my zombie story (I'm still not sure what to call it)

By BadGrammar · Feb 22, 2009 ·
  1. I figured I would post up some more parts of my zombie story. the first part is in first person. I dont like it, but I think it would lose some of its... I dont know... stuff, if I rewrote it into 3rd person. so maybe I can just use it as an introduction to the plot. who knows. anyway, yeah, I know the first part has a lot of verb tense fubars... just bear with me here.


    chapter 1: (part 1 of 4)

    I opened my eyes to what I can only describe as absolute complete darkness. My back felt wet and I had a terrible headache that felt something like a rat trying to claw its way out of the back of my skull. I couldn’t tell exactly if I were lying down or being catapulted through space. I wondered if I was dead, but the pain and ringing in my ears suggested I was not. And then there was that smell, I wasn’t sure how to describe it… rotten meat, milk and cigarette ashes? I touched my hand to my face, I did this for two reasons; to assure myself that I had a hand, and to assure myself that I had a face.

    Satisfied that both were still intact, I decided that it was best to find out which way was up. I thought back to a Saturday morning watching the discovery channel as a child. I remembered a documentary about people who survived avalanches while climbing mountains. They would get trapped under tons of snow and debris and would find themselves disoriented and not know which way was up… some would die digging the wrong direction, the ones who lived, however, used a highly calculated technique. For nearly a decade and a half I considered this to be what I referred to as “useless trivia” but today I was going to use it for the first time, and hopefully last time, ever. With this newly recalled trivia, I prepared myself for the execution of this highly advanced technique. I began to gather all the spit in my mouth, took a deep breath, and hurled it out in front of me as hard as I could. A moment passed and nothing happened, which could have meant a lot of things… mostly that the results of my experiment were inconclusive, or that I just plain didn’t do it right. Suddenly, I felt a splat of warm liquid collide with my forehead. As a small droplet of the splattered liquid ran down the side of my head into my ear I thought to myself ‘if the laws of gravity still apply in this strange place, that way must be up’. I motioned slightly to the area in front of me in vain, realizing that I couldn’t see what I was motioning too, and that there was most likely no one around even paying attention.

    In an effort to gain some clarity on the situation, I decided to sit up. As I raised my upper body, the unstable mass below me shifted, and the lower half of my body sunk in a few inches. ‘Where the hell am I’ I thought to myself, starting to lose my composure. I ran my fingers through my hair, as my hand ran to the back of my skull I felt a decent sized lump. Touching it made a spark of pain shoot through my body.

    Waves of panic rushed over me. “Crap, I must have slipped and hit my head somehow, and now I’m blind… of all the senses to loose, why vision? Why couldn’t I lose my sense of smell, this place is rank”, I whispered to myself. I waited for someone to respond, but heard nothing in reply. I thought ‘Wherever I am, I must be alone.’ Then I thought about the smell… What was that? What kind of place would smell like that? A list of possibilities ran through my mind; the library, swimming pool, video game store, old people hospital. With the exception of the old people hospital, none of those places seemed to fit the bill.

    Something caught my attention. I turned my head to the left and out of the far corner of my eye, I could see a pin sized speck of light! Excitement and relief rushed through my veins as I realized I wasn’t blind, or dead. I was just in a very, very dark place.

    I put my hands on the floor to both sides of me to steady myself as I shifted my weight to my feet. The “floor” under my hands seemed to be made of a combination of solid and not-so-solid material which shifted under my weight. My right hand stayed planted, however, my left hand sunk into the matter nearly eight to twelve inches of cold, slimy mush. Entirely off balance and straining for energy, I rolled to my knees and stood up quickly, and slammed my head into something hard that made a “CLANG” noise. Bright lights and pretty stars swam through my vision for several minutes before I realized that I had dove face first into the semi solid matter that made up the “floor”. My cheek resting in a puddle of what smelled like applesauce which was far passed its prime. I rolled back on to my knees, and wisely put a hand up to the “ceiling”.

    My hand made delicate contact with the matter I had earlier forced my already damaged skull into. It felt warm and solid. I applied a slight amount of pressure to test its structural integrity, as I did so, the pinhole speck of light in the corner got slightly bigger. I rested both of my hands on the “ceiling” and stood up, my legs wavered slightly, and then effortlessly straightened themselves out as I rose up into the unknown. As I stood, the pinhole of light in the corner became a long sliver of light growing longer and wider until sunlight pierced through the darkness in overwhelming force.

    The intensity of the light was too painful, and I closed my eyes and continued to stand up into the mysterious new world around me. I attempted to open my eyes, which consisted of a series of stupid facial expressions and a lot of blinking. After 30 seconds of this I manage to open my eyes and keep them open. I avoided looking into the light, and angled my face down. I saw that the “floor” I was laying on was actually a pile of garbage. Used Kleenexes, paper towels, chicken bones, cigarette butts, and a familiar pool of applesauce with mystery chunks mixed in. My stomach started to turn and I felt a little dizzy. I decided it was best I didn’t think too hard about the origin of the “mystery chunks”. I shifted my gaze up slightly and realized I was standing in a large green metal box; a dumpster, if you will.

    With a grunt, I heaved the “ceiling” up. It was hinged to the back side of the box, and flipped up, and clanged against a brick wall that was positioned behind it. The sound echoed through my head, and for a moment, I thought I could actually FEEL my eardrums. With my hands now free, I rubbed the back of my neck. It was now that I realized that my entire body hurt, not as bad as my head, but pretty bad. My head swam and the world was spinning. I thought to myself ‘Why am I in a dumpster?’

    I climbed out of the dumpster and scanned my surroundings. I saw several other dumpsters, and some smaller plastic garbage cans. I appeared to be in an alleyway, a narrow one with brick buildings on either side. They appeared to be two or three stories tall and had metal fire escapes going up the sides. I could see the street on far right end of the alley; the view didn’t tell me much other than the fact that there was a street in that direction, I also saw part of a dark storefront window. In the other direction, the alley went maybe 100 feet, to a chain link fence. Beyond the fence another 50 feet the alley came to an end with a corner that lead to the right.

    I shifted my attention to the escape ladder which was positioned above my dumpster. The ladder itself was about 10 feet from the ground, and the section of ladder that normally would slide down was missing. I started to piece together that for some reason, I wanted to get up that ladder. I imagined that the lid, or “ceiling”, of my dumpster was probably open, and I stood on the side of the dumpster and jumped for the lowest rung. I must have slipped and fell backwards, smashing my head on the corner of the dumpster, and then the lid closed from the force of my unconscious body slamming into it. I wasn’t sure which was more disturbing; the fact that I injured myself doing something so dumb and laid unconscious in a dumpster, or that I couldn’t think of a logical explanation as to why I would want to climb that fire escape. The only thing I could think of was ‘I must have been drunk’.

    I fished around in the pocket of the green cargo pants I was wearing; they didn’t seem my style, and I couldn’t recall where I got them from. I felt something slimy in my pocket and pulled it out; what I discovered was a banana peel. Convinced that I had no further need for the peel, I tossed it to the side. I moved down to my leg pocket, which felt considerably heavier than the previous pocket. From this pocket I produced two fully loaded pistol magazines. This came to me as a shock. They appeared to be .40 caliber bullets, the clips held anywhere between twelve and fifteen rounds based on a quick estimation. Things really weren’t making any sense to me at the moment. I searched my other pockets and found nothing, namely, the gun that the clips belonged too.

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