Zombie Apocalypse

Author's Note: Like most of my NaNo shorts, this one is connected to some other stories. It especially links to The Void, which I suggest you read first. :)

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Eddie laid his head on the pillow and rubbed his tired eyes, smudging the black eyeliner he had neglected to remove. The teenager hadn’t bothered to remove a lot of things; under the quilt, his shoes were still on and a leather belt still held up his jeans. He hadn’t even washed the thick layer of gel from his hair. Eddie just couldn’t be bothered with life anymore.

His troubles had started on a jog with his friend, Dom. Well, Eddie had been an odd child beforehand; pretending to be the bank robber instead of the sheriff, hunting for drugs instead of treasure… but those were just childish games. Things went really bad on the day of that jog, when he’d killed his best friend.

Not intentionally, of course. The two boys had found a seemingly abandoned garden shed, practically falling to the ground. Inside it, however, was the void. Pure darkness, emptiness; and they couldn’t enter it of their own will. But Dom hadn’t entered of his own free will, Eddie had pushed him in. And Dom had been lost to the void.

No one remembered Dom after that. He was completely erased from existence. His parents didn’t even know his name, and they said that his bedroom full of boyish toys and comics all belonged to some exchange student they used to house. Eddie, at the eye of the storm, was the only one who knew Dom had ever been alive, and the guilt had eaten him up until he was just an empty body. A shell without a soul.

He rubbed his blackened fingers on the sheet, then squeezed his eyelids together, trying to shut out the world and enter a void of his own. Sleep was the only relief he got from his torturous existence, and some nights even sleep punished Eddie. This was one of those nights.

Eddie could see the back of a boy who was running down a street, his messy brown hair flowing behind him. The street looked empty, even apocalyptic; there was litter everywhere, the houses lining it had broken windows and knocked down-doors, and there wasn’t any hint of a breeze. Everything was still and silent, except for that one boy, running vigorously as if his life depended on it.

Suddenly, Eddie heard a growl come from directly behind him. He wasn’t really there, he didn’t have a body to move. It was like A Christmas Carol, and he was seeing Christmas past or future or whatever. Yet he somehow managed to turn around and face the thing that was growling. It was a zombie, literally. The decayed, rotten corpse looked like it had been plucked straight out of a horror movie and thrown into whatever dystopian world he was dreaming about. The creature, both arms raised, walked into the typical zombie fashion straight towards him. And then passed through him. It was going after the boy, Eddie realised.

He became aware of the boy’s panting, even as he sprinted further and further down the street. He became aware of his racing heart, his fear as the growls echoed through his ear drums, the boy’s desperation to get away from that cursed creature. He felt each step as the boy’s feet thumped onto the bitumen, he felt the way his hair lashed behind him, felt the clamminess of his sweaty clothes. Eddie’s awareness of the boy increased with each passing second, and then, in one flash of lightning, Eddie’s field of vision changed, and he was the boy.

“Over here!” Eddie froze in his tracks, his hair falling around his eyes. Someone had spoken. He felt a flood of relief, there was someone other than the dead in this damned world. “I said over here!” There it was again, a woman’s voice. He glanced around him, eyes darting in all directions. She was standing in the doorway of a house, arms waving. Eddie heard another growl from behind him, mustered some energy, and sprinted to the door.

“Thanks,” he puffed as she slammed the door shut behind him, sliding the chain lock. He kneeled against the wall, trying to catch his breath, and looked her up and down. She looked ordinary, like a house-wife turned soldier. Pink shirt, track pants, jogging shoes, hair tied in a bun, and absolutely no traces of a weapon. How this person had survived in a world of zombies, Eddie had no idea. Yet she radiated strength and determination, as if she had unsettled business. In fact, Eddie thought, she looked a little like his P.E. teacher; kind and motherly, but deadly if provoked.

“Call me Mandy.” She held out a hand for him to shake, and Eddie noticed her knuckles were bloody and bruised. Did she fight those things with her bare hands? Surely not; her clothes were so clean they might’ve just come out of the washing machine. Still, she had just saved him from being ripped to shreds, so Eddie put aside any questions and took her hand.

She smiled and said, “You’re going to be fine, honey.”

“So what’s your story?” Eddie asked his host after she’d poured him a glass of water. She was decked out in this house; it clearly wasn’t her’s originally, but she had the cupboards loaded with cans and water bottles, and a comfy assortment of blankets on the living room sofa. He wondered why she didn’t sleep upstairs in the bedroom, but he supposed she wanted to be close to the exit in case something happened.

She looked at him with confused eyes, tilted her head. “What did you do before all hell broke loose?” He prompted when she didn’t give any reply.

“Honey, you know me.” Mandy said quietly, leaning across the dining room table. She gripped his free hand, stroking it, and Eddie felt odd. He knew this wasn’t his body, yet it was. He could feel everything the boy felt, see everything he saw, hear, taste… but now he was beginning to think like the boy. A foreign thought entered his mind, just a slight tug at his memory, and Eddie no longer thought Mandy looked like his P.E. teacher, he knew that she was. And, as the boy’s thoughts grew stronger, he realised that she was his favourite teacher, and Eddie felt a whole lot safer, and a lot less suspicious.

“You’re right,” he said, “sorry.” She shrugged, giving him his hand back.

“It’s the shock of everything, I suppose,” Mandy sighed, “but I’ve still got a story to tell.” Eddie brushed a strand of hair away from his eyes, watching her intently, and wished that he had his trusty yellow cap to hide the messy locks. He’d left it in his room though, and it didn’t look like he’d be going home anytime soon. Eddie’s eyes widened; these thoughts belonged to someone he knew, that yellow hat belonged to someone he knew.

“But I’m more interested in hearing your story, honey.” As Mandy talked, she let slip a piece of information which sent Eddie’s mind reeling. If he wasn’t already in hell, he was now. “Go on, Dom, how’d you get to this side of town?”

“Dom?” Eddie’s heart beat uncontrollably, the glass slipped out of his sweating hand, crashing to the glass surface, sending shards of glass and drops of water skidding in all directions. “What did you say?” He knew what she’d said though, and it all made sense. So much torturous, heart-wrenching sense. The messy brown hair, the hat, P.E, his thoughts, this whole damned body… Eddie hadn’t just inhabited any random boy’s body, he’d inhabited his best friend’s. The one he’d murdered, who he’d pushed into the darkness of the void. Dom.

“Your story, Dom. How’d you get here?”

“I don’t know…” He pushed himself out of the chair, panicking, and looked around the living room. He didn’t know how he’d gotten there. Eddie, himself, he knew his lifeless shell was in bed, sleeping. But Dom. He had no memories of the beginning, of people turning into zombies or of leaving his house and running down the street. He had just appeared out of thin air. One minute there was nothing, only darkness, and the next he was standing on bitumen in an apocalyptic version of his home town, hearing growls behind him. Oh no- the realisation hit Eddie like a monster truck, and he bolted for the front door, just wanting to get away from there, to escape from the whole cursed dystopia. What if he had sent Dom there? What if this was where the void led to? If it wasn’t a void at all, but a portal to a parallel dimension? Had Eddie actually condemned his best friend to be ripped to shreds by the undead? His mind reeled with so many questions, so many possibilities. Eddie couldn’t take it; he looked up at the ceiling and screamed.

“Honey, stop!” Mandy shouted, but her voice was drowned out by his high-pitched, dangerously loud lamenting. Eddie let out all his emotion, all the grief that filled his mind, all the guilt and longing for his friend. His scream was a beacon, signalling to all the undead monsters lining the neighbourhood’s streets. Eddie saw them, through the window by the door, as they stumbled closer and closer to the house. Even as the door rattled on its hinges, the chain lock the only thing keeping it closed, Eddie kept screaming.

He felt the P.E. teacher’s hand clasp around his mouth, muffling his cries, and heard the banging outside. He struggled against her grip; he didn’t care if the zombies came, he didn’t care if they ripped out his intestines and hung them on a line to dry, he just wanted this to end. He wanted the pain and guilt to go away. Mandy was trying to pull him away from the door, she had her other arm around his waist. Eddie knew she was strong, he couldn’t let her save him; it all had to stop. He raised his hand and slid the chain off the door. It burst inwards, and a zombie flew right at him, bloody mouth heading directly for Dom’s face.

Eddie sat up in bed, his sheets soaked with sweat and heart racing. He was in his own shell of a body- greasy black hair, smudged eyeliner and all. Dom was gone again, lost to the void. Eddie tried to cry, that would be a normal, human reaction. But he couldn’t, he was a lifeless, empty shell. When he’d lost Dom to the darkness, he’d lost himself too. But this was a different kind of nothingness.

“Damn you,” he cursed. Eddie looked at his alarm clock: 3:46. He’d slept through the whole day again. He got out of bed, already dressed, and rummaged through his bedside drawer. The teenager’s hands emerged gripping onto a gun. He’d thought about using it before, wanted to use it before, but he’d always been too scared. A coward. And he still couldn’t just send a bullet through his head; that was too easy. He needed a void, like Dom, he needed someone or something to push him. Eddie ran out the house, heading for the public school. If he hurried, he could catch the four o’clock bus.

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If you want to know what happens next, read Bus Trip.