Unliving

I woke up, if that’s what you’d could call it. My body moved with a sharp tingling in my spine aching everywhere with a dry cracked leather feeling, even in my eyes which made it nearly impossible to see. I was underneath a fallen building wall and could barely make out the cloudy, dark sky. I was jolted to my feet by a compelling voice that echoed in my head, directing me towards an unknown destination. The voice was comforting, warm and enticing, so much so that I was unable to move without it carrying me wherever it wanted me to go.

After I began walking I realized I had an old piece of wood sticking out of my chest, with my sight nearly robbed from me I didn’t know what it was, it didn’t hurt, and I couldn’t pull it out of my own fruition. I was terrified. The way my body felt was completely foreign to me, and as my curiosity grew I started to recognize other strange sensations as my fear mounted. I was cold, not in such a way that I wanted to get warm, but in such a way that I felt a lack of tactile function.

I walked past a few buildings, not houses, I must have been in town, but what town? Then it struck me like a speeding train, I had no idea where I was or, for that matter, who I was! I desperately searched my memory for any kind of personal recollections but came up short of anything that could be seen as a valid recognition of my past. The voice, it had gotten stronger and more prominent. I started to get more and more anxious, and as the building started to block out more of the failing sunlight, I started to hope that maybe this voice could have some answers. I also started to see more wandering figures, all joining me in a tide of bodies all heading towards the same place.

The light had all but gone, but instead of seeing less, the voice allowed my mind to see for me. All the people became clear to me and we had gathered in a city square that had a beautiful fountain in the middle of it with what looked like diamond spotted water flowing from it. Above the fountain there was a concrete stage with a gazebo overhead with beautiful vines all over it. The stage had the longest dining table I had ever seen decorated with candles and flowers. It was a sight to be seen. A feast awaited us, but the voice told us to wait. Then a light started to emanate from behind the vines on the gazebo, a figure started to form. A man in a white robe stepped out. He had a glow about him that appeared and felt almost godlike, I felt safe and the fear had gone. Two other figures ascended from a building top and joined the man. He spoke, it was the voice! He said, “Feast my children, you must grow strong for the journey ahead.”

The huge crowd that had gathered swarmed the dining table, there must have been hundreds. I ate so much food that I felt like my stomach wouldn’t hold all of it, but I kept eating. I took a huge bite of a chicken wing when a flood of memories hit my brain like a ten pound hammer. I remember being 5, my name was heather, I had a pink seesaw that my dad built for me that I was riding on. I took another bite, now I was twenty and I was studying cellular biology at LSU. I could remember all the things that had got me there and what my achievements were. I knew I was not Heather, I was clearly a man but, as I ate clarity had begun to return to me as well, and I started to gain control of my own functions again. My eyes started to take over my minds eyes again and the beautiful meal that had been prepared for us began to change. The people turned to pale versions of themselves, covered in blood and filthy unwashed rags that were falling off their frail forms. As I turned my head down towards the table, the food had turned also, into barely recognizable human bodies! I staggered back in disgust, I had eaten these people! I turned and fumbled away from the crowd into a nearby alley trying to comprehend what I had put in my body, and for that matter what my body now was.

I tried to throw up the meal but my body had already processed it. I was disgusted with myself but I did feel better, much better. I could see fine, better than ever actually, and the stick protruding from me? A rake handle, I was now able to remove it, of my own free will. I could still hear the voice, and it was just as clear but I was able to resist it calling to me. I slowly looked around the corner of the alley at the crowd and at the angelic figures, which weren’t angelic at all. Two of them had left, I hadn’t noticed in my feeding frenzy. The main figure had stayed, his robes had turned to gray and his face was now covered by a long hood. I head him say a single word “Flint.”

All the people in the square immediately turned and faced north and like a wake in lake water they all started walking, with the exception of one which seemed to be in military garb. The hooded man waited for the crowd to thin and took the soldier behind the stage and I lost sight of them. I snuck off and hid in a old book store which seemed more secure and less ransacked then the other stores in the area. I was ok for the night.

Flint referred to the city Flint, in Michigan. I knew this because the voice told me, though it had only said one word, it had shown all of us through his minds eye, like telepathy. I stayed hidden and waited in the library. While I was waiting, I saw a dusty book about the human body. I didn’t pick it up but it reminded me of the memories that Heather had given me, They were clearer now, and I could recall almost all the knowledge she had accumulated over her lifetime, it was incredible. I could fully understand cellular biology now, and remembered bits and pieces of Heather’s life, I knew where she lived, which was close by, but couldn’t remember much else besides the schooling. I decided to go there, to her house and stay the night to avoid danger. As I was walking through the dark town and into the adjacent neighborhood I saw corpses all over the place, some skeletons, others were more, juicy. Some were still moving but had no interest in me, they crawled and moved about aimlessly. I reached Heather’s home, it was torn apart from time and weather, much like all the other buildings I had seen. I decided to go inside.

There wasn’t much left to search through in Heather’s house that hadn’t been destroyed, damaged or had something growing in it As I looked over and in between the broken walls, the smell of musty, moist flesh drifted through the cavities in the house. I thought there would be something here for me to find but no new memories would surface. Her memory was not my own and I couldn’t uncover more of her memories this way. I left the house discouraged and confused.

It had been an entire day and I hadn’t seen a single living person all day except for the hallucinations I had seen in the courtyard the day before. It was discouraging but I had to find out who I was first. I decided to retrace my steps, and thanks to Heather reminding me that we were in Starke, Florida she had given me a good sense of stability and direction. I knew to look for a house on the right, close by town with a broken rake in the front yard and a collapsed wall. I walked and watched and thought of what could have happened. It looked like a plague of some kind and my recently stolen memories confirmed that my body was acting very uncharacteristically of itself. I had no pulse as Heather had known them, it was more like an ant colony crawling in all directions through my veins. My skin was nearly white but the sensation of feeling had returned in a heightened fashion.

The neighborhood! I had found it. I was close. I started to run, and as things started to look recently familiar I saw the house. It was burnt almost completely down except for the wall that had fallen on me and an old melted rot iron wind vein that was lying in the overgrown front yard. My front yard.

As I looked at the melted wind vein I remembered being struck, by lightning! I had been holding the wind vein in the rain trying to escape a crazed living corpse! I remember climbing out on the roof to escape. I remember the intense fear as my heart raced. I remember being bit. I looked down at my arm and sure enough there was a faint bite mark. I looked at the rake and remember falling off the roof and onto it after being struck by the lightning strike. I climbed over some of the damaged building it was so destroyed and burned to the ground that there was no chance of getting any kind of memories out of it. I was at a loss.

What was the next step? I didn’t know what to do, I was alone, had no idea who or what I was, and I started to panic. Wait, what is that smell? I went outside and saw that there was a crawling corpse moving slowly by. It was strange but the dead’s scent had grown more potent as time went on. It became more, appetizing, to the senses. I ignored it and tried to concentrate on my next course of action. There was a military base a few miles to the east, Camp Blanding I think. I would head in that direction. I tried to find a vehicle but they all looked so old or destroyed. All the cars tires had rotted away and plants had grown even inside on the seats. How long had I been laying, unconscious in my front yard? I started to jog and wasn’t getting tired. The jog turned to a run, then a full sprint, no exhaustion, but the smell of the dead had grown so strong that I could barely resist it. I stopped running and passed by a car window on the highway. My face was emaciated and thin as I looked at my reflection, I looked like one of them. I had been running for a solid 20 minutes, I knew what this meant, the correlation between the hunger, the smells, and now my skeletal appearance meant only one thing. I had to eat, one of them.

I followed the scent and found a half a guy pulling himself along the highway. The hunger was overwhelming at this point, I immediately began tearing through flesh, devouring every last morsel until the hunger dissipated. I don’t remember too much of the actual feeding, it was like being drunk and blacking out, but instead of waking up with a hangover, I woke up feeling fully energized. The hole where my rake handle wound was had disappeared, and I felt completely normal again. Despite the disgusting nature of eating a half dead, half there man, I felt fine. The moral dilemma wasn’t there any longer either, It didn’t bother me to kill the unliving, and eat them. There was a slightly confusing issue however, I retrieved no new memories from my recent meal. What was different about this time? The only thing that I could think of was that my first meal had been alive. The uneasy feeling in my head returned. Whatever happened in the Starke town square was not the same as eating this time.

I started walking again, it felt like 3pm and the lack of leaves on the trees made me think it was winter so it would be getting dark soon. I needed to get to Camp Blanding. I continued to walk and more and more unliving started to pop up out of the surrounding terrain. Most were walking now, not like in Starke. I could see the base on the horizon I was almost there. I needed so badly to find some people, I was growing lonelier and more desperate for someone to talk to by the hour. I needed answers. I needed to know that there were others out there, but I was also afraid. I could just as easily be shot with my frightening appearance, as I could find someone to talk to. I would need to find some clothes that set me apart from the unloving, something official. I found a few dead guys that looked about my size, their clothes were old and torn but one had a fully intact coat and another had nice boots and pants that were my size. They were easy enough to retrieve, the unliving don’t seem to care too much about clothes. I held the ones arms down one at a time and pulled the arms out like you would a five year old. The pants were a bit trickier, had to knock the thing down to get the boots and pants, but he kept trying to get up so I smashed his head with a rock. There was a bit of twitching but it was much more practical this way. A few other small accessories and I looked like a genuine soldier.

I approached the barricades outside the camp. They were very old looking and covered in dust and dirt and small plants that had been growing for at least a decade. Lots of bones laid all around and it was clear, this place had become a graveyard. Whatever danger there was, it was long gone now.

I let my guard down a little and had started to get a bit less scared at this point. I had reached the gates of the camp, and as the sun set on yet another dark day I began to try to think of having some hope for the night to come. I wrapped some of my old clothes around an axe handle I found outside the camp and fashioned myself a torch. I told myself that if there were survivors of whatever had happened, they would be here. I was about to find out.