prologue + ch 1 for a zombie story

                                                PROLOGUE:

        Only a week had passed since the first reports were being made of disfigured people walking around aimlessly in the dead of night. They said they appeared human at first glance, but with a closer look you could see most had contorted faces, some were missing entire limbs, while others might have had gaping holes in their abdomen or chest. It was difficult to discern the truth from the lies and exaggerations, but in any case there was certainly something unnatural going on, whether anyone could explain it or not. When the calls, rather than relenting after the first couple of days, became increasingly more steady, media reporters began advisories about not traveling at night if at all possible, and definitely not going out alone any time of day.
         It wasn’t until the third night after the calls began that anything notable actually happened – it was the first report of murder done by one of the “zombies”, as they were now being popularly called. The witness had seen it in the park outside his window: a small horde of deranged people encircled a homeless man so that he had no escape as they slowly closed in around him. He couldn’t say for sure what happened after that, for there were too many of them to get a clear view, just that he heard a deafening cry and plea for help. What bothered him most, however, was that there was no body left behind.
         That incident sparked a small wave of fear throughout the city – people began boarding up windows and doubling the locks on their doors, forbidding anyone out of the house for anything that wasn’t completely necessary. An official curfew was put in place by the police until they could get to the bottom of the inexplicable bands of mutilated figures and “quell the threat.” It wasn’t until the fifth day, when multiple police patrols had failed to return to their stations with no explanation of what happened to them, that outright panic took control of an increasingly out-of-control situation. People began abandoning their homes altogether, fleeing to outlying towns, even heading to different states, only to find that the same was occurring everywhere else as well.
         Of course, as with all great plights in troubled times, the looters and the beggars came on in full force, breaking into otherwise safe homes, taking everything they could manage to carry. Riots were incited to keep the looters at bay while the police did all they could to fight off the ever-growing hordes of zombies that now plagued the streets like rats in a sewer. The cities were swiftly being destroyed from the inside out.
         By the night of the sixth day after it all seemed to begin, order no longer held any sway in the city, and from what could be gathered from news reports across the country, and even the other side of the world, things were no different anywhere else. There didn’t seem to be enough the armed forces could do to keep the creatures from taking over, and indeed they had taken over most everything. People continued to flee to the haven that didn’t exist, to cling to hope long since extinguished, and eventually to resign to the fact that all that was really left to do was die.
         Or fight back.
         Not everyone had sold their souls to the devil just yet. There were small contingents of people springing up across the globe that hadn’t yet given up, that believed the zombies could be pushed back, fought off until a greater solution presented itself. While some of the people in these groups felt obligated to use their combat abilities to help protect the people that had not as yet fallen – ex-militants, martial artists, marksman, etc. – most of them lacked any real skill at all, but were driven and protected by something, in a sense, more powerful than any training could provide: the lust for revenge.
         And so, one week after the first reports had been made, the retaliation begins.

                                                  CHAPTER 1

         Dawn was breaking over the horizon seven days after the beginning of the “event.” Gazing out the window after just one more night on top of the all rest without sleep, Edward looked out upon a world he had never before seen. Houses around him lay in ruin, burnt down or torn to pieces by the creatures that had so swiftly conquered the city. Dead bodies littered the street, wandering corpses roamed aimlessly here and there, searching without reason for their next victim. Even with as many as he had seen throughout the past couple days, Ed still shuddered just at the sight of them – their blood trailing after them with each step, the cavities in their chests exposing a heart with no beat, the pupils of their eyes diminished utterly to cloudy white. It was often hard to be sure whether they were really ever human at all or if they were just some twisted creation come straight out of the cracks of hell to torment the living. That is until you saw someone you recognized, the empty shell of an old friend, a neighbor, or worse: a relative.
         It didn’t take long to figure out how they became so many so fast. It was with each new victim that another joined their ranks, their bite somehow infecting their prey to kill, then slowly bringing it back to join their evil crusade. There was nothing worse, nothing more truly heart-shattering, Ed decided, than seeing someone you had once truly loved become one of these abominations, knowing there was nothing you could do to prevent it, no way to save those you care about most.
         It was in this way that he had lost half his family already. When the news started pouring out about the mysterious wanderers and the curfews and the murders, his family had decided they would be best off staying together rather than separated all across town. His eldest brother, John, lived in Seattle and so instead of coming to stay with them in Portland drove to the small coastal town of South Bend to stay with his mother to help ensure her protection. It was Edward and his other brother Albert that stayed in Portland with their father and their stepmother at their house on the western side of the city.
         Once there, they all did their best to fortify the house as best they could, boarding up doors and windows, barricading entrances, even setting up temporary, makeshift proximity alarms with whatever random supplies they could find. And yet for all their efforts, on the fifth night when things really started turning ugly, it wasn’t enough to keep them completely safe. The air horn that had been attached to a trip wire in the driveway gave one portentous cry and was silenced, and everyone in the house knew what was lurking just beyond their doorstep.
         Probably the most tense moments of his life passed over the following minute as Ed held his breath with the rest of his family, hoping against hope that what he was sure was inevitably about to happen somehow managed to disappear, like the funnel of a tornado that never touches ground. He met the horror-stricken gaze of his step mom, the unsettlingly calm focus in his father’s eye, the alert look on his brother Al’s face, and shared with each of them a brief glimpse of understanding about what was soon going to happen. A thousand words couldn’t be used to capture the love of the family in those single glances from one to the other, and they all somehow knew in the end things would turn out all right.
         The moment was shattered by the first bang on the front door.
         And then another on a window in the living room, and another from somewhere in the back of the house. Unintelligible moans could be heard now from everywhere as the pounding on the walls and windows intensified. The overwhelming noise from the invaders added a whole new level of panic and fear to an already terrifying situation, and no one was sure they were going to be able to maintain any sort of calm or self-control. Ed’s stepmother looked as though she were on the verge of fainting; his father still held a stone stare somewhere into the foundation of the house or deeper, as if he were searching the underworld for the origin of the zombies; his brother Al was on his feet now, pacing, ready for anything with some kind of sadistic fire in his eye, daring any zombie to set foot in his house, though it seemed more driven by fear than courage. Ed was perhaps the most normal, or seemingly so, of the four of them. He too was on his feet and ready for a fight, but he seemed to have more of his wits about him, however terrified he might have been. He knew panic would get him no where, nor would a careless frenzied rage – whatever happened, he needed to be in his top state of mind to have the presence of thought to keep alive. He had seen what happened to the people that panicked, that fled, and many of them were probably outside banging on the front door that very moment. He wouldn’t become one of them, he swore to that.
         And then, even above all the moaning and the pounding and the mayhem, everyone in the room heard it: a board from one of the reinforced windows in the back of the house splintered, cracked, snapped in half, and fell to the floor. Al was first to react, the crazed expression on his face flaring wilder than ever before; Ed was actually a little frightened by it. With nothing more to protect himself than just a pair of hammers, Al dashed out of the living room, down the hall, and into the room the board had fallen. Ed went tearing after him without delay, two throwing knives in his belt, a machete in one hand and a large combat knife in the other.
         Sure enough, upon entering the spare room, one board had fallen out from the window and second was pushed halfway out of the wall it had been nailed to. Without any hesitation, Al immediately started swinging wildly not at the board or the nails, but at the many pairs of arms grabbing blindly at the air in front of them, searching for someone to grab hold of, someone to infect.
         “Al, the board! Hit the board, we have to keep them out!” Ed was screaming at the top of his lungs, but over his brother’s bloodlust and frenzy, nothing could be heard. He tried grabbing hold of Al to shake the sanity back into him, but after just ducking out of the way of a flailing hammer, he gave up realizing there was nothing he could do but aid his brother. Together, they stood holding their ground, avoiding the groping limbs, hacking and pounding away as more and more kept reaching in through the narrow slot in the window.
         A small pile of dismembered arms began falling at their feet into a much larger pool of congealed blood that was slowly creeping its way across the hardwood floors. This kept up for no more than a couple minutes, however, before the second board finally shook loose its hold in the wall and landed in the pile of severed limbs. With this, the narrow slot had become an unnervingly large gap in the wall, through which more hands came shooting through, joining their undead companions and forcing Al and Ed to retreat a slight distance. With the added number of zombies able to fit through the window, the third and fourth boards that made up the only remaining blockade were not going to last much longer. It didn’t take Ed long to realize this, and with a great effort took a firm hold of his brother’s blood-soaked shoulders and shook fiercely back to reality.
         “Al! Al, snap out of it! It’s no good, we can’t hold them off forever! Come on, we’ve lost this room, we need to get back to Dad!”
         With one last effort, Ed was able to push his brother out of the door to the room and slam it shut behind them, leaving their attackers to freely gain entrance to the house. Al, the wild fire all but extinguished from his eyes, ran back to the living room to rejoin his parents while Ed made the best makeshift barrier he could manage out of whatever furniture he could fit in front of the door. As he was finishing putting in place a sofa behind the dresser and the table, he could hear the last defense of the window fail and the zombies enter the room. He couldn’t peel himself away from the door until the first pound fell second later, and with a jump he bolted back to rejoin his family.
         Things were no better in the living room, and he immediately cursed himself for having left his dad and step-mom alone for so long. His father had finally managed to snap out of whatever trance he had gotten himself into and had his gas-powered chain saw revving at full speed about the time Ed actually entered the room. Both windows were all but broken through, and the door was very slowly giving way to the unrelenting force of creatures’ attacks. Al had already sprung back into action, once again pounding away at the intruding limbs, beating them back as best he could, while their dad hacked off anything that Al missed in his flailing. After swiftly evaluating the scene, Ed knew that they couldn’t hold out forever and the same fate would soon befall the living room that did the spare room. They needed to make a plan, and if everyone else was too busy hacking fruitlessly away at what he was sure to be a bottomless sea of undead foes, he would have to make the plan himself. But what? How could they all escape with their lives? There must be some way…
         But if ever something would have come to him, none of them will ever know, for there came at that moment a bloodcurdling scream that broke all train of thought, stole away reason and calm and replaced them with panic and horror. He whipped his head around to find that his step mom, in all her terror, had fled the living room when the zombies started finally to break through the shoddy reinforcements, and had run towards the back of the house – towards the spare room. Ed knew immediately what had happened, but couldn’t convince himself it was true until he had seen it with his own eyes. With panic taking the reins, he sprinted out of the living room, down the hall, and around the corner to where he had barricaded the room shut.
         He immediately dropped to his knees and began to retch uncontrollably, tears rolling down his face like a river over a fall.
         He had known already what had happened, but actually seeing it forced his mind to believe it, forced him to acknowledge the truth. The sight of someone being eaten alive by such horrid abominations, screaming and wailing at the top of their lungs, begging for mercy and crying for help that could never come, would be enough to turn anyone’s stomach inside out. Having that someone be one of your parents, someone that’s loved you and cared for you and raised you since childhood, was altogether unbearable. Seeing his step mom like that was too much, and all the level-headedness and composure he had been able to maintain thus far was stripped from him as though punishment for some unforgivable crime he had not committed.
         When he had finished vomiting his insides all across the floor of the hallway, still kneeling he looked up once more at what could scarcely be recognized as his step mom anymore – she was missing one of her arms, which Ed noticed hanging limply from the mouth of one of her killers, she had a hole bored straight through her stomach from front to back, and through her marred and bloodied face he could see she was missing an entire eyeball. At this gut wrenching site, he rose to his feet, looked straight up and let loose a frenzied cry he never before would have guessed he could make, which turned out to be one of the biggest mistakes of his life, for it brought Al and his father running. When they reached the spot Ed stood and saw what had caused Ed’s massive roar, they stopped dead in their tracks. By that time, it really was impossible to tell which one exactly was their beloved wife and step mom, but somehow they both knew, and Ed knew it was already too late to save his father.
         As soon as it all clicked into place, the boys’ father, all sanity left behind in the living room, bolted past both his sons before they could grab hold of him and straight into the oncoming surge of zombies that had now gotten over their last meal and were creeping steadily toward them. Yelling something completely incoherent at the top of his lungs, he lunged at the creatures, slashing wildly in every direction, hewing down anything that came near him. Al and Ed both knew it was already too late to save their father, but still they stood frozen, rooted to the spot and looked on, helpless to aid their father as the zombies finally overtook him. They were spared the sight of seeing him eaten alive, but even the overwhelming volume of moans and pounding and thudding footfalls were enough to drown out the one last word and cry they would ever here from their dad: “RUN!!!”
         It was as if the word had escaped the horde, sprinted down the hall and slammed into the brothers with all its might attempting to free them from their invisible bonds of horror and shock, and somehow, it succeeded. In an instant, both Ed and Al were stirred back to reality and somehow silently agreed on a plan neither of them had the chance to make. They turned heel and ran back down the hall towards the living room, which had now been filled to capacity with the undead monsters, but then turned the other direction and made for the garage. As they opened the adjoining door from the house to the garage they were immediately met by a fresh platoon of unholy warriors, and with no other options left to them, began to fight.
         Ed was first to react, immediately sheathing his machete and whipping out both throwing knives. With a split second’s precise aim, he delivered two blows to the nearest zombies, dropping them motionless to the floor with hits directly between the eyes. Dashing forward, sparing only time enough for Ed to reclaim his weapons, the brothers pushed immediately onward, fighting ferociously with all the bitter resentment and the justice they could muster, hacking and pounding and delivering relentless blows to the oncoming demons. Careful not to allow themselves to be surrounded, they beat their foes down and pressing them back so they could reach the garage door, which was just feet ahead of them.
         With one last devastating blow to the top of the head of the last remaining obstacle before him, Al was able to steal a chance to throw open the garage door, their last barrier blocking their escape. With one great effort, he grabbed hold of the rusted iron handle and thrust the door upward, revealing a heavily infested driveway that briefly reminded Ed of an ant hill, crawling with utter chaos. With no chance to drink in the fresh air of the outdoors that they hadn’t tasted for days, Al and Ed were forced to continue fighting. If they could only manage to get to the street, the creatures were much more thinned out and they knew they would have a fair chance of escape. But there were so many…
         And then a most welcome sound came roaring toward them from the highway. The peeling of tires, the revving of an engine, and the booming echo of a car horn bouncing off the surrounding houses. Without allowing themselves to bring their guard down too much, both the brothers turned their heads up the street to see headlights shooting over the crest of the hill, of which the house sat at the base. Once the car had come into sight over the hill, barreling after its own lights, Ed knew immediately things were about to become much easier. The station wagon floored it down the hill, hit the hand brake and skidded to a perpendicular stop. The driver’s door flew open, and out stepped Rob, Ed’s roommate and best friend, with a giant chain wrapped all the way up his right arm. The sight of help in such a dire moment temporarily relieved almost all thought of what had happened just minutes before.
         The newcomer seemed to distract the zombies almost as much as the brothers, but when Rob wasted no time in hurtling himself from his car and straight into the fray, it seemed to bring everyone back into the moment, and the battle raged on.
         “Hey, man!” Ed cried as he decapitated yet another putrid corpse. “Wouldn’t have complained if you woulda’ shown up a little sooner!”
         “Yeah,” Rob shot back as he bashed the face of his assailant straight into the back of its head with a heavy right hook. “Turns out you aren’t the only ones in town with a zombie problem; I been kinda’ busy!”
         “Shut the hell up and get back to the damn car so we can get the hell out of here!” Al didn’t need to say anymore, and with one final burst of adrenaline, Rob, Al, and Ed had managed to clear a path from the driveway back to the car. With no more words and no more hesitation, the three jumped as quickly as they were able back into the wagon. Rob threw it into gear and they tore away from the house without a second glance, the brothers hoping never to have to set eyes upon the place inside of which they witnessed their parents mutilated and murdered, and where they would eventually turn and become just another couple of walking, mindless, disfigured corpses.