Note: Fluctuations in writing style, expediency, or manner of storytelling changed because I am tired and wanted to get something fresh done in time for posting this. Just arrived in the place I've been travelling to, and am looking forward to sleep once this is done being prepared for being put up. If you want to comment on the quality of this, please do; I want to know how this is received so that I can know what's good or bad about my writing. Anyways, that's enough rambling. Enjoy!
Clarise's End-Times II by Mackinley Clevinger, March 9, 2016
I pointed across the gap between buildings, using a patient and orderly tone in asking, “What are those over there?” He followed the path of my arm, eyes resting on the undulating mass of bodies that had managed to reach the roof which were now casting about for, one would assume, signs of the presence of someone to whom they could ruin the day of. Specifically, given my understanding of what had just happened, searching for yours truly; somehow managing to make a terrible string of days even worse. “What would you call them?” I hadn’t expected life to get much worse than being stranded on a rooftop for over a day, but I guess if we knew what was going to happen in our lives, it wouldn’t be as much fun. “I… I’d have to say that they’re –“
“Zombies, yes, correct. Now, when the dead roam the streets and are trying to hunt you down to, one would think, eat you quite painfully; what kind of world do you call that?” I lowered my arm, wrapping my other around a stomach that had just started to grumble. Figures; haven’t eaten or drunk in ages, and now there’re dead people between me and being able to get food. Am I actually going to have to kill someone to get some service here? “Oh, I’m not saying the world hasn’t gone to shit.” Wait, what? “I’m just saying that it’s… well, more complicated than it just being… that.” He waved an indistinct arm towards the other roof. It was hard to focus on what he was saying with how hungry I was… “I… just… explain? Please?” Maybe when he stopped talking I could get something to eat.
They were completely still, and watching us. Watching him. We were watching him, able to see the ripped clothing and small cuts that still had flecks of dried blood around them, smell the sweat and dirt from whatever he’d been through in the last twenty-four hours. We could feel our hunger – I blinked, breaking away from that feeling of oneness with them, unable to escape that absolute hunger I’d shared with them. I took a shuddering step towards him, mind in two places as he stared at the watching horde. Half of me was the hunger that was driving me towards him, and the other was thinking about what had just happened. They were a hive mind, the individual forgotten in a shared collective whole that thought and acted as one, but without any queen to serve or an overarching purpose besides the immutable and absolute hunger they could never sate.
I was getting closer to him, mimicking his actions of wary surprise to approach without suspicion. He said something, but it didn’t break through the fog; I just nodded my head and murmured assent, seeming to placate him. I was starving, and there was prey right here, before me. There had been a wealth of information shared in my short time in the hive mind, thousands of successful and failed hunts telling me exactly how to do it, but there was something that made me pause in my approach. The way they felt, intelligent but mindless in their obsession to reach their target… I wasn’t there. There was a part of me that hadn’t given in to the hunger yet, and all of me had broken away from the hive mind to remain being me, Clarise, not a creature but a person.
I stood still, trembling, trying to fight the compulsion to give in and jump him. I didn’t even know his name, I didn’t know his story, and who would miss him? I probably wouldn’t even be blamed if I told them he’d died saving me, and then when I was close I could – I shut my eyes, backing away from him and folding my arms across my stomach, reigning myself in. I could hear moans, could recognize them as more than meaningless calls of the dead, but as judgement and disappointment in my failure. In my refusal to join the horde after being invited, and in sorrow that the void would never be filled as it had been for so many of them already. “Th-thank you. B-but y-you should g-go…” They were urging me on, inviting me back, trying to make me take him down. The hunger wasn’t just a part of their bodies, it was a part of the horde, and when one sated that hunger the entire horde would feel it, would be released of the hunger that was driving me to consider eating another human being.
Wait. Am I human if I’m, like, tapped into the zombie mindset? “What’s wrong? Why are – Oh hell no!” He ran, and it took everything I had to avoid chasing him down to rip him apart and sate the hunger. I was me, Clarise, but if I gave in it’d be like any addiction; anything for the next fix, even if it meant giving up my sense of self to the horde in exchange for a rebate on all of their purchases in blood. My jaw shuddered, craving something, anything to eat. Why did I feel like this? It had started as regular hunger from being stranded, and morphed into something much, much worse. More a mental craving than a physical need, though the latter was far too present on my mind still. My entire body was shaking, wanting to run after the fleeing form as he approached the roof-access door and started to hammer on it with his fist. He was trapped, and I could definitely overpower him.
They wanted me to do it, their groans a cacophony I couldn’t shut out. I wanted me to do it, to give in to the – I raised an arm to my mouth and bit into it viciously, mind emptied of rational and irrational thought as pain blanked everything out in a blissful, red overlay of oh-my-fucking-god-why-did-I-do-that. I fell to my knees, trying to work my teeth out of my arm, pain lancing up my arm whenever they got stuck and wrenched at the sensitive flesh beneath the skin. Blood poured out of my mouth and arm, covering my clothes and most of me in red, but my mind was cleared of the obsessive need to eat another human being. I could still hear and understand the horde, and at the edge of my mind I could feel the hunger, but for now I had circumvented it.
I looked towards the man, still banging on the door furiously and looking back at me like I was a homicidal freak bent on eating him, as if a person couldn’t change in thirty seconds. I rose to my feet unsteadily, the abuse of the day and the malnourishment finally getting to me. I took a step towards him and swayed, unsteadily beginning to make my way towards him, ignoring the sounds of the horde behind me and trying to wipe the blood off of me only to spread it around more. I was going to need to get my arm checked on, but that could wait until I ensured the guy who apparently knew what was happening that I wasn’t going to eat him with my bare hands. I’m just that kind of a good person, I guess.
I opened my mouth to call towards him and start a dialogue, mouth parting with some difficulty due to the dried blood holding it together, when a sound on the edge of hearing made me freeze, listening intently around the banging of a fist on yet another solidly-locked door. I could hear something impacting the ground, getting steadily louder with each successful crash of sound. The next one was a double thump, a grinding sound akin to nails on a chalkboard connecting the two. In the corner of my mind I could feel the connection to the horde, and in my mind I gently tapped it, my ping returning with the knowledge that the last one to try jumping across the gap was currently hanging on by a hand, as likely to fall as it was to climb up. I limped towards the door, ready to break it down if I had to in my eagerness to not have a horde of zombies that didn’t just possibly want to eat me, but also viewed me as a daughter who had failed to uphold the family’s values, catch up and exact justice on me. A sound broke through the night, clear and concussive, overshadowing the banging of a fist on the door and a tattered sneaker dragging along a brick wall; followed an instant later by the sound of metal striking concrete and a patch of roof by my right foot disappearing in a blast of sparks and shattered metal.
Light bloomed in the night, a wide beam coursing over the rooftop that illuminated me in all my bloody glory with the first few members of the horde making their way onto the roof, the seemingly sole survivor desperately beating on a locked door to escape ‘us.’ Behind the light I could barely make out a helicopter, gently making its way to set down on the far side of the roof besides Mr. Whatever-his-name-is, both the helicopter and the horde equidistant from me in the middle. I was starving, probably insane, and quite a bit injured, but I could still recognize my ticket out of here and muster up the means to take it for myself. I limped towards it aggressively, cursing myself for every ache and pain as it got increasingly nearer to coming to a brief halt to pick up the anxiously awaiting man. Tapping the horde again, I could feel them getting closer behind me, but luckily most of them had injured themselves leaping after me the first time, slowing their approach. I redoubled what few efforts I had, desperate to reach safety when both it and what was chasing me would likely want me dead if I couldn’t first explain myself, watching in dismay as the helicopter approached the right height accept the man while I was still too far away to force myself onboard, the inescapable momentum of the horde behind me sure to swallow me up despite nearly joining their club.
Crap, I wasn’t going to make it at this rate, which meant an awkward conversation with the much extended family and then settling our differences over having me ripped apart and eaten. I think that’s what they meant, anyways, English to ghoulish isn’t a perfect translation. You couldn’t deny they had drive, though; they really knew how to push themselves to the limit in the face of adversity. Adversity being an exhausted and injured girl about to die because she couldn’t get a move-on like… Well, fuck it, why not? I reached for that little patch in my mind that linked me to the horde still, feeling the absolute hunger grow in my stomach, and all my cares and worries died away as one thing became an absolute: The need to feed. The helicopter was lifting away from the building, passenger safely stowed, as I merged into a dead-sprint and, for the second time that day and in my life, leapt off of the side of the building, arm reached out to grab for the landing rails and desperately hoping that I hadn’t horribly fucked myself over. Again.