The Remnants(Part 1)

Have you ever had a day when you woke up and thought about something you've done in the
past, something that you wish never happened. That's happened to me, too many times to count.
None of those thoughts matter now, everything is gone. My family, friends, co-workers, all of them,
gone. I don't know if anyone survived the outbreak, or if there's anyone left in the U.S. at all. No
one knows where it came from, it just started one day. The first of the outbreaks were in the south,
all contact was lost with Florida and Mississippi. It was on every channel, the same news reports,
people were rioting for no apparent reason. Scientists couldn't explain it, they didn't know what was
happening. People died then about ten minutes later they would revive. It was like one of those
creepy old movies I used to watch, except this wasn't a movie.

I locked myself in my basement when the news said the outbreak had reached Missouri. I had
brought enough food and water down to last at least two months. I stayed there, watching the news twenty-four seven, barely getting three hours of sleep each night. I was too afraid to sleep, I kept hearing things outside. There were gunshots, squealing tires, the sound of tank tracks rolling down the streets, and even the occasional explosion. Then everything stopped, there were no more gunshots, no more explosions, nothing but the sound of the frightened newscasters on CNN.

Every day the reporters seemed to get more and more scared, a couple days ago one women
broke down on live television, the fear was growing bigger. I had been in my basement for around two weeks, which felt like two years to me. I woke up with a start, a result of a nightmare I was having. Nightmares had become normal to me, it was because of the fear inside of me. I worried about my family, hoping that maybe they got out, maybe headed north to the Canadian border. Canada had opened its doors to us after the first couple days, when American citizens were trying to get past the border to escape.

I got up knowing that I had no way to try and contact my parents or my girlfriend. I got dressed,ate a little bit of cereal and a half of an apple, and then I turned on the television. The screen stayed blank, there was no picture or sound. At first I thought maybe I had accidently unplugged it, but i checked and it was still plugged into the outlet. I checked the small refridgerator I had in my basement, it was off. The power had gotten shut off some time while I was asleep, and now I had no news. Nothing to tell me what was going on in the outside world. I started to panic a little, thinking about what I should do. I finally came to the decision to leave my house, and try to get to Canada.

I started gathering up dry foods and bottled water to put in a backpack, I grabbed some old
newspapers and a couple lighters in case i ever needed to make fire. I packed some clothes, a couple books on survival, and pictures of my loved ones. I snatched up my car keys and went upstairs. I unlocked the basement door and went in to my bedroom, opened my bedside drawer, and pulled out a nine millimeter pistol and all the ammo I had. I went to my closet and reached up to the top shelf and pulled down a combat knife that I had bought about five years ago. I put everything into the backpack and gathered my thoughts.

When I got to the front door, I took a deep breath in and then out and I opened the door.
There wasn't much difference to the town, except that there was a new atmosphere. There was an unfamiliar smell in the air, it was like wet dog and smoke mixed together. There were bullet holes on the walls of the other houses. I walked out into the middle of the street and saw that there were some dead bodies strewn along the street. They were piled on top of each other like animals, they all had bullet holes in their heads, and some had no head at all. The stench was unbearable, there was so much blood, it made me gag. I threw up on the side of the road, and almost passed out.

I regained my balance and started off to find my car. I always parked my car down the road
about a block from my house, just so I could get some exercise. I got to where it should have been, and in its place was a broken, mangled, piece of metal. It was my car, I could tell, but it was totaled. It must have gotten blown up in one of the firefights I heard while I was in my basment. I needed to find another vehicle so I could get out of town, and I needed to find it quickly.

I started looking in the windows of all the vehicles on my street, hoping to find one with the
keys still in it. The fourth car I checked was unlocked, but there were no keys. I jumped in and opened the console between the seats, there was an extra pair of keys in it. Finding those keys was pure luck, something I never had a lot of. I put my backpack in the passenger seat and started the car. It had about three quarters of a tank of gas left, I let out a little sigh of relief, and started off down the road.

I wasn't sure where I was going, I just kept driving out of town. I drove for miles and miles,
looking for little signs of life. All I saw was empty cars on the higway, some were on fire, others were
covered in dried blood. There were more dead bodies along the road. Some of the bodies looked
burned, some were missing limbs. I had never seen so much blood and death in one place. It was
almost overwhelming, I started to feel woozy.

My vehicle started to swerve off the road, I felt like I was going to pass out again. Then I
snapped out of it and jerked the steering wheel over and regained control of the car. I had to
watch out, if I kept drifting off, I could end up killing myself. I needed sleep, my eyes were starting to get heavier with each passing minute. I stopped at an old abandoned gas station on the side of the highway. I turned off the car and grabbed my stuff. The sun was starting to set as I opened the door of the station.

I had survived one day outside, but how many more can I withstand. I found an office in the back of the station, and I went in. I closed the door and barricaded it with a desk that was in the office. I pulled a blanket and a pillow out of the backpack and put them on the floor. The floor was made of concrete, and it wasn't that comfortable, but it would have to do. I put my head on the pillow, and in a few minutes I was asleep.

I was awaken the next morning by another of my nightmares. This one involved my mother being
attacked by a mob of crazed people. They were tearing her apart, the whole time she was screaming my name. I didn't want to think about it anymore, so I got up and repacked my bag. I checked my map to see where the next town was. The closest was thirty-seven miles away from the gas station. I was going to try to get there, hopefully I would find some survivors to help me.

I jumped in the car that I hotwired earlier, and started toward the town. I looked at my watch and saw that I had slept the longest I had in days. I didn't feel tired, which meant that I could pay more attention to the things around me. I turned on the cars radio to see if I could find any news on the outbreaks. It took forever before I found a signal from a station. The reporters were saying that contact with five states in the west was lost. The outbreaks were also spreading in Mexico, which is where scientists think the first outbreak was.

I was almost to the town when something exploded in the car. The front started spewing out black smoke, then the car died. I got out and opened the hood, I didn't know what to do. I never really knew the parts of a vehicle, so I was out of luck. I grabbed my backpack out of the car and slung it around my shoulder. I took the map out of my pocket and tried to pinpoint my location. I was about ten miles away from the city limits, so close, yet so far away.

I took my pistol out of the bag, loaded a full clip into it, and put it in the back of my pants. I also
took out the knife, checked the blade, and put it on my belt. I took a few deep breaths to settle my nerves, and started walking toward the town. As I got closer, I could see smoke rising in the distance. My hopes of finding some survivors died a little. I stopped at a tree to rest, I was starving, I needed to eat something. The tree provided some shade from the burning sun, so I sat down in front of it. I took a cereal bar and a bottle of water from my backpack, and refueled.

When I finished, I got back up and took one last, big, gulp of water. I started walking to the town
again. The temperature had to be close to eighty degrees outside, and I was sweating a lot. I finally got to the city limits. I couldn't read the name of the town, the sign had been burned and wasn't eligible. There were a few houses that had been completely demolished, there was only one that wasn't, but it was locked. I heard a bunch of voices coming from around a corner, I hid behind the remains of a car. I couldn't tell if they were survivors or....something else.

They came running around the corner, they were all covered in blood. I stayed where I was, hoping they wouldn't find me. As they got closer I could tell that they weren't human, not anymore. One had a gigantic chunk of flesh missing from its arm, but it didn't seem to be in pain. There were only three of them, but I didn't know how strong these things were. They ran past the car I was hiding behind and kept going for about twenty feet, then they stopped.

I could tell they knew I was there, they seemed to be smelling the air. They turned around and
stared straight at me, one of them let out a shrill screeching sound, and came at me. I whipped out my gun and aimed at its chest, I squeezed the trigger, and shot. The bullet hit the creature right in the heart, but it didn't stop. The next shot was aimed right at its forehead. The bullet blew the back of his skull out, blood splattered everywhere. It was then I figured out what these creatures were, they had all the characteristics of zombies.

The other two zombies came at me while the first was still falling to the ground. I aimed at their
heads and I fired two more bullets. Both zombies fell to the ground, their skulls cracked on the hard
asphalt. My hands were shaking as I put my gun back. How many more zombies could there be in
this town. The thought of over a thousand of those things scared me, I didn't want to think about it
anymore.

I sat down on the ground next to a car, I was shaking badly. I had never been so scared in my life. Zombies, I almost couldn't harbor the thought of such a thing. But there they were right in front of my eyes, dead on the street. The old movies I used to watch always said the only way to kill the is a shot to the head, or a hard blow to the head. Anything that would severely damage their rotting brains.

I finally stopped shaking and regained most of my strength, enough to walk again anyway. Slowly I got back on my feet. I stumbled a little bit as I started walking further into the town, then I got myself together and continued. I tried to trace the source of the smoke I had seen earlier. It led to a destroyed tank, burning like a campfire. There were no signs of the soldiers that had been inside of it. Maybe they got away, they were soldiers after all......