Days of the Dead

Meeting them

The memories came in drips and drabs, but they had stopped for the past couple of days. This Earth wasn't as it had been, but that is not now. I never eat, because I know I'm not human. I never sleep, drink. I know nothing about this desolate world, but I need to search for life. As I walk, I approach remains of what seems to be human near a dumpster. The body looks as if it had been ripped apart, face shredded by acid rain. The head is facing away from me, but I can tell the body had been here for a while. The flies have gotten to it and when I turn the head around, maggots roamed in it's eyes. White eyes. Not fully black. I thought as I kick the face away, dry pieces of meat hitting the tin of the dumpster. It has been days since my last memory, almost fifty years since the war.

Venturing on is all I can do until I find someone who has transferred souls. I stepped away from the body and walked down the road. I have no name. I thought to myself. I am merely a soul carrier. I know this because of the sudden memories that seemed inevitably impossible to ignore until recently. Memories. Memories about the transferral. I have a soul inside of me. They had given me life before the war. They? I can't remember who they are. Looking around, I can piece back broken memories, just like this broken world. Where houses were, rubble remained. I can hear children laughing. I see the world splash into colour. The rubble were buildings in this memory. "Kids!" The children run inside, and I follow. The garden is full of little balls of colours, the house, bigger than most on the street. I walk to the door and reach for the handle and... The memory fades and all that is left around me is rubble. Colour drains once again. I'm back in the world where colour is merely a memory. My hand extends to where the door handle should have been. I retrieve my arm and walk back where the road is. I never check any buildings, because when I had, the body would be crushed.Walking down the road, it split into two ways, one, towards the buildings with rotten food that used to be able to sustain a whole town, and on the right, the road that stretched on into the distance until it disappeared into a thin line, barely visible.

I walk down the right road, step after step, day after day, week after week, until eventually I come across a new town. This one seemed more organised than a mess of just rubble. It was as if the war hadn't affected this little town at all. Some houses have walls still up, and as I kept walking, some houses hadn't been destructed at all. This all seemed strange, because this little town was only a few months walking away from the previous little town. It looks like someone was actually... Rebuilding the houses. I look around, searching, observing my surroundings for something, anything that could tell me someone was alive, that I wasn't alone anymore.

It has been two weeks and I have looked in all the houses, and the houses keep rebuilding themselves. Suddenly there is a pull. I feel the tug of my soul, almost wanting to escape out of the steel frame. I follow that pull, walking to one of the unfinished houses. I can see the building was being rebuilt, the old bricks mending with the new. This town seemed alive. I run to the house and swing open the door, the pull so strong that I almost fall over. Then I see them.