Outlive

Chapter 1: The Stranger

This chapter has been edited

It had been five years now since the outbreak, Day Zero, as people called it when the dead started making meals of the living. Five years and things still hadn't gotten better. No one knew how it started. Some said it was a government experiment gone wrong or a mutated strain of rabies. Others claimed it was God's wrath punishing us for all of our wrongdoings. But whatever the truth really was, the world had fallen apart and there wasn't anything anyone could do to stop what had already started.

The darkness was quiet and still. Lauren was crouched behind a counter in a run-down gas station that she had been looting for supplies. The place had already been well picked over and all of the food, medicine, and other potentially useful supplies were already gone. All she had managed to find that was of any use was a small plastic flashlight with a crack in the blue outer casing and a dirty red bandana. The rest of the items left in the store were mostly empty wrappers and cans, broken glass, small toys for movies that stopped playing in theaters years ago, and other small and useless items. Haven given up Lauren was just about to leave when she had heard a noise behind her. Without even thinking she had ducked behind the counter where she hoped she was out of sight of whatever might have entered the gas station with her.

Slowly, she peered out from behind the counter. In the dim interior of the building, three figures slowly made their way into the building through the broken glass doors. They milled about the empty shelves, kicking through the garbage and debris that was strewn about the floor. At a quick glance, they almost looked human... almost. They walked without motivation, occasionally bumping into a shelf or a wall. Their gaits were slow and unbalanced, almost like a heavily drunk person. Once they had been human, with clear thoughts, actions, and ambitions, but not anymore. Now, they were zombies.

The closest one was about four meters away from where Lauren hid, standing next to a fallen display stand with a cartoonish panda bear printed on it.  The small amount of light coming in through the entrance of the gas station illuminated a creature with discolored skin that was rotting down to the bone in several places, and clothing that hung in tatters on its body. It was missing the bottom of his jaw and it looked as if someone had shot it off. What remained of the jaw was nothing but a few strings of rotten muscle, tendons, and bone that swayed each time the creature took a step. 

The zombie next to it looked more a bit more human, it wasn't quite so rotten. Based on its level of decomposition it was likely that it had been alive less than a week ago. There was a bite mark clearly visible on its left arm, right below the elbow. Even with the greyed and decayed skin, the area around the bite clearly stood out. It was blacked with bruising and had dark veins spreading out from it into the creature's body. Its eyes were cloudy white and they stared straight ahead. The world had not been kind to humanity in the five years since the outbreak had started and every day was worse than the one before. The number of humans still alive was dwindling.

The creatures stumbling through the ransacked gas station were not people anymore. Whatever used to make them human was long gone, leaving nothing behind but animated masses of decaying flesh that had no other purpose than to devour anything with a pulse. Thousands if not millions of people had died over the years because they believed otherwise. It's hard enough accepting the death of a loved one, it's even harder to believe they're truly gone if they stood up and walked around after they died.

Lauren forced herself to look away from the recently turned zombie, and focused her attention on the third and final zombie, a massive brute of pure decomposing muscle. It wore a tattered military uniform with bullet holes spattered across its chest like swiss cheese.

She groaned internally at the sight of it. If it had only been the other two zombies, getting out of the situation in one piece wouldn't have been much trouble for her but the bigger zombie complicated things. For some reason, only strength seemed to pass through the process of becoming a zombie. The bigger and stronger a person was in life, the bigger and stronger a person would be in living-death. That is until it rotted down to nothing. Maybe it was because the more muscle a zombie had the longer it took to rot away, but whatever the case, the large zombie in the military uniform was three times as dangerous as the other two put together.