Sparing No One

A rumbling.

 

I raced around the corner and another one slammed into me, drooling and screaming its arms flailed everywhere as it tried to grab me.

 

Desperately, I turned back, noticing the rusty door at the end of the corridor. I sprinted past all the limping, growling bodies as they followed behind.

 

Now my ankle ached as I pulled the rusty door open - erk -it creaked as I kept using all my weight to push against it, struggling to force it open. I could hear them, lumbering as they chased me with their missing heels or their bitten off kneecaps. They were fast approaching. One was so close that its putrid smell offended my nostril greatly - causing me to gag and cough. My eyes watered as I managed to yank the door open at last, my arms weakening from the effort. The zombie came roaring up behind me, and finally I quickly squeesed through the door and slammed it shut.

 

I panted, sliding to the floor. Its clawing like an animal forced me to hide in the small closet - no weapons, no protection - my only choice was to lie dead.

 

The average person wouldn't consider that this would happen. And absolutely no one ever expects to have to pull a rotting body detached from of head ontop of them just to cover the smell of a clean, living body.

 

I closed my eyes, clutching the T-shirt sleeves of the deceased zombie's body ontop of me. I had to pull it over me. My biggest worry was Dex. Closing my eyes tightly, my only hope was that he had survived through all of this.

 

Only hours ago, we were cornered.

 

The zombie scratched at the table I held up as a shield. Slowly. I had backed away from it, and my brother, Dex, had run to the door to bolt it shut. We had to keep them all from coming. We were down to the last zombie - we'd killed so many that the floor was covered with body ontop of body - there was no space to put your foot down in between them - and the stench had been so much that I found it almost impossible to keep breathing.

 

We'd used all the chairs to repeatedly hit the zombies until we'd reached their brains - or at least damaged them enough to knock them out. We had thrashed them with the metal chair legs - shoving it through their squishy eyes and battering the zombies' heads in with the headrests. Dex and I had learned to be ruthless.

 

Luckily, this is only the beginning of the zombie outbreak. This new dug - Bizome - was created as a way to absorb all sickness within the human body. At first, it was working; our test subjects were about to die from their long life illnesses and then they were able to get up from their hospital beds - they could even jog. But we found a fatal problem with Bizome. It only made you better in the short term, and then the subject would quickly pass away. Because the body had physically been restored by Bizome, the person managed to reawaken, and technically live again.

 

It was odd - but somewhat good. Until, that is, that Bizome once again made the person flourish only for their body to deteriorate again. This caused their brains to reform and change rapidly over a few weeks, making their brain function abnormal. We found that by taking the drug, each time the subject recovered, they became less intelligent - and the drug was officially discontinued. We were appalled that it had taken so long to halt the development of Bizome -  but the government felt that the subjects 'were dying regardless of the drug's input, and therefore it was no cause for alarm.'

 

Finally, we thought we'd solved the problem. No. Halting Bizome only made the subjects suffer from withdrawal. And withdrawal caused their brains to rot, as their illnesses were slowly returning, combined with the brains malformation.

 

We contained them. We never let anyone know.

 

I regretted not doing anything about it - but now I would suffer. I had killed many colleges when Dex and I were alone in that vast cafeteria. I was standing on their limp bodies and bashing my boss in the head with a table.

 

I screamed to Dex, 'I can't handle him!' My arms were shaking, fatigue overwhelmed me.

 

'Okay!' Dex shouted, and quickly ran over the lumpy bodies that covered the floor. A few of them made noises as his foot pressed deeply onto their stomachs - they were becoming conscious again.

 

Dex raced to me - and without thought, punched my dead boss. My throat welled with sickness, fear shooting through my back at my brother's careless attack.

 

My boss fell backwards and his knee ripped off from the rest of his body. We had been lucky. The zombies were quickly deteriorating, and so we had a chance.

 

I told Dex to find an escape somewhere, whilst I regained my energy. I had been tense every single moment and had each hand wrapped tightly against the table - in case any zombies were to get to me.

 

Unlike me, Dex had speed on his side. He was working in the fitness facility. He was our best runner - and yet when he applied for the job I told him it wasn't a good idea. I'd have been dead if he hadn't ignored me - but he wasn't to know how truly grateful I was.

 

Dex raced to the other side of the cafeteria, and found an airvent. His years of running had made him slim - small enough to get through. Battling my way through with the table, re-knocking out zombies as I came over to him, I shortly found out that I was too big.

 

'We'll find another way,' he said, determined.

 

'Go.' I ordered.

 

He stood. I heard the hissing of waking zombies behind me and Dex's eyes pleaded with mine - but I nudged him with the table, forcing him up the airvent.

 

'Don't say anything - carry on, Dex. Find a way out.'

 

That was the last thing I said.

 

The table broke off after I sent a few last living zombies flying - I was glad for their weak, crumbling bodies. I've never been a very strong woman, but picking up boxing to impress a guy had definitely paid off.

 

By the end of it, I was huffing, standing amidst a room of headless, or severely dented zombies.

 

I leant heavily against the door that Dex hadn't bolted shut. This was where the batch of zombies I had killed came from, so when I headed down the corridors, I wasn't worried. Along the way, we had locked every door that contained zombies but I knew of one that was made of glass, and would shatter at any moment.

 

Then I heard it - all the little shards of glass panging on the floor. The grumbling of hungry dead bodies got louder and louder as their feet thumped along the corridors overhead. They couldn't see me - but they could hear me.

 

If Bizome hadn't made all of their cognitive processed much better than before they first took it, then a lot more of us would still be alive.

 

As they shoved each other to get to me, I ran the other way and tried my best to remember where any little useful objects were. I pictured the layout of the entire facility, and remembered the reception desk. It wouldn't be much - but it would do - that is, if I could also kill another hundred zombies in the reception area.

 

The zombies behind me were shoulder to shoulder, taking up the side of the corridor. They were all so desperate to get to me, that they had got themselves stuck because of their sheer mass.

 

I sighed with relief, and for once stopped thinking instinctively. Up until that point, I hadn't the time to consider my feelings. It was as simple as seeing a monster, and trying to smash its head in or escape from it. Standing back from the herd, I looked for familiar faces. These people, all of them, had known me. Most had uttered more than a few words to me, but others I spoke to everyday.

 

Hank. His face used to be somber. Always somber. He spent so many years rambling on about ho miserable his life was, but I'd kept hoping that one day he'd come into work and proudly announce that he was happy, and that he'd found someone. It hurt me so deeply, right in the crevices of my heart, to know that he would never experience true happiness, that he was miserable, and would forever be miserable. But from him, I had learned a valuable lesson - look on the bright side, because it won't always turn around for you in the end. I realised I had to enjoy what I had, and that having a life was extremely precious - they didn't really have one - all of them shuffling, cawing at me. Their brains, by this point, were level with a turkey, but with the predator instinct matching a lion's.

 

I knew that even if Dex and I didn't make it, the world wouldn't end. I was sure that a few of these unnatural beings would escape, but most would expire by then. In only a day since everyone had been bitten - I watched their zombie bodies go from the ability to fight back with chairs and the like (that was the hardest bit) to drooling and trying to scratch me. I estimated that in only 23 hours since the last person Dex and I had seen get bitten, the zombies' I.Q. points had dropped from 100 or more (the original person) to as little as 55. To have such a massive reduction made me estimate that the zombies would only have another 23 hours at most left to live.

 

Not even 2 days but they'd managed to kill at least 1000 staff members.

 

As I stared at them, looking for faces, one zombie shuffled forward a bit, making it so the others could move. Instantly, all of them were falling forward and limb by limb, were getting up again.

 

I spun round and sped off like a racecar. The whole floor rumbled with their stampeding steps, clumsy and loud, they were hunting me down as I turned each corner, being faced with wall after wall leading to rooms with even more zombies in them. When I thought I'd found a safe room, another zombie came pounding on the doors, its saliva dripping from its mouth. Only a door with a small round window separated me from death.

 

I kept running, and kept finding no way out. I was the type to believe that if you tried hard enough, you could escape anything. Now I was doubting myself. What did the past version of me really know? Nothing. She hadn't encountered such a traumatic event. She had an easy life. Her biggest worry was getting the guy at the gym to notice her, or to remember to buy her mum a birthday present, or to remind her brother that the boss wanted him to fill out some paperwork after his thirty minute run.

 

The boss. He's gone.

 

I shook my head - the only way to live was to keep going. If I was to run to a dead end, then so be it. I would die - but I would shove my fingers deeply into the eyes of each and every zombie - right until I could feel the softness of their deformed brains. I would duck at one mouth, forcing one zombie to eat another, I would pull off my shoes and pound their faces whilst the small muscles on my arms tensed, the veins a bright green as I would use my last bit of strength to cause them as much discomfort as possible. But that didn't happen.

 

As I ran, my foot caught on a solid, cylinder shape and I feel to the floor. My knee scraped the ground, immediately becoming sore and red. With no time, I angrily thrust the object into the air whilst it was within my palm. In the blinking lights above, I read the label on it.

 

Insect killer.

 

I pulled off the lid, sprang onto my feet, and carried on running. Insect killer wasn't going to hold them off for long, and it certainly wouldn't kill a group of about 60 zombies.

 

I finally reached a dead end. The moment of death. I braced myself, and my body tensed so much that I shook violently, and my eyes forced me to relax with the release of tears. The zombies came up the corridor, but they were blurred to me. Feebly, I put one arm across my eyes and the other out - holding out the insect killer spray.

 

The flickering, rectangular light above collapsed as the pounding herd's footsteps shook through the walls and to the ceiling. I uncovered my eyes as hope tingled in my anxious stomach. The light landed on top of 5 of them, and had them sprawled out on the floor. Their clawing fingernails scratched at the ankles of the 5 zombies ahead of them, causing a domino effect. I wasn't completely safe, but took my chance.

 

As each one looked at me, sprawled out on the floor, I sprayed it in the face, and watched each pair of eyes tightly shut as they grimaced. By the time I ran out, I was at the back of the herd, with one zombie standing, slightly hunched. I threw the spray can at its head, hard, making it go, 'oh' in a weird, child-like voice as I sped down the corridor.

 

I thought I was free, and jumped in the air as I ran, throwing up my fists of triumph! But then the rumbling resumed, and I came around a corner and slammed right into another zombie's body. It hesitated, and drooled at me.

 

This brings us back to the beginning, where I found the rusty door. The closet has long been abandoned and the person in it was obviously like me, trying to escape. But without a head, it had come into harm's way, and perhaps Dex had been here.

 

Of course. He was still alive! But why the need to crawl out of the air vent? I turned my head and noticed the grating was on the floor, the air vent completely open. I thought he must've removed it, killed the zombie, and gone back into the air vent. But why?

 

Author's Note

Should I continue the story? Do you like it? If you have suggestions for a better title, please let me know!

Reviews

[Talal Hussain]

nice work :-)

[Persona]

Thank you

[WingsToFly]

Nicely written and you should continue it. At some places it felt like more of an essay than story, but I liked it. Do writer of it.

[Persona]

Thank you - are there parts that are too factual? I'd love it if you could point out any examples!

[Panda11598]

This is so cool! I would leave the title, it sounds interesting. I'm going to be honest, when I saw the title I wasn't expecting this! I would LOVE it if you continued the story! I'm sure others would, too, with a lot of people being obsessed with the zombie apocalypse! 100/100 (As always!)

[Persona]

Yeah well thank you for reading it - what were you expecting with such a title?

[Panda11598]

I'm not really sure actually haha but when I saw it was about zombies and stuff I was like COOL!! haha