The zombie game

chapter 18

Tom was sitting slumped in a dark, dank, smelly room. He looked around and saw small, wet stains smearing the walls, as well as the blood that was streaking the floor. He was getting scared. Tom slowly stood up—he had to steady himself, pressing his hand against the wet wall. The smell of blood and feces drifted through the air, causing a sourness in his mouth and a heaviness weighing against his stomach as if he were to vomit. He staggered forward, toward the door, and tried to open it but he couldn't.

Damn, he thought. He looked at his hands—saw the grime and dirt and grit smearing his palms and he felt a sticky fluid on the side of his head. Blood he knew. He felt as if his life was worthless. He had been fighting zombies just before this, and now he was captured, in this place, unable to move anywhere. Unable to escape.

He had to escape though. He had to fight this. This regime of sorts Dave was going to create. He looked around and nearly vomited. Tom stood up and walked to the door, longing to get out. The zombies he had to face were worse than this—much worse. But at least there he knew what was going to happen—he knew he would either survive, or die and get bitten. Here though, he would either die or live or something even worse than that—be torture. And now, with Dave in power, the world, this dear place Tom had once loved, Tom had once called home, the United States would become a sort of hell in which there was no escape. Tom couldn't leave the states because for one, he unfortunately couldn't swim, and for two, there were probably no boats around to take him over the ocean. And who knew what else lay in other parts of world—other countries could have been overrun by these things, nobody really knew.

Tom turned back around and sat down, looking at the door. He figured he would just die here, either by killing himself, or waiting for these soldiers to kill him. There was no escaping this—Tom thought he had it easy by just killing zombies, but no, he didn't, and after all he had been through this was how he was going to die?

The sound of footsteps on the cement floor on the other side of the door could be heard by Tom, and a jangling of keys as the door swung open on rusty hinges.

“Come with me,” the guard said. Tom stood up and was grabbed on the right side of his arm. He was dragged toward another dark room.

The light was suddenly turned on and sitting in front of Tom was a huge machine—it looked like a generator. Five armed guards were standing on the top of a balcony, machine guns cradled in their arms. Three large, red wires coiled from the generator like a snake. Dave stepped into the room, a heavy smirk stretched upon his face. He had changed from his normal military uniform and was now wearing a flannel shirt and ripped, dirt smeared blue jeans. A machete was hung around his waist and a pistol was shoved into the waistband of his jeans.

“Hello Tom,” said Dave.

“What the hell do you want?” spat Tom

“Oh don't get so offensive,” Dave said coldly. “I am just here to show you my little invention. Look at it. What does it look like to you?”

“A generator,” said Tom.

“Well yes—and no. I call it the Red eye. It is something I created awhile ago. I have yet to test it though. You see, it is a machine that can control zombies. It has energy waves that shoot from it that can control the dead brain work of a zombie. In some cases can bring it back just enough to do my own will. Today I thought I'd bring you here to test it.”

“Why me?”

“I just wanted one person to watch the demonstration. A person I can feed to the zombies if, of course, this thing doesn't work. Let me show you, in fact.” A couple of moans drifted through the air and Tom turned his head, seeing two zombies being led out of a small room with a sliding door. They were chained together, arms outstretched, mouths wide open, moans of hunger coming slowly from them.