Pandemic

16:51 Hrs, September 11th

Glandice City

54 Carter St.

Vincent sat in the building that he had called his home for the past year, staring at a barren wall in grim darkness. The generator was on the fritz and all the windows had been sealed shut. He thought of nothing, as if thinking might strike a nerve. He didn't want to move, he didn't want to eat, he didn't want to stay in the fortress he occupied. Nevertheless the thoughts seeped through the floodgates. Slowly they took over his vision, and he was back in time exactly one year.

He was shaken awake by his father. "Vincent! Let's go! There's no time!"

"What? What's going on?" Vincent replied groggily. There was a low groan unlike anything he had ever heard before coming from down the hall. He jumped out of his bed and raced to find the source of the noise.

"Wait!"

It was too late. Vincent came face to face with a towering inferno. Their house was on fire and the structural integrity was deteriorating with every second that passed.

"How?" He blurted out running back into his room.

"Someone tried using a Molotov against them!" His father yelled over the continuous roar of the fire. He grabbed a baseball bat and smashed the window open. Let me check if it's clear before you jump down."

"What?" But his father was already out of the window.

"It's clear! Jump!"

The floor buckled, then collapsed from underneath him. Vincent reached out to the window ledge as he fell and held on for dear life, the floor crashing into the hungry mass of flames. Broken glass dug into his fingers. Heat licked his face. Fear rushed through him.

The paint was melting off the walls as a large crack shot across it, smaller cracks breaking and splitting off of the first.

Vincent heaved himself up, despite the glass entrenching itself in his flesh. For a moment he struggled to get his legs up, then rolled out of the window. He landed on his back hard. Everything went black from the intense, striking pain.

Vincent momentarily broke free from the engulfing trance. He wasn't exactly sure what had happened between this time and when he woke up in the fortress that he still resided in. His thoughts skipped over to his first memory of the fortress.

Orange light poured through a single window when he woke up. The sun was setting. He was laying on top of a blanket on a concrete floor. Several men moved about the building at work. There was clustered whispering but he couldn't tell what they were saying. Vincent stood up and began searching for his father.

"Hey! He's up and about!" A man came up from behind, slapping Vincent's shoulder heartily. "Feelin' okay?"

He was lost in confusion. "Uhh, yeah." He paused. "Where am I? Where's my dad?"

"We've holed up in a partially built office building. Figured it would be safest here." Someone boarded up the final window and the room went dark.

The man turned for a moment. "Get that emergency generator up and running!" He looked back at the teenager. "Your dad should be around here somewhere. Check some of the upper levels, but don't go outside."

"Why? What's outside?"

But the man was already gone, slipping away in the darkness.

Vincent began to slowly make his way across the room, not even sure how large it was.

A cone of light dashed across the room before freezing on him. "Where do you think you're going?" It was the same man.

"I-"

"Until we get the generator up and running it's gonna be dark. You might want a flashlight." He handed it over to Vincent. "Be careful though. Some of the floors haven't been cleaned out yet. If you see or hear anything unusual don't make a sound and immediately alert us. Okay?"

"What are you even talking about?"

The man sighed. "I…Just remember this. If you see dead people don't hesitate to run." At that the man slipped away for good, turning on another flashlight and passing more out to others.

Vincent walked around, flicking the flashlight back and forth, examining his surroundings. The place was extremely bare, like an empty car garage. The floor, the ceiling, and the evenly spaced pillars separating the two were all concrete. Men bustled about, fortifying the building against unknown forces. The women sat in a far corner of the room in a circle surrounding the children playing inside. Searching, he finally found a staircase. His steps echoed off the dark walls.

Vincent wondered if he was just dreaming, where everything seemed so real, but when you thought about it nothing made sense. What happened to my house? Who were these people? What are they so scared of? What was so dangerous about dead people? He entered the second floor. There were men boarding up the windows on this floor as well. The orange light pouring in, yet ever so slowly fading, revealed a mess of construction tools. I can see what that guy meant when he said all the rooms weren't cleaned out yet. The men paid no attention as he scanned the room for his father. There was no sign of him.

Vincent wandered back into the shroud of darkness the enveloped the staircase and walked up to the third story. The room was completely dark, the sun had finally set. The flashlight roamed about the walls but there was no sign of anyone here as far as he could tell. There was substantially more debris on this floor than on the second floor. Vincent didn't bother investigating the room further, and continued up to the fourth floor.

There were double doors blocking the entrance. Two rectangular windows, one on each door, allowed only vision beyond that point. Vincent tried opening the doors but both were locked securely. He peered through one of the windows and shined the flashlight through the other.

This floor had by far the most junk in it, piling so high in one corner that it reached the ceiling. Several dividers split the room into sections, preventing a full scan of the room from his current vantage point.

The circle of light slid across the room slowly, giving the silhouettes of debris color. A figure stood still, and stared back at the teenager.

Vincent's heart almost jumped out of his chest as his flashlight illuminated someone who was watching him the entire time. Collecting his senses he looked back, but the person was gone, once again a silhouette among the debris.

Vincent thought for several moments, trying to visualize what he just saw. A very weak person, possibly injured, definitely starving. What were they doing in there? Why'd they lock the door? He decided to check it out. He took the back of the flashlight and smashed one of the door windows open with it. Reaching in, he twisted the doorknob and pushed the door open slowly. Vincent was surprised at how silent everything was, even scared. Not even the door hinges made a sound. He didn't even understand why he was so scared. The man said watch out for dead people, right? If the person can stand and move then they clearly aren't dead. So why am I shaking? He stepped forward slowly, scanning the area of the sighting with his flashlight. There was no movement as far as he could tell.

There was a low grunt, followed by a moan, followed by clicking, all of which echoed from all directions. Vincent's body shook as he closed in on the place where the stranger once stood. It made no sense that he was scared, but he knew something wasn't right here. The sound of a displaced pile of debris ricocheted off the walls.

The flashlight spiraled around the room wildly, there was nothing. Moments passed, then Vincent reached the pile of rubble the person was hiding behind and shined down the light. Just a concrete floor. He mustered up the bravery left in him. "Please, wherever you are, let me know. I can get you food. Just make some sort of acknowledgement."

There was complete silence, then a roar, then clicking quickly approaching. But from which direction?

The generator kicked in and small, bluish lights cut through the darkness. Vincent whipped around fearfully to scope out the target. A split second too late. The person was charging him at full force. No time to react.

There was a loud bang and the attacker was knocked to the side and down, skidding lifelessly to Vincent's feet.

The left side of the corpse's torso was missing, brown liquid emptying out of the fatal wound. Vincent stared at the body, understanding nothing, then searched for the cause.

At the entrance his father stood, holding a rifle.

Vincent broke free from the past once again. He must've been in too much shock to register anything that had happened immediately after his first encounter with a zombie. He did, however, remember what the city looked like when he first saw it. The circumstances were blurry, but the image was clear. Plumes of dark smoke, mountains of fire, collapsing buildings, scattered gunshots, screams for help, car accidents, blood, fallen power lines, death. That image never faded, no matter how much he wished it would.

Vincent's memory flashed forward several days to the government's final response. The spectacle of Hydrogen bombs lighting the horizon was awe inspiring, both in the sheer heat that emanated for miles, and in the mass destruction that was caused. It was this that killed all the plant life. The unwanted result of the bombs. The immense levels of smoke released into the atmosphere world-wide blocked out the sunlight. The effect still hadn't reversed itself enough to allow enough light for plants to survive. The lack of plants to hold in soil and to break the wind led to sandstorms that crippled everything that remained. Vincent also remembered that it was about this time that times got tough for the "plague fighters", a term that worldwide survivors gave themselves. Almost immediately food supplies ran low and the nearby sources of food were quickly depleted. As "gathering missions" grew longer and the zombies became more intelligent men were quickly lost. Soon the office building was in a crisis, as there weren't enough men to collect food, and everyone was starving. There was no possible way to support such a population and there was a split of the people. The majority wanted to search for a new fortress, with better food supplies. The minority thought it was best to stick it out in the office and hope that a solution could be found. After hours of argument there was a compromise. Most of the men, and all the women and children decided that they would leave in search of a new sanctuary. They would leave all who wanted to stay, as the remaining population could potentially survive in the city. Both groups were happy, yet sad, thinking that the other group made the wrong decision and would die because of it. In the end both groups were right. Immediately after the group departed for a new place to live they were ambushed by zombies. The few remaining in the office building provided protection from the onslaught and saved the group from certain death. The group was never heard from again, though a radio was constantly tuned to the designated frequency. The remaining group, consisting of himself, his father, and six others, toughed it out in the office complex. Though "gathering missions" were less frequent, they were extremely difficult due to the cut in men. Through the months their numbers dwindled down one by one until it was just him and his dad. Now he was the last known survivor of Glandice City, appointed the task of surviving against an countless hordes. Now it wasn't a matter of if they killed him, but rather when.