The Last Legends: A Novella

Alec

I hate to say it, but I hid. I hid in my bedroom upstairs, listening to the repeating thunk against every area of the house on ground level. Listening to the moaning of the Infected as they besieged my home. Despite how many I had taken out earlier, it seemed as if there were more than ever, though they seemed to increase in number every night, though I only ever found a few scattered about the neighborhood during the day. 

I was a coward. It was my imagination, my terror which multiplied their numbers! I didn't even look at them! How could I know how many were out there?

But there were no lights I could use if I even wanted to look at them. The generator had run out yesterday, even with sparse usage, and my phone died early this morning, not that it had been of any use even before it died. But before there had been that small, stupid "what if". Now, there was no way to contact me save for charging through a small army of nearly immortal beings. If you can be immortal while technically being dead, that is.

With every minute, it got gradually darker in my room. Had I had a real watch, or a battery-powered clock, I probably could have figured out what time they come out to maximize my time doing anything else. After all, I had to be back, locked in my house before it starts getting dark, or I become something akin to catnip for Infected. Or maybe it would be more accurate to compare them to a fish and myself a worm. Either way, they would be on me within minutes, perhaps even seconds if I found myself unprotected. 

If I knew exactly what time they came out, I might be able to risk a venture to somewhere I can find food; food is finite, after all. I have no car, so it would have to be close, and closer still so I could easily return even when loaded down by supplies. Everywhere like that had been picked over early on during the initial phase of the Infection, even before the looting began. My best bet was a larger store, and the closest of those was probably a two-hour walk. 

My parents had taken the two cars we owned. There were still many in driveways and along the street, but there was a downside to that. Most of the owners had either wandered off with the keys after the infection began, or had been placed in a pit behind their house by me. People had begun to always carry their keys with them in case of an emergency during the initial outbreak, and almost all died with their keys in their pockets or purses. While I hadn't bothered to check any purses, as there were surprisingly few, I was unwilling to search a dead man for his keys. I would not dig through a pit of rotting cadavers for a set of keys to a car that may no longer work.

So, unless I discover a set of keys hanging somewhere or lying on the ground, I will be staying put until I run out of food. 

With a slight whimper, I plugged my ears with some tissue paper and curled up in a ball, covering myself with my blanket as if it would protect me in case one of them got in. Stupid, I am aware, but yet I did it. Every night, it made me feel like the kid I was no longer permitted to be. Any children left were more than likely Infected now, perhaps even murderers of their parents.

Eventually, I forced myself to sleep, trying to block out the pounding that penetrated even my makeshift earplugs.

When I woke, I performed my typical routine: I got dressed in a cleaner pair of clothes, ate a quick breakfast of stale cereal with no milk, and surveyed the boarded-up windows for signs of damage. As there were none to be found, much to my joy after the noise from the previous night, I condensed the rainwater we had been collecting into two buckets. Only two buckets. It really needed to rain. To downpour.

The barrels which collected rain were stationed far enough away and were large enough that Infected mostly left them alone. It was just the occasional one which would stumble into it and send whatever water was inside washing over the grass. It had still managed to work thus far, though. That was something, at least.

Once my water was safely inside, I sat down in the family room. And waited. And waited some more. And continued waiting. I waited until it was what I felt was close enough to noon, grabbed some weapons, and set out for my daily cleansing.

When I was done, it was almost time to shut myself in for the night. Per house, there weren't many more than usual; only an additional one or two per every couple houses. But one or two adds up with over a dozen houses. Instead of my usual forty to fifty, I cleared out about sixty Infected, not that I was tallying. It still wasn't as much as when I had started killing them, but it made me realize just how many people can live in a relatively small area. I had killed well over three hundred, about half the population of my hometown before the Infection, and they just kept coming. Every night. 

At least no issues arose. For another day, I was alive.