Bloodhearts

Chapter one: Dead.

They say that being cured is impossible. They say that we are all dead. I suppose it's true, I mean all we do is to drag ourselves around town with an occasional groan or two. We don't talk since it's literally impossible for us to pronounce more than a few syllables before we start choking on the words. It sucks, but at least we get by. I'm not sure you'd call what we do living, because our existence is nothing but a long wait. A cure is probably not coming, I've been here long enough to stop believing in that.

I wonder what the living think. They could be working on a way to rid this world of this disease. It'll most likely involve the murder of everyone who's like me, lost and confused, but I hope they extinguish every boney out there. I don't want to die, even though the world might end this way. Cure or no cure, nothing changes around here anymore. I do the same things every day; I walk around the same parts of a crumbling town, I groan at whoever I meet, and I eat. I wish I was on the other side of that big perimeter fence and that enormous wall that protects the living from us. I wish I could eat them.

This is my world.

Everything else is gone.

I don't know my name. I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't know why I'm wearing a uniform of a kind. I also have boots. Judging by the way I look, I must've been young when I died. There's even something on my chest, some writing that I can't grasp. It's stuck to my skin. You can only see it when the wind blows my jacket to the side enough so that it becomes visible. Sometimes I try to decipher it out of curiosity, but it's no use. It refuses to make any sense to me. Just like the signs I pass in the streets don't make much sense. Sometimes I look at them and they feel vaguely familiar; but it is only a glimpse of recognition and it goes away as fast as it came. I awoke like this a couple of weeks ago. I'm not sure why. I've begun to notice things. When another of my kind passes me, I try to ask them things like; What's your name? Who are you? Of course, no one answers me, but I keep trying anyway. Not only is talking an issue, but with little to no memory of our former lives, we have nothing to rely on but our instincts. The one that is most explicit is the hunger. It never goes away and it can never be completely satisfied. I think most people here choose to rely on it so much that it consumes them. I used to do the same. Now, however, I seem to have changed my mind.

I have this growing desire to figure out who I am - or should I say, was. I only know I was young when I died, but I don't know how long I've been here for. Our bodies decay at individual speed. Some go faster than others, but the inevitable result is that we all become boneys someday. It happens when you give up on everything. It seems that when the boneys move together in unison, they don't have a soul of their own anymore. They're become part of a bigger organism. I don't like it. They also look a lot like skeletons, moving around in stiff strides and growl throatily, depersonalized. They are hollow; dead yet alive.

It sucks that becoming one of them is what I have to look forward to. That's unless I die truly before I shrink into one of them. True death only happens if we get shot in the head or simply drop dead. It happens that one of us starts to stumble, a strange shaking going through them until they suddenly just die. No explanation, no cause. They just die. I've seen such things before. I have a silver bullet in the left side of my chest. It's been there for some time, I think, because all that's left now is a dark wound, not much different from everything else you see here. The wound suits my zombiefied exterior in a very macabre way. It's also proof of the risk we have to take every time we hunt. The living defend themselves with guns and they know how to end us. But we know how to end them, too. The living aren't hard to kill once you get close enough. They aren't always fast enough to escape our grip. And once bitten, there's no going back. They suffer. I've heard their screams, seen their fear, but I don't feel pain like they do. I don't feel much at all. My dead expression and pale grey eyes are as colorful as this dust-covered town. It's just another day in zombieland. That's what I used to say.

I let out a wheezy groan, titling my head to the side. I hate being this zombielike, but right now I just can't help it. I'm with a small group of dead, marching through the city with just one purpose; to eat. My cravings are strong. It's been days since my last meal and my stomach is as empty as the city streets.

Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.

The thought casually pops into my head and I stop my drooling for a second. I let the others continue without me and they don't notice anything. I know they've sensed something living nearby. I can smell it. The others are too consumed to notice anything else.

I look around for a second. Right now, We're in the outer parts of the town. The buildings don't go much higher than five floors up. There's an old convertible nearby with smashed windows and a broken door. It used to be brand new, I imagine, in colors that don't exist here any longer. It could have been a very expensive car. Once. It's nothing more that a dust collector now. I don't know where I get ideas like that. I don't know what a 'new' car looks like. It's one of those thoughts I've begun to have, but I don't understand most of them.

I let out another wheezy sound, a questioning 'huh?'. I notice a streak of strange, bright color on the car. It reminds me of the sun. I move closer to examine the stuff. The brightness of it almost hurts my eyes, but I can't stop staring. There's a strange smell emitting from it and some of it is running down the sides of the car. Is that what I smelled?

I scrunch up my nose and try to touch it to satisfy my curiosity. I can't even remember when I've seen something so fresh - not even human flesh - before. Clumsily, I let my fingers run over the side of the car, smearing the sun-colored stuff onto them. I see it drip from my fingers, but I don't feel anything.

I should have expected that.

Letting out a long and painful breath, I move back until I find myself surrounded by four living whom I haven't seen sneak up on me. One of them is holding a can with the same strong sun-like color and several guns are pointed my way.

My eyes go wide and I know there's no way I can escape. I should have kept an eye out. The guns are corked and pointed at me as I turn around to face them. I have no doubts of what a gun does. I know it can kill me. All I want is to attack these people. I am being cornered and I don't like it.

In front of me are four faces that show something other than the anger or fear I'm used to. It think what I am met with is shock.

Deep, horrifying, painful shock.