Day: 1

Zombies Killed: 0

“ARTHUR! GO!”, my father screamed while pushing his body against the entrance door, one shoulder on the portal and one hand on the ground, for support. Bright red bloodstream rushed from his neck all the way down to his fingers.

“Bu- Bu- But...”, I didn’t even know what to say, just standing there, my entire body shaking. My eyes turned to the dead things behind the already half-open door, scratching the windows and trying to get in. One of them was our old neighbor, one side of his neck with such a wound that he couldn’t keep his face straight up anymore.

“Morgaine!”, father turned then to my twin sister.

“...Dad...”, she as bad as me, though, unable to do anything but to watch powerless, and couldn’t do as father wanted to.

“You two, listen to me: you have to run. Please, I already gas fill the house” a zombie had already half its body inside our home, and his claws were tearing apart my father’s arm skin. “I won’t become one of these things… But don’t want to see you two dying too!”

The creatures broke in at the same time that me and my twin sister turned ourselves, tears in our eyes, and rushed through the corridors and stairs, to the second floor and father's room. The zombies were slow, but dozens of them invading our home in an instant, pressing and pushing each other's bodies, the first floor was flooded in seconds, their hands scratching against the steps of the stair just behind me and my twin sister made my heart beat so fast, the thumping so loud in my ears that I couldn’t hear anything else. I couldn’t see anything that wasn't right before me. I couldn’t think of anything but to survive.

I couldn’t feel pain.

Maybe for the best.

Morgaine and I jumped inside the room and reached for its door at the same time, and just in time to hear the impact of a compressed mass of dead meat shocking itself against the barrier. For a moment, we stayed still, as if the undead would go away if we didn’t make noise, but once that we started to listen to an ominous sound of wood cracking, we immediately started to look around.

The first thing I thought was to push the wardrobe and put it against the door, like they do in movies: I didn’t expect the furniture to be any more resistant than the door, but if it came to buy us even a single second more, would be already worthy.

When I finally finished moving the thing, then, I heard Morgaine:

“Bro! Here!”, she had a window open and was already going through it.

When I rushed to catch up with my twin sister, the door broke, but the wardrobe did a good job and contained the creatures for just enough time for me to follow Morgaine and we stay together.

We were then in the roof, and from there; while going all around the house and to its front, we having the same idea to use the car as a buffer so we wouldn’t hurt ourselves from falling on the ground even without saying; I saw a hundred helicopters flying in the skies, from who only a couple was of the police and was shooting the brain eaters, while the rest was of TV stations filming everything or particular property of rich people. Crashed cars that started to burn suddenly exploded, hordes of thousands of undead moved as seas on the streets, devouring everything in their way, getting only bigger, sirens sounding loud and acute thru the city, ships trying to leave the ports only to be shot sunk from battleships for violating the quarantine, fighter planes throwing napalm around the city and in its forest and exploding the bridge for containment. Groups of survivors kept organized themselves to make barricades or loot stores and commit crimes and atrocities. An entire building fell and the ground shook, cracks and holes opening here and there, exposing the sewers, and portals to hell itself as gas and electricity created big explosions, bringing down even one or two helicopters, whose freed and wild helices sliced thru concrete and meat.

When Morgaine and I jumped from our house roof to the top of fathers car, and from this to the ground, I tried to open the door to the vehicle, but only then I remembered that we left the keys inside the car during the mess that was the attack on father.

The zombies were jumping from the roof too, having followed us, and even more were roaming the streets and having their attention captured by me and my twin sister. I reached for Morgaine’s hand and we just run.

Our home exploded and burned at our backs, and killed many brain eaters. Just a scratch for the horde, and though the horde wasn’t as fast as we were, it didn’t get tired, slower, and their numbers kept increasing, zombies falling from windows of the neighborhood houses, breaking fences, and encircling us little by little. We avoided the undead that staggered ahead, and went around cars whose alarm was on, and kept dozens of zombies distracted, but nonathletic teenagers as we were, we had barely get 100 meters away from our lost home and we were already panting and covered in sweat: driven by adrenaline or not, our bodies were about to give up unless we had some rest.

Right then, a monster car forced its way through half a wooden house close of us, and its driver, a fat man with a tank top and sunglasses, jumped out of it, caring a shotgun. Of course, it wasn’t to help us, but to invade the house of the school’s biology teacher, who’s been talking about the parasite menace for a while, breaking into it with a kick. We heard screams; our teacher was apparently still alive then. But soon, loud gunshots and silence.

At least the guy attracted the zombies that just a second ago had my twin sister and me as their targets to himself. Or at least most of it: then staggering as much as the creatures, we managed to reach the end of the road.

The crossroad ahead kept a metal fence in an “L” shape. The police, then very poorly equipped even though they had supposedly got military-grade weapons, guarded two sides of it, without even noticing we coming closer; they complained about their guns and something about how they should have used silver bullets against a “target”, while zombies were pushing against one of the sides of the barricade and, before the other side of the metal fence, two groups of survivors fought each other, with clubs and knives while being, slowly, surrounded by the undead.

We were away already when the fences fell under the zombies’ weight, when all the survivors were already dead and the policemen had undead on their throats.

Though my twin sister and I were tired, we couldn’t just stop, and even if walking, drenched in sweat and terrified, we continued, seeing a woman with hokey mask shooting another wearing a yellow raincoat in his knees and letting him behind as a bait, saying that all of that was happened because of fagots like his victim; and a guy completely protected with medieval steel armor and holding a machine gun in one hand and a sword in another laughing of a woman being eaten alive, telling her how she should have paid more attention to the horoscope, like he did.

“Where are we going...?!” Morgaine questioned, visibly at her limit… like myself.

“Good question”, we had seen the army isolating the city, follow the street, we would only reach a broken bridge… I didn’t, then, needed to think.

Because I was attacked by one of the creatures, who got my foot from under a car.

I fell and almost brought Morgane with me before I let off her hand. I felt the infected teeth of the zombie biting my shoe, but while hurt a lot, it hadn’t enough strength to tear the leather apart. Screaming under the feeling of my foot being crushed, I started to kick the face of the creature with my free limb. The flesh of the zombie was unnaturally squishy and slimy, and already the first strike tore off half of his face, that glued in my sole like gum, but the skull was still hard, and the creature didn’t really felt any pain. I saw Morgaine approaching and lifting her foot over the spine of the undead, about to break it, so his hands would let me go, but before she could do so, the door of the house by our side opened and a creepy and hairy man rushed out and grabbed Morgaine’s long black hair, then pulling her to inside his home.

Tears flowing without stop, my world falling all around in a single day, I bent and grabbed the zombie’s face with my own hands, sliding my thumbs into his eye socks and pushing his head with all my mighty, until his rotten head touched the middle of his back and its neck broke in an explosion of blood when his spine pierced his throat.

Freed, and somehow without getting a single drop of the red in my eyes or mouth, I immediately got up and looked for my twin sister, but she was already kicking the guy right in his knee, bending his leg to the wrong side. I took her hand and we started to run again, letting the attacker behind and to the zombies that approached too much while we were stuck back there.

Just ahead, a hundred vehicles clogged the street, the bridge who once connected the port to the outside of the town then broken and the drivers without knowing what to do; in the front car a man with a hat and hood, and two women, one with braces and other with another with tattoos all across her face cursing telephone posts for the disaster and laughing of the tower they broke. A woman ahead started to scream to the police the other side of the broken bridge and saying that she was a judge, that she could and would sue everyone there if she wasn’t rescued, that they just needed to research this a bit and they would see.

“The bridges are broken, the forest is burning, and we can’t just swim away…”, I pointed, walking away, then paying as much attention to the living as to the undead.

“We hide then?”

“I don’t know if we will be able to survive while hiding.”

We were already heading away, when, for everyone’s surprise, the policemen really rescued the judge woman and a couple of friends of her that she pointed too. Horns started to sound, the angry mob screamed and protested, but only when someone took off his cellphone and started to film that something happened: a volley of shots. The drivers on the rear, instead of reverse, accelerated and pushed the first one, and some more, into the river, that once was a popular fishing spot. I looked ahead again and decided to not look back.

“Then… The Rock Hills!”, my twin sister had a genial idea; there was nothing to burn there, nor natural obstacle, in the worst scenario there would be soldiers there, but even then, if we just kept the right distance, they would take care of the zombies coming closer and allow us to live.

“Yes, let’s go!”

We didn’t lose any more time and put ourselves in the right direction.

“Sorry, boy, there’s nothing I can do”, the soldier with a gas mask had a said.

“Please, we’re not infected!”, I couldn’t even believe what was happening; we crossed that hell completely, avoided death a hundred times running from hordes of zombies, fighting psychopaths and barely avoiding being crushed to death by rushed cars, falling buildings, and carried away by the ferocious river. We reached then the rocky slope and saw the iron fence guarded by towers and soldiers, and run towards it, where we were intercepted by the army guarding the last available city’s exit.

“Orders are orders, sorry.”

“Will you just left us to die, then?!”, I insisted.

“Hey, hey, and what do you want us to do? Everyone knows that this thing is passed by computer viruses, and you, younglings, are always on those computers, right? There’s no such thing as ‘I’m not infected’ with you.”

“Please!”, Morgaine advanced while I could only stare blankly. “We can’t just go back, we will die!”

“Well… my orders are to don’t let anyone pass; you know, you must have a medical document proving that you’re clean (bullshit, if you ask me), and we should have clean clothes, that we don’t, to give you and all… But let’s do like this: show me your tits and you’re free to go.”

“WHAT?!”, my twin sister and I screamed at the same time, gaping, amazed.

“AND HOW THE FUCK WERE WE SUPPOSED TO PROVE OURSELVES CLEAN IN FIRST PLACE?!”, I covered Morgaine with one arm.

Before the soldier could continue, though, I heard a voice empowered by a megaphone from above, and helices sound while strong lights fell over my twin sister and me:

“You fucking uneducated should have thought about this before killing yourselves!”, a rope ladder fell right beside the soldier, who started to salute, and soon a woman in a black suit, sunglasses, and black gloves slid down. She was somehow familiar, but I couldn’t tell how; in any case, while a cameraman followed her down, filming us, she continued: “weren’t the TV alerts already fucking clear enough? THE ZOMBIES ARE A REAL FUCKING DANGER! We were saying this from the fucking beginning!”

“But-!”, I tried to reply, to protest and claim mine and my twin sister’s innocence and ask for help, but a straight punch from the woman, that even pushed me behind and took my balance, I falling with my but on the ground, shut my mouth.

“Did you guys saw this fucking retard? This is how the pathetic voters of my rival look like: a loser”, the woman turned to the camera while pointing to me with her thumb; my twin sister advanced one step, but the soldier immediately aimed at her with his gun. “Just fucking research, you losers, or you will end like this pathetic folk here, voting on the wrong person and having you own city flooded by mindless cannibals.”

“We’re not even old enough to vote!”, Morgaine replied. The soldier pressed the barrel of his gun against her sides while the woman in black, that I finally recognized as a governor candidate approached her and hugged her. Turning to the camera once again, she continued, unbelievably:

“...See, people of this great country? Everything that goes against my words is nothing more than my rival propaganda, the reality is like this. Do you want to kill children? Not, right? Yeah, me neither, you can research how I’m good and right, you’re very smart if you’re with me no matter what, and everyone else is bad and wrong and a bitchy faggot. That’s everything, thank, God bless you all!”, the woman ended her speech by taking a pair pistol from inside her suit and shooting to nowhere while dabbing.

“Aaaand cut!”, the cameramen lowered his machine, then turning his attention to buttons and a small screen on the camera.

“...If you don’t want to see kids dying, then why don’t you let us get out off here?!”, I asked wiping the blood flowing from my nose with the sleeve of the jacket of my school uniform.

“And risk to let you bring that curse with you? No, thank you. Now get lost, boy, unless you want to receive, besides my fist, a fucking bullet in this ugly face of yours”, the woman in black answered, putting her weapons inside her holsters once again and lighting a cigar.

“We will vote for you!”, Morgaine said, getting away from the soldier and crouched by my side.

“Interesting propose… But if I start to let your type to get in for your votes, there’s also the chance that you will bring the God’s curse with you and kill even more voters; logically speaking is just a bad deal, research the mathematics...”, she walked to the rope ladder, shaking her hand as if dispensing a servant.

Research. She said to research again… Why does everyone say it?

Research.

Mathematics...

“...My father died today”, I said, getting up. The soldier pointed his weapon to me, but I continued, standing still and frowning my eyebrows: “my twin sister and I almost died too”, I captured the woman in black's attention, when I advanced one step, forcing the gas mask to scream to me to stop. “I saw my city burning and everything I knew to be taken from me today. I won’t just let things end like this!”

“And what are you gonna do, boy? What even CAN you do?”, I felt the woman in black’s index finger bashing against my chest.

“There are about 70.000 people in this city”, the woman in black lifted one eyebrow. “Let’s assume all of them became zombies, and despise the number of the creatures that were already taken down. They’re dumb and slow and easily lured and defeated… One year.”

“...What?”, The politician candidate took off her mouth the cigar.

“If we kill around 192 zombies every day, or 96 zombies each one, we can clean this entire fucking city all by ourselves in just a single year! Go ahead and do the math. ‘Just research’.”

“Ha! Interesting…”, throwing away her cigar, the woman in black added: “Interesting! Then, let’s do like this, boy: if the day when there won’t be even a single fucking zombie walking around, I’ll take you and your twin sister out of this shit hole and take care of you and all your needs.”

“Then you better wait and see! We will just kill all the zombies!”

Grabbing the rope ladder and being taken away by her helicopter, the woman in black concluded:

“I will, boy! I will…!”