Chapter 1

Breathing. Heavy breathing. And smells. Smells everywhere. From every angle. And then sights. Blurry and distorted. Muddled and confusing. But clearer by the second. Blinking helped to clear the blur. Soon things were becoming focused and concise. Smells began to coalesce into a recognizable odour emanating from the ground below. It was the city smells. Smells of a decaying city that had passed its prime. And other scents. Perhaps human, at one time in their lives but now they were no longer completely human. Only something remained, in shape and form and maybe a little bit of behaviour. Otherwise they were not. There was only one human nearby and that was myself, lying face down on the concrete floor of the broken apartment building I had run into. I had tripped over a large crack in the floor and dizzied myself for a moment but it was no time to be recovering. I had to get back onto my feet so I could continue fleeing my pursuers.

I hurried back onto my feet and pushed forward through the crumbling wreckage of the building. Its ceilings and roof had fallen long ago and it was now just a thirty story shaft open to the air above. But down on ground level it was just one more hiding place for me. Up until recently. Even as a hiding place I had only been here for a few days and hadn’t had enough time to familiarize myself with all its different obstacles, such as the distorted ground in what used to be the main entrance. And on top of my lack of experience travelling around the interior of the building I was also feeling a rush of adrenaline coming through me to help boost me physically. This did not help my focus though or my memory and it was more about running faster for the moment then knowing whether or not to go left or right at the door.

I chose wrong. The hallway I was running down had no exit. Part of the wall had collapsed into a pile of rocks that I could not hope to climb over in time. I turned back down the hall and pressed myself against the wall. I brought up my right wrist, the one that had a large metal band that twisted and wrapped itself all the way up to my elbow and which had a round metal disc that lay on my palm and was attached to the band. I knew with a push the inner mechanisms of the band would activate and nearly kill me, deconstructing my body and materializing it somewhere else. Provided it still had enough energy in it. I hadn’t charged the thing in a week and had used it twice already. Portable teleporters were power-suckers and I didn’t know if it could stand up to one more use.

I wouldn’t have much choice soon though as my enemies rounded the corner and headed down the hall towards me. They were the cause of the strange smell in the city, one that was nearly human, though not quite. They looked human, mostly. They had the same shape, same face, same looks and walks but they had something else too. They had a disease. They were no longer people in a common sense. Now they were something else, something a little more primal. Something hungry.

They called them zombies. Whether this was true or not to traditional definitions is left for debate but for now it is their name. They are not the living dead, they are living dead. At least to people they are. They are dead to all of us and we try to make sure they enter that state. But there is a challenge to it all. The challenge seems to be that for them we are living dead and they must kill us to survive. And by kill it is established that they choose to eat us and we choose to shoot them.

Their method seems to be working though, and they are winning. Or have won. I am in Los Angeles, or what would have been called that before some large scale wars and a zombie invasion and I am among thousands of other people who are scattered throughout the city trying to survive against the thousands more zombies. We are no longer trying to win a war against them or to exterminate them. We are simply living, from one hour to the next, minute by minute until enough of them build to call it a day and until enough of them pass by to call it a week and so on. For me it has been twenty years of survival, ten of which were on my own. I was born during the peak of the disease, ten years after it had first appeared and for almost all of my life I had been hiding in a safehouse deep underground. Only recently did it finally run out of supplies and I was forced to leave it and to venture out into the LA city. And out here is where I finally met some zombies.

They travel out in the streets, roaming about looking for whoever they can to feed upon and if you get attacked but escape then it is more than likely that they bit or scratched you, at which point you too will become a zombie overnight. I have been scratched. I’ve been bitten. I’ve lost my ring finger on my left hand but for some reason I will not change. That doesn’t make me immune to being eaten though so my fear continues and my chances of surviving right now, pressed up against a wall with a nearly lifeless battery on my wrist, are low.

I could see the zombies approaching closer, fighting amongst themselves on who would get first pick of me. They moved forward slowly because of this, constantly blocking each other’s way so they could be first for the kill and it gave me more time to consider my options. I always had the revolver in my back pocket but it had run out of bullets this morning so at best it could be used to beat them down for an extra twenty seconds before they tore my arm off. While zombies may not be reanimated corpses they sure act like it when they are in pursuit. When they get hurt they just keep pressing onwards. If you blow off their legs they’ll keep dragging themselves after you until they bleed dry. This lack of pain makes them even more dangerous. That and a lack of fear. Without fear they can constantly attack you even when you have the shotgun advantage. Without fear they can walk into traps and ambushes, loose an arm, and keep moving forward.

In all my encounters with them I found it best to simply shoot and run. If you appeared to kill it it’s best not to check. Best not to do anything but use it as a chance to get a head start. Zombies are tough to kill and it’s best not to see if they’re alive or not. I wouldn’t get that chance with the ones approaching me. I wouldn’t be able to kill any of them or even injure them.   

As the zombies squabbled with each other I began to lightly and quickly press the metal disc on my palm. I had learned this technique for warming up the teleportation machine before use. If it wasn’t warm it could sometimes fail when quickly started or mess up the transportation, which could only be righted again by teleporting a second time which I did not have enough charge for. I might not have enough juice left for this jump but I could at least try. And it seemed that warming it up used up less battery power anyways. I could feel it heating up along my forearm, fainter than usual since it was running low and was mixed in with the sweat rising along my body in anticipation.

One of the zombies was slammed into the wall and its arm crunched against it awkwardly, snapping it back at the elbow and causing it to hang loosely to the side of its body. It did not whimper or cry out in pain. It simply pressed onwards but fell behind the other two as it recognized its place. The teleporter on my wrist wasn’t getting any warmer so I had to assume it was done. And yet it wasn’t. Judging solely by how warm it was it didn’t have enough power in it to make a successful jump right now. I squeezed the disc a little bit harder to try and make it force into a start but it didn’t change. The two zombies in the front had quit arguing for the moment and broken into a sprint towards me. I had seconds, maybe.

I pressed the disc hard against my palm and released. Nothing. Again, perhaps holding longer. Still nothing. Zombies approached. Their odour grew stronger. Their feet pounding the ground became louder. Squeezing some more I created no extra heat. Again nothing. I flipped my wrist up to my face again. Checking the reading it showed nothing. It was flashing red and declaring empty. The revolver felt ready for a usage. But I would not give up on the device.

Again. Nothing.

Again. Nothing.

I could squeeze all I wanted in short bursts and it wasn’t getting warmer. Either now or dead. I clicked the disc down and waited for a few seconds before the machine tried to activate. It sputtered a little and became red hot as it tried to release all its energy at once in order to make the jump.

World became hazy. Particles of my body began to separate and distribute themselves into the air before coming back together and reforming my body. The machine was struggling but it wouldn’t make it. No luck this time.

One zombie broke ahead form the other in a sudden burst of speed and I threw my hands up in front of my face. Its hand ran straight into my open palm. It nearly crushed the metal disc into my palm.

I went hazy again. Perhaps? Was it going to work? Was that the jump it took? Or was I bound here? Or would a zombie come with me? It was a personal transporter it couldn’t possibly take us both.

The hallway began to blur and dissipate while I felt a burning in my left shoulder. The zombie must have scratched me lightly as I faded away but my body was releasing. Gone. My whole physical form was torn apart and thrown to the air. It was supposed to be the closest thing to death on earth. Teleportation. What an insane invention.

I checked myself over in the behind the counter of the supermarket. Lucky me I had materialized here where I had recently travelled instead of into a zombie hotspot. In fact just three weeks ago I had dragged the receiver for the teleporter to this massive superstore and plugged it in behind the counter at the back of the store in what used to be a customer services section. I looked beside me to see the receiver standing tall up to my chest, an antenna coming up out of what looked like an upside down oversized flower pot and a mushroom cap on top of the antenna. The whole thing was wreathed in faint blue lights that helped illuminate the back room.

I had carried that receiver all the way from one of the homes in a neighbouring residential district and placed it back here since it was basically a large fortress against zombies and it had power flowing into it so I could plug the stupid receiver in. Power was becoming hard to find these days. While power plants had long ago been switched over to being maintained and operated automatically the cables had not and had been destroyed during the wars, along with some of the power stations. That and a lot of zombies liked to mess around with power cables to give them an advantage over people who needed them for defence systems.

However even though this place had power the charging station I had brought with the receiver for the machine on my wrist had broken along the way and was now just mocking me as it stood beside the receiver. I kicked it over in frustration and stood around listening to the echoes around the store and counting. Six times. Was the world really that empty? While this superstore was nice all the food supplies in it had expired, other than the small emergency provisions I had left here. For I am a smart survivor. The teleporter on my wrist is supposed to have an accessory for the other wrist, the device which controls where you go. I lost mine so my teleporter goes where it likes. I’m glad it goes anywhere at all but I still run the risk of landing in the middle of a pack of zombies so I am constantly movies receivers to safer places and setting up little emergency hideouts for when I land there. This one was packed with three days worth of food and a pack of bullets for my revolver, along with a mattress I had dragged over from the sleep department of the store.

I reloaded my gun and packed away the rest for safe keeping and sighed as I checked over my machine. The zombies assault on it hadn’t shattered anything on the outside and it had worked in bringing me this far so I could only assume it would continue to work. But it was definitely completely dead at this point and without a working charge station I was just a regular old survivor now. So far I had been getting by on the advantage that I could leave if I got stuck in situations, like in the apartment building. As I thought of it my shoulder stung and I looked over to see a light cut across the skin. Nothing potentially infectious or bloody but enough to hurt for awhile. Since I was inexplicably immune to zombie virus that didn’t bother me either so I was temporarily in the clear.

The real trouble was in this area. When I had travelled here and set up the teleportation site I hadn’t really checked around. I had been living in the old residential area until it ran out of power so I simply moved the devices I needed and set up a haven here but otherwise I never really made sure there weren’t masses of zombies in the area. For all I knew they could be prowling around outside these doors or maybe they had recently invaded the area in search of new food.

No matter what I was tired from my run and from a jump and so I unwrapped the mattress from its plastic and went off in search of a blanket and pillow. Some of the lights in the building were functioning, enough to give me some dim vision to work with and the few signs still hanging pointed me in the generally correct direction. Once I found a suitable pillow that conformed to my neck and head shape with some sort of specialised foam and a blanket that could keep me warm I returned to my room behind the counter. The only other thing back there was a large power switch which could turn the whole place on or off. I pulled at its rusted hinges until it gave way and the entire place fell pitch black. Without power the automatic doors were technically locked and to the extent of my knowledge a zombie wouldn’t break through the glass to get into a building with no lights on. That seemed to be a common trend I found among zombies in my escapes from them. They did not like the dark. For me I could see a little bit from small amounts of light coming from various objects and holes but for zombies they didn’t seem to have much sight at all in the dark. Perhaps it was a trade-off for not feeling any pain but either way while the dark wasn’t my favourite place to hang out in it was the safest against them.

I settled down under my blanked and left the revolver just beside the bed, ready to be reached for in case anything did decide to break in during the night. Over time I had become accustomed to sleeping on the edge of the knife and could be woken by the slightest sounds. While this didn’t give me the most relaxing sleep, I was alive and that was relaxing enough as it was. I slept awkwardly for the first hour, trying to find some position that was comfortable considering my arm had large red marks across it. I somehow managed to drift into some form of sleep.

Hours later I awoke to a knocking on the front door. The emptiness of the store allowed for me to hear the knock all the way at the back and my body seized with fear. I knew I couldn’t make my way all the way to the front in the dark. I didn’t even know if it would be daylight out right now and if any light would be coming through the doorway. And if I turned on the lights it would turn on the doors and let whoever was out there in and if that person happened to be a zombie then I was dead. There could be any number of them sitting out there.

There was more knocking, this time a little bit more forceful and rushed, almost like panic building. Perhaps those zombies outside really wanted in or maybe a surviving human was trapped outside and trying to run away from some zombies, hoping that somebody was in here and would help them out. The knocking persisted, becoming even more panicked and rapid and then there was a clatter at the door as more knocks were heard along it and then the sounds of other things thumping against the glass. I was surprised the whole thing hadn’t shattered but a scream piercing through the empty storefront and confirmed my second theory.

I placed my hand on the revolver and drew it in close before wrapping myself tightly in the blanket and attempting to catch some extra hours of sleep. Yes I had let a person die but letting them in could have simply let in even more zombies and led to both our deaths. Better one of us live than neither. It was a sad state of affairs but it was how the world worked around here. Perhaps in other more civilised parts of the world there were people helping each other to live each day but not here. Here it was one of us or the other.

Though in the long run what was the point? Survival simply because I didn’t like the idea of dying yet? There was no overall goal, no plan to kill all the zombies and rebuild the world. This was just the way things were now. This was the world. Nobody was extensively researching a cure. I knew I certainly wasn’t and I was not contributing to anything but my own life. I had already given up on my old goal of finding my parents at this point and had stuck with simply leaving them as the dead people they probably were. I couldn’t remember much of why they left, other than that one day they just left me in the safehouse to go find some more supplies since we were running low and then they came back once for a moment and disappeared without explanation. So what was my point now? Perhaps it would be best to just open the doors of this place and wait it out until the zombies found me or my water ran out.

After lying restlessly a few more hours on the mattress I finally pulled myself up out of bed and tucked the revolver away in my back pocket. I wished the security cameras outside the mall worked if I turned on the power but there wasn’t enough flowing through the building since I had plugged in the receiver. It stole most of the energy sent here. I still fumbled along the back wall until I found the power switch and shifted it back into the on position. Whether there were zombies around who would take notice or not I needed the light to get around this place. I grabbed a small meal made from snack bars that had preserved in their wrappers for this long and headed to the front door.

The last time I had been here this place had been completely empty in terms of people and zombies so I didn’t expect many to be out there now. That survivor who had been at the door had probably run here from somewhere else but even if they had been staying around here they were most likely the only person so the zombies would have left in search of more food. The glass door was smeared in the blood of the person though and there were a couple of large cracks running along the door from when the zombies had pressed against it but they obviously hadn’t had enough force to break it. Lucky me.

The doors slid open upon my arriving, one of them rattling a lot and sticking after opening halfway. Perhaps it had taken more damage than could be seen initially. Just outside was a sun high in the sky to reflect midday. In front of me sprawled the barren wastes of an empty parking lot followed by some dusty buildings falling apart around the edges of a strip mall. One of the vending machines to my right was flashing on and off as power came and went and it spat out an ancient bottle of pop that rolled over to the doorway. Perhaps luckier than I thought I was. The bottle stopped beside a garbage can which had a small piece of paper flapping underneath a corner of the can.

I bent down and pulled it out from under the garbage can and left the pop where it was after checking the expiration date. Underneath the blood stains around the edges was what appeared to be a small map scribbled in black pen. It was tough to discern exactly where it was or of what it was but it looked like there was one intersection that had been circled and another spot nearby marked with an X. There was an arrow pointing to the X and at the end of the arrow were two words. The first was covered with a drop of blood and the second was simply “road.” I tucked it away in my pocket having no way to read the map without one of my own. But I knew someone who could.

Even as a lone wolf sort of survivor I did know of some permanent connections living in certain areas. There was one who almost everyone in LA knew, the Rumour Mill as he was called. All throughout LA there were metal “pods” planted within buildings or along streets that could fit a single person in them. They had been made during the war as safety places for people who could not get into larger fallout shelters and after the war they were being used by people to hide from zombies. Unfortunately the shelters were too small to stay in permanently and food and water still had to be found. But for the Rumour Mill one of those pods was his permanent residence and safety from zombies. He supplied and traded information for food and water. If you paid him he could help you with everything and everybody in LA who knew of him visited him whenever they got a chance. Usually he just dealt with news related to the most recent zombie activity, the best hiding places, and if help or military aid was coming. Maybe he would know something about a map where there is a specific road.

I grabbed the pop bottle and tucked it away to give to the Rumour Mill and found my directions off of the sun. By my memory the Rumour Mill was fifteen miles west but I would have to travel near the Ravine if I took a direct route. I slapped myself mentally for not been making maps this whole time as I travelled but I guess if I had the other half of my teleporter I wouldn’t need one so for me maps weren’t needed while looking for that other half. Right now I would just have to get by going around the Ravine. That would add an extra few miles to the trip but since I had no purpose right now other than surviving it was better than waiting to be caught. I checked my revolver over again and headed off westward with the hope of finding a charging station along the way.

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