ATZ Forums: Alone in the Dark: day 1 (plus a little background) - ATZ Forums

The sun in sky seemed hang heavier with the passing hours and the sweltering heat began to bake the highway. All she could see in the distance was a watery version of asphalt and sky. The good thing about the highway was that she could see for miles in every direction. It brought a sense of calm to know that there were no dark corners or buildings one of them could leap out of. She had enough of that trying to work her way through the city. Although it wasn't safer out here on the highway, it was easier to see what could be coming for her. With the city behind her, she felt as if she could breathe a little deeper. The thirst in her throat lessened a little. The tension in her chest felt like a knot being pulled apart, and became looser and looser with every tug of a strand. She might have been walking for a couple of miles now. She passed by countless abandoned cars. Each looked as though a part of a grisely movie scene. Doors were thrown wide open with blood streaked stearing wheels and soaked into the seats. The blood was even still wet in some them. They went for the cars first. It was the noise. Easy to hear from a ways away. Now and then she'd sidestep to avoid one of the putrid bodies of fallen zombs that had been hit by frantic drivers in the initial outbreak. Viscera splattered over the highway in streaky red and purple smudge marks across the fading divider lines. The heat made everything take on a sticky glossy sheen like dried globs of acrylic paint dripped across a torn and burned up canvas of black and grey. It seemed as if all color had been drained from the world around her. All of the left over smog in sky, though keeping things in a steady shade was keeping the sun from giving life to any of the vegetation. The car accidents had been so clustered and severe that all the cars on the highway for as far as she could see were covered in a black and grey film of grime left by the clouds of smoke hanging over the horizon. At one point she gathered enough gall to reach out a finger and swipe it against the hood of one of the cars that seemed to be less gruesome than the others. In seconds her finger was covered in a black clay like substance consisting of smoke and the burned residue of whatever chemicals joined the smog in the sky. She rubbed the dark dusts between her thumb and forefinger and felt it give way to the force of her pressing, leaving a thick black smudge on both her fingers. For a second she had been so focused on the grimy powder that she had almost forgotten what she was in the middle of. She caught herself drifting off into thoughts of people she missed, people she used to have lunch with about this time. Her train of thought was cut short when she heard a long scream piercing the relative quiet of the atmosphere off in the distance. She could tell by the tone that it was not of the living. She then began to contemplate where she was now and how it showed such a dramatic shift from the reality she knew only a mere few weeks before; before all this happened. Although the events of the last few weeks were hard to forget, for a moment it was easy to revert back to a simpler way of thinking. Back when all she had to worry about was how long it might take her to get ready for work on any given day. Or if she would wake up on time for her first class of the morning; what she'd eat for lunch or who she'd meet. It all seemed too ridiculous. Routines consisting of schedules completely made up of fake time frames that weren't ever based on any real carnal need. She might schedule a time for lunch because she believed that she needed to eat at that time but in reality it was the social aspect of eating that she scheduled. She wouldn't starve if she skipped that lunch date. There was no need to search for food and thus develop a time when it would be best for her to go out into the open. To gauge her safety with the extra cover of darkness like a small rodent coming out of the shadows when the cat was away. No, The previous way of thinking was based on the superfluous need to maintain a schedule and a social standing. The funniest part of that old world was that even with all of the crime and underlying dangers that surrounded the everyday life of established communities, all assumed a blanket of contentment and safety within their lives with no real proof to back it. How could any of them have been safe in the world it had been? Sure things had changed dramatically over the last few weeks but the dangers had merely morphed. At the very least it was almost better after the outbreak. At least there was an excuse for the disturbingly horrific behavior of the human species. What had been the explanations before? A tainted mind, a troubled life, cruel parents? Where had the blame been placed in that world? It certainly hadn't been on any of their shoulders. The world where people were shot on the street on their way to work. Where everyone drove large metal machines on trails of rock hard pavement going much faster than it would take for them to die instantly if they were to misstep. The one with brutally twisted serial murderers and rapists. Where everyone fought in the name of imaginary gods claiming that the bloodshed was only necessary. She began to feel sick. She wasn't really sure if she just got herself too worked up or if it was the the thick haze in the air that tasted like burning rubber and ash. Even though she was out in the open the air seemed to get thinner the further down the highway she got. It seemed that every car in the city was trying to get somewhere in a hurry but ended up abandoned here. She heard the scream again and her own internal tangent resolved itself for a moment so she could listen for the movement of anything in the distance. It seemed that the scream had gotten closer but it was hard to tell with her head still pounding in rhythm with her feet. Although she hadn't been traveling quite as quickly as she would have liked down the highway, she had still put a decent amount of distance between herself and that on ramp. What was slowing her down most was the maze of stranded cars. If one was in a helicopter flying above it must look like a filled scrabble playing board with different lengths and colors connected in lines and turns all along the gray and yellow of the scenery below. She was doing her best to keep her distance from the seemingly empty vehicles. She could never know if the victims had been able to escape from their predators or if they had just been trapped within the metal box waiting to turn into one of them. She didn't have much faith in the hope of finding other survivors. Just the knowledge that she was the only person she needed to be concerned with and in order to survive she had to be as careful as she could manage to be. The road started coming to a hill. It didn't look much like a hill but she could tell as her the incline started to make her calves cramp. With the lack of water her muscles were straining to complete the task of marching forward. She pushed up as quickly as she could. After hearing the screams of the undead in the distance she couldn't afford to slow down or stop. Not only the threat of being seen, but her other concern was with her water and food supply or what was left of it. She needed to get to that gas station. She put one foot in front of the other reluctantly. As she felt her legs begin to give way she grabbed onto an open car door sticking out across the median and pulled hard to steady her legs and pull herself up. She grabbed onto sharp yellow bunches of dead grass for added support. She pulled on the door and the grass with everything she had to keep her legs moving. One last pull beyond the car door with another clump of grass and she was at the pinnacle of the hill. She could see an entire landscape before her. The valley flowed like water within her view. She could even see the gas station ahead. It looked to be about 5 miles or so. Pulling herself away from the sweeping landscape she turned around to look back at the warzone-like territory of the city she had just barely escaped. She was shocked at the view she had from up there. She could see every street, every home, every building from this vantage point. She could see little representations of beings wandering throughout the streets that looked like little rushing ants. She had to assume that they were not people, well not anymore. It was hard for her to imagine there were any other survivors. She was still surprised that she made it let alone could there be anyone else who had been too lucky. Escaping them wasn't even a matter of being clever. It was by chance that she had been spared because she had been fortunate to live in a large building with 15 floors. Lots of tenants packed into tiny box-like, rent controlled apartments. It was a literal buffet for the undead. All they had to do was roam from room to room and pound down each door and immediately they had a feast, families, children, bachelors, men, women, no one had been safe. It was in the beginning that the real damage was done. No one really stood a chance. People were ill informed and too empathetic to the "lost souls" and "mentally incompetent" that were ravaging their neighbors. It was originally thought to be something in the water; A new mutation of Kuru, the human form of spongiform encephalitis that slowly degrades the brain to a spongy mass full of holes causing uncontrolled behaviors like crazed giggling and unprovoked violence. The biggest mistake was that we thought we could treat it. Find a cure. "Victims" were holed up in the psych wards of every hospital, restrained with weak canvas to beds where they were treated as if they were simply sick and needed care. Once the hospitals had been taken over there was no stopping it from spreading to the rest of the city. Countless nurses as well as doctors were exposed to the virus. Although the threat of infection was recognized, there was little that was known about the new virus and as such there were very few credible sources of information on how to stop infection. Those who had been thought to be exposed were given retroactive treatments and sent home with simply cautionary instructions to report any adverse symptoms. There was thought to be no point in quarantining them since there was no real evidence to suspect that they might become like the others. It wasn't determined what fluids were specific to infection transfer. After their treatments they were free to venture home, out into the world of the uninfected. The saddest part was that the one thing that might have maybe changed everyone's view of what was happening was just the thing that no one seemed to be able to catch a glimpse of, the transformation. Those that were already in the hospital beds had turned before ever being seen by another person....or the witness was likely killed before they had a chance to alert any authority. Those had seen the transformation and lived, which there were few, had probably escaped by some chance, some glimmer of happenstance. As it is understood now through the miracle of science. The virus was something entirely new. Not quite new in the sense that it had never existed but in the sense that it had been an organism that existed within the integral parts of our species and had never attacked us until now. Although we had been aware of the organism and it's functions within our own bodies. Never had we seen it attack our cells in such a way as it had after the mutation. There was really a lot to explain but few sources of circulating information were available after everything had gone to hell. garbled information came out to be something like a map of the transformation of the infected itself. The actual science of the organism was a little wordy for the limited public broadcasting. The explanation they cooked up for the rest of the population...or what was left of it sounded something like this:
"First the body convulses uncontrollably while hemmoraging in every vital organ. Blood flows freely out of the mouth until the virus has taken full hold of the body. The skin becomes pallid and glossy. The virus passes throughout the body making every effort to destroy all immune function as it rips a bloody path on the way to it's final target, the brain. As it travels it replaces each cell with it's own encoding DNA which in turn continues to replicate the virus particles as the rest of it continues to head north through the body. The body becomes a well oiled virus production machine. The virus continues to battle with the immune system setting off every defense that the body holds causing intense fever and hallucinations. The brain is the ultimate destination. The virus attacks the brain with delicate precision. What is left of the immune function, already whipped into frenzy by the aggressive attack of the ever multiplying viral cells, attacks with full force at the site of the brain causing a such swelling within the brain that it is all the body can to do rely on it's very last defenses to hike the body temperature to about to a fever of 105 degrees or higher. The pain within the body is excruciating. There is almost a sort of constant trembling withing the infected body. The levels of adrenaline released in attempts to sort of quell the body and allow for it to push through all of the damage in hopes of salvage causes the body to twitch without reason or provocation."
There wasn't much known about the make up within the body after the transformation as it was nearly impossible experiments to be performed on the infected after the transformation as the body was so fragile after the initial infection. Subjects simply did not survive the probing and prodding. All experiments of which had been performed by government officials trapped within the confines of old bunkers set up to be safe houses. But when those safe houses were recognized as tainted, the scientists within saw the opportunity to figure out what was really going on. Because of the relative seclusion within the bunkers, it was of no concern that inhumane experiments with human subjects could cause an outrage within the population. The truth was the population was dwindling. Once everything had really gotten out of hand the distinct difference between us and them became blindingly clear. And with that important distinction also came the realization that our hold on the earth as the most prominent being began to slip into something like a horror film. Our world was being taken over. We were no longer running this ballgame. We became prey within our own homes. Everything that had become familiar was suddenly turned so foul. All the conveniences of our culture became the downfall of our supposed safety. We were hunted. All familiarity fell to pieces and our existence became one of survival instead of passing time.