Wasteland - Chapter 3

Joan had cradled a mug of hot cocoa, a recent addition to many people’s diet after a recent expedition south set discovered a tribal settlement, that grew the special plant. Her friends sat around a crackling fire, surrounded by gravestones at night.

“… and they say, that if you ever see the dark cloaked man, it’s already too late. Because just when you least expect it, he’ll jump out at you!” Catherine had spoken quietly for most of the story, but she raised her voice for the last part.

Joan’s friends jumped at the sudden volume change.

Catherine burst out laughing, so hard in fact, she got serious case of the hiccups

“You… hic… should have seen… hic… your faces… hic…” she taunted.

“That wasn't scary at all,” James, another of her friends jeered.

“Oh… hic… and I suppose you have a… hic… better one.”

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

“Then tell us,” Joan goaded.

“Ok, here it goes.”

They all shuffled in closer as James cleared his throat.

“They say…”

“Who says,” Catherine interrupted.

“They.” James responded

“They?”

“Yes, they.”

“Who’s they?”

“I dunno. Now shut up.”

“Sorry.”

He stared at Catherine for a moment, then began again.

“Anyway. They say that in a little village not far from here…”

“What’s it called?” Catherine interrupted again.

“What’s what called?” James asks.

“The village.”

“I don’t know, does it matter?” James complained.

“Of course, a good story needs a good setting.” Catherine explained.

“This one doesn’t.”

“Then it’s not a good story,” Catherine said, matter-of-factly.

“You’re just annoyed because I said your story was bad,” James complained.

“Exactly,” Catherine agreed.

“I’m going to ignore you now.”

“Just you try.”

“A little village not far from here, there lived a group of kids, only a little older than us…”

“What where their names?”

James continued “… they snuck into the graveyard one night.”

“Why?”

“… And a strange mist rolled in.”

Catherine had resorted to poking James.

“Oh will you two just get a room,” Will teased.

“Later,” James said dismissively, “The kids built a bonfire, and sat around it to tell scary stories.”

“What scary stories?” Samantha, Will’s sister, asked.

“Oh not you too,” James groaned, “do you wanna here about zombies or not?”

“What are zombies?”

“Their dead people that come back to life,” James explained, “and they eat brains.”

“Why brains?” Will asked.

“I dunno…”

“They sound made up,” Joan complained.

“Of course they’re made up,” James said, “duh.”

“You shouldn’t have told us that, now the story won’t be scary,” Catherine explained.

“I give up, someone else tell a story, I give up,” James threw his arms in the air and sighed exasperatedly.

…

Joan remembers those stories now as she stares at the decaying zombies, up until about ten seconds ago, she had thought they were made up, like trolls or dragons.

But as the zombies reach for her with rotting arms she rethinks her whole reality. Are trolls and dragons real, after all zombies obviously are, so why not.

And maybe their friendly, perhaps they won’t eat her, or her brains.

“Hi Mr Zombie, please don’t eat my brains.”

He grunts, in reply. And promptly tries to eat her brains.

Joan ducks, avoiding the zombies teeth, and pulls out her gun.

She briefly wonders how they had survived this long, they had presumably been dead for 250 years. Although dead was a relative term, obviously.

“Sorry about this.”

Click, she pulls the trigger. Nothing happens.

Click, again pulling the trigger. Again nothing happens.

“Piece of…”

“Grrrrrrr.” 

“… jammed.”

With that, Joan takes off. She runs down the corridor away from the door, that way being blocked by the undead.

Joan sprints, zombies hot on her heals.

As Joan runs, she reaches a junction, she can go right or left.

She chooses right.

She chooses wrong.

More walking corpses block her way, she tries to backpedal, but finds her way blocked off by a wall of flesh. Zombies grapple her, and pull her further into their grasp.

She pulls out her recently acquired machete with the intention of hacking away at the long dead children, when one of them bites down on her arm.

She gasps in pain and drops the machete.

Another zombie tackles her to the ground. She struggles to get up, but more fall on top of her.

She kicks at the zombies and pushes as many of them off of her a she can, before using the zombies around her as foot and hand holds to slide across the floor away from the fumbling mass.

Seeing an empty classroom, she crawls towards it and slams the door again and again, catching several zombie limbs. With a final shove, she shuts the door and sinks to her knees with her back against the door.

It takes a moment for her to realize that there is no way out of the room. No windows. No other doors. Just the one behind her. The only source of light coming from stained windows high above

Joan gets up and looks at the door. A thick wooden one a small window and a small lock. She sees the window is covered with the works of long dead students. She looks around the room itself, and finds the walls covered in similar pieces. She locks the door and wanders around the room to find something to use against the zombies.

She opens the desks and finds dust covered workbooks and the rotted and dried husks of what was possibly once food. She finds nothing of use in the desks, but sees that there are Bunsen Burners lining one side of the classroom. While walking over to them, a zombie smashes the small window in the door. It pokes its head in and tries climb in but gets stuck halfway through.

With a new sense of urgency, Joan quickly turns the valve on one of the burners. Nothing comes out. She checks the next one, and again, nothing. She turns on all of the burners but none of them work.

"Damn!" she mutters to herself.

A little dejected, she searches the teachers desk. To her surprise, she finds a box of matches. She opens them and finds just one left.

"Better make this work," she sighs.

She turns away to find something suitable to burn, when something catches her eye. A red button, with faded words around it. Only making out the word 'Master...' she shrugs and presses it, and hears the slight hiss of gas escaping.

"Yes," she jumps a little in joy.

She rushes over to the burners. Striking the match, a big flame bursts outwards, but quickly dies down, to a tall orange flame.

Joan rushes over to desks and pulls out some of the dry yellow books. Some of them crumple in her hands, but a few stay intact. She holds one of them over the flame, it quickly catches alight, she holds that book over the others and they burst into flames soon enough.

Picking these books up, she carries them to the door, juggling them like hot potatoes. Once only a few feet away, she throws a flaming book at her half in half out friend. His dried skin quickly burns and he wriggles out of the window. She throws another book through the window. Then all of them.

The zombies in a burning panic stumble away from the doorway. Taking her chance, Joan opens the door and runs for her machete. Dodging the now very angry zombies, she reaches her knife and picks it up. Now brandishing a weapon, Joan feels a little more confident. She aims a slice at the neck of a zombie, but instead slices him from shoulder to opposite side.

She stares in surprise at the zombie, then at the machete. Now feeling much more confident she runs headlong into the zombies. Slicing left at right.

Joan decides that fighting zombies is easy, particularly with a weapon, a very sharp weapon.

Gore splatters and the smell of blood adds to the smell of burnt flesh in the air as she chops her way through the mass of the undead. 

She breaks through, and runs.

Passing more of the dead along her way, relieving them of their heads as she hacks away.

She finally reaches a window. It has been smashed outwards.

Joan prepares to launch herself through the opening. She dives through the window, throwing herself out into the open air.

She lands in some bushes and finds an old boot, and dried blood in the leaves. Her chest hurts and she feels winded.

She tastes blood, her tongue having been bitten.

Struggling to right herself, Joan is lacerated by tiny shards of glass, her hands and face sting painfully. As she finally stands, zombies swarm from the small opening. She grabs her machete and runs.

She runs and runs.

She doesn’t stop running.

Her lungs are on fire but she keeps running.

The zombies are long gone, having fallen behind.

She still runs.

She cries.

The events of the past hour or so catch up to her.

Yet she keeps running.

…

She had stopped running.

The sun was setting, there was no beautiful sunset she had see in ancient postcards.

Nope, the only discernable change had been everything going from grey, to a slightly darker grey.

She had run from the small pre-apocalypse town back into the wasteland, a huge desert, stretching as far as the eye could see. The desert was a massive flat plain, devoid of life and covered in small boulders.

Joan was exhausted. She had been beaten to within an inch of her live, and had been chased by a swarm of undead corpses.

She was drained physically, and mentally.

And it was cold, her breath fogged the air.

Her physical injuries included; her left eye had almost swollen shut, her nose was badly broken, she had a pounding headache, she was black and blue all over, a cracked rib, small, yet painful lacerations on her face and hands, glass still hanging out some of them. And a large gash on her right arm.

The gash on her arm worried her most of all.

It was a bite.

A zombie bite.

She was worried it would become infected.

She had seen people come into her city with wounds that would not heal, from Radcoon bites or other wasteland creatures. They came into town and would be treated in the town’s hospital. It was taken very seriously, they could become infected and become fatal, if not treated soon enough.

Joan, of course, has no clue as to how an unhealing wound could be treated, and she was far from the nearest settlement she knew of.

As Joan continues to walk the watery sun dips below the horizon. Shadows elongated and the flat ground was streaked with black lines, shadows from even the smallest of pebbles.

As all traces of the suns existence disappears, a tiny pinpoint of light can be seen.

Joan decides that it would be beneficial to walk towardsthe light, hoping to find a fire, and friendly faces..

As she nears the source of red light she sees it is a large cooking fire, surrounded by horse drawn caravans, liikely filled with food or other trading goods.

Crack!

Something tears through her leg, causing searing pain to shoot up her thigh.

Crack!

Blood erupts from her shoulder as another bullet rips into her.

"Stop!" She screams.

Crack! Pew!

Another bullet, this one misses and wizzes past a few inches from her left ear.

Joan drops to the ground, she crawls towards a small boulder, all the while under fire from her assailants.

She reaches the the rock and hides behind it, bleeding from several different wounds in her torso.

The firing stops.

"Is she dead?"

"I don't thinks so."

"Go check."

"Why me? You go check. I checked last time."

"Last time?"

"Yeah, and the time before that."

"I'm pretty sure there hasn't really been a last time."

"Of course their was, you're old and your memory is going."

"Just go check if she's dead."

"Fine."

Joan hears footsteps walking towards her, gravel crunching underfoot.

A young man, only a few years older than comes round the side of the boulder.

Joan lay unmoving.

"I think she's dead."

She draws a ragged breath and tries to say something.

"Wait, she moved, what should I do?

"Shoot her," someone else says.

He brings his gun up to point at her.

"Wait," her voice come out in a croak,"please... don't shoot."

"Who are you?" the young man asks, still pointing the gun at her.

"Joan."

He rolls his eyes, and lowers the gun slightly.

"Well thats great," his voice dripping with sarcasm, "Where are you from? and what do you want?"

"Help," her voice comes out in a small squeek.

The edges of Joan's vision turn black.

She forgets the boy talking to her.

A million things rush through her mind. Is this it, am I going to die.

I'm so young, I haven't done all the things I wanted.

Her last thought as everything fades to black is; will I see my dad again.