Chapter Text
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
I was supposed to be 200 miles away preparing my dorm room for my time at college. I was supposed to be hard at work studying for my exams and working on my assignments. I was supposed to be having fun at parties and dating all sorts of people.
Instead I’m stuck here.
I’m cold.
I’m hungry.
I’m scared of the noises in the forest.
I’m in pain and covered in blood.
I’m barely alive.
I don't know how I managed it. But I’m alive. Barely. But even this ramshackle hut in the middle of Kentucky can't offer safety. Not truely. Not from those… things that lurked in the forest. They warned us to stay inside, that we should stay home until the infection passed. Instead the infected came to us. They banged at our doors and windows until they broke. They hunted us down like lamb to the slaughter. They ripped and tore at our flesh, driven insane by an insatiable desire to consume.
They hunted me too. My own friends and family. They came for me. Tore at my clothes. At my hair. I had to do it. I had to kill them. They weren’t themselves. There was nothing I could do to save them. I couldn’t save them when they first fell ill. I couldn’t save them when they passed. And I couldn’t save them when they came back for me.
And yet I hated doing it. I hated having to crush their skulls. To see their brains all over my hands and feet. Even now it stains my clothes with bits of viscera clinging to me as a reminder I killed my own family. A reminder I couldn’t save them.
A small radio sat on the floor next to me. It mostly just plays static while I try to nurse my mangled arm. But sometimes there’s news broadcasts, or desperate survivors desperately trying to call for some kind of help.
The news broadcasts don’t know what's going on. They think it’s just an outbreak of the flu. They’re scared the army has tanks deployed, and that they have a curfew. Occasionally there’s talks about riots or protests elsewhere. I wonder sometimes if the army knows about what's going on. They occasionally have helicopters or jets flying overhead, so I imagine they have to. And yet they do nothing to help us. There are no troops here to save us like there are at the quarantine lines. There are no helicopters coming to rescue survivors. There isn’t even any supplies being dropped to us. They’ve just left us to die here. Sacrificed us to try and save those outside Knox county.
I’d cry at the prospect of dying. I’d cry at the idea of turning into one of those things out there. I’d cry at the fact I’m being sacrificed as if I don't matter. But I can’t cry. No matter how much I try to cry, the tears just don't come. Maybe it's from the pain my arm is in. Maybe it's from the hunger that gnaws at me. Maybe it's because I haven’t been able to drink anything for the past 2 days. Or maybe it's because in my mind I’ve already given up and surrendered myself to my own fate.
A cold wind seeped into the room and blew up against me from underneath the door. The hut was in the middle of some farm some ways out of town. It was safe from the creatures that shuffled and moaned on the streets in town. But it wasn’t safe from the creeping cold that seemingly craved any semblance of warmth. I remember back when I was young, how I used to always get so sleepy and tired in the cold. I hadn’t slept for the past few days, but now with the cold sapping away at my strength I could feel the sleep slowly claiming me. My breaths were by now getting shallower and shallower, my eyelids growing heavier and heavier.
“A little sleep won't hurt ''