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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 -
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Genre:Living Dead
Type:Short story
Rating:4.5 / 10
Rated By:57 users
Comments: 3 users
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