SurvivorZ

1

JANUARY - DAY 80

THE ONGOING NIGHTMARE

"Oh baby dont cry tonight, because your tears they will gleam

Underneath this blood red moon, I'm deafened by your screams

Watch what you say, I will betray

My promises, they will decay

I'll make amends, but not today

Behind these walls, we'll watch it fall

As our union crumbles into hell

It's not the end of the world now baby, so c'mon dry those tears

It's not the end of the world now darling, but I can see it from here"

- Lostprophets, It's Not The End Of The World But I Can See It From Here

EVE

Nursing a goose egg on the back of her skull, Eve Cutler came to in a soft bed of frozen powder, surrounded by a world of contradictions. A chill raced through her body from the cold snow melting into her clothes, yet the winter wind carried a warm breeze to heat her back. The sun vanished behind the stark pines and leafless birches hours ago, yet the forest around her glowed with a golden hue. She wobbled unsteadily to her feet to discover that she stood alone, yet her nerves screamed that she was anything but isolated.

Then she turned around, and all incongruities suddenly made sense.

The heat from the conflagration consuming the Traveler's Inn warmed her cheeks, even from her vantage atop a neighboring hillside almost forty yards away. She watched the flames dance to the heavens upon the blackened bones of their former refuge. The sight both sickened and fascinated her.

Like most places they came across in the months since the world went to Hell, looters picked the Inn clean ages ago. What remained was theirs by attrition. The group worked hard to barricade the ground floor, using doors and furniture from the hotel rooms to block off all but a couple of passages. A chain link fence walled off three sides of the property, and they fashioned a barricade from derelict cars for the roadway entrance. It wasn't the Ritz, but it was clean, relatively safe, and within walking distance of a commercial district not entirely picked over.

They could have hunkered there all winter, if need be. In light of their disastrous decision to migrate north, it felt as though more than just wood and glass disintegrated in the inferno. Their last hope went up in smoke with it.

Eve witnessed a black tide of misshapen figures swarming into the main parking lot from the highway, drawn like moths to the raging flames. Their mindless drones echoed in a discordant carol. She recognized their lumbering gait at once: feeders, numbering in the hundreds. The fetid stench of their rotting bodies sickened her from here.

"No. Oh, God, no."

A whip crack of fire boomed from one of the rooms, spraying flaming debris into the side parking lot. The noise attracted a handful of the dead, who hobbled over for a closer inspection. Charlie and Denise siphoned enough gas from neighborhood cars to keep their generator running for weeks. Like everything else they owned up to this point, it disappeared in a flash.

With a mournful sigh, Eve collapsed to her knees. Her breath came in labored hitches. Tears blurred her vision. Staring at the fire, she knew in her heart that none of her friends survived.