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Description
“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”

- T.S Eliot

You didn’t know how it happened, truthfully. The months that it started seemed to go past in a blur tainted with tragedy and death. You remembered sitting at the kitchen table with your little brother, watching the TV as some anthropologist or whoever spoke about developing a vaccine that would apparently “push humanity forward”.

What a bunch of crap.

What was supposed to augment muscle power only eroded them, what was intended to boost brain power only ate them away, what was supposed to be humanity’s salvation ended up being its absolute destruction.

There was no hope left on earth anymore.

If there was a God, He had abandoned you.

There were signs that no good would come of Project HE – Humanity’s Evolution, as they had taken to calling it – some civilians and military factions had even gone as far as to team up and make bunkers specifically for the inevitable apocalypse. Of course, most of the population assumed they were just being overdramatic.

It had been little under a decade since the mutant outbreak, year 2040 it was, and your town had faced the brunt of the horde. You were just fifteen when it happened. God how you wished you could forget it, the screams of your family as their flesh was ripped from their bodies, their bones being broken and the marrow sucked out of them. You pressed your hands to your ears, trying to drown out the sounds of their cries, but it was no use.

“Teddy!” your brother called, crying for his big sister to save him. You stood there, petrified at the pungent creature that stood before you and over your brother. Drool trickled from its mouth as its one remaining eye bore into you.

You were terrified, too scared to even move, too scared to rescue your nine-year-old brother. Quivering in fear you finally managed to take your eyes off of the putrid monster and looked at the sobbing wreck of a child on the floor. His legs were broken, that fucker must’ve bashed them in you thought.

“Teddy…” he wailed, “Mama and Papa are…” he couldn’t even finish his words at the pain it caused him. His parents were dead. Your parents were dead.

You sat up abruptly in your bed—or better said your worn-out mattress that could barely sustain your weight—and brought a hand up to wipe away the beads of sweat that had built up on your skin. Oh how you wished you would stop having that dream, you wanted those gruesome images to stop haunting your mind, but would they stop?

No, of course not, a fool you would be to even consider such a possibility.

You panted heavily, slouching over in your poor excuse of a bedding arrangement as you prepared for another day ahead. A day of survival. A day of hell.

The sun’s light peaked in through the cracks of the wooden boards you nailed over the windows of the convenience store. Heaving a sigh you stood from your spot and headed toward the bathroom of the abandoned store to splash your face with water. You lifted your head from the sink to stare at your complexion in the cracked mirror barely holding on to the wall and groaned at what you were met with.

Your hair was a mess, your skin was paler than normal and your face seemed to have a frustrated expression permanently carved into it. This whole apocalypse thing was really weighing in on your appearance.

You paused for a moment before raising your bandaged hand to be in view of the reflective glass and, with great hesitation, peeled away the wraps only to reveal the scarred skin beneath. You winced a bit as you recalled the memory of being bitten by those same damned monsters that took your brother from you.

How long had it been since then? Three months, four months? Usually people turned within days, and you waited patiently for your turn, but after a week of no infection you had begun to notice certain changes in your system. You could see farther now, run faster, carry more, and think clearer. It was odd to say in the least, all of a sudden your abilities had increased tenfold, but the bite mark never went away.

You were smart, you knew not to harp on things like this in the middle of the apocalypse, the only thing you could do was use your new abilities to your advantage. And you did. Surviving was a lot smoother for you than you predicted it’d be for others, now that you discovered your immunity to zombie saliva the world was, quite literally, in the palm of your hand.

You applied fresh bandages on your scar before making your way back to your room and packing the necessities in your bag. It was too dangerous to stay here anymore, you knew that, immune or not you couldn’t fight off an entire horde of walkers, nothing in your array of new capabilities covered being eaten alive.

Slinging your pack over your shoulder and placing your pistol in its holster you moved the shelves from in front of the door and pushed your way out of the store.

As you had expected, those mutated assholes had littered the goddamn streets though seemed to be flocking toward one particular location. Was there someone there? What had them so riled up they travelled there in vast numbers? If it was a survivor, you knew you’d had to help them, who else could?

And so you found yourself leaping from rooftop to rooftop with those exceptional leg muscles of yours, sprinting across the buildings and heading to the location that had caught the attention of the undead.

Not to your surprise, it was a survivor, but much to your surprise, this dark-haired fighter had been picking them all off one by one.

You narrowed your eyes to get a better look at the man on ground level that had been so skilfully overpowering the zombies. Your sharp eyesight managed to get you a good view of the handsome – albeit short – man beneath. And good god, was he wearing the most impractical armour you’d ever seen in your life.

He, like many other survivors, had war paint smeared on the plains of his muscular body. His shoulder was marked with an odd symbol you’d never seen before, a pair of wings, it looked like, a pair of black and white wings. His uh, “armour” consisted of barely anything more than arm bracers, a shoulder guard and a pair of shorts accompanied by belts and holsters. Littered on his outfit was an array of skulls – far too small to be human – honestly, you were stumped on what creature those skulls even belonged to. You could only assume they were put there for nothing more than style. Whatever style he was aiming for. What an odd man.

It had seemed though that there were more enemies than he had anticipated and soon the walkers had started to overpower him. “God damn it, you fuckers!” he spat as he wedged his hatchet in the skull of one of them.

This was your cue.

You leapt from the building you were perched on took out your pistol, shooting the ones closest to the mysterious stranger first before taking care of the ones headed to you. This had caught his attention as he paused what he was doing to observe you fighting.

God, you were incredible. So smooth and swift. You made killing zombies look like a goddamn art, one that someone could easily find themselves become enraptured in.

Sensing the presence behind you you brought your leg up in a crescent motion and aimed directly for the head, feeling the skull shatter immediately at the contact between your foot and its crown. Thanks to your immense strength, the already weak and rotted flesh that barely strung the zombie’s cranium to its neck had broken off completely.

The man watched in well-masked awe as you had – quite literally – kicked the head off a zombie. No mere human could ever have that kind of strength, so then, what were you?

Images flashed through his mind, speeding at so fast a motion he barely had time to comprehend a single thought. He couldn’t rightly pinpoint what you were, what skills you possessed to manage to pack so much strength behind a kick, but in all honesty he didn’t even care. You were a survivor, that’s all that mattered to him.

The walkers had been dealt with; the both of you made sure that none of those damned corpses would wake up again. It had been instinct as of this point. Leaving a dead body unchecked could result in your own death – or worse – an infection from the virus they carried.

Once it was certain that it was just the two of you remaining, the man you could’ve only described as a savage approached you. “We should get going,” he said.

You raised an eyebrow at him, evidently confused at his abrupt statement. This guy didn’t even introduce himself and he was already telling you to follow him. “I just saved you in a parking lot – and suddenly we’re allies?”

He irately clicked his tongue, “First of all, you didn’t save me, I could’ve taken care of those shitty zombies by myself. And secondly, I’m a part of one of humanity’s last civilisations, if you want to live, I suggest you follow me.”

“Right, and I should trust you?”

“Tch, if you want to stay here and have a tea party with those shit-stains be my guest. I’m headed back, come join me if you decide to grow a brain.” And with that, he walked over to an abandoned vehicle that had long since rusted over and pulled a duffle bag from the eroded trunk. So that’s what he was? A scavenger?

You watched him intently as he trudged away from you, seemingly knowing where he was going. This asshole, you thought, is he seriously abandoning me here?

You could hear the zombies surrounding your current location – one widely known fact about zombies was their incredibly keen perception, perhaps even as keen as yours. They could hear, see or smell something from a mile away, and the ruckus you made taking out their brethren would’ve been more than enough to arouse their awareness.

You pursed your lips as you thought. You didn’t rightly relish the idea of taking on an entire horde by yourself, and even if this guy was a part of some twisted, cannibalistic cult, you were positive that you could take them on. Either way, it was near certainty that violence was to come. And you’d much rather face humans than have to get an eyeful of those disgusting excuses of breathing organisms.

Shrugging your shoulders, you decided to take your chance with the stranger. At least if you were forced to kill him and his friends, there was probably a nice, safe base waiting for you as a reward.

Description
“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”

- T.S Eliot

You didn’t know how it happened, truthfully. The months that it started seemed to go past in a blur tainted with tragedy and death. You remembered sitting at the kitchen table with your little brother, watching the TV as some anthropologist or whoever spoke about developing a vaccine that would apparently “push humanity forward”.

What a bunch of crap.

What was supposed to augment muscle power only eroded them, what was intended to boost brain power only ate them away, what was supposed to be humanity’s salvation ended up being its absolute destruction.

There was no hope left on earth anymore.

If there was a God, He had abandoned you.

There were signs that no good would come of Project HE – Humanity’s Evolution, as they had taken to calling it – some civilians and military factions had even gone as far as to team up and make bunkers specifically for the inevitable apocalypse. Of course, most of the population assumed they were just being overdramatic.

It had been little under a decade since the mutant outbreak, year 2040 it was, and your town had faced the brunt of the horde. You were just fifteen when it happened. God how you wished you could forget it, the screams of your family as their flesh was ripped from their bodies, their bones being broken and the marrow sucked out of them. You pressed your hands to your ears, trying to drown out the sounds of their cries, but it was no use.

“Teddy!” your brother called, crying for his big sister to save him. You stood there, petrified at the pungent creature that stood before you and over your brother. Drool trickled from its mouth as its one remaining eye bore into you.

You were terrified, too scared to even move, too scared to rescue your nine-year-old brother. Quivering in fear you finally managed to take your eyes off of the putrid monster and looked at the sobbing wreck of a child on the floor. His legs were broken, that fucker must’ve bashed them in you thought.

“Teddy…” he wailed, “Mama and Papa are…” he couldn’t even finish his words at the pain it caused him. His parents were dead. Your parents were dead.

You sat up abruptly in your bed—or better said your worn-out mattress that could barely sustain your weight—and brought a hand up to wipe away the beads of sweat that had built up on your skin. Oh how you wished you would stop having that dream, you wanted those gruesome images to stop haunting your mind, but would they stop?

No, of course not, a fool you would be to even consider such a possibility.

You panted heavily, slouching over in your poor excuse of a bedding arrangement as you prepared for another day ahead. A day of survival. A day of hell.

The sun’s light peaked in through the cracks of the wooden boards you nailed over the windows of the convenience store. Heaving a sigh you stood from your spot and headed toward the bathroom of the abandoned store to splash your face with water. You lifted your head from the sink to stare at your complexion in the cracked mirror barely holding on to the wall and groaned at what you were met with.

Your hair was a mess, your skin was paler than normal and your face seemed to have a frustrated expression permanently carved into it. This whole apocalypse thing was really weighing in on your appearance.

You paused for a moment before raising your bandaged hand to be in view of the reflective glass and, with great hesitation, peeled away the wraps only to reveal the scarred skin beneath. You winced a bit as you recalled the memory of being bitten by those same damned monsters that took your brother from you.

How long had it been since then? Three months, four months? Usually people turned within days, and you waited patiently for your turn, but after a week of no infection you had begun to notice certain changes in your system. You could see farther now, run faster, carry more, and think clearer. It was odd to say in the least, all of a sudden your abilities had increased tenfold, but the bite mark never went away.

You were smart, you knew not to harp on things like this in the middle of the apocalypse, the only thing you could do was use your new abilities to your advantage. And you did. Surviving was a lot smoother for you than you predicted it’d be for others, now that you discovered your immunity to zombie saliva the world was, quite literally, in the palm of your hand.

You applied fresh bandages on your scar before making your way back to your room and packing the necessities in your bag. It was too dangerous to stay here anymore, you knew that, immune or not you couldn’t fight off an entire horde of walkers, nothing in your array of new capabilities covered being eaten alive.

Slinging your pack over your shoulder and placing your pistol in its holster you moved the shelves from in front of the door and pushed your way out of the store.

As you had expected, those mutated assholes had littered the goddamn streets though seemed to be flocking toward one particular location. Was there someone there? What had them so riled up they travelled there in vast numbers? If it was a survivor, you knew you’d had to help them, who else could?

And so you found yourself leaping from rooftop to rooftop with those exceptional leg muscles of yours, sprinting across the buildings and heading to the location that had caught the attention of the undead.

Not to your surprise, it was a survivor, but much to your surprise, this dark-haired fighter had been picking them all off one by one.

You narrowed your eyes to get a better look at the man on ground level that had been so skilfully overpowering the zombies. Your sharp eyesight managed to get you a good view of the handsome – albeit short – man beneath. And good god, was he wearing the most impractical armour you’d ever seen in your life.

He, like many other survivors, had war paint smeared on the plains of his muscular body. His shoulder was marked with an odd symbol you’d never seen before, a pair of wings, it looked like, a pair of black and white wings. His uh, “armour” consisted of barely anything more than arm bracers, a shoulder guard and a pair of shorts accompanied by belts and holsters. Littered on his outfit was an array of skulls – far too small to be human – honestly, you were stumped on what creature those skulls even belonged to. You could only assume they were put there for nothing more than style. Whatever style he was aiming for. What an odd man.

It had seemed though that there were more enemies than he had anticipated and soon the walkers had started to overpower him. “God damn it, you fuckers!” he spat as he wedged his hatchet in the skull of one of them.

This was your cue.

You leapt from the building you were perched on took out your pistol, shooting the ones closest to the mysterious stranger first before taking care of the ones headed to you. This had caught his attention as he paused what he was doing to observe you fighting.

God, you were incredible. So smooth and swift. You made killing zombies look like a goddamn art, one that someone could easily find themselves become enraptured in.

Sensing the presence behind you you brought your leg up in a crescent motion and aimed directly for the head, feeling the skull shatter immediately at the contact between your foot and its crown. Thanks to your immense strength, the already weak and rotted flesh that barely strung the zombie’s cranium to its neck had broken off completely.

The man watched in well-masked awe as you had – quite literally – kicked the head off a zombie. No mere human could ever have that kind of strength, so then, what were you?

Images flashed through his mind, speeding at so fast a motion he barely had time to comprehend a single thought. He couldn’t rightly pinpoint what you were, what skills you possessed to manage to pack so much strength behind a kick, but in all honesty he didn’t even care. You were a survivor, that’s all that mattered to him.

The walkers had been dealt with; the both of you made sure that none of those damned corpses would wake up again. It had been instinct as of this point. Leaving a dead body unchecked could result in your own death – or worse – an infection from the virus they carried.

Once it was certain that it was just the two of you remaining, the man you could’ve only described as a savage approached you. “We should get going,” he said.

You raised an eyebrow at him, evidently confused at his abrupt statement. This guy didn’t even introduce himself and he was already telling you to follow him. “I just saved you in a parking lot – and suddenly we’re allies?”

He irately clicked his tongue, “First of all, you didn’t save me, I could’ve taken care of those shitty zombies by myself. And secondly, I’m a part of one of humanity’s last civilisations, if you want to live, I suggest you follow me.”

“Right, and I should trust you?”

“Tch, if you want to stay here and have a tea party with those shit-stains be my guest. I’m headed back, come join me if you decide to grow a brain.” And with that, he walked over to an abandoned vehicle that had long since rusted over and pulled a duffle bag from the eroded trunk. So that’s what he was? A scavenger?

You watched him intently as he trudged away from you, seemingly knowing where he was going. This asshole, you thought, is he seriously abandoning me here?

You could hear the zombies surrounding your current location – one widely known fact about zombies was their incredibly keen perception, perhaps even as keen as yours. They could hear, see or smell something from a mile away, and the ruckus you made taking out their brethren would’ve been more than enough to arouse their awareness.

You pursed your lips as you thought. You didn’t rightly relish the idea of taking on an entire horde by yourself, and even if this guy was a part of some twisted, cannibalistic cult, you were positive that you could take them on. Either way, it was near certainty that violence was to come. And you’d much rather face humans than have to get an eyeful of those disgusting excuses of breathing organisms.

Shrugging your shoulders, you decided to take your chance with the stranger. At least if you were forced to kill him and his friends, there was probably a nice, safe base waiting for you as a reward.