Ground Zero

PROLOGUE

When I was 5, I used to play in the fields behind my house every day at the same time. I would always go to the field at 4pm sharp. I remember my mother asking “Why the same place every day? Why the same time?” I would always give her the same answer “I am expected for tea and biscuits, mother. I tell you every day and you always ask me those same questions again day after day.”

When I turned twelve, my mother had me committed to a mental institution because she thought that I was crazy. I was locked up in the back of a lime green truck with six other people and left there for two days. When the door finally opened, I wasn’t expecting the sight that I saw.

Bodies strewn around on the grass, shreds of flesh and shards of bone scattered around like leaves on a breeze. We all screamed when a THUNK! Echoed around the clearing we were stationed in. I turned around and was greeted with the smile of a daemon. This creature looked human but had razor sharp teeth in three rows that had flesh stuck in between them. There was fresh blood dribbling down his chin and a gruesome smile plastered on his face.

I ran. I had never seen such a gruesome sight in all my twelve years. I heard footsteps behind me and turned to see who (or what) it was that was following me. Shrieking insanely the other patients from the truck followed me at a slower pace. The daemon creature chased us all and I knew beyond a doubt that not all of us would survive this encounter.

The first to go was an elderly man who had a bite-mark on his left upper arm. He went grey in the face then dropped like a fly onto a carcass. We stopped and saw that the wound was foaming.  Now we knew that the beasts were poisonous. I turned and saw that four more of the beasts had caught up with the first one. I screamed for everyone to run but only two others made it out after me.

Two of the beasts lunged and latched onto a teenage female and an eighty something year old lady and we all knew that they were gone. I ran faster while the creatures were snacking. We all finally saw a clearing and dove for the light. The creatures still chasing us burst into the clearing and started smoking. They screeched and latched onto the other two patients, dragging them into the undergrowth at the back of the clearing. I saw a line of sunlight wide enough for four people to walk abreast in it and bolted along it.

When I reached the end I heard a screeching noise and yelling. Thinking that the creatures were after me again I stepped forward into a large amount of sunlight and knocked someone out of the way as a car sped down the wet tar I was now standing on. The driver honked their horn and screamed for me to get out of the way but I was frozen in shock and terror.

I felt a sharp pain in my left temple as the oncoming vehicle screeched to a stop, but not before knocking me flying down the road and into a comforting soft blackness.