Dark Days

Waking Up

©JRF2016

Rachel opens her eyes and surveys the room. 'How long have I been out?'  She wonders.  The room was empty and dark.  She musters up the strength to get off the bed and stumbles to the door and into the hall.  She doesn't remember much about what had happened when she got home last night but by the looks of the house a tornado had ripped through here.  Walking downstairs she notices the place had been trashed.  "Vultures," she said out loud to herself as she then noticed that there wasn't anything missing just stuff strewn about.  "What is happening?" She turns on the TV but there was nothing.  No news, no emergency broadcast, nothing.

A car alarm sounds outside. Rachel grabs her pistol and runs out to see what is happening. A strange looking man is staggering around by her car.  She raises her gun and yells at the man.  He looks up at her and growls.  He starts towards her.  "Stop," she yells, "I'll shoot!"  The man growls again and keeps staggering toward her.  She fires a shot hitting the man in the chest but he still keeps coming at her.  She fires two more shots into his chest still with no effect.  One more shot catches him right between the eyes and he goes down.  Rachel stands there in shock when a hand lands on her shoulder.  She turns just as a woman lunges at her trying to bite her.  Rachel pushes the woman away, but she just bounces right back.  The woman's intestines were hanging out of her stomach and dragging across the ground.  Rachel feels the vomit rising in her throat and shoves it back down before raising her pistol to the woman's head and pulling the trigger.  When Rachel turns around there were more headed her way.  She runs back into the house and barricades the door.

She leans against the barricaded door trying to process what she had just witnessed when she heard a crash in the next room.  She looks over to her right and one of those things was crawling through the window.  She grabs the baseball bat lying on the floor and smashes the man in the head splattering his brains on the walls and window sill.  She pushes his body out the window and onto the lawn when she notices the others coming toward her and the open window.  She still had two shots left in her pistol.  She takes out the closest two and turns to block the window with the bookcase.  It was heavy but it wouldn't hold long.  She runs through the rest of the rooms barricading the rest of the windows and doors the best she could.

She walks into the kitchen to find something to eat.  When she walks through the door she notices Johnny lying on the floor with blood pooled around him.  She kicks him to see if he was actually dead, nothing. He didn't move or make a sound. Rachel checks out the back door and saw it was clear.  She drags his body outside and went back inside blocking the door.  She had come in here to find something to eat and she was determined to do just that, as she starts to search the cabinets.  There isn't much there but it would last for at least a couple days.  "I can try to go out tomorrow and get some more supplies. Those things have got to wander off by morning," she told herself.  After she finished eating she took herself upstairs to bed but she didn't sleep well between the dreams and the groans from outside.

She was right, most of the dead had wandered off and the few that were left weren't much of a challenge.  She wishes now more than ever that she had some family around.  This new world is going to be a lonely, quiet place.  She made her way to the store that was just around the corner and gathered enough supplies so she would be able to make that house safer and some food and water so she wouldn't starve all alone in the big house.  She loads everything up in the truck and heads back to get to work on boarding up those windows and doors before any more of those things showed up.

She had been safe here for a few weeks with no incident. She stayed in when it was dark and only went out during the day if it was absolutely necessary.  She was getting bored being locked up all the time and lonely so she decides to look around the neighborhood and see if she can find any sign of life. She wanders down past the store where she had scavenged most of her supplies for the last few weeks when she notices a strange vehicle parked in the front.  She creeps up hiding behind the car checking to see who it might belong to.  There was no one outside so she decides to move in.  She creeps by each aisle slowing peeking around corners to see if anyone was there.  She finally hears two voices.  People, live people, someone she can talk to, survive with.