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"That door will never hold," Paul said.  "We need to get out of here."  Pounding started on the door at the top of the stairs.  Paul ran to another basement door and opened it.  There was a short flight of concrete stairs up to another set of red metal doors.  Paul picked me up, climbed the stairs and pulled back a sliding bolt on the red doors.  It made a metal on metal noise that sounded like a car crash in our attempted silence.  He pushed the bulkhead doors open and stuck his head out to look.  There were at least fifteen of them in the back yard.  Paul hurriedly shut the metal door and shot the bolt home.  Pounding started immediately on the bulkhead doors.  Trapped.

Paul ran back to the side casement window he had used to let me in.  He opened it and looked out.  Nothing.  "Ok little buddy, time to make our escape."  he said.  He opened the window and helped me through.  I scanned the side yard and still saw nothing.  There was a crash inside the house, and Paul started to climb through the window.  "They’re coming!" he said.  "I can’t fit!" he added desperately.  There was no way he was getting through that little window.  He pulled himself back in the house and I could see through the window that the others were coming down the stairs .  Paul whacked the first one in the side of the head with his wrench, and it went down like a stone.  There were many others behind the first one, but they could only come at him one at a time.  Paul smacked a second one and it went down as well.  There were too many though.  I could see he was in trouble.

There was a screeching sound in front of the house.  A car had stopped, and four people got out.  "DAD!" shouted one.  I heard gunshots!  These people had guns!  They fired at the weird people, and one of the newcomers screamed: "IN THE HEAD! ONLY SHOOT THEM IN THE HEAD!"  I crept back to my hedge.  There was more shooting, and about two minutes later, Paul came out with his rescuers.

"Wait," cried Paul, "there’s a…"

"Dad, we gotta go!"  one of the newcomers interrupted.

"No, I let him out, he’s on the…"

"DAD NOW!"  the same one yelled.

"Rick they’re coming!" said a woman’s voice.

The newcomers shoved Paul in the car and the car screeched away.  I was very happy for Paul, he had been nice to me.  I was a little sad for me though.  In the space of twenty minutes I had lost everyone I had ever known.  I was alone again.

I knew I couldn’t stay where I was, so I dashed across the street into the trees.  I must have made it unseen, because nothing followed.  I climbed a tall birch tree, and hunkered down.  I would have a better understanding of my surroundings tomorrow.

Four Days Ago

I woke up stiff.  It was a long night, and I didn’t get much sleep.   I had been sleeping under bushes and behind trees for a few days.  There was a new smell in the air too.  It smelled a little like the garbage can at my house, but thicker, and sweeter.  It was them.  The air was heavy with the stink of them.

One thing of note:   It was obvious that the people that used to live here had started to rot.  There were crowds of lurching people, and they all had the color of rancid cream. They had started to smell too. I could tell when they were about because of the smell.   The stink gave them away before the moans sometimes.  In the daylight I could see that they had terrible wounds, and they were filthy and covered in gore.  I kept low, and moved quietly, and they never knew I was there.  I was a picture of stealth.  Not bad for one so young as myself.

I had caught a rat and had eaten it alive yesterday.  It was disgusting, but I was starving.  I remember the cracking sounds it made as I consumed it.  It was awful.  It was hot and sticky, but it made me less hungry.  After I had cleaned the rat’s blood off of me, I decided to explore some more. I moved into the city slowly, with eyes and ears on full alert.

The Rottens, because that’s what they were, rotten, were out it force.  It was relatively easy to stay hidden, they weren’t that intelligent, but they did seem to have a pack mentality.  When one would see something interesting, it would moan loudly, or screech, or hiss, or something, and others near it would come stumbling to investigate.  They were like ants.  You never see just one ant.  Where there’s one, there’s usually more.  They were staggering around, some trailing pieces of themselves in a bloody swath.

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