Sabrina Eisele
02/05/2015
Dead of Night
Zombies. I can’t recall how many times I’ve had nightmares including these flesh munching, blood-lusting fiends. One way or another dreams always become reality. I have watch duty tonight, which is fine, I can only rely on myself. Getting enough sleep in this world is arduous but getting sleep makes you vulnerable.
There’s so much on my mind; fresh and crusting blood clinging to coarse lips and greyed skin. Chunks of flesh stuck in between yellowed teeth. Raw, torn skin, pale with death, stomach swollen with devoured flesh of the living, or rather prior living. This ghastly scene races through my head as I anxiously grip my pickaxe. This disease took everything from everyone. Nothing was left untouched. Everyone paid the price.
I remember the day the outbreak occurred. It was all over the news, parents gripped their children as the panic-stricken news anchor delivered his appalling tale. Like an epidemic the word had spread, plaguing the world’s swiftly beating hearts and troubled minds with a horror that, until this day, had lingered unknown to mankind. On that day I was informed of a race of terrifying and mindless varmint; a species so primal they were rendered speechless, thoughtless, and consumed with a hunger for conformity. These creatures were none other than the monstrous beasts known as flesh eating, mind gobbling zombies.
The snap of a twig brings me back from my memory. I hastily climb the small barrier I created and vault myself into the clearing. They come slowly, eyes straight ahead, jaws slack, arms reaching forward. Many are unable to walk due to decomposition or severed limbs and are reduced to pulling themselves forward with hands, fingers, or even teeth. As soon as they are in range I start swinging.
The rest of the camp hears the grotesque struggle and thoughtlessly heads to my rescue, but there are more than I anticipated. I promptly dislodge my axe from one of the deceased and look up. The odor is biting like infant feces, its pungent like rotten food, it’s an overwhelming smell of musty blood. Grumbles of the walking dead monopolize my senses. We are surrounded. Zombies are relentless in their assaults. They keep advancing as long as their brains are intact. Twelve against dozens of man eating bodies we are driven to use the last of our ammunition. They never retreat, we don’t waste a single bullet.
As the sun