No tears for the dead (standard:horror, 2292 words)
Author: margisama	Added: Feb 15 2006	Views/Reads: 3331/2122	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Genevieve Bloughton is just another person trying to survive the zombie apocalypse...or is she?

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

buildings should the need to seek cover present itself. Pressing on, 
albeit at a slightly slower pace, she continued her journey through the 
settlement. Eventually she detected faint sounds coming from an 
alleyway a few meters ahead, and she paused; gaze drifting downwards 
once she'd reached her impulsive destination. 

Rainwater had flowed out of the narrow space between two shops and
formed a decent-sized puddle at the junction of two stretches of 
sidewalk, but the glistening fluid was not the clear, transparent color 
it should have normally been, it was clouded with ribbons of dull red, 
and particles of larger, thicker things. 

The sounds became more distinct as she pondered the unsettling sight of
the scarlet-tinged water, and when she lifted and turned her head in 
order to glance down into the alley, a part of her deep inside knew 
what she would see before she even completed the motion. 

The storm of the night before had apparently not been enough of a
deterrent to the raiding party; the remnants of which lay before her 
now. Two, perhaps three men- though it was hard to get a completely 
reliable estimate simply by observing the mutilated remains that a much 
larger group was currently occupying themselves with. A balding man who 
seemed to have been in his late forties at death possessively clutched 
a severed arm to his chest as he chewed on the half-eaten wrist; giving 
a growling sound of warning as another of the pack seemed a little too 
interested in his prize. 

There were six or seven others besides the two squabblers, crouched over
the flayed open torso of one of the once-living scavengers, so many in 
fact that it was rather impressive that they'd somehow managed to 
navigate the narrow alley and find enough room for all of them. A black 
woman in her early thirties, a red-haired girl who'd probably been 
around nine years old, a teenage boy with blood-stained sand-colored 
curls; whatever prejudices they might have possessed when breath filled 
their lungs had long since dissipated, and they fed with relative 
harmony in each others' presence, only showing a hint of what might 
have been called aggression or displeasure when another tried to take a 
particularly choice morsel they had been reaching for themselves. 

The acrid smell of gunpowder was stronger here amid the coppery,
sewer-like stench of exposed bowels and viscera. A battered rifle lay 
discarded just outside the mouth of the alley, and a few feet in lay 
the unmoving hulks of the two revenants the now-dead men had managed to 
bring down before apparently being cornered in the alley and 
overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of the undead. These two were never 
going to get up and walk again, she mused, glancing at the 
half-shattered skull of one and the bullet-pierced forehead of the 
other. Reaching down, she took the gun in her hands and checked it, 
finding it empty of ammunition. How desperate for supplies must they 
have been to have chanced a night-time raid with so little in the way 
of weapons, she wondered inwardly as she tossed the now-useless gun 
back to the bloodied ground. Maybe they'd thought the storm would have 
covered their movements, but when trying to evade hunters who didn't 
need to worry about exposure or the other dangers that their living 
counterparts were faced with, their decision had been brave at best, 
outright stupid at worst. 

And very much unsuccessful in the end as well, she mused with a weary
sort of resignation, eyeing the garish remains that were too badly 
mutilated to ever rise again. The gory sight of the dismembered corpses 
the restless dead were still consuming no longer made her retch like it 
had in the beginning, but it didn't mean she enjoyed such a macabre 
spectacle either. It was just an unpleasant fact of existence she'd 
been forced to accept if she wanted to continue on herself with her 
sanity still intact. 

The messily occupied undead were taking no notice of her, but the
thudding slam of a door she hadn't yet noticed, set into the side of 
one of the alleyway buildings only two or three feet away- brought her 
to sudden and complete attention. At first glance, one might have 
thought the man stumbling out into the early morning sunlight was a 
miraculous survivor of the ill-fated scavenging party; his clothes for 
the most part were clean and undamaged, and his flesh lacked the 
grayish pallor to it that many of the others in the alley possessed. 
But that first impression was incredibly misleading. Clearly, he `had' 
been a survivor, at least of the initial strike that had reduced his 
companions to the morning meal. 

He'd apparently tried a final desperate measure and had broken into the
side entrance of a small fabric store to seek shelter from the death 
that had closed in from behind him. His pursuers had not followed him- 
perhaps they'd been content with the bounty his less fortunate 
companions had provided. But he hadn't escaped completely unscathed 
himself. As he emerged fully into the light, she saw the torn sleeve of 
his shirt and the gaping wound on his left arm; the flesh torn by 
blunt, once-human teeth that hadn't been designed to rip into 
struggling prey. The bite, as nasty-looking as it was, by itself 
wouldn't have been enough to end his life had it come from a natural 
creature or a living human, but even the tiniest of nips from the 
walking dead was enough to infect, and the former survivor had probably 
died sometime before dawn; his narrow escape proving ultimately futile 
in the end. 

Dull brown eyes that held a glazed, unfocused look to them turned her
way; the blank expression of the newly reanimated man seeming to study 
her for a moment before turning aside in obvious disinterest; the 
sounds of the feeding further down the alley drawing his attention as 
he stumbled towards them to join in; bloodying his mouth on the 
remaining flesh and tissue of what could have been his friends or even 
members of his own family only a few short hours before. 

Feeling not so much disgusted as disheartened, she turned her back on
the gory tableau and left the alley behind, continuing on into the town 
now that she had discovered the source of the gunpowder. Her own 
clothes had seen better days, and it was that fact that guided her 
steps into a second-hand clothing store. No one, living or previously 
dead, challenged her as she entered the unlocked shop, and she was free 
to browse the racks as she would have been back in her own hometown- 
before civilization had crumbled and the laws of nature itself had 
turned upside down. 

Finding a pair of jeans and a simple green blouse that matched her size,
she changed in the middle of the store- not seeing much point in hiding 
herself in one of the fitting booths since there was little to no 
chance of anyone coming into the store to view or be offended by her 
lack of modesty, at least, no one who would care about or probably even 
understand what she was doing. And if the would-be gawker had still had 
a heartbeat, she doubted they would have wanted to watch her undress 
anyway, given her condition. 

Oh, not that she looked like some of the outright horrors she'd seen
during her travels south... as she finished fastening her jeans she 
straightened up to begin the tedious process of buttoning up her new 
shirt; casting a reluctant glance in the floor-length mirror that sat 
propped up against the wall just in front of her. Her shoulder-length 
brown hair was slightly wavy but otherwise non-descript, her features 
clean and well-placed enough to make her pretty, though no stunning 
beauty. There were no dramatic wounds or mutilations marring her 
slender form; a little too skinny even from before, no missing limbs or 
exposed bones to provide a blatant give-away of what she had become. 
There were a few small scratches here and there, but those had been 
caused by the branches and underbrush she had apparently staggered 
through during those first early days. 

The eyes that met her gaze in the mirror were remarkably clear and
lucid; a pale blue that seemed no different than the eyes of the 
transformed survivor in the alley must have once looked. But there was 
a drawn look to her features that set her appearance...off, and her 
skin was just a little too pale to be healthy, or natural. And if one 
were to look closely enough at her, they would soon notice something 
else that didn't seem right about the young woman...namely, the fact 
that she didn't breath as she finished the menial task of putting her 
new clothes on and gave her reflection one final, cursory glance before 
turning to make her way out of the abandoned store. 

Yes, even though some quirk of fate or cruelty of the divine had left
twenty-two year old Genevieve Bloughton as quick-witted and morally 
conscious as she'd been before the world had gone to hell, she was 
still as physically dead as the revenants gorging on the repulsive 
feast in the alley only a few blocks away. 

... 


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