GAME OVER Part 1

1#
THIS IS AN IMPORTANT SAFETY ANNOUCEMENT, PLEASE LOCK YOUR DOORS AND REMAIN INSIDE UNTIL A SAFE ZONE HAS BEEN SET UP. I REPEAT STAY INSIDE, LOCK THE DOORS AND WAIT FOR THE SAFE ZONE ANNOUNCEMENT. As the female announcer finished for what felt like the millionth time he threw his half full shot glass at the stone blue wall that had been mocking him for the last two weeks, he could almost picture the wall with a giant face in it laughing at him, if only he had been allowed to hang some pictures up then maybe he’d have something to look at now, but unlike the others he followed the rules of no personal pictures, how was he or anyone to know that he would be sat for two days watching the same piece of stonework whilst the dead would come back to life and cause havoc in the world they once lived. He sat back in his reclining chair, pushing it back as far as it would go, it made a squeak as he pushed it back indicating it was either about to break or it needed oiling. He looked up to the celling, took a deep breath in and then let it out again, what was he going to do? Two days ago he was just plain old Peter Wellings on his way to work for another night of watching over a building that was never going to get broken into. He worked as the night watchman for the local job centre for the past two years, nothing ever happened, every now and then you’d get some drunks trying to get in but they never got very far. Peter felt sorry for the people that work during the day trying to help out people who had no job but clearly didn’t want one and the last thing they wanted was for them to try and help them out to earn some money instead of being vultures, if only they would get off their asses and do some work instead of letting the poor tax payers pay for their next cigarette or beer. As he sat back in the chair he remembered the night it started two days ago perfectly. He had just looked up to the clock; it was nine o’clock, time for Peter to start work and time to lock the front door. He followed the last customer to left the building to the door whilst pulling his keys that were tied to a chain that was clipped to his belt buckle out of his pocket and found the gold key which locked the doors. As the customer opened the door a vile smell nearly brought Peters dinner up but he managed to keep it at bay. The customer even turned his nose up at the smell. Peter pulled the door back so it was in line with the other door and began to push the top locks into place when he heard a blood curdling scream from just around the corner were the last customer had walked off to. He pulled the top lock out of position, opened the door and went out to have a look. There was nothing, just the one street light shining down its yellow light onto the pavement. The smell had become even viler if that was possible, it smelt like dead meat or something. Turning to go back into the build he saw something by the corner of the building, which from where he was standing looked like a skull. His worst fears were confirmed when he got up closer, it was a skull and what’s more the body belonging to the skull had its rib cage ripped open and what looked like another man was eating his insides.
“Holy shit! What are you doing?” Peter questioned the man eating the stomach of another human.
The man looked up at Peter, made an animal like sound before standing to his feet. Once fully standing Peter could see that this man also had his chest ripped up. Peter could see the man’s heart inside but it wasn’t beating. Peter noticed that the man’s intestine where hanging out, they wrapped around the man’s left leg with the end caught in between the man’s toes. As he stumbled towards Peter, Peter ran as fast as his big fame body would allow him to back into the building slammed the door shut, quickly putting the top and bottom lock into position before turning the key, closing the main lock and setting off the fire alarm to warn others. He took a deep breath before looking out of the window of the door into the darkness. Had it all been his mind playing tricks on him? Outside there was no sign of anyone when suddenly man he had just seen slammed the palms of his hands onto the glass nearing sending Peter into a heart attack. Peter found himself trying to talk to the man and ask what he wanted but he realised he was trying the impossible to get an answer from a man who’s heart wasn’t beating so was technically dead. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that from the corner where the scream had come from three other creatures had appeared, they as well as the man at the door had body parts missing and were covered in blood what was worse was that they were making their way towards the door.
Peter took a step back and watched as the creatures gathered at the doors, he watched in amazement as their hands tried to grab the door handles but it was if they were new born babies and couldn’t grab anything, they coughed up blood all over the glass and made weird noises, kind of a moaning noise. Peter wondered where they had come from and what they wanted. As Peter watched the creatures he noticed two small cracks appear in the glass of the door, it couldn’t take all the creatures pushing it, it wasn’t going to be long before that glass smashed and the creatures would be inside the building. Peter slowly started to walk backward towards the door to the stairs whilst keeping his eyes on the glass and the creatures at all times. With his back again the big wooden door that led to the stairs, he watching the front door whilst tumbling around trying to find the handle to get to the stair when it happened. The glass shattered into a million little bits allowing the creatures to enter the building. As the first creature stumbled forward he tripped over his own guts that had become stuck in between his toes, the second creature attempted to run but snapped his leg in half, it was hard for Peter to watch, it was like one of those football tackles that had gone wrong, this didn’t stop the creature he continued to use his hands and crawled slowly towards Peter, there were three more creatures behind the crawler so Peter decided to shut the door and run up the stairs. He ran up about three floors before stopping and looking down over the bannister to the stair well below. One creature had made it through the door to the stairs whilst another one was stuck where it had opened the door but it had swung back on it before it had time to get all the way into the stair well. For a second Peter froze in fear, what should he do? He decided it was best to take up camp on the floor he was on. Peter turned away from the bannister and headed towards the wooden door to the third floor, he slowly pushed opened the wooden door and had a quick look around, it was empty, he shouted out for anyone who could hear him to stand up and make themselves known but no reply. He turned back to lock the door when the vile smell returned and without warning a face slammed against the glass panel in the wooden door and began violently hitting the glass. It was a woman, where had she come from? She was screaming at him for help and to let her in. He pushed the top lock into place then the bottom one and finally took out his key turned the middle lock, locking himself in. She screamed at him calling him a bastard and every other name under the sun because he refused to let her but what she didn’t realise was that Peter had seen behind her the creatures running towards her and knew there was nothing he could do to save her, he began to cry as he watched the creature snapped her legs off like wish bones, snap her arms off her body like they were dentist pulling teeth and finally ripping her head off which they did by violently ripping it from side to side. After the feeding he walking over to the nearest chair and slumped into it to it. The sound of the young female screaming as they torn her apart would be a sound Peter would remember till the day he died
The first thing Peter tried was a phone on one of the many desks but as he put the handset to his ear he couldn’t hear a dial tone, he thumbed the keypad for a bit hoping that pressing random buttons would start the phone again but nothing. He put his hand into a fist and blew down the middle of it, last year Peter had lost his wife to Cancer, it sent him into a deep hell of depression, putting his hand into a fist and blowing into the middle had been a technic he had been shown to combat the dark thoughts and stress in everyday life, these weren’t just dark thoughts they were real. Dead people were rising up from their graves and eating the living. Peter noticed that a few of the desks still had handbags on from staff that must have left them when he set the fire alarm off. Digging deep into one of the bags he found a mobile phone which still had two of the five signal bars in the top right hand corner, he breathed a sigh of relief. He pushed the nine button three times before pressing the button with the picture of a green phone to contact him to the emergency services, it didn’t even ring it just contacted straight to a message service which informed him that the current number was “out of service”. For the next half an hour Peter sat in one of the comfortable reclining chair that he wished management had got for him as well as desk staff ringing every number on the phone but every single one had the same “out of service” message. It had been two days now since the dead made their first attack. He had been surviving by playing a card game on a pc, drinking the water out of the fountain and eating sweets and mints left in people’s handbags. But the fountain was nearly empty, drying up, he had become some anxious that he was drinking more than normal, he couldn’t survive much longer. Searching the other desks he had picked up two bottles of vodka which were supposed to help but instead they were making his dark thoughts return, he also found an old world war 2 service revolver which was loaded with three bullets, why anyone in a job centre building would keep a gun in their desk was behind him. All he had now as entertainment was a pc he could play card games on and a battery powered radio that just kept playing the same depressing safety announcement every twenty minutes. He was losing it mentally he watched a wall painted hospital blue wall that he could swear was laughing at him and the sound of someone or something wearing the carpet out upstairs by pacing up and down. At night he was entertained by the undead, it was strange they only seem to come out after the sun went down, as if they were vampire or something. Peter spent the last two nights watching how dumb the creatures were, they bump into post boxes like they couldn’t see it even if they were 10cm in front of it. The undead humans weren’t the only danger that came out at night; only last night Peter sat with his nose to the window pane as what resembled a dog mulled a cat to death. It was clear the dog was no longer living as in the glow of the moonlight Peter could see that it had no right eye, the socket which once held the eye had now become a nice home for a pulse of maggots, that wasn’t the only place the tiny white creatures wiggled. The belly of the beast had somehow been sliced opened and the maggots were slowing dripping out just like someone had left a tap to drip away without turning it completely off. As he drank straight from the bottle of vodka he felt a cold shiver go down his spine it was like a sign that the demons of depression were coming back to take his soul to hell, being on his own for two days was allowing his mind to exaggerate his thoughts. Midway through his depression last year Peter attempted to take his life, he grew tired of waking up every morning, sitting at home watching the clock tick time away, every minute felt like an hour. His friends and family had said to try and indulge in his hobby of fishing but he couldn’t even enjoy that. It torn him apart inside that something that gave him such joy before was now being a chore. One night when the sleeping tablet wasn’t working he had been working up the courage to walk out to the bathroom and just take every tablet he could find. At 10am he went and did it, by 10:03am he was ringing for the ambulance. Something in the back of his head kicked in and told him he shouldn’t be taking his own life just now. But now as he sat alone in the job centre with the dead overrunning the world was there much point in living? He hadn’t seen another living human for two days, was he the only one left? .He was losing his slowly, but there was no help, no doctors or friends or family to help him through it, it would only be a matter of time before he would join the dead.
As night three approached Peter sat with one leg across the other stroking the world war two revolver he had found, staring at the blue wall that he still believed was laughing in at him.
“STOP LAUGHING AT ME! I AM IN CONTROL” peter stood up and shouted at the blue wall.
He saw what was a face laughing at the fact he maybe the last human on the earth and couldn’t survive .He stared in anger at the wall for a while then screamed for it to stop before wrapping his fist around the revolver, placed his index finger on the trigger and placed the long neck of the gun into his month. Tears ran down his face as he shook his head.
#2
“SHIT!” Adam threw down his binoculars, ran down the wooden stairs and out the fire escape. The noise of Adam running down the creaky wooden steps had awoken Ben who raised his head from his pillow to just catch a glimpse of Adam “WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON. WHERE YOU GOING ADAM?” Ben screamed at Adam as he pulled himself up from the stained mattress he had been sleeping on. Adam didn’t reply, he was already out the door. Ben kicked the can of beans that were due to be his lunch over in anger; he picked up the shotgun that laid beside him on the mattress and checked it was loaded before running down the stairs in anger after Adam. In his angered stated Ben had completely missed the bottom step of the stairs, he went flying to the ground, Ben was a husky male in his mid-30’s, he had an image in his head that him falling must look like a whale jumping up out of the ocean and crashing back down into the waves. Adam had reached the doors of the job centre safely; he had gone into autopilot mode and wasn’t really thinking. It was night time; the time when the dead seemed must active. The main door to the job centre was just metal frame work now; all the glass had been smashed out, even the metal seem to have bite marks in it where in desperation for food the dead had attacked it. Inside the whole ground floor was trashed, paper was all over the place, pens leaked ink all over the floor where the dead had been biting into them and smashed computers seemed randomly placed all over the floor. Adam saw what he wanted the stairs. A few feet from the main entrance was a thick anti-fire wooden door; it was hanging on by one hinge, through the gap lay the stairs to the upper floors. Adam shot through both doors at the speed of light and started to run up the stairs, if he was going to save this guy’s life he needed to be fast. Adam had been watching Peter across the road since he 1st met up with Ben two days ago, he saw him as a sort of giant goldfish something to watch and past the time. Approaching the door to where Peter was Adam reached out for the handle but it was locked. Out of his back pocket he pulled a small hand gun, pulling the trigger he successfully shot the lock off, the noise from the gun shot had spooked Peter, he had taken the gun out of his mouth and turned around to find a tall, muscled up man, who had a shaven head. The man was wearing black combat trousers and had a white tank top on.
“Come with me, I’m here to help you” Adam told Peter.
Peter looked at Adam but he didn’t look like a member of some rescue team. If anything he looked like a criminal but Peter didn’t have any other offers he decided to follow Adam.
Unfortunately Peter wasn’t the only one to hear Adam gun shot, the creatures that lurked on the floor above had come down to see what the fess was about, they were like a group of swans that had seen someone drop some bread in the water. One of the creatures slipped on the top of the landing and tumbled down the stairs, this was Adam and Peter first warning that the creatures were on their way. They stood and watched as the creature landed with a thud, head first just in front of Adam. A pool of blood began to circle around Adam’s feet where the creature had split his head open. Within seconds of the blood a second thicker, gooier, pink liquid began to trickle out. Even though Peter hadn’t eaten a good meal in two days he could feel himself wanted bring something up and be sick at the sight of seeing the creature’s brain run out.
“Come on! Let’s go before the rest come” Adam commanded Peter.
Peter had never run down a flight of stairs so quickly it was almost as he was walking on air the speed he was going. As they made it to the metal frame that use to be the front door Peter could see a figure outside waving a torch. As they go closer Peter could make out the figure, it was a husky, large guy with hair that was spiked up with hair gel, and he was carrying a shotgun
“Duck!” the guy shouted at them
Both Adam and Peter took to a crouching position as the large guy opened fire with his shotgun. The shot was ten times louder than the one Adam had fire, the force nearly knock Peter over. As the guy loaded up for a second shot Peter put his fingers in his ears. The second shot knock Peter from a crouching position to lying on the concrete.
“This way! Let’s go” Adam shouted as he went to help Peter back to his feet.
Peter pushed Adam hand away, pulled himself to his feet and turned around to see what the large man had been shooting at. Lying on the floor where two of the creatures, one had his head blown clean off by the shotgun blast whilst the other one still had one eye and half a nose. Peter watched as he could see past the creature’s rib cage and see its heart beating. It was amazing, even after a shotgun blast to the face the creature was still alive. Suddenly it opened its one remaining eye and turned what was left of its head towards Peter. Peter turned around to find that both men had disappeared. He was now alone the darkest with this creature that was slowing getting to its feet. As Peter looked around for the two guys he saw the torch light again.
“Over here! Quickly! ” The large man was waving his arms angrily, across the road down an alley between a bedding shop and a fish and chip shop.
Peter ran across the road to where the large guy was standing, he was loading his shotgun ready for another shot. Peter looked behind him, to his amazement the creature was just a couple of feet from him. The large guy pulled the trigger and the creatures head popped like giant spot only it wasn’t white puss that came out it was blood. Peter’s clear white shirt wasn’t just smelly and creased; it was now covered in blood.
“Get inside quick you idiot! Before you attracted more of those things”. The husky man wasn’t messing around; he gave Peter a cold stare before pointing him towards the skin head guy.
Peter followed the skin head man up a long flight of wooden stairs, as he reached the middle of the stairs he jumped at a loud banging noise and turned his head. Behind him at the bottom of the stairs the larger man had slammed closed the big metal fire escape door. He looked back at Peter, raised his right hand and was going to say something but Peter had reached the top of the stairs and collapsed from shock.
When Peter awoke it was day time again. He was in a massive loft. The place was full of mattress, two of which were lying on the floor by the only window. It looked like the two guys who had rescue him had set up their own little camp, a small saucepan lay on a travel gas stove. The bald head guy then came over.
“Welcome. You ok? My name is Adam. The big guy over there is called Ben, he gets mad sometimes but he means no harm. He’s just getting you a mattress”
“Here you go!” The husky man who Adam had named as ben threw down a mattress right next to Peter nearly hitting him.
“My name’s Peter. Thank you for saving me. How did you know I was there?”
“Adams been watching you since he first got here” Ben told him. “Tell him your story” Ben looked at Adam. Adam nodded and they both joined Peter sitting on their mattress.
“I was part of the army. Three nights ago I and my team were called up to be part of a search and rescue operation here in the city. The six of us were dropped off just down the road on the city entrance; it only took a few minutes before those creatures started to attack us. They killed three of my team in seconds and the other two were overcome with them. I decided I had to make a run for it, I couldn’t run very far with all my gear so I dropped it all apart from the shotgun and handgun. I ran down this alley and became lost; it’s like a maze of alleys, that’s where I bumped into Ben. He was smoking outside the fire door” Adam then nodded to Ben who took over the story. “I’ve been working at this bedding shopping for six years now, everyone calls me big Ben. I just thought it was going to be another night of taking mattress from downstairs to up here but then Adam came along. I have to admit at first I didn’t believe him about these creatures but then as we were talking two of them must have been following him because they tried to attack us, thankfully Adam shot them. The next day we ventured out to look around. It was weird, all the corpses, zombies, creature whatever they are where all lying on the ground dead to the world. We thought we had been dreaming, everywhere we went corpses laid dead on the roads and paths, even the fly’s and maggots where eating at them. We grabbed two wheel barrels and stocked on stuff and looked around for more survivors. As we made our way back to the attic the darkness started to creep in and the corpses started to rise again, we looked at each other, dropped the wheel barrels and just ran back here.
“I knew there was something up with these creatures, as I sat watching from the window I didn’t see one of those creatures till the night time” Peter was pleased he wasn’t the only guy left in the world now and these two also didn’t see any creatures trying to kill the living in the day time, maybe there was hope
“They are around in the daytime, it’s just like Ben said, they don’t seem to work. Maybe it’s something to do with the moon” Adam replied
“I don’t know” Peter was confused. “Are you saying even the creatures that are cut in half still come back in the darkness?”
“Let’s take him and show old Bill? It’s daytime. He’s always there?” Ben asked Adam who nodded his head as he picked up the shotgun. Ben looked at Peter and motioned for him to follow them, Peter wasn’t 100% sure he wanted to go outside after what happened the following night but as Adam had a shotgun, was a solider and had a pretty good shot he went with them. They walked down the other half of the alley before turning left to go down another alley. Down the new alley were some stales that sold fruit, fish, meat, etc. Most of the fruit was rotting in the sunlight and the meat/fish had maggots all over it, there were random bite marks in the meat as if a creature or dog had eaten it. Just past the fruit stale was a stale that sold mobile phone cases, Ben and Adam stood still and looked over the table that had phone covers on it.
“Have a look” said Adam pointing behind the table. Peter lend in to have a look, lying on the floor was a corpse of an old man, his brain was showing, it looked like someone had used a hammer to smash in the man skull open all that was leaved now was a shiny pinkie like jelly the brain, it had a few veins but they had turned black, as Peters eyes moved down the corpse he realised that it was chopped in half, all the intestines and guts were lying randomly looking like someone had gutted a fish on the floor next to the legs.
“That’s old Bill. During the day he’s dead but come night time he’ll be crawling around looking for his legs” Ben informed Peter.
“Can I see this?” Peter asked as he opened a bottle of pills, placed a small round tablet on his tongue and swollen
“Ok if we’ll come back tonight with torches” Adam agreed. “As for now we’ll go to that shop we found the other day pick up some food” Adam nodded to Ben who nodded back, it was like a type of code they had.