Chapter 10
She woke up startled and still feeling dizzy with a pounding headache.
"What hit me?" she said as she massaged her temples. "I could majorly use some aspirin, although I am sure that anything I could find in the pharmacy would be long expired."
She still had the distinct taste of vomit in her mouth and she felt wet all over. Not only had she been sweating profusely, but apparently she had also wet her pants when she fell unconscious. She immediately took her pulse to see that her heart rate had gone down but was still rather high. Her eyes were burning and she still felt rather dizzy, so thought she should take it easy and not move very far from the bench.
After resting for a couple of moments she managed to compose herself, gather up her things and slowly stand up. She rubbed her eyes and looked around her. She noticed that now the city was starting to get dark.
"What time is it?" she said as she looked at her watch to see that it was now 7:40 PM. "It is almost sunset, I really need to get back to my spacecraft as I definitely do not want to spend all my night in the city. The city could be dangerous at night. Even with my flashlight I don't want to be in a city full of wreckage and debris and be tripping over it in the dark."
No way could she make it all the way back to her spacecraft before it started to get dark. She really was in a predicament now. Not only was she experiencing some feelings of vertigo, no doubt from her prolonged amount of time in space still catching up with her, but now she would have to navigate the city in the dark.
"Maybe I should just find some place to hunker down for the night," she said as she looked around. "I certainly don't want to stay outside as I still don't know if the predator that killed that dog and that squirrel might come back. I certainly don't look forward to running into them."
Then she started to worry even more. Maybe the vertigo wasn't just from being in space; maybe she had contracted some type of infection from cutting herself earlier. It could very well be a combination of both things. But she knew she still wasn't feeling well and that was enough to get her nervous.
She squinted as she looked ahead. "What's wrong with my vision? Everything seems so blurry."
She continued walking slowly and carefully down the street still feeling disgusting from all the sweat and urine on her new clothing. "I majorly need a bath, even if it just means skinny dipping in the ocean again. And I think that I have already worn out my new outfit after just one day. That's the Apocalypse for you. In Hollywood everyone always looks like movie stars during the Apocalypse, but here's the reality of it, wearing a bunch of ripped and bloodied clothing soaked with sweat and urine as you dizzily wander down a dark street full of debris, certainly not very glamorous."
Every couple of minutes she would spot a bench and sit down for a while, as she could tell that the strain was really beginning to get to her, and night was coming. She really would have to find some place to hunker down for the night as there was no way she was going to be able to walk all the way back to her shelter back at the Seaport. She also wasn't close enough to her apartment and didn't think she could navigate the city effectively in the dark like that.
As she felt the tension rising, she thought maybe she should do something to try and relax herself, and music had always helped her to calm down in the past. She sat down, took out her MP3 player and put the plugs in her ear and decided to put her music on shuffle. The first song it went to was Downtown by Petula Clark.
"How oddly appropriate," she said as she began walking down the street singing along with the tune, which managed to drown out any noise in the background and was having a calming effect on her. But she couldn't help but notice that downtown was a lot different now and wasn't quite as pretty.
"Downtown!" she began shouting as she started to dance to the song as she slowly continued walking down the street. Maybe she shouldn't be listening to music when she's walking around in the dark like that she thought, but at this point she needed something to distract herself from the creepy environment she found herself in.
As the song came to an end she thought she heard something in the background so she took her earphones out and turned her music off. "Is anybody there!" she shouted ahead, but she got no response. "Life really is making me pretty lonely right now."
She continued walking and off in the distance she thought she saw something moving. "Hey!" she shouted as she began to run towards it, before stopping in her tracks at the sound of a high pierced shrieking. She rubbed her eyes once again and shined her flashlight straight-ahead to find it was catching the reflection of the creature's eyes.
"What the hell?!" she shouted. But she could see through the illumination of her flashlight and what she saw was what looked like a humanoid creature appearing in front of her, but it wasn't quite human. It looked almost human but extremely pale, bald and the skin was covered with pock marks, and appeared almost as though it were rotting off of the body. Its eyes were glowing red and it seemed to be drooling blood as it continued emitting that high pierced shrieking noise.
"I think I should get out of here," she said as she slowly started walking backwards. But as the creature continued shrieking she heard more shrieking being returned off in the distance. Whatever this creature was it seemed to be calling the cavalry and she did not want to wait around to see them.
As she began to run she started to feel cramps in her legs. "Not now!" she shouted. "If there was any time I didn't want to get some type of a Charlie horse it's now!"
She took no chances and immediately ducked into the nearest store she came to, slammed the door shut, and threw a chair in front of the door. No sooner than she had done that though did she start hearing a pounding against the door and the creature slowly breaking through.
She looked around her and found that she appeared to be in some type of the store, a general store, nothing around she could use as a weapon. She saw what looked like a cleaning mop and she grabbed it, pointed the end of the broom at the creature's face as it began to push through the door and jammed it into its mouth, causing blood to gush out in all directions and causing the creature to emit an even louder shrieking than before.
She pulled the broom back out of the creature's mouth and then thrust it into the creature's genital region, momentarily stunning it, but she realized that that was not going to be enough to hold it off. She had to think, and that was when she looked at the counter and saw a bunch of lighters. She quickly grabbed a lighter, turned the mop around and lit the mop on fire, turning it into a torch that she started waving at the creature's face, causing it to back off for a while as it was continuing to spit blood in every direction.
As she waved the flaming mop in the creature's direction, she managed to continue causing it to back off until it was outside of the door where, much to her horror, she saw that there were at least six other creatures outside shrieking and spitting in her general direction.
"It doesn't seem to like light or fire," she said as she pushed it out of the door using the flaming mop. "But I don't think this is going to hold them off for long."
She saw the back door to the store and slowly began walking backwards towards it while still holding the flaming mop in front of her to keep the creatures at bay. When she had reached the door she quickly went out the door and slammed it shut behind her, only to find herself in an alleyway.
"Now where do I go!" she shouted as she ran with her flaming mop. That was when she looked out on the street to find that there were no creatures, but suddenly she heard the door behind her give way and a whole bunch of the creatures were giving chase. Without even looking where she was going she ran into the next store that she saw and slammed the door shut.
"Where the hell am I now?" she said as she looked around only to suddenly feel relief. "Maybe there is a higher power looking out for me after all!" She grabbed Maria's cross and kissed it.
As she looked around she found that she was in a guns and ammo store. She had never been a huge fan of firearms but she
had been to the shooting range a few times, so she thought she knew the basics well enough. At any rate she had just found herself the perfect refuge in a terrible situation.
She looked around and quickly picked up a handgun and began loading ammunition into it, aiming it at the door and standing there ready to attack. As soon as the creatures began pounding on the door she began firing into the frame, provoking louder shrieking from the creatures, but they appeared to keep coming!
"Don't you damn things die when you get shot!" she screamed as she continued firing the gun, before reloading and firing some more. Then she thought to herself maybe they weren't fully alive to begin with. "Maybe I just need more firepower."
Putting down the handgun, she quickly grabbed a shotgun and started loading shells into it. As the first of the creatures managed to push in the door she responded by aiming the shotgun directly at its chest and firing, blasting a hole straight through the creature, but apparently not killing it.
"Oh for fuck's sake!" she said as she fired another shot into the creature's stomach. The creature continued shrieking loudly and spilling some type of fluid, that she wasn't quite sure was blood or not all, over the floor. "Why won't you die!" she shouted as she finally blew the creature's head off, causing it to fall to the floor and immediately begin liquefying and evaporating. So that's why there are no bodies, she thought to herself.
More creatures began barging through the doorway and she began to fire into the chest of one, and it went through the creature's body and hit the others behind it as well. The creatures continued coming as she continued firing until she realized she was out of ammo. A creature came running towards her but luckily she was able to grab a hunting knife and stab it in the throat, but it still continued violently hissing at her face and spitting blood in it.
"Gross!" she shouted as she pushed the knife deeper into its throat before falling to the floor and kicking the creature off of her, then running into the back room where she quickly closed and locked the door.
"What do we have in this room?" she said as she looked around. That's when she saw that she had hit the jackpot. Hanging on the wall was a flamethrower! She quickly took it down, aimed it at the door, and waited patiently for the creature to break it down, before letting loose with a burst of fire that caused the creature to scream out in agony before falling to the ground and melting right in front of her.
Feeling more confident she began to walk forward, training the flamethrower on the five other creatures and reducing them to puddles that immediately evaporated. Finally the creatures all seemed to have been defeated, but off in the distance she could still hear more shrieking outside the store. "This is going to be a very long night," she said to herself, "a very very long night."
Chapter 11
Amy barricaded herself deep within the gun store and locked the door once she had driven enough of the creatures away with the flamethrower. She could hear them shrieking outside the door and pounding on it, but she felt confident that she had secured herself inside of a safe place. The unfortunate thing was that she had no way of getting out and she was still very weak and tired.
"Of all the times to be feeling sick," she said as she turned to the side and vomited. She took out a bottle of water and took a small sip to rinse the terrible vomit taste out of her mouth, but she wanted to ration it in case she had to survive on it for a while. "If these creatures don't leave I am as good as dead."
Eventually the shrieking began to subside and amazingly, despite the situation she was in, she slowly fell into a deep sleep.
"Where am I?!" she shouted upon waking to find herself in the darkened room before remembering where she was. "Was that all a dream?" No, that wasn't a dream, she thought, it was a nightmare, and the fact that she was still locked away in the storage room at the gun store was proof that it was real.
She slowly got up and managed to find a light switch only to remember that there was no electricity anywhere anymore. She used her flashlight to see around and listened carefully. "I don't hear any more shrieking or pounding on the door. Maybe the creatures have left, whatever the hell those things were."
Very carefully and with the handgun at her side she opened the door to find that it now seemed to be about mid-day and there was no sign of the creatures. There was also no sign that they were ever there in the first place. "That's why there are no bodies," she said aloud as she looked at the spot where she had melted the creatures the night before. "They completely evaporated."
She actually wished this weren't the case because she would have loved to get a sample of their biology to see exactly what it was that they were. The scientific equipment she had with her back in her spacecraft was only a small amount, but she figured she could probably find some scientific equipment lying about somewhere that had been undamaged in the catastrophe that befell the Earth.
But she began making lots of logical inferences. She had seen no human beings, but she had seen a bunch of creatures that looked like they were some form of human at some point. The creatures, whatever they were, seemed like they were designed to self-destruct upon being killed, and killing them wasn't easy. Their primary weakness seemed to be fire.
They also appeared to be completely nocturnal, which might be why she never saw evidence of any of them from space. When she had been surveying the Earth with satellite photos she had been taking pictures of the cities during the daytime, when these creatures must have retreated to someplace where the sunlight would not bother them. And she had no doubt that they were definitely the predator she had feared that had drank the blood of the dog and the squirrel.
That was when she began to put everything together. "Pale nocturnal creatures that drink blood, hate the sunlight, and only dissolve when you blow off their heads or light them on fire. They are almost like zombies or vampires, or vampire zombies, zampires maybe? That's kind of a stupid name, but that's what I am going to go with for now."
She then reasoned that these had to be the result of the bombardment. They didn't seem to be very intelligent, but they did seem to be humanlike and not so much extraterrestrial. Perhaps the virus had turned all of the infected into these creatures. That could explain it. If the humans who were affected by the virus turned into these creatures and these creatures dissolved whenever they got killed, it would perfectly explain why there wasn't any evidence of human bodies anywhere. And it could also explain why she hadn't seen any larger type of animals. These predators obviously would feed on any type of large creature, leaving only small animals like dogs, squirrels and birds left alive. And if all 8 billion or so humans had turned into these creatures and have been feeding for the last two years there might very well be very little left alive.
"I might be the last living human being on the Earth after all," she said to herself. "The question is, what do I do about this? I am clearly vastly outnumbered."
When she had gathered up her things and stockpiled as much ammunition as she could carry, she decided that she had better get out of the city before nighttime came. Although she really wanted to bring the flamethrower with her, she thought that it would be too difficult to carry and didn't know how much fuel it had. She thought the easiest thing would be to take a couple of handguns that she could keep with her at all times in case she encounters any more of these creatures on the way home. She wanted to get as far away from the city as possible, because with 10 million New Yorkers that is a lot of potential creatures out there, even if plenty of them migrated out of the city after turning into those things.
"This must be the second wave of the invasion," she said as she walked outside of the gun store and looked around. Once again she saw no evidence of all the chaos that had taken place the night before. These creatures left no evidence of their existence behind, and that made them all the more frightening as they could completely cover their tracks.
As she began to walk back towards the Seaport she suddenly paused. "I can't go back just yet." Her apartment was not that far away, and alt
hough it could be dangerous, and although she still felt rather weak and sick, she couldn't leave the city without looking to see if there was any evidence her fiancée had survived. Perhaps he lived long enough to leave some type of message for her. It was a long shot, but she would never be able to live with herself or move on if she didn't check.
"I guess I will just have to be quick about it," she said as she began walking in the direction of her apartment.
Along the way she was very careful, constantly looking in every direction with her gun drawn at all times, but fortunately she did not encounter any of the creatures, so she must be correct about them being completely nocturnal. That was one thing she had to her advantage.
When she finally arrived at her apartment it was already about 3 PM, but she was so glad to see her old home for the first time in years that she smiled for the first time in a long time, then began to get watery eyed and wiped away a tear. She realized that her vision was still blurry beyond what could be attributed just to the fact that she had been crying.
"Great, the last thing I need is to be visually impaired," she said as she rubbed her eyes, not thinking that would do much good. She was still convinced that this was probably an adjustment to the Earth after being in space for so long, and she would just have to hope that it would wear off eventually. As far she could tell whatever virus turned people into these creatures hadn't turned her into one, although the fear that that could happen was always in the back of her mind.
She went into the lobby of her old apartment building to find that it was filled with debris as well and that most of the glass had been broken. She found a couple of dead animals that seemed to be drained of blood, and for a moment she thought about turning back. "No, I've come this far," she said as she continued to proceed with caution and entered the stairwell. "It figures I would live on the top floor."
The Last of the Living Page 5
