Becoming Them: A Zombie Novel

One

     When I drifted awake, through the grogginess of my sight, I could see an unfamiliar, dirty white ceiling.

     A growing migraine pounded against my brain and I wanted nothing but a drink of water to ease the dryness in my throat. Looking around me, I found I was inside a small room, built for a little kid most likely because of all the various types of toys scattered all over the ground. How did I end up in this place? The last thing I remembered was sitting next to my mother, holding her as she cried while mourning over her dead brother who had gotten lost in the crowd of those treacherous zeds, her cries echoing throughout the small room of the church we were staying in for the night.

     Still hopelessly scanning the room in an attempt to detect any clues as to how I got here, my eyes homed in on a small doll with blonde hair and a skinny, unrealistic body frame, smiling a soulless smile.

     It reminded me of Ava, the friend I made at the camp. I looked around and found the room void of her. She was always giddy, bubbly. Her joy was contagious and whenever she let out that crackly laugh of hers, I couldn't help but join her. I remember she had shown me the remains of her collection of dolls with only two left which she held dear to her heart and never kept out of her sight. 'I had fifteen of these, can you believe it?' The long hair of the dolls stuck out pointedly like thorns in a rosebush. The colour of their eyes had smeared, and parts of their wax bodies had been chipped away, disorienting their looks. The rest of her collection was left behind when her old house had been raided by a dozen or so zeds, a few of which had pulled her sister and father into the depths of hell and back to become those flesh-eating monsters.

     Not coincidentally enough, my dad died the same way. Stories like mine were way too common, and some people were so unlucky, they had lost their entire family to small herds that tore them to shreds like paper.

     I remembered my story so vividly, it pained me when thinking about it. I thought about how my dad had begged for mum to leave with me out through the back window before the horde of zeds had the place surrounded. I thought about how torn my mother was about having to go. My dad's option of a weapon was an axe, and I stared longingly as he turned his back to us to face the door. Splinters began to break off the wood and the whole house sounded like it was creaking. Mum pulled me along behind her and I never got to see how my dad ended up. But I knew it couldn't be good because as mum and I left the house, we heard the door give way and zeds filled the building. I forced myself to look back, only seeing shadowy figures through the windows. Mum made me look forward again. We knew we wouldn't see my dad again. Not in one piece anyway.

     Then I recalled the nasty stench of rotting corpses and dwelled upon the memory of the large herd, consisting of around thirty to forty zeds. It was enough to take over the camp of only sixty-three residents, including myself. Over thirty of us had unfortunately been pulled to the large crowd, soon to become one of them and tip the scale in favour of the zeds. It was then we decided that we just had to make a run for it, not daring to look back as the scene of people being pinned down and bitten by flesh-hungry beasts was enough to scar a person for life. Now imagine seeing that on a day-to-day basis. I was becoming used to the stench of death and the rotting of corpses in front of me, but I wasn't used to being part of the war zone where it all began, something that no twelve-year-old (or anyone for that matter) should have to experience.

     My worst fears had become reality and the group of twenty-four had separated into smaller groups going in all different directions. I was left with my mother, my thirteen-year-old friend Ava, Roger who had befriended all of us during the outbreak when we were randomly grouped together in the camp, and Mason with his ten-year-old son, Zev. We hadn't exchanged greetings with Mason or Zev when we were comfortable inside the camps protective shade. They simply followed the first group of people they could find, and that just happened to be us.