The Flares

Baby Killer

I CANNOT DESCRIBE how badass I felt with my modified golf club. I wielded it like a knight with his sword, fiercely guarding the castle from invaders. Except I had no castle to protect, no shiny armor to protect me, and the invaders were greying mutants with an exceptional bloodlust. But I felt badass nonetheless.

The only thing lighting the dead night was the half moon and sprinkling of stars adorning the sky. Despite the difficulty, I could still see the silhouettes of a few infected as they trudged along the street and did my very best to avoid them.

My eyes burned intensely from the lack of sleep I'd gotten, but I wasn't going to turn back. I needed to prove to Stephanie that I was an asset to them. The weather was unbearably humid for a starry night, but not entirely unusual. I paused for a moment and tried to dispel all fear from my mind as groans and gurgled screeches echoed through the vacant streets and I clutched the golf club handle tighter reflexively as I stepped into an alley, poking my head out the side. There was a large parking lot on the other side of the street leading up to what was presumably a mall. Cars remained stagnant throughout the lot, abandoned by their owners when the solar flares began and the EMP knocked out all electrical appliances.

There were no infected as far as I could see, which wasn't very far in the dark, so I kept my guard up as I rushed from the alley towards the lot. I moved slowly past the cars. If I rushed from here to the entrance, I'd be out of breath by the time I got there. A lot of the car doors remained open. Nobody would steal them, unless they were willing to steer and push from here to their homes. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a body in the drivers seat of one of the cars. The body was decomposing and slumped over the steering wheel, and I held my breath when I expected the smell to invade, but it had been drowned out by the thick, humid atmosphere.

The trees and plants that once decorated the entrance of the mall were withered up and dried shells of what they used to be. A few dead leaves stood still on the dirt beneath them with no breeze to move them around. There were no howling winds, or screams of agony, or screams of hatred from the infected anymore. Just the steady thump of my heartbeat as I slowly walked towards the entrance. The massive glass doors that should have been there were caved in, shattered and littered the floor around it. I stepped carefully around the glass so as not to crack it.

Inside the mall was a horrendous mess. I wasn't entirely correct when I assumed that everything was untouched. It made sense that smaller shops along the sidewalk were abandoned. It seems like people rushed to the mall when looting became the new norm, as proven by the shattered windows of stores, upturned cases and the general mess throughout the place. The ground had been turned into a playground of polystyrene containers, bottles and papers that were scattered as far as I could see. The air was drier than outside, and it stuck to my nostrils leaving me with deeper nasal breaths as the minutes stretched by. I didn't want to be in here too long. If I surrounded myself with the dry and dusty atmosphere for prolonged periods my entire throat seems to close up and I have to flush it out with water; something I was in dire need of.

It was troublesome to look into the stores. The mall had been illuminated by the night sky from a broken skylight, which only darkened the stores in comparison. The signs above gave me a general idea of what and where they were, so I kept track of where to backtrack. The first thing I needed was a backpack or two. The lower levels were mostly supermarkets, and I made a note to hit them on my way out.

I took the stationary escalators, walking to the second floor but stopped when I saw a figure standing completely still beyond the top. I was nervous, and a hand rose to comb through my hair, which was my substitute for nail biting. No matter how afraid I was, nail biting was just too strange of a habit. Besides, have you seen my fingernails? I'm not exactly generous with the hand wash.