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(Not) Just Another Zombie Story
(© Biswapriya Purkayastha)

Page 1

(Special thanks are due to Rich Restucci for encouragement and feedback for this story.)


10.30 pm, 1st May.

I’m writing this down as fast as I can, hiding in this room while listening to them walking up and down the stairs and along the corridor. Any moment now, I expect one of them to try and open the door, as they have opened every other door I’ve seen so far. I really don’t know why they haven’t tried mine, yet. I suppose it’s only a matter of time.

My heart is still hammering, and I’m sitting down with my back to the wall and trying to take deep breaths. Something bumps on the wall, near the door, and an electric thrill of terror shoots through me, thinking this is it, now, but whatever it is moves away, scuffling. I’m going to have to stop trembling before I can continue writing this.

(Later)

Somewhere nearby, something is burning. The smoke’s coming in through the window, which I’ve left open. I’m on the third floor, and there’s no convenient tree or drainpipe nearby to get to me, so as long as the door stays shut I suppose I’m safe.  By the same token, though, I can’t get down except through the door. And I can’t stay in here indefinitely; there’s nothing to eat in here, and besides sooner or later they’re going to find me.

I don’t really know for whom I’m writing this diary, on this pad meant for pathology reports, and using a pen I stole from the senior nurse’s station, not that the senior nurse is going to miss it anyway. It’s not as though anyone’s going to be able to read it, unless I escape and find other...people. Probably, then, it’s for myself, a way of keeping myself sane in a world gone mad. Maybe I...

This is no good. I can’t wait here to starve or be eaten. I must get out, somehow. It’s impossible to jump out through the window, because it’s three floors right down to the concrete parking lot. I must simply walk out of the door and down when there aren’t any of them around. After all, even they must rest once in a while, mustn’t they?

Frankly, I don’t know the answer. I don’t know anything about what’s going on since yesterday. Let me try to write it all down and see if any of it makes sense...

My name is – but why should I write it? I know it, and since this diary is for me alone, I won’t waste my time and energy writing it here, or my age for that matter. I’m a surgical nurse at the hospital, and I live in the nurse’s quarters at the back. It’s useful not to have to travel long distances when you have a job like mine.

I’d reported from duty, straight out of bed. I’d just finished a double shift, sixteen hours straight at work, and I’d been so exhausted that I’d dropped right into sleep and woken far too late to do more than gulp down a cup of coffee while getting into my spare uniform. I was almost running when I left my room, and I only just made it in time. I thought I was lucky. Now, I’m not so sure.

There was a commotion in one of the surgical wards. I remember shouting and things being thrown, and a couple of the doctors running past. Of course I was curious, but I had to report to duty.

The nurse’s station was empty. I signed the register and was about to go and begin the rounds of the surgical wards when I saw a man staggering along the corridor. He almost fell, got up again and came wandering on, and I hurried to help him. I had almost reached him when he fell down again and some instinct – I don’t know what – stopped me from reaching down to touch him. He was making strange sounds and trying to get up, and suddenly he lunged at me on his hands and knees. His teeth snapped a millimetre from my shin as I jumped out of the way.

“Watch out!” someone shouted. I don’t know who it was, but the man on the floor was still crawling towards me and trying to bite. I stumbled backwards from him and almost fell, only saving myself by a quick grab at the corner of a desk. The crawling man was almost on his feet now, and I could see that there was something badly wrong with him; his eyes were staring vacantly and the saliva drooling from his mouth. He was still trying to get to me, and I looked around desperately for help.

[ Continue to page 2 ]

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Information
Genre:Living Dead
Type:Short story
Rating:7.15 / 10
Rated By:167 users
Comments: 8 users
Total Hits:24559

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