It's three fifty in the morning on day 72 after the incident, the night has been one of the better ones, with fewer screams, some shadows have passed by the corner, apparently they're mutilated. My area remains quite calm compared to others I've seen, and the stench isn't as strong. I think tomorrow will be a long day; I'm running out of chlorine, and pork... The latter will be hard to find. I saw a supermarket near my old study area, in the small shopping center. It seems to have survived, although the downside is that that area is in dispute.
The boy finished the note, staring at it for a few seconds in the dimly lit room. He was physically and mentally exhausted, his body bearing several bruises under his clothes. The largest and darkest one was on his right shoulder and back, a wound that never healed due to the strain of carrying and firing the rifles.
The room he was in was spacious, his bed was disheveled from tossing and turning without being able to sleep. Next to it, on the nightstand, there was an ATL AR rifle, a custom modification of an AR-15 made for some magnate who probably died without using it. On the table rested a battered mechanical camera with various types of lenses, two notebooks, and a couple of pens. On the wall, there was a huge poster of the Star Wars war, as well as a Millennium Falcon on a shelf, right next to a small stack of comics. The room in general was quite orderly, the wall paint in perfect condition, and the nauseating atmosphere from outside was imperceptible in such a place, no flies, no smell. However, at a glance, anyone could guess that something strange was happening.
The windows of the room were covered with transparent plastic and sections of newspapers, both placed inside and outside the room. But that wasn't the main indication of what was happening.
It was probably the overall darkness or the deep silence that rested over everything, houses, and streets of the city. Silence and death lingered on every corner of the scene; not even crickets could be heard above the wind.
The room where he rested was the main one in a large house. Despite everything being meticulously arranged, and flies not making their way inside such a place, just by looking at it, you could tell that something was not right.
The boy grabbed the camera and took a picture of himself; the camera's flash momentarily blinded him. He noted the time in his notebook as he glanced at a large cell phone in the pocket of his jeans.
He moved around the place, opened the window to get a glimpse through all the plastic and check the area. There was no movement, no signs of danger, which was a relief. However, he felt a tremendous discomfort; he had spent several nights without sleeping well. When the clock struck three or four in the morning, he was already awake and wandering around. He needed some way to sleep, even if it required medication. Otherwise, he would collapse.
He checked the AR rifle when the phone emitted a small green light, indicating it was exactly 4 am. That greatly discouraged him; he had a long day ahead, and by noon, his body would probably feel terribly exhausted.
His thoughts were interrupted by a scream from inside the house. The sound woke his sluggish senses, and he got up immediately. His breathing quickened for a moment, his body trembled, and instinctively, he moved to look at the door. He took the Beretta 92 SB-F pistol from the nightstand, pulled the slide back, loading it, and walked slowly down the dark hallway. He didn't try to turn on any lights; he knew there was no electricity in the entire house. His eyes were equally adjusted to the darkness; he could perceive the movement and outline of everything in the house with ease.
Except for that scream, everything remained silent. He was aware that it was almost impossible for anything to get in; he had set up all the necessary traps, checked everything before going to bed. He hadn't left a visible trail, so no sniffer should try to make its way inside. The place was, in practical terms, a fortress of concrete and steel. He had tested it before, which is why he stayed there, despite being quite large for one person.
He advanced through the living room; everything was in its place, which calmed him somewhat, but it wasn't a reason for trust. The scream sounded again, and he recognized its source. He ran with the weapon held at his side to the back of the house. Where there used to be a beautiful patio, there was now a room with barred windows on the inside, without any door.
Inside the sealed room was one of these bloody beasts, repulsive, with glassy eyes and putrefied pale-yellow skin. Despite everything, the creature seemed to remain somewhat immune to time. It had a hole in its jaw from which something viscous dripped, something the boy didn't want to investigate. It had no hair, but it was obviously of the female sex, indicated by its chest and the long blue blouse with dry and stiff brown stains. It was trying to escape from a pair of handcuffs and chains that kept it at the back of the room.
An image came to the boy's mind; it was on day fifty-four when he captured that repugnant creature and locked it entirely in that room as an experiment. He needed to know how long a zombie could survive without anything to eat. That was the only reason to keep it despite the screams or noises it might make. In his opinion, it was a calculated risk.
In recent days, the creature didn't scream or wheeze as much as before; it remained still, motionless for hours. But it seemed that hunger brought consciousness back at certain moments. That, or for some other reason, the undead occasionally emitted guttural screams or senseless wheezing. It unnerved him and scared him at times; there was always danger. If only another undead heard it, he would have problems.
Fortunately, the room and the hallway contained all the sound within the house. The walls of that house had internal linings and sand within each concrete block. Nevertheless, he usually closed the door to the adjacent corridor, which eliminated the scream inside the house, and his mind was calmer, allowing him to get some sleep.
However, tonight he was there, standing in front of the creature, contemplating the possibility of eliminating it. He raised the gun, aiming directly at the zombie's head. He wanted to see it dead, to end its suffering and screams, but it didn't make sense yet. He lowered the pistol, disappointed in himself and helpless in the face of the entire situation he was living. His body trembled with anger.
The smell of excrement and old urine from that dead thing didn't help relax his nerves either. The flies were in that wing of the house, buzzing and fluttering on the floor, walls, and the body of the dead. It was a headache.
He sank to the floor; it was day seventy-two in the early hours of the morning, almost twenty days of having the dead one locked up there, and there were still no signs that it was about to succumb due to hunger. Were they immortal? Could they survive forever? Or should he try other factors like temperature or water exposure? What should he do? It was impossible to contain the entire population of his city by locking them up. Maybe the other person was right, and blowing them all up was the most effective method.
Seventy-two days ago, he was an ordinary boy from an ordinary part of his city. He had just finished high school with excellent grades, which he cultivated thinking about a good university and perhaps a scholarship to make things easier. His hobbies were photography and swimming; the former allowed him to appreciate and detail things, the latter gave him a couple of muscles and a well-defined back.
His few friends would have said that he was a quiet person with few words. Serene to an extreme, a dreamer regarding his ambitions but very focused on his tasks in the classroom.
Now, his high grades in school didn't matter much, nor did the swimming records, or his possible entry into a biology or medical career.
Just a few hours were enough for the rules of society to no longer apply. Hours for the future of thousands to be destroyed, and the only relevant rule was to survive. There weren't many safe places now, let alone media, police, military, and the like; they all ended up collapsing due to their own kind, humans.
The cause of this disaster was unknown; it wasn't verified if it was a virus, a biological weapon, or a failed and uncontrollable experiment. There wasn't much time to react either. By the time governments confronted it, it was happening almost simultaneously in every corner of the planet. The warning calls only created panic among the population, and the shelter sites became lunch for the dead.
The first day of the infection and the following five days were the worst. The dead actively hunted and chased people who screamed in desperation trying to save themselves.
What he was sure of was the mode of infection; he had seen it firsthand several times: blood. Both a bite and contact with infected blood on an open wound turned people into the dead. The eyes or the mouth were the same story; the person would die within seconds amid convulsions and screams of pain, and then they would rise as part of the zombie army that roamed the city.
He returned to the room, disheartened by the situation and the stagnation of things. His future now was not bright; on the contrary, it seemed very gray, with a chilling routine of searching for food and surviving. Perhaps one of the worst things was being alone. Not having anyone to talk to was taking a toll on his mind. The real damage was not from the time he had been without company; it was the stress he was subjected to day after day with few options for fun or relaxation. He was sure that sometimes he suffered from small delusions for the same reason; that's why he had journals in his room and took photos whenever he could. He needed an anchor to reality.
Unfortunately, necessity didn't allow him to lock himself in his room to sleep and watch the days go by. There were many things to do if he wanted to stay alive, places to explore, supplies to secure. Time was always running, and the one who took things first was the one who survived. New rule of the apocalypse.
On the other hand, his home required certain processes to remain safe. This included cleaning with chlorine, starting the generators, finding gasoline, sealing the rooms, installing air filters, cleaning water filters. And all of this meant continuous outings to a city infested with the dead. Visiting places where hordes rested, or places so nauseating that you could barely stand without vomiting.
He was sure that at some point, luck would run out, as would the supplies, but he wasn't willing to make it that easy. Not without a fight. He didn't have a death wish; he felt that there was much more to come, although he wasn't sure exactly what, and that made him anxious and uncertain.
It was 4:23 AM when he heard an explosion in the distance; the windows vibrated, and the dead reacted by letting out screams into the air. Hundreds of them began to run in different directions. He remained silent in the dim light. The clustered footsteps were even heard on the roof of the neighboring house. He slightly opened the curtain to observe the situation, shielded by the darkness and the chaos in the streets; none of them noticed his eyes in the darkness.
"Later, I have to go check what that was, probably some group, or some dead thing bumped into something," he muttered quietly before closing the curtain and lying down on the bed. The rifle remained by his side, as did the Beretta. It was the only way to get some sleep.
An hour later, his cell phone vibrated, and he jolted awake. The waking hour always took him by surprise and left him with little rest; his daily routine usually started early in the morning.
He took a shower, ate some cereal with previously prepared powdered milk. Then he cleaned and reloaded the ATL AR, as he had used it the day before. He went on to water the plants he kept in an improvised basement where sunlight entered through a small window with reinforced glass and grates. The light was dispersed around the room with mirrors hung by wires. A rudimentary but effective method he had read about somewhere.
The small greenhouse was one of his recent projects. He had some herbs for any meal, a couple of plants he thought might be antiseptic, but he didn't dare to test it, some tomatoes, and a couple of flowers without knowing the exact reason.
He didn't usually use electricity except to keep the refrigerator running, although he had managed to get three medium-sized generators. The reason was that the noise they made was a danger, and not the entire house was soundproof. The soundproof room he had created for them was now the residence of his unwanted wheezing tenant in the back, so he moved the generators to the basement. There, the noise was greatly minimized, although not entirely. For that reason, they could only be turned on for a couple of hours a day while he kept watch, ensuring that the smell of smoke didn't attract visitors.
That day, he needed to leave the house. The day before, he had investigated a large supermarket about a kilometer away from where he was. The area was swarming with sniffers, which always complicated things. Moreover, certain buildings were nearby, and these always meant swarms of huffers. He didn't enter the mall, but from the outside, he could see that the supermarket's gates were intact. This was a good sign, meaning it hadn't been looted in the early days. It was worth getting closer; food was one of the most crucial assets, and even though he had plenty, he understood that at some point, the situation might not be so simple.
Despite that, the number of dead in that area was a significant danger. The offices had created areas where concentrations were higher than usual. Doubt had firmly settled in his mind. He feared the huffers greatly, and with good reason.
After spending so much time alone, in the company of the beasts, he had been able to differentiate them and classify them into three types.
First, there were the mutilated. They were decayed dead with yellowish skin due to time, moving slowly and disorganized. They reacted to sounds around them, which often disoriented them. Many of them were missing eyes or limbs, hence their name. They didn't pose a significant threat unless encountered in a confined space or when they traveled in large numbers. He had already seen them, crowding together in one place, body after body until structures gave way. In general, they were the type of zombie he had read about somewhere and seen in movies.
Then there were the huffers. They were infected humans who seemed to be in good physical condition. Their eyes were sunken in shadow, and the air around them was extremely nauseating, especially because some of them still excreted on themselves. They were distinguishable by the blue or black veins heavily marked on their whitish or grayish skin. Their muscles seemed to be easily defined, and some lost all their hair. They stood anywhere, agitated, expecting a peculiar scream or sound. Upon hearing something of interest, they would run vigorously in groups toward their target. Additionally, they possessed immense strength and, at times, by instinct, reflex, or imitation, they were capable of overcoming obstacles, even opening doors. This, in the boy's understanding, was a sign of intelligence. Despite being very rare occurrences, he had already witnessed it a couple of times, taking shortcuts to surprise their prey or bypassing obstacles.
Lastly, but most importantly, were the sniffers, which he considered the most dangerous of the three. This category included infected humans and animals; he had seen dogs and birds fall into this category. For some reason, the infection had given them a hypersensitivity to smells, allowing them to track their prey. They seemed to communicate with each other through deafening screams. They were fast, rapacious, and, like the huffers, they could climb. They could be found anywhere, hidden, following tracks, sniffing around. The worst part was that, if one of them found you and let out its hellish scream, you could be sure that a horde of huffers and mutilated would immediately respond to the call.