From the Ashes, You Crawl

Chapter One

               Author's Note: WELCOME, FRIENDS. I am so excited for this story it's ridiculous. I don't really want to tell you much right now, because it's secret. Literally, one person knows what will happen. Okay. Yeah. I'm excited. 

                 But wait! I need to personally thank all of my fans, friends and family. There was a time, not too long ago, when I wanted to leave writing. Thank you for your encouragement, support, and love. I really owe you all one.

                Secondly, I would like to acknowledge the movie "I Am Legend". My inspiration for this story came from the billions of hours I have spent watching this movie. Apocalyptic things have always interested me, but about a month ago, I thought of this movie, and the idea sparked. 

               Thirdly, I would like to thank @ikilltheparty for the cover. It looks great.

               Sorry, I talk too much. Just go ahead and read because this story blows my mind.

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           Something about the setting sun reminded Gerard of the days before this. The days before the whole world fell apart. He leaned against the window and watched the pink haze for barely a second before he raised his hammer again and pressed the final rusty nail into the block of plywood. He stepped away and admired the blocked windows. They were sturdy, hard and crashing out all the light that dared to enter from the hazy sun. That was a good thing. Gerard sighed, ran a hand through his long, black and horribly greasy hair that met his shoulders.

                How long had it been since he had seen another person? Weeks? Months? Years now? How long had it been since the infection had began? He used to keep track of the days by the movements of the sun, and, if he was lucky, the cycle of the moon, but after several weeks, he found it difficult to continue keeping track of the days, so he stopped. It didn’t matter anymore.

                He turned away from the window and walked through the blackened shack. From the slits of light coming from the less than a quarter inch space between the plywood, he could tell the sun was setting. Gerard picked up his slow pace as he practically ran from the first room to the back room where he would bunker down for the long night.

The first room was his stockpile of weapons. Guns, machetes, chainsaws, baseballs bats, crow bars, grenades, and countless others resided on self-made stands surrounded by the over-turned furniture that guarded them even though there was nobody to steal them. The back room was his food medicinal and fire-starting stash. Gerard had accumulated tons and tons of food over his time in isolation. Every day, when he left, armed with a fully loaded pistol and his favorite black katana, Gerard would fill his dark green army tote with any food he could find in the city. He’d enter the empty skeletons of once occupied apartments and gut them of anything useful, usually only decaying food and medicine. When he’d come back to his shelter, he’d find his huge, to scale map he had made of the city and ‘X’ out the gutted building, and he would never return.

                Gerard closed the door to the back room, stepping around the mountains of food. It was all arranged according to size, color, and brand. Some stacks reached clear over his head, not because they were plentiful, but because they were made a delicacy. Packages and packages of unopened Nestle Chocolate Chips and cartons upon cartons of Folger’s Coffee Beans nearly brushed the ceiling. They were his treasures and only relinquished his desire for the two when he felt it was a special occasion.

Whenever that was.

Gerard laid down in his unmade bed surrounded by the mountains of pure temptation. It had been hard the first few weeks to not tear into the stashed food. He was hungry, but that had become normality. Besides, even before the infection, Gerard had been starving anyway. Now, the mountains of food only supplied him company and made him feel safe in a relative way. He sighed and crawled beneath the blankets and watched the slits of light from the only window in the room. They dramatically faded, falling into nothing.

                Gerard took a deep breath, counting to ten and listening. There were screams outside, but they were not of humans. They were the screams of the infected, and they were starving. Gerard pulled the blanket over his greasy head, whimpering. The infected had taken to cannibalism since the human race was exterminated, eating each other, but receiving no sort of nutrition. A part of Gerard knew that they were searching for him. They could smell his scent in every apartment he went in and followed him after the sun set, but it vanished as he left New York for the nearby New Jersey suburbs through the weeds and grass that was well above his waist.

Gerard lay awake for two hours, like he does every night, listening to the wails of the undead as they were obliterated into each other. The whole cannibalism thing made no sense to Gerard. If they’re eating each other, then they must be killing their race, right? But, Gerard wasn’t so sure. The wails only increased by night. Not because the infected were getting closer, but because their population was expanding. That was the scariest part of the whole situation.

                Gerard touched his forehead once more after two hours, counting to ten and repeating the Lord’s Prayer twice before he finally relaxed. It was the end of another day all alone. One day closer to the inevitability of his own infection and eventually death. He sighed and rolled on his back, lowering the blanket. He was safe one more night.

With one last thought of the years before the infection, Gerard sighed. This was the only time he allowed himself to recollect his past. He never allowed his thoughts to cloud his work and schedule throughout the day.

                After only a few moments of recollection, Gerard finally fell into a dark, nightmarish sleep, accompanied by the screams from only miles away. He was used to the nightmares. They made him feel like he was a normal person even though years before the infection, he wasn’t normal at all.

                It was okay to pretend like he had been though. He could be whoever he wanted in his head now. He was, of course, the only person alive.

                Gerard did not know this, but there was a flaw in his thinking;

                The last man on Earth was not alone.