To whomever finds this,
Something very unusual has happened to me, and I am writing this down in the hope that someone will find this and know what I have done. Hopefully the information will be useful to someone too. I am doing this now because I don't really know how much longer I will be able to (I apologize for my handwriting, but it was never great to start with). It's already very hard to speak understandably.
My name is Terrance Jeffrey Bizzle, and before the world ended I worked at The Athlete's Village, a sporting goods store here in Covenant. I was of average intelligence, got decent grades in school, and never went to college. I ate meat, but not to excess, I liked a good salad once in awhile.
I'm originally from the bay area, but I moved up to Covenant to live with my girlfriend. We broke up long before the end, but I never moved back. I've never been particularly heroic or selfless, even when the world ended I preferred to keep my head down and concentrate on my own survival.
I don't know if any of that stuff is important or not, but I include it just in case.
When the dead rose and the world ended, I sought shelter in the Mallville Commerce Community. A lot of people went there, the ones who didn't leave town or die pretty much all ended up there. I was given a spot in a clothing store to set up my tent; I can't remember the name anymore, but I know it was not somewhere I shopped.
We had food, light, and water there, but there were problems. People like me who did not live there before the end were treated poorly, and I guess there were other issues besides that. A group formed to oppose the guy who was running the place, I think his name was Kaur; he had been a security guard or something back when the place was still just a mall. Tensions built for months, but I tried to stay out of it and be content with just being alive still.
Eventually someone fired the first shot, although I couldn't tell you which side it was. A small civil war broke out inside the mall, with people on both sides attacking each other. People were killed, and those people turned, and rose. Zombies in the mall ended up not being the final straw for our shelter though, because someone set off a bomb big enough to collapse a section of the building.
A lot of people didn't get out of there, more than I realized actually, but I did. I joined up with a group headed by a woman named Tara. I kind of remember seeing her around the mall a few times; she seemed like she was at the center of some of the problems between the two groups, but I didn't care about that. It didn't matter who did what anymore, all that mattered was surviving.
Things with Tara's group were harder than they were at the mall. There were a lot of fights, and we were all crammed into a small warehouse out near the edge of the city. There was no power, no running water, and so much of the food left in the city had already been scavenged while we were in the mall, it was hard to find enough to eat.
The group didn't stabilize, and people were leaving all the time. Some would leave in the middle of night, afraid of what she would do to them if she caught them leaving, but I never heard of her doing anything to stop anyone from going other than begging them to stay. I heard that she would cry a lot at night. I can no longer picture her in my mind, but I seem to recall that she was pretty, but sort of mean looking.
Every day we had to go farther and farther to find food, water, candles, or anything else useful to us. We only had a few guns, so we were forced to fend off the zeds that we came across with baseball bats and tools. There weren't a lot of the monsters around, some people said most of them were going to be clumped around Mallville. They said that the sound of the explosion would have attracted them, and as long as nothing drew them away, they would stay there. This didn't mean that the streets were exactly safe though.
The zombies weren't the biggest problem as we would have regular run ins with other people. These usually resulted in both sides running away from each other, but I did get shot at a couple times. I think I knew some of these people that we ran into. Some from the mall, but others had been part of Tara's group at the beginning.
It wasn't another human that did me in though, but a zed. Maybe something drew some of them away from the mall, or maybe she escaped only to be turned later, but I knew the one that got me. She had been living in the kitchen store across from me.
I don't remember her name anymore, names seem to be the things I am losing first; names and faces. I am slowly losing details, but that's just another reason to write this all down, right?
Anyway, I rounded the corner of an aisle in an already picked-clean convenience store, and there she was. I was surprised to see her, and I called her name. Was it Rebecca? Reba? Something with an R, I think. Anyway, she attacked me.
I managed to get out of the way of her first attack, and she fell on the floor. I couldn't bring myself to hit her, and that was when she bit my leg. I bashed her head in with a hammer.
One of the first things we all learned as the world ended was that being bitten is a death sentence. There is nothing to be done for it, so I hid the wound and went back to the warehouse with my group.
It only took a couple days for the virus to start effecting me. I started to feel achy and I had a fever. I snuck away in the middle of the night so that I could die in peace. I did not want to rise as a zed, but I didn't want someone shooting me in the head either, and there are a lot of people who are disturbingly willing to do that.
I have only the vaguest memories of the next couple of weeks. I know I found a house to hide in, and I remember being scared. I remember praying, although I realize now how foolish that was. If God is still up there, He's already ignored the prayers of billions, why should he listen to mine? Then again, maybe He did, in a fashion.
For that couple of weeks the world faded in an out. A lot of it is just a blur, but I do remember the bedroom I was in being full of people at one point. The girl who bit me, maybe it's Renee, was there; she apologized, and said she didn't blame me for beating her to death.
Tara was there at one point too, along with a woman and child I saw her with a lot, and her boyfriend, a big guy named Oliver, I think. They looked worried, except for Oliver, he kept asking if he could shoot me.
That should have been the end of this, but it wasn't, obviously, since I'm writing this now. Imagine my surprise when I woke up and the fever had gone. I was a little stiff, and very cold, but I was still me. I thought that my body must have developed an immunity to the virus or something, and I was absolutely delighted for a few minutes until I realized something: I wasn't breathing.
When I say I wasn't breathing, I don't mean that I can't, I just mean that I apparently don't need to, and the part of my brain that used to make me breathe automatically is no longer working. If I want to breathe, I need to will myself to do it, like lifting my arm, or turning my head. About the only thing I need to breathe for is talking though, and it seems that my vocal cords are decaying or something, because my words are almost completely unintelligible to me now. I sounds like I smoked for a century or two.
I stayed in that house for a couple more days before venturing out. I was trying to figure out what I should do. I figured that I'm definitely a zed, but a new kind. Is the virus mutating, or am I special? I certainly haven't heard of a zombie keeping their marbles before, but does that mean I am the only one?
I don't remember what my reasoning was, but I decided to head back to the warehouse. Maybe I figured that someone there would have the knowledge to figure out what I was, or maybe I just wanted someone to see me. I never made it there though.
I was cold, even with my coat on. It seems that not generating any body heat is one of the zed traits I picked up. It makes walking a little difficult, but I don't really feel pain either, so I can deal with it. I don't shuffle like a normal zed, but I'm not going to be setting any records in the hundred meter either.
As I headed in the general direction of the warehouse I heard a scream. A part of me was drawn towards it, and I started to feel hungry. I also had this weird feeling in my head, like someone was pushing down on my skull gently.
I walked as fast as I could towards the scream, and as I got closer to it the pressure in my head grew. The source of the scream was inside of a brown SUV with metal screens welded over the windows. There were four zeds pounding on these screens trying to get at the meaty prize inside while two others tore at the body of a man lying just feet away from the driver's side door. The car was parked at the curb in front of a bookstore, a big one, but I don't remember which one.
The screamer was a woman, but that's all I can tell you about her. The pressure in my head was greater now, and seeing the woman made me want to eat her; the tear her flesh and muscle from her bones. The urge surprised me, and it took a lot to not give in to it. I think this is what it's like to be a drug addict.
I yelled at the zeds trying to beat their way into the car, my voice already sounding raspier than it normally did. For just a moment they stopped pounding on the screens covering the car windows, and turned to look at me. This only lasted a moment; they didn't come at me, or try to attack me. They could tell I was one of them, not food. They held a similar lack of interest to my own cravings.
I moved closer, still psyching myself up to run if they made to come after me. The body on the ground had a crowbar lying next to it, and I picked this up. I hefted it in my hand, feeling the stiffness of my muscles try to resist me, and then I swung at one of the zombies.
It took a couple of blow to bash in the first zed's skull, but it sat there and took it, never looking up from its gory meal. I quickly did the same to the second one. Then I started in on the zeds attacking the car, and one by one took them all out. It was like they barely even registered that I was there, even when I struck them directly.
When I was done, there was just the sobbing girl and me.
“Are you okay?” I asked, but she didn't answer me. She looked terrified, not just of the situation, but of me. I can understand that; I had seen myself in a mirror, and I looked just like one of them. My skin has gone gray, and dark circles have formed around my eyes. About the only thing that I noticed about my own reflection that is different from the rest of the zeds is that my eyes are still clear (and thank God for that, for all of my loss of coordination and ability to talk, at least I can still see pretty well; clear enough to read my own writing at least), but given her current situation I'm not surprised that this did not give her confidence.
“You should go,” I said, “Do you have the keys?”
She didn't answer me, but after a moment I realized that it was a stupid question. If she had the keys, why would she have kept sitting there while the zeds tried to eat her?
Figuring the dead guy must have been the driver, I knelt down, feeling the muscles in my legs strain with the effort, and rolled over the partially eaten corpse. There were a set of car keys lying there under him. I guess he must've been getting them out when he was attacked.
It took me a couple of tries to pick the keys up. My hands don't work as well as they once did; I certainly won't be threading laces into any new sets of cleats any time soon. I used the side of the car to pull myself up, and then I forced the car keys in through the mesh covering the window. They landed on the driver's seat.
“There,” I said, “You should go,” I said.
It took me some time to notice that the feeling of pressure in my head had gone, but my hunger had not. I understand now that I can sense when other zeds are nearby. It's like I have zombie radar that guides me right to them, the pressure inside my head increases the closer I get to one. This has, and will, come in handy.
As far as the living go, I don't have any ability to sense them. This is probably a good thing, as just hearing a living person makes me hungry. I figured this out after the girl in the car sped away, leaving me alone surrounded by the dead. As soon as she was out of sight, my hunger lessened, and after a few minutes it went away entirely. As long as I don't see a living person, I don't feel the hunger. It was figuring this out that caused me to not go back to the warehouse. I didn't know if I would be able to resist the hunger if I was around so many people.
I was also worried that I would be shot on sight. I know that If I saw me coming down the road, I wouldn't let me get close enough to try and explain that I wasn't that kind of zed.
I spent a few days wandering around after deciding that I couldn't trust myself around people, or them around me. Every so often I would get the feeling of pressure in my head, so I would test out my zombie radar theory by following it to a zombie, or clump of zombies. I would then beat their skulls in with a baseball bat I found. It was much easier to swing effectively than the crowbar.
Getting used to my unlife, I have made some discoveries:
1. As I have said, I only feel hunger around the living. I do not feel hungry around other zeds, or even around food. I tried eating a can of cold soup (which I cut myself on, but I will get to that in a minute), and it tasted like nothing. It wasn't good, it wasn't bad, it was more like eating wet paper than anything. It did not satisfy me in any way, or make me crave more food.
2. I do not feel pain. I first realized this when I cut myself on the soup can. I didn't even realize it happened until I saw my finger. I have also tried sticking myself with pins, and I can feel the pins if I push them deep enough, but they do not hurt. Interesting note though, I do bleed, but my blood has gone black like any other zed. It's kind of disturbing to see coming out of me.
3. I do not heal. The cut on my finger has not closed up, or sealed. I tried using some of that liquid skin stuff on it, but it doesn't seem to do much of anything. I try to keep all of the wounds I have picked up along the way bandaged as best I can. It's not out of any attempt to be sanitary, I just don't want open wounds catching on things and tearing away more of my skin.
4. I do not get tired. The cold makes me feel sort of drowsy and achy, but I have kept moving pretty constantly for at least month now, and I have yet to need sleep. The warmer the temperature, the more active I feel. This seems to happen to other zeds too, as I have found some that almost looked like they were hibernating. I wonder if this means there will be more zeds roaming around once spring gets here fully.
5. Most of my senses seem unaffected. I can smell things fine (blood smells disturbingly good to me), my hearing is just fine, and my vision is at least good enough to read my own handwriting still. My sense of touch still works, and I suspect if I were to eat the right thing, or person, I would discover that my sense of taste also still works. I don't know if this applies to other zeds (I think that milkiness over their eyes may limit their vision at least), but I believe they can hear just fine.
It was some time ago that I last ran into another living person, his name was, well, I don't remember his name, but I remember he had a chainsaw strapped to his arm. He said his name was based on some movie character, it's right at the edge of my mind, but I can't get it.
Anyway, the chainsaw guy saw me taking out a couple of zombies I found inside of an oil change place. Two things crossed my mind when I saw him. The first was that addict's craving I'd felt with the girl in the car, the second was that this was the end, as I was sure he was going to shoot me with that shotgun he was aiming at me.
“What are you?” The guy called to me. I remember that he looked pretty young, maybe my age. Alex? Avery?
“My name is Terry,” I croaked at him after forcing myself to take a breath, and speak slowly. my voice sounded bad, but still understandable.
“Okay, Terry, but what are you? You look like a zed, but I've never seen zeds attack each other,” he said, not taking the gun off of me, “I haven't seen any talk before either.”
“I don't know,” I said.
“Are you infected?”
“Yes, I was bitten a month or so ago.”
“But you're still you?”
“Yes, and I still don't like having guns pointed at me.”
“Yeah, well I don't much like getting eaten, so you're gonna have to just deal with it for a little longer while I figure out what to do about you. You're not exactly normal, you know?”
“And people with chainsaws attached to their arms are?”
I really wish I could remember what he called himself. I can see the movie in my mind.
“The other zeds don't attack you, why?”
“I don't know. I think they recognize me as one of them.”
The guy nodded, “I've been watching you, why do you kill them?”
“They hurt people. They need to be destroyed. They're also really crappy conversationalists,” This was only half a joke. I have spent some time trying to talk to the other zeds to see if I could understand some sort of zombie language, but there doesn't seem to be one.
“Okay, I can see that,” he said, and finally lowered his gun, but made no movement towards me, and I made none towards him even though he was making me drool a little, “So you're what, like some sort of zombie superhero? The Undead Avenger?”
“No, I'm just me.”
“No, you're not you, no more than I am who I was. You're something totally new. You should take advantage of this opportunity to re-invent yourself. Throw on a cape and a mask, go for a whole Batman thing, it might hide your, uh, condition a little, get you more chicks. Go commit a little zed-on-zed violence in the name of humanity.” if the chainsaw had left any room for doubt, it was gone now. That guy is crazy, and if he is still running around out there I would suggest keeping away from him.
Of course if you're reading this, chainsaw guy, I'm sorry I forgot your name. You're still nuts though.
“Sounds like a plan,” I said, wanting to get away from him before he changed his mind about the shotgun.
“If you really want to go kill some of your own, I'd suggest heading over to Mallville. That place is crawling with them now. Well, I can't stand around here chatting all day, there's evil to destroy, babes to save. Don't try to follow me, or I will take you down,” with that, he turned, and ran. He ducked between two buildings. It wasn't long after he was out of my sight before the craving went away, not that I could have caught him on foot even if I wanted to.
I'll give that guy one thing, he wasn't wrong. I didn't go put on a mask and cape or anything, but I did head for Mallville. The last time I had seen the place there had been smoke and flames pouring out of it. Now it looks like some giant smashed one of the sides of it with his massive fist.
As I crossed the surface parking lot, I could feel that pressure building inside my head. There were zeds nearby alright.
Getting into the mall was easy, I just climbed through the gaping hole. I probably would have been smarter to go find an open door, as most of them had been opened when everyone fled. Finding a door would have saved me most of the skin on my left shoulder and my left pinky finger, both of which I lost when I slipped on the wreckage and fell down into the remains of the garage.
The mall looked nothing like I remembered it. Everything was covered in black soot, all the lights were out, and there were zeds everywhere. It also stank. The place smelled like smoke, and death, and mildew.
It was pitch black in most areas. Some light was coming in through the doors leading out to the park, and through the skylights in the corners between sections where the ceiling was open all the way to the roof, but mostly it was dark. I spent some time searching out lanterns and flashlights so that I could see what I was doing. A couple of days in, I found a forehead mounted flashlight, and that helped a lot.
I don't know how long I was in there. Time is hard to keep track of already without phones and computers, but when you cannot see much natural light and don't have any sort of sleep cycle, well it gets harder. I think it may have been a couple of weeks at least, it's a big place, you know?
I worked my way around the whole complex twice, but I'm still not completely sure I got them all. I can tell you that I was not feeling any indication that there were any nearby when I left though.
I can also tell you that there are a lot of supplies still in there, and aside from the destruction on the shopping floors (there's a lot of fire and fighting damage down there), a lot of the place looks like it is still livable.
The apartments and stuff on the other side of the building from where the explosion happened look mostly untouched, just abandoned to the dead. I don't know if the building is structurally safe though.
Given some of the zeds I found in there, it looks like some people didn't leave after the explosions. I found zeds closed up inside stores. Maybe they died from the smoke, but some of them were really skinny, like they had become trapped and starved to death. That seems like it would have been a horrible way to go.
That probably sounds weird coming from a dead person, but at least I didn't starve to death with food and supplies so nearby. That would be like drowning only inches away from the surface of the water.
I also found a number of bodies that made sure they wouldn't rise. My limited religious upbringing initially made me look down on these people, but as I slayed more and more of my fellow undead I realized that they at least went out on their own terms. Anyway, who am I to judge anyone? If there's such a thing as an abomination before God, it's most certainly me.
I'm really not sure how many of them I killed, but after I fell down a staircase and broke my left arm while taking out the fiftieth or sixtieth zed, I realized that I was working too hard I didn't need to search room to room, I could make them come to me.
After splinting my arm so that I can still sort of use it (I can feel the bones grinding if I turn my wrist, it doesn't hurt, but it feels weird), I decided to start attracting the zeds. I would find an area with a zed or two in it, and make some noise. I would bang against the wall, or throw a bottle, or fire a gun into the ceiling (there are plenty of them there, some just laying on the floor next to long dried blood stains), and the zeds would practically trip over themselves to get to the source of the noise.
I don't know if they were disappointed to find that the source was one of their own or not, Can a zed be disappointed, one beside me anyway? It doesn't matter though, because I would beat their heads in, or just shoot them if I had a decent supply of ammunition with me at the time.
I went around all of Mallville three times, it's not like I had anything better to do, right? On my third trip I did not find a living zed. I feel a bit proud of that, actually. Can you imagine what a group of zeds like me could accomplish?
My sense of pride is a little lessened by the fact that I don't have anyone to share this accomplishment with. I still don't dare try to approach the other survivors at the warehouse, if they're even still there, and I don't know how to find the guy with the chainsaw, although I suspect he knows where I've been there.
In fact, he's probably gone in and started raiding the leftover supplies by now.
I didn't take much from there myself. I did manage to find the keys to a working car, a mall security SUV, it even has a full tank of gas. I also took a few guns and bullets. I've decided the chainsaw guy was right about one thing: I need to take advantage of this.
I'm still not going to put on a mask and a cape, and no one is ever going to draw a comic book about me, but as soon as I finish writing this, I'm going to go on a little road trip. Maybe I can't play baseball anymore, but I can still drive a car well enough.
I'm going to head down to San Francisco, or as close as I can get before the roads are too jammed. I remember the footage of the big cities as they fell, and I want to try and take this one back. It could take me years, but if I have years, then I'm going to do it; I'm going to take out as many zeds as I can before this body falls apart or my mind completely fails and I become just like them.
Maybe it is pointless, but if I can believe that my actions save at least one person's life, then it will be worth it. Whoever you are, please at least remember me for my intent. Know that whatever becomes of the world, I tried to make it a safer place.
I'm going to go commit some zed-on-zed violence in the name of humanity.