In The Woods

Steve leaned against a nearby tree, completely exhausted but unable to ever really rest again. He glanced down at the purple and bluish bite mark on his arm and knew that it was the reason for all of his misery. His every thought was consumed by the hunger that pulsed through him and clouded his every thought. All he wanted to do was eat, eating would satisfy him, the problem was what his brain was now telling him was food.

Images from the past week flashed through his mind. A real zombie outbreak had consumed his small little mountain town like it had in so many other places across the world. All of the pain and suffering he had seen was now replaying itself in his mind. Then it had been horrible to see people he knew killed and eaten alive. Now what troubled him was the thought that he wished he could have done some of the eating himself. He hadn’t seen his wife, Tabitha, for days and had a feeling deep in his gut that she had perished like so many others.

Far off in the distance he heard gunshots and screams. That meant that soon this little sanctuary would be swarming with people that were itching to put a bullet through his skull. Part of him wanted to stay, to just let it all be over, but a bigger part of him still wanted to survive. That is if you could call whatever he was surviving.

He turned and ran in the opposite direction of the noise and trying to be quiet but knowing he needed to get out of the area as fast as possible. On his run he encountered more of his kind trying to do the same thing or, so far gone, just standing and staring off into space. He paid little attention to them all, getting out of there was his only concern at the moment.

Just when he thought that he may be far enough away he could stop running, a new burst of gunfire sounded off to his right. Before he could change direction to avoid this new group of people, someone ran right into him and knocked him to the ground.

For a moment he was disoriented but quickly snapped out of it when he noticed who it was that had run into him. Tabby, his wife whom he had thought died in the initial onslaught. She wasn’t dead, though. Well, not in the terms that he had thought. For a moment everything seemed to stop as she realized who she had run into and their eyes met. Tears welled up around the edges of her eyes as the gunshots started to get closer.

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” she whispered to him. “I don’t want to be this anymore.”

He wiped the tears from her eyes and kissed her on each of her eye lids. “I don’t either, my love.” All the previous thoughts of survival vanished and the hunger wasn’t even anywhere to be seen. All he wanted to do was make the pain that the love of his life was feeling stop.

A group of people with guns entered the clearing and spotted them. “It’s okay, love.” He told her as panic showed on her face. He leaned down and kissed her deeply just as the hunters sighted in on them and pulled the triggers.