transfer or bite needed to get infected with this virus or whatever it was. This wasn't some kind of zombie thing that one would find in the movies or TV shows. This was real.
And all it took was a touch, or rather a dermal transfer. An infected would only need to touch you long enough for the viral infection to transfer. These things never tried to kill anyone.
To the contrary, their sole goal was to infect skin-on-skin contact. Tear your clothes off or any place where there might be skin and firmly place a grip on you. It was reported that when one of these things touched your skin, there was an ice cold subzero type of feel.
Approximately 1 minute after the first touch, if you felt a searing sensation, like a thousand needles being jammed into you in a one square in piece of your skin, then you knew with certainty that you'd been infected. Only a red sunburned mark was left behind. Matt swung again and again.
The thing stopped moving. He grabbed Josie's arm and forcefully dragged her back to the house. Shortly thereafter, Jim arrived with his three children in tow.
Josh was a few minutes behind with his wife and two children. 11 people in the house. 11 people in a three-bedroom house waiting.
The days went by slowly with no electricity. All Matt had was a handc crank radio that only rang with the irritating emergency signal. Matt was able to catch something that he never shared with anyone in the house.
One morning, shortly after everyone took shelter, Matt saw a neighborhood woman, an elderly woman walking down the sidewalk, clutching a bag and her cat. She was covered in blood and moving at a pace that was beyond slow. How she got as far as she did was unbelievable.
She lived five blocks down and didn't drive. Some said she had dementia. Her husband was nowhere near.
As she walked down the sidewalk, three or four of the things had taken notice and began to walk towards her in their familiar strange but mechanical movement. As they drew closer, another five or six came out from by Josh's house, making their way over to her. When the first set finally got to her, it was horrifying.
Each thing grabbed a piece of skin, arm, leg, whatever was exposed. One even went as far as almost hugging her, trying to cover his body over hers. Before Matt knew it, he saw the entire pile of things just fall over right on top of her.
He shook his head and sighed. What he saw next astonished him even more. As they began to get off the ground, he saw the little old lady stand right up.
Two or three ribs exposed on her right, jaw offset to the left, snapping up and down, her right arm completely torn off, her clavicle protruding from the top of her chest. She was moving around looking to infect her own victim. Matt knew he couldn't run.
One touch from these things and his and Sarah's life would be over. 313 million people in America. Who knew how many were left?
Days continued to go by. By the end of the first year, most of the food was gone. Josh and Jim had done missions of running back to their homes to procure more food and water.
And about 2 months prior too, Josh returned to the house, a seared looking red mark about the size of a man's palm on his right forearm. Matt took him to their backyard, sat him down, and waited for the infection to take effect, and upon doing so, proceeded to push him down and immediately stomp his face in while swinging the bat for good measure. Rebecca never looked at Matt the same way again.
The second year was worse. Leaving the house was getting dangerous now. Way too many of the infected began to hover around the house.
Josie, in her need for food, ran out one evening and returned with canned goods. How she obtained them, no one knew. But she also came back with a large red handprint on her upper arm.
She was dispatched too, to the horror of everyone in the house with a swift bash of a knife block to the back of her head. The blood soaked wooden knife block, which took about five strong cracks to the back of Jos's skull before doing the job, was thrown into the fireplace during the winter to keep everyone warm. As the second year was winding down, the remaining survivors were getting desperate.
Arguments grew between Matt, Sarah, Jim, and Rebecca. The five kids were starving. The adults were starving.
Water was down to a few gallons. Rationing wasn't an option anymore. The winter was brutal.
Everything in the house that could burn was burned. The things outside grew, increasing in number. At any given time, that would stop counting after 700.
They thought of everything, trying to figure out how to get out, how to survive. Then they finally thought of Matt's truck. Jim needed to protect his kids.
Rebecca hated Matt for the way he killed Josh and Sarah, but Sarah knew they would all die if they didn't move. Only Matt refused. Jim, alongside Rebecca and Sarah, had made a plan to make a run for the truck, which was parked right outside.
It hadn't been started for months, but it was a newer model, and Sarah was confident the tank was nearly full when she drove it last. The plan was simple. Jim would put on enough clothes to cover himself.
Wrapped in jeans, a button-down full-length shirt, his Timberlands, a ski mask, and a pair of gloves. He was to cause a diversion and lead the things away from the truck while Rebecca and Sarah would run and get in, kids in tow. Once they were inside, they'd drive over to Jim and let him in.
Matt begged Sarah not to do this. It was risky. It was dangerous.
And as apparently slow as these things were, they were brutal, engrossing, enveloping, swallowing people to the point of death. Sarah, there's not even enough supplies. We have about 7 days worth of food and 3 days of water.
Matt cried. It doesn't matter, Matt. What we have isn't enough.
We can't die here. Not like this. No one's coming to help because there's no one left.
We have to make a run. We have to move. Please come with us.
Sarah begged. I can't. This is stupid.
Sarah, I love you, but we can't make it. Please stay and we can come up with a different plan. Sarah looked at Matt, a quiet sadness in her eyes.
She knew that she was going, and she knew that Matt was not. Jim, in his full garb, was ready to go. The kids were packed up, holding whatever food they could.
Rebecca and Sarah had their pipes and bats ready to swing. Matt stood silently, staring, aching, begging with his heart for Sarah to change her mind. The front door flew open and Jim ran towards the truck, then past the truck, whooping and yelling, trying to draw as much attention as possible, which he did.
The things began towards them like giant robots craning in his direction. Sarah watched Jim running around, getting further and further away while looking at the crowd of things when she saw it. An opening.
Sarah screamed a signal. She ran out, followed by the five children and Rebecca covering the rear. Most of the things had begun following Jim, but many now switched direction and were heading directly towards the truck.
One came dangerously close, and Rebecca swung her bent pipe, causing a large gash to open up on the face of it. Sarah, in her panic, couldn't get the keys into the door. Breathing hard, she realized the key fob had an unlock button, which she pressed rapidly several times.
The door unlocked, but it also set off the car alarm. Jim heard the commotion and began making his way towards the truck. Rebecca was swinging away as more of them came towards her, inching closer.
She was loading the kids into the truck. 1 2 3 4 when she heard a loud shriek. One of Rebecca's children was gripped by an infected.
Rebecca, breathing heavily and arms tired from swinging, turned around to see her six-year-old daughter in a headlock. three more perilously close to her baby. She ran directly at them, knocking both her daughter and the infected over, but it never let go of the grip.
Her daughter screaming, Rebecca tried in vain with every bit of muscle to get the infected off of her to loosen the grip long enough to let her daughter go. in her efforts. Three more infected had made their way to them.
One grabbing and pulling on the little girl's legs while the other two were gripping Rebecca by the arms and throat. Both were screaming as the infected wouldn't let go. Sarah stepped out of the truck with her bat to run to Rebecca's aid when she heard another scream.
She turned around to find Jim swallowed by the infected. Unable to move with only his head poking out from the pile, Jim was screaming for help. His mouth was filled with the fingers of the infected, slowly gripping his mouth open wide, then wider and wider.
The skin on his face slowly tearing off. A hollow, muffled scream, eking out from Jim's throat. The things pulled slowly, peeling back his face like taffy.
The screaming stopped. Sarah tried to swallow the vomit that came up from the back of her throat, ran towards Rebecca and her daughter, only to find it was too late. Rebecca's 9-year-old son, who heard his mothers and sisters screams, leapt from the truck to help.
All three were gripped by the infected. Rebecca's daughter had long stopped screaming. Rebecca, in the time trying to help her daughter, turned and became infected herself.
That would be the only explanation as to why she was pulling on her own son's arm like the other four infected. As Rebecca's son was pulling back, trying with all of his might to break the grip of the five infected, he was reaching out with his free hand to hold on to something that could give him some leverage. He felt a minor sigh of relief when he saw that his sister was pulling on his other hand.
He just didn't know it wasn't his sister anymore. That was his last thought before his mother ripped his arm out of the socket, hugging it like a prize while his sister pulled his other arm out, gleefully, robotically walking away. Sarah couldn't watch anymore, running back to the truck, sobbing and trembling.
She slammed the door shut, reaching for the key to start the truck. Her hands shaking, she forced the key into the keyhole when she heard a door open. She looked at her side of the car, but she couldn't see any open door.
She turned back to find the passenger side door open in the rear with an infected pulling out one of Jim's children. She reached back as quickly as she could to get the 10-year-old boy, but the infected had slid him out of the car. She screamed loudly.
She was not going to let another child die. She opened her side of the car, bat in hand, and screamed for Matt's help. She glanced back to the front door of the house, but Matt never came out.
She ran to the other side, swinging her bat left and right, up and down. She could hear the whimpering of the other two boys in the truck, while the third was kicking and screaming, fighting as hard as he could. Sarah felt her head being pulled back, being led by her hair.
An infected grabbed her arm with the bat while the others were ripping at her clothes and trying to grip her face. One grabbed her earring, pulling on it before it tore off. She screamed in pain, but that only invited others to join.
She was finally pulled backward and fell to the ground, head staring at the direction of the house and the truck. A bloody haze came over her, causing her to blink repeatedly. The last thing she saw were the two 5-year-old twins crying, trying to reach out for her, and a hand covering her eyes.
Fast forward 3 years again, three long years. Matt had been in his prison for three horrible years, but he was determined to live, watching his friends die, his children, and his own wife die. He knew that there was no more running.
He ran out of food 4 months ago. He'd been drinking from the toilet, the last bit of water that was left in the house. He stepped away from the window, the rumbling from the truck long gone.
The infected wandering aimlessly around the neighborhood. His stomach growled. The hunger pangs were so loud and painful.
He was trembling, shaking, but he was alive. Matt walked into the restroom and looked in the mirror. His face was drawn out, his skin as pale as sheets.
He could hardly focus, leaning to one side. He looked at his left arm, blood streaming down, maggots crawling over his open wound. He mustered up some energy and walked over to the dining room table.
In place was a dirty knife and fork, which hadn't been washed since forever. He placed his left arm on the table, grabbed the knife, and proceeded to cut a small square of skin off. He grabbed the fork and jabbed the rubbery flesh.
Accordingly, he placed it in his mouth and began to chew.
