The Scavengers|| Hank Thompson x Reader || He/Him

Introduction

August 5th 2015

I wasn't sure what brought my dog and me to Humboldt county, but I can guarantee that the reason we stayed is that we had no choice other than to stick around. Half a week into my trip, people started dying. They would drop dead in the middle of the streets, in grocery stores, in their driveways and homes. On the first day, I had gone from having never seen someone just drop dead to having seen eight people die. It was terrifying. About a week after that is when we found out they wouldn't be staying dead.

I could have left before then. Maybe I should have realised what would be happening. People don't just up and die, they have a reason. It wasn't heart attacks or some kind of obvious illness that you could just predict. One second, they'd just be alive. The next, their eyes will stop blinking, mouths will stop chewing, blood will stop pumping, and then they die and shit themselves.

Did you know that? You shit yourself when you die. I didn't know until I saw the first person die, and a stranger explained to me what the source of the rancid odor was. Usually-- they said-- it should have been over a few days that it would happen. Rigor mortis doesn't set in until later, but for some reason, this 'virus' makes people skip it completely. They skip a few steps. The body just completely relaxes, which means your body no longer holds in... what you were trying to hold in.

At first, they thought it was similar to sudden death syndrome (SADS), but they weren't dying of cardiac arrest. They were just... dying. Everything shuts off at once like a switch has been flicked.

The number of those who had died grew, almost as quickly as the ones who came back to life. The ones who came back were no longer themselves. They weren't even able to speak. Having your brain get shut off would usually do that to you. They were your typical flesh-eating monsters, like the ones you'd see in movies. They didn't generally start to chase people until three days after they were 'revived'.

I won't make up some name for them, we just called them what they were. Everyone agreed on it without even having to speak about it. We called them zombies. Not walkers, creepers, ghouls or ghoulies, the infected, and whatnot. We called them zombies. The dropping dead we started to call 'pre-zombie-syndrome' and the revival was nicknamed 'post-zombie-syndrome'. When you were bitten and turned, that was just called zombification. You'd start to see that more as the days passed. The longer they were around, the longer

This was also around the same time people began to have random marks appear on the chest, fingers, hands, or wrists. They were all different shapes, permanently etched into the skin like a tattoo. I haven't yet seen one person with the same one. The ones who had 'pre-zombie syndrome' didn't get it. I heard some people call it the mark of the saved, or the mark of the fate. There were two to three per person, of various sizes. They appeared as black lines, but some people started to have ones that would occasionally glow and change colour. Once they changed colour, they stayed that colour. It was different for everyone.

I had mine. It was about the size of my balled-up fist, inked into my chest below my collarbones. The clean outline of a circle with a small, black, filled-in circle in the center of it.

So here I stand in a house in Humboldt county, a large knapsack on my back with clothes, a first aid kit, soap, food, water, and whatever else I needed. My dog stood at my side, looking at me as if he understood what we were to do now.

We needed to run.

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Author's Note

Okay, the introduction is pretty short, but the goal for the regular chapters is 3000+ words. I'm really excited about this story, and I hope you are too.
- IJ