The After World, a Horror story

Chapter One

Chapter One

Day One of Year One of the After World

“Death Day”

They said that it was an illness, something that had started in Southeast Asia. I wasn’t too sure though, I hadn’t been paying attention at the time. It was a continent away, and surely, with the US’ advanced medicine, it wouldn’t ever reach us. But soon enough, it got closer and closer. Morocco. Spain. England. Brazil. Mexico. It was no longer a disease, it was a plague; a nightmare. People were saying that it was driving victims mad. Bodies started appearing in the streets in the big cities, and were disappearing before police could arrive, the callers gone with them. People would go missing for days, only to appear randomly attacking somebody for no reason. My parents were worried, and decided that we needed to leave the city, packing my sister and I in the car and heading for our grandparents’ house outside town. We didn’t get far, though.

Apparently, we weren’t the only ones thinking that way. Traffic blocked the highways, cars and trucks sitting still for miles. Then it happened. I wasn’t sure where it started, but I know it came sudden and fast. Something was happening about 30 cars ahead of us. We could hear the honking and yelling. Then there were screams. Car doors were slamming and the sound of panic grew closer. We moved fast, running out of the main road on foot. We grouped with another few people, and took refuge in a pharmacy.

It was a bad plan; chaos had taken reign over the people, and it was madness. We should have known that people would head for a pharmacy to grab supplies. We should have known that staying in a city was just asking for those things to find us. And that’s exactly what they did.

It all happened so fast, yet I remember every second with clarity. The creaking of the boxes on the glass door, the falsely cheery ‘Yes, we’re open!’ sign tapping against the windows. There was a crash, and the doors burst open. After that, everything seemed to slow down. I can still hear the shriek of a woman we had grouped with as she was grabbed, and bitten into. I can still see the man who had been kind enough to let us hide in his pharmacy, as he became riddled with holes, flesh exposed to the world. At that point we started running to the back door, but they were numerous, and we were little. They grabbed my mom, and my dad soon followed as he shoved us out the back door to escape.

But most of all, I remember with startling details, how my sister went down. My sweet, six year old sister. She fell to the ground behind me, as she had tripped while I was dragging her. They were upon her, and I didn’t have any weapons to defend myself, or her. I remember her adorable pigtails my mom had painstakingly put in this morning had fallen loose, causing much of her hair to fall and hang loosely around her freckled face. Her Hello Kitty T-shirt, a white and pink thing, was being stained with the crimson of her blood. At that point I’m not sure if I cried, or how hard, but I know that I ran while they feasted on her corpse.

Day Sixty-two of Year One of the After World

My eyes cautiously scanned the area as I crouched on the shaded asphalt behind a dumpster. Three of them were still in the hot summer sun, occupying the remnants of a 7-11 parking lot. I clutched the worn handle of the hatchet in my hand and took a steadying breath. It was only three. I could handle this, I knew, but even after being alone for so long I still felt uneasy at the sight of one of those abominations. Exhaling, I sprinted across the road, reaching the parking lot quickly. They were spread out, so swung at the one nearest me. The blade buried itself in the back of it’s skull, and as I pulled it out the being fell to the ground with a sickening thump. By now I had caught the attention of the other two, and they inched towards me slowly. That was the one good thing about them, I guessed. That they were slow and stiff, not able to move properly after their body had turned rigid from rigor mortis. Well, that was most of them. Some of them were faster, their corpse not even cooled when they decided to get back up and attempt to join the living. Those ones were gorier. The ones that had died of multiple bites and scratches. They had turned quicker, and their bodies were riddled with holes and marks, baring their yellow, rotten innards to the world unabashedly. I was lucky; these three were the slow, stiff kind. The ones I felt more pity for. Pulled out of my thoughts, I quickly took a step back from the approaching two. One of them was closer than the other, and my weapon was lodged in their head now. I tried to pull it out, but it was hard; it was stuck,a and the other was nearing quickly. Wincing, I pushed my tennis shoe clad foot on its emaciated face and pulled hard. The blade left the body with a loud squelch.

His partner shambled towards me, and I messily chopped into his head. I used his shirt to wipe the mess off the blade, I wouldn’t want it to get rusty.

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One never realizes how useful a 7-11 can be. I had scoped it out a week ago, checking it for any openings, and the door was locked tight. Lucky me. I walked up to the door, yanking my elbow back to smash it when I paused; if I smashed the door anyone could get in. Walking around the building, I spotted just what I needed; a back door. Bingo. The question was, how did I get it open?

The answer was in a sheet of metal a few feet away from the door. I grabbed the sheet and examined it; it looked to be about a foot long, and nearly a foot wide. The back door was crappy, green paint chipping away, and the knob crafted out of a cheap metal and wood. I grabbed the sheet and smashed it into the knob, nodding with satisfaction as the knob broke. I opened the door slowly, eyes adjusting to the darkness. I propped the door closed with the metal and looked around the room I was in. It was an empty office. Uninterested, I opened the door into the main are of the building, the part filled with food. I grabbed one of the little blue baskets in a stack by the door, and started stuffing items in. Lighters, matches, junk food, the cheap little boxes of generic condoms on the front desk that sat next to the cases of e-cigs. In a normal world, these items wouldn’t do much for me.

But this was no normal world.

The warm light of the sun was gently fading below the horizon, unknowingly spelling demise for anyone foolish enough to be out in the dark without a light of some sort. I quickly shambled up the steps to my makeshift fortress.

The house once housed a group of people, I guessed, judging by the still pictures of a happy family that adorned the walls. I felt a pang in my gut as I thought of my family, but quickly pushed the thought out of my mind. Now it was my sanctuary. I locked the door, and pushed large boxes in front of it. The house was two storied, and I blocked off most of the bottom half of the dwelling with bins and crates and sheets. I walked up the flight of stairs, and entered the main part of my home. I thought it was originally the master bedroom, and this was where I lived. I began securing the sheets and tarps around the windows, making sure the blinds were closed.

While the dead ones couldn’t see, it wasn’t them I was worried about. Even though it had yet to happen, I always knew, vf r5vin the back of my mind that I was not alone, and that one day I would encounter other people, and that scared me. I set the blue basket down and pulled out a lighter. Walking around the room, I lit the candles.

Once the room was lit, my doors and windows secure, I allowed myself to relax. This was the one place where I felt a bit of safety. I looked around, to the disarrayed blankets and frayed yet colorful quilts residing on my bed, to the coffee table I had dragged up here from the living room, which was covered in various things. I smiled at the worn deck of cards and small stack of books, the pad of notebook paper with multiple pens on top of it. I had managed to go through the contents of their garage, and had struck gold about a week ago; a small propane camping stove, and 4 tanks to supply said stove. It sure beat eating cold canned vegetables and soup. I leaned back into the bed in contentedness. This old house wasn’t pretty, or filled with beautiful things, it wasn’t luxurious, and it was perfect. Hey, in the bathroom I even had a little washroom set up, and a tub full of clear water. This old, unspecial house, was my place. It was the only place that I could call my own, nothing in it tainted by the outside world. The house only had my books, my clothes, my things. And I felt that nobody could ever change that.

I heated up my dinner; a can of generic clam chowder I had grabbed at the 7-11, and ate my meal. Amusedly, I noted how if I were the same as I was a year ago, I would’ve scrutinized myself, checking to see if my thighs were still touching or if my hair was suitable for public viewing or not, my only concerns my appearance, my grades, and if the cute boy that sat next to me in English had a crush on me or not. Oh, how times change.

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The next morning I was hit with an unusual bout of lethargy. Today, I didn’t want to go out into the world. For once, I wanted to crawl deeper into my blankets and block out the world. Maybe if I tried hard enough when I fell asleep again, I would wake up at my house with my parents waking me up to go to school.

Fortunately, since I had gone yesterday, I could afford the luxury of staying in and doing easy tasks. Crawling out of bed, I landed with a thump on the wooden floor, landing on my side. Groaning, I forced myself to stand up. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and looked at the white wall in front of me. Otherwise known as my calendar. I had been keeping track of how many days had passed since it happened, and placed another crudely drawn tally mark over the four, making a group of five. I grimaced at the less than straight line; I had always hated my handwriting. 63 days. I thought for a moment, about how many days were in each month, and what day it was when it happened. That would make today May 8th.

My birthday. Huh. I started chuckling, and it turned into laughter that sounded hysterical even to my ears. It quickly turned into sobbing, and before long I was crumpled on the ground, sobs wracking my frame.

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I felt a sort of numbness come over me as I duct taped sheets of balsa wood to the windows over the sheets with little slits in them so I could see out. The wood wasn’t the strongest, but it was lightweight so I could pick it up with ease and something was better than nothing at all. Now there was at least a bit of resistance. When I was done, I grabbed the long forgotten broom and dustpan from their corner and swept up the dust and dirt that I had dragged in. I used a baby wipe to clean the mud and dirt prints on the floor off. God, I felt like a housewife. The old me would’ve chuckled and insulted me; I could just hear her now. ‘What the hell are you doing?? You don’t clean; you hate that shit. Come on, seriously; you’ve despised cleaning since Mom and Dad started making you clean your own room by yourself.’

“Things change.” I said to myself softly, aware that only I would be able to hear it.

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When I finished cleaning the house, I cleaned myself. I went into the bathroom, staring at myself in the mirror. Who was the girl staring back at me? Her cheeks were far too hollow to be the chubby cheeks I once despised. My eyes had always been a dark hazel, tones of green and brown mixing together; the girl’s eyes were a murky color, and it seemed that their gaze wasn’t focused on the mirror, but looking through it. Her chapped lips couldn’t be the same pair that I coated in chapstick daily so long ago. It wasn’t possible that the dark earth colored hair in a frayed mess ending just below her chin was once long locks trailing to my shoulderblades, that I had been proud of.

But yes, if I looked closely, and squinted a little, I could tell. Through the desolateness I could see that her eyes were exactly the same shade of hazel; a color I had gotten from my father. The hair, although a fraction of it’s former length, was undoubtedly mine. She had the same little scar on her bottom lip; a memoir of a 7-year old me who thought that she had the upperbody strength to hang from a tree branch with one arm like a monkey. All I gained from that experience was a busted lip and the knowledge that humans weren’t exactly like monkeys.

Shaking the memories out of my head, I turned over to the tub that I had filled to the brim with water. I dipped a washcloth in the water, squirting a dollop of soap onto it. I dragged the cloth across my forehead, dripping down onto my cheeks. It trailed down my arms, leaving goosebumps from the cool temperature of the water in it’s wake. I lifted my shirt a bit to wash my stomach and rolled up my jean legs to wash my calves. When I finished I squeezed as much of the water I could into a separate bucket with the used water in it and stuck the rag on the sink edge. After doing that, I grabbed another bucket and promptly dumped my head into the clean water.

I pulled my head out, gasping. I put a little bit of hand soap in my hair and lathered, cleared out the hair bucket into the used bucket, filled it back up, and rinsed out the soap. I did this about once a week, and it just happened to be Monday.

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I spent the rest of the day reading; I had to know how my book ended, although I had read it about 3 times before this. I didn’t have many books, and I didn’t mind; after reading it multiple times, I noticed things I hadn’t the last time and interpreted things interested, so it was a little different each time.

I closed the novel with a snap, finishing it for the fourth time. Elise and Broderick had saved the kingdom yet again, and lived their Happily Ever After. Admittedly, the book was a bit cheesy and cliche, but entertainment was entertainment, and I had been deprived of netflix for months now. I stared through the slit in the windows, and observed the sky turn a gloomy shade of indigo as the sun disappeared.

I settled into my bed, bundling by blankets around me. I double checked for my knife under the pillow and my hatchet next to the bed before relaxing. I closed my eyes, already drifting away as they closed shut.

And they immediately snapped open the moment I heard the ear piercing scream of a child.

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