Going down in flames by Flo (animal farm read TXT) 📕

“MRoOOoOaaAaAhhHhh.”

The soldier spun around to face the noise.

A lone zombie was stumbling towards him, arms outstretched, intestines trailing like morbid ribbons. One foot dragged along the ground, the ankle clearly broken, a yellowed spur of bone protruding dagger-like from the side. Its tattered, filthy clothes hung loosely off a skeletal frame, spattered with congealed blood, and the foul miasma of decaying flesh filled the air with the ghoul’s evil intent.

He froze, fear and experience dictating it to be the best course of action. The corpse halted and groaned for a second time, appearing as bemused as a dead man was capable of.

The soldier snapped into action. He leapt to his feet, unholstered his laser pistol and aimed it at the zombie’s neck, moving the brilliant beam of scarlet light slowly from left to right. Thick blood oozed as the cadaver’s jugular was severed, and a few seconds later the zombie’s head fell away entirely, the brittle skull cracking open on a rock as it hit the earth. It rolled several metres, depositing a trail of scrambled brain matter atop the scorched grass, its body taking a few more shambling steps towards him before it too tumbled to the ground.

It had been precisely fifty years since Doomsday, as survivors had taken to calling it. Fifty years, and still it was unimaginable to do so much as cross a street before some variation of unholy creature pounced from the shadows.

The soldier was on a scavenging mission, searching primarily for food and ammunition for the refugee camp he helped to defend. He was painfully aware that he had to be back at the camp by nightfall, as the nastiest creatures came out to play in the darkest hours, and they had, like almost everything else in this world, developed a taste for human flesh. Earth had become a slaughterhouse, and it operated in shadow.

But all that the soldier had happened across in half a day’s frantic searching was fresh psychological scarring, pulverized buildings and scores of the undead. The last thing he desired was to return to camp with nothing but the blood on his hands, to bear witness to the hollow cheeks and glassy stares of the starving children, to feel the accusatory glares from their parents for failing in his role as both protector and provider, and, now that they had run out of bullets, to hear the scrabbling of a growing horde of undead slowly clawing its way through the outer walls with a deadly determination, powerless to do anything but fire sporadic laser bursts, and hope that the remaining laser pistols lasted longer than their predecessors.

Dreading the moment of his inglorious return and the cold, heavy knowledge of his failure, the soldier gave up. Reluctant though he was to return, it was obvious to him that he would find nothing here.

Almost all things mechanical had short-circuited on Doomsday- the most commonly used theory was that an electromagnetic pulse caused by an incredibly powerful solar flare was to blame. The human race had become too dependent on increasingly fragile technology, and was all but lost without it. A few cogs continued to turn, until the power stations shut down along with the government. But that was history now, as were all the life values of fifty years ago. The lasers were among the last remaining electronics that still functioned, although few of the living had the mechanical understanding to know why.
The roads were all in total gridlock from the sheer number of abandoned vehicles, so the only way to get around these days was to walk or run.

As a result of this, the sun had faded into the horizon by the time the soldier made the journey home. The moon was bright and the sky eerily cloudless, illuminating his path in more detail than it had deigned to the previous times he was out after dark. Unusually, he didn’t encounter a single threat along the way, and soon the camp came into view.

And soon the soldier saw that something was wrong.

Very wrong.

He could not be certain from this distance, but at least one side of the barricade appeared to have collapsed. Despite a growing sense of dread, he drifted closer, praying that his eyes were betraying him.

They were not.
A seething mass of the undead had annexed the camp, drowning it in an undulating sea of death. Nobody could have survived when the wall crumbled- the soldiers didn’t even have enough weaponry to spread amongst themselves, and their charges were not allowed to carry them inside the walls.

A volcanic fury exploded through his mind, quickly subjugated by glacial despair as conflicting emotions warred relentlessly for control of his body and soul. Every single person that he had fought for, that he had cared for, dead. In an hour or so, they would be undead. He had failed in his duties yet again that day, and it was not a pleasant feeling.

With only one thing left to do, he began to jog directly towards the ruins of the bastion he had called home, snatching his laser from its holster.

He may have been too late to keep them alive, but he wasn’t too late to keep them dead.


884 words

Publication Date: 07-14-2012

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