When Night Falls (Apocalypse)

Chapter 1 - The Start Of The End

This is the first chapter! It's unedited so ignore any mistakes! 😊

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My friends and I had always joked about a world-crushing apocalypse made up of flesh eating Zombies. We would watch Zombie movies and Zombie shows constantly, then rant on for hours about our own thought-up survival methods and what we'd do to make it through the harrowing chaos of the end of the world. Not once did we ever actually think we'd be thrusted into the horrors of our wild imaginations projected into real life. Our plotting and planning was just for fun, that is, until it wasn't.

      To the rational people of the world, zombies were just the products of scary stories and gory horror movies. For most, there was never a chance in hell this kind of life-ending threat could actually materialize in our world. A world of security and laws meant to be abided by, but when the news reports started to surface, becoming more and more frequent with each passing day, I couldn't help but become quite alarmed. An entire family murdered in their home, only the partially eaten remains left behind by the unknown attacker.

      "A family of 4 has been found slain in their home early yesterday afternoon," the platinum blonde news caster droned with a horrified expression. "The autopsy reports found no indication that any weapons were used in this savage killing. It appears that all the victims died of massive blood loss as a result of numerous bites all over the body inflicted by an unidentified attacker. It is said that they quickly succumbed to their injuries after the brutal attack."

      As I sat watching the horrors of our impending doom, my mother had joked, "look Kat, zombies!"

      She laughed at her own joke, her friends joining in, but I didn't bother to laugh. Tidal waves of anxiety began to rise deep within me, and I couldn't help but think she was right, even though she was passive aggressively poking fun at my wild imagination. There's no way an animal could have gotten into that home and mauled 4 people without leaving some sort of evidence behind.

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      That night after dinner, I did some heavy research on the incident reported on the news earlier that day. The scene of the crime was in Harrowsmith, about 3 hours away at the time, but I took no comfort in the thought. I knew if this was something as serious as what I thought it was, no amount of distance could save me or the ones I loved.

      I had continued to scroll on through the news site, the description of the assault was grisly and disturbing. They chilled me to the core, not only because of the brutality of what happened to these poor people, but because of the inhumanity needed to commit something so evil and violent. It was unlike any murder I had ever heard of before. This situation was different. These people were different.

      Autopsies of the bodies revealed that these folks had indeed been savagely mauled by another person. They matched bite marks on the little flesh that remained on the bodies to the dental records of a middle-aged man named Gage Kent, a local of Perryview.

      A person eating their fellow man alive, I thought to myself. What on Earth.

      My stomach churned upon reading that little piece of information related to the cannibalistic attack. The thought of a single person being cruel enough to commit such heinous acts against another living thing was bad enough, but the suspicion brewing deep within me was much, much worse as the minutes dragged on.

      After reading up on that attack, as well as many other seemingly related incidents, I entered my parents room and hugged them that night before bed with underlying urgency.

   "I love you guys," I whispered with an intensity I'm surprised they hadn't noticed.

      "We love you too," my mother tiredly replied. "Now, go get some sleep."

      I always had nights where it was a struggle to fall asleep, but that night took the cake. As I laid with my eyes closed, wishing sleep would pull me away from the horrors of my own thoughts, I relentlessly tortured myself with gory images from the hundreds of zombie movies I'd watched throughout my life, and the passages from every zombie book I had ever read. I eventually relented to the tearing claws of exhaustion, and fell into a restless sleep.

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Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed! 😊