Warning: For fellow The Last Of Us fans, the clickers in this story have been buffed in some cases.
Also, i do not own the Clickers, they're from The Last Of us and are owned by Naughty Dog.
The boy crouches behind the several bins hauled into a pile at the edge of the street. He holds his breath as to not breathe in the thick, putrid air rising from the decomposing bodies thrown upon the heap of trash. The clicking and moaning hasn’t stopped.
They’re still there. Listening.
Just waiting for him to reveal his location by some stupid or careless mistake. He quickly scans his now broken dagger…not even sharp. He looks around for something, anything that could help him defend himself. The streets have been covered in moss for a while now but stray papers were still floating on the wind to some unknown destination. The buildings have begun crumbling and many have collapsed after years of their foundations wearing away. Trees and plants have begun growing out of wounds in the road. The landscape has an almost natural, peaceful atmosphere if it wasn’t for the bodies littered around him and the monsters that would happily rip into his flesh if they get the chance.
Why did he even go out in the first place? Stupid. That’s what he is, but he can’t beat himself up just yet. They’ll discover him eventually so he needs to get out of here…but how? His footsteps would be a dinner bell. He’s seen it happen to someone, she had tried to run from them but obviously they caught up to her. It took her five minutes to die.
They take their time.
He is not letting the same thing happen to him. All he has is his useless, shaking dagger in his hands. He can’t sneak past them because they’d hear him and slash him to pieces. He can’t fight them because they’d overpower him and tear him to shreds. He can’t run from them because they’d catch up to him and rip him apart. There’s nothing he can do. Could he wait it out? He peers out the side of the pile of bins and bodies that separate him and the deadly beings out on the road. One, two, three, four, five, six…
Seven of them. This is getting worse and worse.
Clickers, the worst of them all. Although not the final known stage in their growth and evolution, they most certainly are the most deadly. At first glance they appear vaguely human, just like any other person with clothes and walking upright until they begin walking and their limbs jerk and spasm as the lethal fungus that has invaded the pitiable mind of the once perfectly normal human forces them to move. This fungal parasite makes its home in the brain of its host and with time, grows outwards and outwards until it bursts through the victim’s skull as a plant bursts through soil in an endless search for sunlight. The eyes, nose and scalp are now overrun with the flaky, mould-like fungus growth which has distorted their prisoner’s features beyond recognition. Their mouths have adapted to create a clicking noise, much like bats, for echo location as their eyes hold no more use. Once you hear this clicking, it means a clicker is close by, meaning your chances of survival are slim.
Two rules for clickers. You move and you’re dead. You make a noise and you’re dead.
But now there are seven of them less than five metres away from him…and one of them is heading right towards him. It hasn’t noticed him yet but given ten seconds it would certainly realize that there’s a fresh, uninfected victim to bite into.
‘What should I do?’ he thinks frantically. No reply.
‘What should I do?!’ he shouts in his mind. No reply.
‘What should I do!?’ he screams to himself. No reply.
The clicking is abruptly silenced. It’s right above him…one look down…he isn’t taking that chance.
He jumps up and plunges the knife into the clicker’s chest. It slices straight through its fungus and flesh with a lot more ease than expected and the force of the attack makes the creature stumble back. Without a second thought, he runs. He doesn’t look back. He doesn’t need to. He knows that all seven of them will be right on his tail, even the one with the knife lodged in its ribcage. It takes a lot more than that to kill a clicker.
He runs until he can run no further and then continues running. This is a cruel world, survival of the fittest. He’s always been hiding from these things, never fighting and never running. Why is he running? This is going to get him killed. He turns a corner to face a skyscraper. He could hide, trick them into going upstairs and hopefully sneak out whilst they’re a few floors above. He reaches the sealed automatic doors and kicks the glass. Not a crack. He grabs a brick lying next to him and smashes it against the doors.
A single, tiny crack.
‘How thick is this glass!?’ he hysterically shrieks to himself as he hurls the brick against the doors once more. The crack expands to reach all corners of the glass; wasting no time he throws himself at the doors and the glass shatters under his weight. He slips and falls onto his hands and knees but as he sprawls to get back up and running arms grab and drag his head and neck to pull him back.
The first bite tears out a chunk out of the back of his neck.
He screams before the second pair of fangs rip into his stomach.
They hold him down, shrieking and clicking whilst biting into him, none of the bites hitting vital spots like the throat or the chest but rather in the legs and arms. After his screaming subsides to a slow gurgling the monsters get back up and continue wandering around…waiting for their next victim to foolishly reveal themselves
