The Realm

Chapter Three

After biking for what seemed like hours, however, probably less, my legs were aching. Luckily we came across an abandoned neighborhood. Sadly the sight wasn't pleasant. There were corpses littering the street, none of which were full bodies. They all had either a missing top half, missing arms or legs, or other pieces gone, but overall none were full corpses. There were flipped-over cars, broken glass from homes and vehicles, and countless amounts of blood everywhere. Alex and I looked in disgust and horror. And I needed to get off the bike before I passed out from the sight.

Alex and I settled on a small one-story house. Upon walking inside, we were greeted with the horrid smell of death. I plugged my nose and looked around. One wall had claw marks that stretched all the way across it, mixed with blood. It was splattered on the floor and walls, really anything close to where the incident occurred was stained red.

I walked around looking at the damage when suddenly something smushed under my feet. I looked down to see a small child's doll stained with a red liquid I knew all too well. I didn't want to touch it so I walked farther into the house. The first room I went into explained all the sights I saw earlier. A little girl, no older than 4 by the looks of it, lay on the floor with her stomach ripped open. Next to her lay an adult male, presumably the father, holding a double-barrel shotgun. He was surprisingly less dismembered than the little girl, but still in horrid shape. He was missing a leg, from the hip down. And was covered in wounds.

I approached the corpses carefully like they would bite me if I got too close, and grabbed the shotgun. After that Alex and I didn't search the rest of the house, I didn't want to see anything worse than that. I picked my bike back up and started walking around the neighborhood, hoping to find any survivors. The neighborhood looked like it was lovely before this world went to shit. If the houses weren't stained red and charred, they would have still been all white, clean, and cozy-looking homes. As we walked, I looked at the homes and children's toys on the yards of a few houses. Alex soon snapped me out of my imagination of the possible past and meowed towards a certain smaller house. Unlike the others, this house was brown and very small. For some reason, it was less thrashed than the others. Alex jumped out of his spot in my bike's basket and trotted towards the house. I sighed in response, this cat is going to get himself killed. When I walked into the house I was more concerned than before, there was a single wooden table with a chair on each side in the middle of the room, and behind it was a stone fireplace and two doorways on each side of it. Alex perched himself on top of the table and started grooming himself. He stopped suddenly, tongue still out of his mouth, and his ears pinned all the way back. Fucking hell, I can't escape these things can I? Alex turned to the doorway on our left side, the rooms behind were pitch black, meaning there were no windows in the back of this house. It wasn't until a few seconds later that I heard loud footsteps. Then the doorway was occupied by a body.

It was a person, they held a rifle of some sort. They were wearing black gear, a black balaclava, leather gloves, and eyewear that covered any part of their face that may have been exposed. They first looked at Alex and shot him with something, not a bullet but something else. I didn't move, as much as I wanted to check on Alex and see if he was ok if I moved I'd be shot too. The person turned to me "I'm sorry, you'll thank me later." It was a man that spoke, a deep but clear voice. My analysation of his voice distracted me from paying any further attention, but moments later I felt a prick on my neck. And it all went black.