No More

I knew I shouldn’t have left the hideout… I really shouldn’t be outside, but I couldn’t take it anymore. “Living like this isn’t actually living; merely existing, surviving,” I thought. My family and friends were dead, and they didn’t do anything drastic to save me or something like that. They were the first to go: first to be infected: gone without a word: gone without a thought.

The anguished cries of infected humans and animals alike were not far off the bank of the pier. I could see the Willis tower from here, fallen and tilted on its side, using other buildings as support beams. A dying cat, mauled by her own infected kittens, was wailing in a nearby alley.

As a child, I often dreamed of apocalyptic worlds but never in my entire life did I imagine that anything close to a zombie apocalypse would occur… that was a thing for horror movies and comic books. But here I am, surrounded by infected animals, standing on a pier in Chicago, my hometown, which now looked nothing close to the Chicago I used to know. “Zombies” were beginning to stumble out of the wrecked doors of nearby buildings, their sense of smell, sensitive to flesh and fresh blood was greatly enhanced.

I turned away from the buildings and looked down at the murky water. I remembered vaguely that before the incident, the lake had been clear and baby blue. Cool air prickled the skin on my bare arms and it was a lovely autumn afternoon but I was debating whether or not to jump because I’d rather die than become infected. I almost did it too.

Just then, an undead human came around a nearby corner. Skin peeled off of the blistered rotten flesh on her face. It was almost impossible to tell what her skin color had been before… her hair was short and limp across her forehead but I knew her. There was no mistaking those large brown eyes and the piercing on her nose confirmed it. I reeled backwards onto the gravely pavement of the peer and stood frozen as my best friend uttered a deep guttural sound from the back of her throat. A sticky strand of blood and saliva dripped from her bottom lip onto her muddy torn cardigan. I had seen this before. I’d seen my boyfriend like this, friends, family… It had become all too familiar of a sight but that didn’t make it hurt less. That didn’t make it any more bearable.

In the spur of a moment I turned and sprinted down a side street. I was so enraged at everything and I ignored the groans of the infected inside nearby buildings and just kept running. I must have run for over three miles because I found what I was looking for. Before me loomed a huge public school, abandoned and sealed shut. I decide to spend some time sneaking around the school, checking every door.

The only unlocked door was the heavy hatch on top of the school, leading to inside the roof. Given the trouble I had with it, it hadn’t been open in ages. When I finally found the door that released me from the cobweb ridden roof, I clambered into a storage room and choked in the dank, dusty atmosphere. I clambered over cleaning equipment: brooms, mops, and feather dusters, that would probably never be used for cleaning again and eventually I shoved my way out of the heavy steel doors of the cluttered room and found myself in an empty hallway.

I was sure I was alone for now; I had tried every single door around the school and all had been locked and firmly barricaded, and the windows had been fastened with steel plates; there was no way anything could have gotten in unless they had come the same way as I did, and that was unlikely unless they were uninfected.

It was unsettlingly dark and my little led flashlight gave only enough light to see a few feet in front of me. Dust particles danced in the beams of light but the rusty lockers, so unused to the feeling of light after so long, provided no reflections. The carpet under my feet was probably once a soft blue but now it was a vomit-like beige and its design was no longer recognizable.

The gymnasium, not far from the café, was vacant; a single bright red emergency light shone through the upturned basketball hoops revealing only open space. I had never imagined this gym could ever be this silent. A school banner lie crumpled halfway up the bleachers and the plaques on the walls of all the tournaments ever won were cracked and practically unreadable. Walking to the far east side of the gym, I found the PE storage rooms with the doors still slightly ajar. Glancing around, I found what I was looking for. I picked up the metal baseball bat off the floor next to a rack of volleyball nets infested with spiders. Crinkling my nose, I edged my way out the doors of the storage room.

The last place I visited was the auditorium. The seats were empty and worn, the cushions of the chairs deflated and frayed. As I observed the silent stage, I wondered how long it had been since I had heard the sound of a symphony or laughed at a funny line in a musical.

Lost in my thoughts, I didn’t hear the quiet rumble from the band and orchestra rooms behind the curtains of the dark stage. I didn’t hear the familiar creak of a door opening from above in the sound booth. It was only when I felt something brush my ankle that I swung around and realized the school was not deserted. Sure, nothing had gotten in, but that also meant that nothing had gotten out. Classes were still in session, and the only ones allowed to attend… were the undead.