Cravings of the Dead

Usually these tales begin with something like;

It was the year 2020…

Or;

In the year 2012…

It\'s often a pretty number too or something with meaning at least.



This story doesn\'t begin like that.

Maybe, because it isn\'t a story. Well, not to me at least.

I know some people who try to pretend it is though. That none of this is really happening.

I wish I could.

Then again, if I could, I\'d probably be dead by now.

Then again, per chance that is a faith much preferable.

I\'d better stop now. Lest I get stuck in a vicious circle of \'then agains\', again.



Currently I\'m living in a small hell hole in the inner city.

It\'s a small human colony of mismatches, desperately struggling to survive.

Don\'t even try to get any petty ideas about brave survivors striving to find a way to combat the evils of the world and restore humanity to its \'rightful\' throne on top of the world. These are not those kind of people, these people are purebred Darwinists; survival of the fittest. Though I doubt half of them even know or remember who Darwin was.

My point is, these men and woman will slit your throat without a second thought if it could get them more food or warmth or shelter. I\'ve seen parents toss their crying babies unblinkingly aside, sacrificing their own offspring to be ripped to shreds in a cruel death, so they can escape from them.



Them; The Monsters that now rule our world.

I\'m not sure exactly what spawned them, no one is really. But, nobody cares much either. Why or how they came to be is of no concern to us.

Our concern is to do every thing to survive.

Thus we live by a strict set of ruthless but effective rules.

My mother created them, she is one of the \'leaders\' of our little colony.

It\'s funny how a crisis can bring out parts of some one\'s personality no other was ever aware of.

She was, well still is a lovely woman. Quite petite and fragile to the eye, soft spoken and polite. My father did the disciplining in the house, she just busied herself with prettying it up.

She was a simple receptionist, hired because of her impeccable appearance and perfect posture. She was very proud of it, and would always chide me if she caught me slouching.

Only now she doesn\'t chide.

Now she\'ll kick me in the shin or hit me with the butt of a gun.



When the invasion began a group of them invaded the office complex she worked in. One of the first people to fall victim was her own boss.

I remember that man quite clearly. It\'s hard not to really. I mean, that guy was huge. He was a tall square boulder, I swear he must have had his clothes custom made, he was large enough to dwarf most NBA players. But his most distinctive feature was his face, or rather what grew on it. Clean shaven till he had baby soft cheeks (You don\'t wanna know how I know, believe me) they were marred by a bizarre manifestation of wild wicked growth under his nose. I swear it looked like he missed while sniffing up the coke-line and accidentally got a porcupine stuck up there instead. He must have been way wasted.

Still, that inhumane manifestation wasn\'t enough to save him. To bad, I really liked him.

As I heard he died vialently.

Came storming out of his office shotgun at the ready, took down a fair amount of them too, before he finally succumbed under the seemingly never ending wave of undead.

He died bravely, defending his workers and workplace, ensuring the majority of them could escape to the safety of the outside. Where more monsters roamed.

A lot of brave men died in those first few weeks.

I think heroes are extinct now. They were a rare breed to begin with.



Now my mother, she not hero. She\'s not even brave.

She is however, incredibly vain.

Rumors say she had been cowering in the cafeteria when the evacuation was in progress, too scared to move. Rumors also say she was eloping with the delivery boy, but that\'s beside the point. He is her right hand man now though, but I\'d still rather see him as a pushy big brother.

So yes, she was hiding in the cafeteria, probably shivering behind the coffee machine, when one of them found her.

Common sense dictates that such a fragile little lady would be a goner in such a scenario. Common sense also dictates that Jehovah witnesses would not exist in a post-apocalyptic world. Moral of the story; common sense died out with the heroes.

What happened was beyond bizarre, and the witnesses, yes there were witnesses still speak of it with a mixture of awe and disbelief.

The monster found her first, as she had refused to hide in the large cupboard with the other workers because she did not want to dirty her dress or rip it or something stupid of the ilk. So the monster found her, and well obviously attacked her, cute little defenseless meal I\'m sure it\'d thought, if they are capable of thought.

While it roughly hauled her from behind the coffee machine it broke something. A nail.

I know not what kind of strange mythical switch a nail is to a woman, but that broken nail caused her a complete 180 in her personality.

Screeching like a banshee she was said to have transformed into a breathtakingly beautiful fiend, (I swear that delivery boy is full of shit) and bludgeoned the monster to death with her baby blue designer pin needle heals. This of coarse ruined them, effectively increasing and prolonging her rage.

She stormed out of the cafeteria, followed by a small band of inspired colleagues, leading the path to the emergency exit and madly swinging a giant stapler she picked up somewhere at anything or anyone who dared to cross her path. At the exit, her last great act, after probably losing more then half of the band that had been following her and not even knowing, was to decapitate monster that was hottest on their heels with a machete that was conveniently laying nearby and having the survivors shove the large trash container in front of the door, effectively blocking the exit route of the monsters (and probably those still trapped inside).

Personally, I don\'t believe even half of the story, but it\'s a fact that delivery boy still lugs around a giant stapler as symbol of her power.



Afterward more people joined the little band that followed my mother; people from neighboring offices, kids from my school, shopkeepers of all kind and whatever more that roamed the streets and was human.

Over the months we grew to be about three hundred strong and settled in a abandoned mall. I swear this has everything to do with my mother\'s beauty quest.

Luckily this mall is defendable like a fortress; it\'s one of those super deluxe malls with a special building plan designed to appeal to and attract the richest people possible. It\'s not particularly big, and is built on an island in the middle of a sizable parking lot and surrounded by a small lake.

Its name is Chateau d\' Lux. On principles alone I would have never entered any establishment bearing such a name. However, it can not be denied that, with one entrance, tall elegant battlements on each corner and strong solar powered spotlights this castle replica is the perfect fortress.

Perfect, apart form the food factor.



Initially food was not a problem.

Le Chateau was well stocked and a small but adequately sized food court. That the building also had several large solar panels was an added bonus, and probably one of the main reasons this fortress survived so long.

By economizing on other electrical aperture such as lights, elevators and other luxury items, we could save up enough electricity to keep the large refrigerators running on solar power.

Our base is probably one of the best organized ones in the city, and I don\'t mean to boast.

A couple of techies joined the ranks and they planned everything from energy consumption to escape routes to waste management. The result is a strict set of rules and weekly boring lectures on how act within and around the base.



With all these businesses perfectly ordered, there remained only one problem: food.

Over time our base quickly attracted a large number of survivors, which steadily depleted our food supply at an even quicker rate.

We couldn\'t really turn them away. We needed people to man the fortress, for both maintenance and defense. It is different now though, if you want to enter, you damn well have to be able to contribute something worthwhile.

This has made us quite hated with some of the other survivor groups. Most of them refugees we turned away because they had nothing we needed.

To maintain our food supply quite early on convoys were organized. Every morning a group of youths is send out to scout for food and other useful items and bring them back to the base.

Lately, easy picking have become scarce though, and we have taken a new approach. One that has made us even more hated.



Raiding.

Basically, what we do is locate one of the bases of the other colonies spread throughout the city and raid it. Preferably one of the smaller colonies, since these generally have the worse defenses. Just good enough to keep a mindless monster out.

Defiantly not good enough to keep a ban of armed organized and determined teens out.

Each of us has specific tasks, fitted to our endurance and strengths.

I\'m a scout and a look out.

I\'m on the small side for a guy, something that\'s always peeved me and I\'ve always blamed my mother for. I\'ve never had a great endurance, but I\'m a terrific sprinter and climber. These are the things that gave me the job.

Scouts work alone.

We watch the back of the group, but nobody watches ours. Our primary goal is to make sure the main group is safe and the retreat to the fortress also remains safe, so that as much food as possible can be transported back to the fort. It\'s simple really, the more you worry about each other, the bigger the chance you lose the food.

Give one life to spare many. This is the same reason we don\'t send out rescue missions for those that get left behind. If you manage to turn up on your own, great! We might put you in quarantine, if you were valuable.



Today our target is a small group know as The Bokors.

They are a shabby looking group, and very eccentric. There is actually hardly any structure visible in their organization, which may make one wonder how they managed for so long. This is not what attracted us though.

What attracted us was their location.

Their base is a large experimental underground root cellar complex, built by a couple of fanatics in 2007, in anticipation of an oil-shortage induced apocalypse if I remember correctly. Fanatics will always prove to be good for something.



Right now I am perched on a small silo opposite to the low flat roof from which our band commenced their invasion.

All is quiet, as usual.

I\'ve gotten used to the sun that burns down relentlessly, damaging my skin. I should really remember to actually use sun block for once before the product becomes extinct.

Suddenly a faint commotion can be heard from the hole we made in the roof, followed by the distant shots of firearms under ground.

\'Ah, they\'ve been discovered\' I think, \'took them long enough. Now lets just hope-\'

The long distance communicator beside me crackles faintly and I sigh. \'No such hope\'.

I flip the gadget open and Derk\'s crackling voice immediately greats me.

"Whyatt, get in here, we need you to scout for an emergency exit. Take the West wing, Vicky\'s already on the Eastern side. Over."

I sighed again, things must have gone very wrong if they send out two scouts, I concluded as I jumped off the silo and dashed toward our initial point of entry.

Carefully I slid into the cool building, darting into a corner and pausing to let my eyes adjust to the darkness before continuing.

Some where off to my right I heard the sounds of a skirmish. I set off in the opposite direction. It was my job to find an exit incase Vicky, the primary scout, didn\'t succeed or got caught. We both had our advantages, Vicky traveled with the group so she could find the places closet to the group. But because of that the rightful owners of this place were probably already aware of her presence.

This worked to my advantage, since most people didn\'t expect there to be a separate scout that always moves in the exact opposite direction of the main group.



I slinked through the damp dark narrow corridors.

\'Damn,\' I wondered, \'what do these people do here? It reeks of death; they probably don\'t even know basic first aid or something. They\'re such a waste of food.\'

The farther I moved the more I doubted I\'d be the one to find an exit. The path I\'d taken seemed to lead only deeper into the ground, and unless I found some airshafts, my search would have been hopeless. I\'d have to find something soon or I would turn back. I\'m not spending the night in here, hiding from some old vengeful geezers.

And then I suddenly caught some movement out of the corner of my eye. I instinctively sidestepped and found myself facing what I had initially taken for a cupboard, gun in hand. It appeared to be just an old rope gently swaying in the wind.

Cautiously I approached it, so I could discern the origin of the airflow. As I came closer I saw that the cupboard in reality was an old elevator used to bring goods and whatnot from the surface down to the bottom levels. Some 10 foot above me I could see the evening sky.

I made sure I was completely alone before contacting Derk.

"Derk, Whyatt here, I found an exit. Over."

Derk\'s response came immediately, his voice much calmer then it had been earlier, though still a little shaky.

"Good, we\'re out already, Vicky came through." He stated proudly. I groaned softly in annoyance, of course his perfect girl would. His next words drove all contempt from my mind though.

"Whyatt, don\'t use the exit we came in through. This place is infested, and they are still swarming there, drawn to our lingering scent. Over."

My throat closed up as I shakily affirmed that I understood before closing the communication channel.

Just my luck.

Stuck all alone in a zombie nest.

At least the exit is right in front of me…