The Paroxysm

2. Ugly Red Door

   It's been 73 years since the world fell. It's been so long you'd think us to have figured it out by now. To understand why what happened, happened. Why we stood no chance against the dead rising. How hoards of them so easily overcame our barriers, how fast it spread through cities leaving the country a safe place for a decade or two. Cities now sit rotting just like those who destroyed them, hospitals and grocery stores looted till they were bare. My grandparents would have been there to see the news stories, to lose their neighbors so fast. They stayed safe for a long time, moving far up north where the cold was thought to slow the Rotter's. They lived as peacefully as they could in a makeshift town, maybe like mine now, for 7 years before it was overrun, my mom being one of the few to escape and carry on to something else. I was young when I heard the stories from her, before she fell as well. Before I was taken from my dying, infected mother.

5 years ago, there was a story of people who could walk amongst the Rotters unbothered and not attacked. They were never hunted, and we don't know why. These people are valuable, able to scavenge, search, rescue, and detect. A bounty was set for these people by multiple towns and smaller communities of people, all wanting to get theirs hands on a weapon such as an immune. A group of people, who I like to call Leeches, because they find, attach and take from anything and everything, they found me in a small camp with my mother. They had heard the whisperings about me, my mother always tried her best to keep it a secret.

The Leeches leaked Rotters into our camp, causing a distraction giving them time to take me without many noticing. My mother in the most distraught I've ever seen her wouldn't let go of my arm, digging her nails into my arm causing blood to drop to the ground and leaving scars that last even till now. I screamed and kicked, I fought as hard as I could against them, but it didn't matter, and nobody helped my mother. She was too focused on me, she wasn't aware of her surroundings at all, a Rotter was able to grab her pulling her to the ground with it sinking its teeth into any skin that was exposed to him. She let go for one moment and the last thing I ever saw was my mother on the ground, her long, thick brown hair covering her face and almost seeming to muffle her screams.

I think about her often, the last thing she'd ever given to me was my fathers knife. His name carved into it, 'Nicholas Larson'. I run my fingers over the handle as I begin down the main road. I think of my father being in a Militia much like the one Lanely has, I think how one night they sent out a group of them to break up a hoard coming towards the town, and how that was the last time my mother and I had ever seen him. Our old town, where we spent 10 years holed up in was called Treeton. Although hundreds of miles from here, I still worry that somehow my dads' body that once was one with his soul, has made it all the way here. That maybe I'd see him and my mother out here waiting for me to put them to rest.

I have to stay focused; I don't have time to pity my own life. I shake the thoughts away and walk further down, passing old houses and stores. Some baby boutiques, some hardware stores. All were of course robbed to the bones now. A baby. Could I have a baby? In what the world is in now? Certainly, I could, but should I?

Once again, my thoughts are drifting, after all this is just one long lonely walk in an old lonely town. I continue passing the stores, houses, even some old cars that's been scavenged for parts. Probably by my town. I try to listen, for any commotion that would tell me what's going on with the family. If they're still okay. Nothing. No shuffling of twisted feet or even wind blowing the trees that have taken over everything. I assume it's been a decent amount of time, maybe I should call in, just to be safe. I take out the walkie-talkie and hold the button on the side bringing it up my mouth.

"Hello, I'm about 10 minutes from arrival. Updates?"

I wait.

A crackle in the radio sounds then stops. I shrug, I think about being told to move slowly, what if me taking my time, instead of helping them could be hurting them. I strap my radio onto the backpack for easy access, securing the straps across my chest. I start at a light jog that eventually turns into a run as soon as I notice no Rotter's paying me any attention. I get a brain-dead glance here and there, but I continue on my way.