Dead Horizon (© Elvis Cardona)
It has been four months since the dead began to walk, and for some strange,
apparent reason, they have all just—vanished from the face of the Earth. The
very moment I begin to grasp the fact that the living dead are walking around
and attacking every single living and breathing human being that catches their
eye, they somehow just… disappear? I mean… how is that even possible, right?
The question though, should be… how was it humanly possible for the dead to
rise up and walk in the first place? Living in an undead world is something I
would have never dreamt in a million years. I don’t know… maybe this is all
just some sort of punishment, maybe we all deserved what’s been happening?
Before the dead disappeared, they were outnumbering the population of the
entire planet. The living was becoming extinct, like undomesticated animals.
Walkers were taking us out one by one. Devouring and conquering the human
species.
No one knew how to destroy those God forsaken creatures. We tried everything;
we tried burning them, running them over, with oversized vehicles, shooting
them, stabbing them but, nothing seemed to work. The more of those things we
killed, more of them were coming. The dead were like a plaque. It almost
felt biblical. Like the end times. It was an apocalyptical event that
seemed to last for more than a lifetime and time was running out… for all of
us. Nowhere was safe anymore. No matter how far we ran, the dead seemed to stay
one step ahead. It was like they knew our every move. I have heard different
explanations as to why this whole outbreak occurred. Some of them seemed a
little unlikely to me but, scientists believe that it was because of a
viral infection. They also believe that the infection was possibly airborne.
Now, I am no scientist but, there have been so many different kinds of viruses
and most viruses have been man-made, mostly by our “friendly”
Government.
I know what I have seen and what I saw seemed like a living nightmare. It
started inside a military Armory at Fort Bragg, Fayetteville, North Carolina.
It was on the day of September 9th, 2009. Inside the Armory was abandoned. The
smell was very musty and old. Broken windows were all about the Armory. Dried
up, blackish-red blood was smeared all on the walls and the lighting was very
dim. The room itself felt of decay. I searched the room for any sign of life
that might’ve been left. There were radios and all sorts of technology that was
totally outdated. I sat my backpack down on a desk that was to the left of the
entrance and as soon as I started to unzip it, I heard some commotion coming
from behind the bathroom door that was about three feet away from where I had
been standing. I figured I would go and investigate…bad idea. As I drew closer
to the bathroom door the commotion suddenly came to a stop then there was a
moment of uncomfortable silence, then there a very peculiar, creepy sound of
gnawing and chewing. The hairs on my arms stood up and I had this gut feeling
that something was terribly wrong with this situation. I turned the desk behind
me where I had placed my backpack, unzipped it all the way ;and pulled out
my crowbar. Then I turned back around and started for the bathroom door.
;I reached out my hand, turned the door knob and slowly opened it. I could
not believe what I was seeing. There were two people, on the ground. There was
a man lying dead upon the bathroom floor He was dressed in cammies. Right then
I knew he was military. The other person, although I knew it couldn’t possibly
be human, was kneeling over the dead marine’s body. I must have been quiet
enough to where opening the door didn’t draw its attention towards me.
This—thing was feeding on the dead marine’s body. I looked down and I noticed
there was a gun in his left hand. He must have taken himself out before that
thing attacked him. The marine’s insides were all hanging out and this thing
was holding and chewing on them. There were all kinds of bite marks all over
his arms and face. His neck had some flesh missing from it, skin torn from
where his eyes were. I almost began to vomit when I quickly threw my hands over
my mouth and swallowed. The smell was unbearable. I firmly gripped my crowbar,
raised my hand and before I could strike, it looked at me and growled reveling
flesh and blood in between its teeth. I took a few steps back in defense. “COME
ON YOU UGLY SON OF A BITCH!!” I daringly told it. As it got up off its
knees and proceeded towards me I could clearly tell that it was a person and
was clearly dead. ;He was really grotesque and his facial features were
almost skeletal-like. His eyes were deeply sunken back in his head, cheek bones
were really defined. The skin around his teeth and mouth looked as if it had
been pulled back so to speak. The odor that lingered about him was utterly
rancid. His skin was rotted and falling off in some areas. The hair on his head
appeared greasy. Clothes were in tatters. ;As he came closer to me my
heart began to beat faster and I felt all this adrenaline come over me. Now he was
about a foot in front of me and that’s when I drew my hand back in a swinging
motion and I drove that crowbar right between his eyes. He quickly dropped to
the floor.
I was in total shock from what I had encountered that day inside the Armory.
The one thing I do know though is that that man was dead; walking and
committing an act of cannibalism on a level I had never seen or even heard of
in that matter and I’ll never forget that. One thing I did learn from that day
was that it takes a lot of fucking strength to be able to drive a heavy
ass crowbar through a human skull... The only way to put those repulsive things
down permanently is by destroying the brain. It was a lot to take in knowing
the realization was that the dead were coming back to life and it was occurring
everywhere. All around the globe the unexplainable was happening. Another
incident I heard on the news was about a homeless man being attacked by another
man who was naked, who apparently had been infected with some sort of parasitic
virus.
The virus was comparable to Toxoplasmosis Gondi, which is a parasite that lives inside the brain. What this parasite does is control the human
brain. ;The naked man was eating the homeless man’s face and other parts
of his body as well. Of course the cops were called, but only one officer
arrived at the gruesome scene. The police officer was in shock and awe. He
could not believe what he was witnessing. He drew his gun and pointed it at the
naked man. The officer shot him in the back at least four times, but he would
not go down. Instead the man proceeded to feed upon the victim. The officer
yelled at him to halt. Then he jumped up, looked at him and growled. Finally
the officer shot him in the head. He fell to the ground. ;After hearing
about that I finally realized that the world had gone to hell. And the dead had
come back and that was a hard pill to swallow.
Who knows what lies on the other side of the horizon? Maybe the grass was
greener on the other side? What was to become of the future no one knows? I had
said that the dead had just… disappeared well, maybe I was wrong. I think the
truth was that they had all gone to the other side of that horizon. And that
was something we as society had succumbed to. The future was written by the
blood of the dead. And if that was the reality then no one is going to survive.
- THE END - |