Isolated

A man struggles to stay alive in a run down cabin when zombies attack

The sun went down, darkening the entire cabin. Nick made his way to the only window that he left half-unbarred, and drew back the torn purple curtain. The woods surrounding the area were thick and nearly impossible to see through. He let the curtain go and watched it fall back into place. 

Making his way into the small bathroom, he caught a quick glimpse of himself and couldn't stop from staring at the weak figure looking back at him in the cracked mirror. Bloodshot eyes were peeking through scraggly bangs. A rough beard was starting to grow on his battered face. Sleep deprivation made itself known through the heavy bags under his eyes. 

He looked at his calloused hands, then slowly balled them into fists. Flashbacks of his life before all the madness began racing through his deteriorated mind. 

They were quickly thrust back out from his brain from some rustling in the thick dying woods that encased his cabin. Without hesitation, he moved to the slightly more open front room. He grabbed a metal baseball bat he had left leaning against the wall beside the front door, and quickly began peering back out of the window. 

The darkness was still. 

After scanning the area a few more times, he headed into the kitchen to try to eat what little food he had left. He grabbed a can of beans and looked it over a couple of times. It had expired weeks ago. He took his knife out of its holster on his belt, and jammed it into the top, using it as a makeshift can opener. 

He popped the lid off and started to eat out of the can with a small bent spoon. As he leaned against the counter while eating the cold, tasteless beans, he caught a whiff of himself and almost gagged. He had been in the cabin for three months and hadn't been able to shower or even brush his teeth the whole time. 

He hadn't even slept a full eight hours the whole stay there either. The most his troubled and desolate mind would allow was two to three hour naps. 

The harsh wind outside began to slam into the boarded windows. It was easy for him to ignore it, however, as he had months of isolated training. 

A while back, the undead took over the city. All the help that was ever going to come had came and went. Nick was the last human left in the city. Everyone he had ever known was either a zombie, or simply dead. 

He was slowly losing his mind from being alone. He was only twenty-nine-years-old, but had the physical appearance of a forty-year-old train wreck. He was falling apart slowly, but surely. 

The rustling started up again. He tried to pass it off as the now harder blowing wind, but his paranoia got the best of him. Gripping the bat, he cautiously walked over to the back door to his right. 

He turned the rusty knob, slowly at first, before quickly throwing the door open. Slowly he stepped out from inside of the cabin. The world around him was silent, aside from the wind, which had now reverted to a gentle breeze. He shook his head, letting the delusions dissipate. 

As he turned to go back into his temporary haven, cold rotting hands slammed themselves onto his weak shoulders. Like some sort of second nature, he swung the bat as he turned around. The owner of the hands' neck snapped as the metal bat met, and caved in, its soggy skull. 

It was an undead man. The way it was dressed made it look like it was a lawyer of some sort before his demise. The lawyer collapsed, landing on its stomach. It writhed on the ground. Nick raised the weapon above his head and slammed it through the back of the lawyer's cranium, covering himself in blood, but ultimately finishing the undead foe. 

He ran back into the cabin, bolting the fragile door behind him. The woods around him were alive. They had found him. 

"Took 'em long enough," he mumbled. 

The front door started shaking violently. The one window he left partially unbarred suddenly shattered, letting arms of flesh eaters pour in. 

Before he knew it, his thoughts had brought him back to the past. He was standing next to his wife. Her angelic blond hair reflected the radiant sun of the cool summer day. Her deep blue eyes were fixated on their two daughters, spitting images of her, playing in the backyard. He leaned over to kiss her cheek, but was instantly brought back to the present. 

He shook his head and ran over to the window. He swung the bat wildly at the hands that were clawing at the air, breaking them each and every way. 

When the arms retreated, he picked up a sturdy wooden box and shoved it through the window, knowing they wouldn't be able to pull it out, or in the least, break it that easily. 

The front door burst open and he rushed over and kicked it shut, bolting it with padlocks; something his mind had apparently let him forget to do in the first place. Or maybe he had forgotten on purpose. He wasn't even sure anymore. 

He moved as fast as he could to the bedroom and grabbed an old shotgun lying on the broken bed, tossing the bat aside as he did so. Back in the front room, he pointed the gun at the front door and window, standing as still and determined as possible. 

Sweat began to slowly leak down his face, taking some of the dirt and grime with it. 

The back door crashed to the ground with a zombie lying on top of it. As he ran over to dispose of it, two more undead barged in, arms extended. He blasted the one on the left first, cocked the shotgun, rinsed and repeated. 

After cocking it a third time, he pushed the barrel into the face of the remaining intruder, who was now climbing to its shoe-less, bony feet. He pulled the trigger. A loud click escaped the empty, hollow barrel. 

He threw the gun down and dashed back to the bedroom, picking the bat he had traded for the gun back up. When he turned to finish the job, he bumped into his target and fell on his back beside the bed. 

The decaying attacker had fallen with him and was now on top of him. The soul-less shoe-less zombie was also missing its bottom jaw. It appeared to have once been a man in his very early twenties. Its eyes were almost solid white, and definitely void of any human emotion whatsoever. They were empty. The person that had once inhabited the body was long gone. 

Nick was using the side of the bat to hold the zombie off by pressing as hard as he could against its neck, while drool slowly ran from its hanging tongue onto Nick's straining face. 

He finally managed to kick the gurgling creep off of him. It fell back on a metal bar protruding from the nearby metal fire wood holder; impaling the back of its head. 

Nick laid back, breathing heavily. He looked over and saw a picture he had brought with him lying under the bed. It had been there for quite awhile from the look of it. He grabbed it and saw his wife and daughters' permanent smiling faces. His mind wandered back to that day, roughly a year before the outbreak. 

He was holding a brand new camera he had just bought an hour ago. They were at the local park on a slightly cloudy day. He happily told them to say cheese, something he always felt was a little ridiculous, but the girls loved it, to which they happily obliged. As soon as the camera let out a bright flash, he snapped back to reality once again. 

He climbed to his feet, and slid the picture into his back pocket. The front door finally splintered from the force of increasing undead army. He bolted into the adjacent room. It was the smallest room in the entire place, but was being used as storage, and was filled to the ceiling with boxes and crates of the cabin owner's memories and heirlooms. 

He scanned the tiny cubicle of a room and hastily grabbed a lone crate packed to the brim with large and heavy metal objects. He tried to lift it, but to no avail. With no other choice, he got behind it and paused with every bit of strength he still had in his weakening body. When the crate was pinned against the door, he ran back into the room and got a relatively less heavy box, and stacked it on top of the metal-filled crate; exhaustion creeping up on him the whole time. 

It gave the door and himself a few more minutes. 

Before he could even stop to take a breath, he remembered he had to go back and fix the other door. When he approached the door, another decomposing being showed itself. He kicked it in the stomach, knocking it to the ground with ease. After picking the half-destroyed door up, he shoved it back into its frame. He wedged the only chair in the room under the knob, knowing it wouldn't hold for more than hour, at best. 

He got the bat he had dropped in the storage room, and headed back into the front room. The box in the window was finally starting to break, as was the split door. 

Looking around for what to do next, he spotted a dirty string hanging from the ceiling. Up until that very moment, he had been reluctant to mess with it, but not so much now. He darted over to it and yanked it down as hard as he could. An old wooden staircase dropped down in front of him. 

Taking one last look at the door, he saw that it had now been completely broken, allowing three zombies to knock the top box off, before tumbling over the bottom crate, and each other. Taking a deep breath, he proceeded up the creaky stairs. 

When he made it into the very dark and small attic, he pulled the stairs back up. The attic was pitch black and extremely cold. He pulled his small lighter out of his front pocket. He clicked it a few times before a flame was born. 

The flame barely penetrated the thick darkness. He heard sudden thudding and crashes below, a forceful reminder that there was no turning back now. He cautiously started walking forward when his foot bumped into something on the ground. He bent down and held the lighter's small flame to it. 

The light revealed a lantern that looked like it had been dropped, due to a tiny crack in the glass. He picked it up and lit it. The lantern's light illuminated the entirety of the small attic. He slipped the lighter back into his pocket, and slowly looked around. 

There were several boxes scattered around. He glanced over to his right and saw a body slumped against the wall with a hole in his head, and a pistol in his hand. Nick automatically knew who he was. There had been pictures of him all over the cabin. 

He looked away, the true fear was just now starting to seep in. On the opposite wall across the way, was a small window, which looked farther away than it really was in the increasingly claustrophobia-inducing space. 

As he started to walk over to it, the weak stairway fell back down behind him. He ran back over to shut it again, but two brain eaters were already climbing up the rickety staircase, albeit very slowly and clumsily. 

He doubled back to the window and pressed his burning and sweaty face against it to peer out of it. There were at least ten members of the Devil's army marching towards the shoddy cabin. He glanced at the skin feeders still trying to stand up, then broke the window with his bat. 

After clearing all the remaining glass fragments out, he climbed out onto the tiny windowsill. He then began to slowly straighten up, holding on to the roof's edge for balance. As he went to throw the bat on the roof, his foot slipped, causing him to drop his only weapon to catch himself. He watched helplessly as it fell to the mob of undead below. 

He let out a groan of anger, frustration, and fear and climbed onto the roof, just as one of the zombies in the attic grabbed for his legs. 

On the worn roof, he could see all of the zombies coming in from the surrounding woods. The whole city had found him. Fear shot through him when he heard a soft scraping noise behind him. Two decrepit hands slid up from the far side of the roof. He walked over and kicked the now exposed rotting head, knocking it down to the other awaiting zombies below. 

What seemed like every five seconds he found himself repeating the process over and over and over. He was past exhausted in every way. His body, mind, and soul were far too tired, and far too worn out to keep it up. He slowly, slowly backed up to the center of the roof, and collapsed to his knees. 

He reached into his back pocket and pulled the picture out. He stared at it, smiling for the first time in all of those three months. His eyes seemed to close on their own, and he kept them way for what felt like years. When he opened them, he was back at the park, holding the brand new camera and happily telling his family to ridiculously say cheese, to which they happily obliged. 

He snapped the picture and his daughters went back to playing. His wife, who was still smiling, like she always did, walked over to him. "So, Nick," she said in her soft voice. "It's going to be like this forever, right?" 

"Forever," he smiled back, kissing her gently. 

Once again, his mind made him come back to the present. He saw dozens of undead climbing up to get their long awaited prey. He looked back at the picture, then up to the starry, and somehow hauntingly beautiful sky. "Forever," he repeated as he watched the biggest and brightest star slowly fade out.

Author's Note

Not good with the mushy stuff, as you can probably tell, but either way, I hope you enjoy. As always, any feedback good or bad, is greatly appreciated.