War, Love and Timetravel

The Lurch

They quickly approached me while I stood there unable to move, looking down at the river flowing behind me, I needed to die on my own terms if today was the day I die; so I fell backwards into the river with my eyes closed, then swam up to the surface and saw the beasts jumping into the water and rushing back out to dry land almost immediately after, as though they hated the water. Then I realized water was their weakness; none of them could handle the water so they stood on land and watched as the river currents took me along, I couldn’t express how terrified I was, but I was grateful I survived. Although I was pulled out of their sight, the water currents were so strong I was still being pulled regardless; now there was a different problem which was a waterfall a few meters ahead, I tried to make my way out of the river but swimming was pointless, the currents were too strong. There was literally nothing I could do in that moment and it made me hopeless; knowing fully well that I wouldn’t survive a second time, I closed my eyes to say my last words of prayer as I came close to the edge. The currents took me down the waterfall with my eyes still closed and it was surprisingly a quick drop about ten feet down below. The currents became weaker making it quite possible to swim my way out of the river, overcoming the weak currents with every swimming stroke I swam with little strength left in me and made it to dry land safely, laying to catch my breath for a while, I was faced up with my back against the ground so I could see the sunrise on the horizon. It truly was a beautiful moment and it made me appreciate having to live another day in this withered world. I sat down there for long, such that my clothes dried up making me feel a lot better and stronger, then I picked myself up from the ground to have a good look around. With little to no surprise there was nothing but trees for miles on end around me. Knowing I couldn’t stay out there in the open I began aimlessly walking onwards for hours in search of whatever sort of shelter I could find, my stomach protested the starvation it felt due to the extensive periods of time I’d sustained without food; unable to take me any further my legs trembled and fell to its knees. Then my body went along with it and fell to the soil with my face looking in the right direction, my eyes spotted a building predictably two miles ahead. The situation became hopeful, consequently giving me strength to keep going. I arrived shortly at the premises which turned out to be a factory, one that had been abandoned for a very long time, its paint had worn off completely and some trees around it grew their way into various windows, its massive front door was wide open, so I cautiously proceeded into the old factory; careful not to make a single sound. The place was dark and quiet which made it a perfect hide out from the infected, I took the time to carefully examine every corner inside including the second floor making sure there wasn’t a single one of them inside before coming back down to lock the front door. I then chose to reside in the second floor because it had lots of hide out corners in case the building ever got intruded by screamers. A certain section drew my attention in the factory’s second floor a place I didn’t notice was there before, a balustrade barricading a pool containing some sort of liquid substance; with its surface starting thirteen feet below where I stood, I had no idea how deep the liquid was but if there was one thing I knew for sure; it definitely wasn’t common water, I could tell this from the smell, but I ignored it and moved over to a random corner of the empty hall to sit, my pockets were loaded with a bunch of things that I began bringing out one after another, the first one was the watch Sophie had given me on the morning of the outbreak, I took a close look at it and noticed that the time hadn’t changed from when I first checked, it read 10:37am still, its date was December 31st 2021, meanwhile today’s date was 3rd January 2022, there were these long numbers I still couldn’t quite figure out yet just below the time and date, “this stupid thing doesn’t even work” I muffled, giving it a light tap but still no result, I rolled the long thin tubes sticking out of it around its sides and clipped it unto my wrist. Generally it had a good look so I left it there to take out the second item which was a picture of my family, looking at it hampered my heart with so much grief, driving me to tears. How happy we all were during that photo shoot; it was our best picture as far as I was concerned and I always kept it with me. “I miss you guys” I sobbed and kissed the photograph, “Francis do you really miss us?” the pictorial figure of mum spoke and I saw its mouth move, shocked I tossed the picture away, just up ahead there was a shadow standing in the dark corner and it stood there silently. I got up from where I sat and slowly approached it, “hello?” I whispered with intense terror, stretching my hand to touch the dark figure, it immediately turned towards me, poking out of the dark and looked into my eyes, I saw that it was mum. But half her face had been chewed off, so much that I could see the bone beneath, I fell to the ground trembling in fear, “you’re….” I stammered, struggling to speak, “you’re supposed to be dead” I said, visibly shaking on the floor, then she moved closer to me, “do you really miss us Francis?” she said again in a whisper, “yes mum I do, I really do” I replied. “But you let us die” she said walking towards me as I slowly scuttled away, “you let us die!” she said again in a deeper voice as her skin began melting from her bones, “no” I whispered scarily with one hand over my chest as I could no longer breathe, now all the skin had melted to the ground like wax and it was just a skeleton walking towards me, she reached out her arm to touch me but before she could, I saw her bones dismantle and fall to the ground shattering and turning into ashes. My heart was pounding out of my chest, my temperature was soaring and a second voice behind me whispered, “Do you truly miss us, Francis?” it said and I turned to see dad holding Mary in his arms while she ate the flesh off his neck, “dad….” I spoke softly as he came closer to me, “do you see what you did to your sister? Look at what you did to us” he said crying blood, Mary came down from his arms and slowly crawled towards me, a portion of her head was gone from the gun shot and her eyes were blood red, “you pulled the trigger on your own sister” he said with half of his neck eaten off as they both moved towards me with so much enmity but I was too frightened to move, Mary screamed, starting to crawl even faster but once she tried diving on me I shut my eyes out of fear, shielding my face with my arms for a moment and opened it to see that they were both gone. Shaking I looked right and left then saw a little girl sitting in the corner, Sophie I presumed holding her favorite teddy bear, I hurried over to meet her, “Sophie are you really here?” I asked her curiously, “She looked into my eyes with a blank face and her mouth wide open, “you told me they were all in a better place” she said with her mouth still open and pointed behind me, “does that look like a better place to you?” she said and I looked over behind me and saw mum, dad and Mary all standing silently, but they were all engulfed in flames from neck to feet, “stop it!” I commanded, and Sophie laughed deeply, “Stop it!!” I started yelling louder and louder as I shut my eyes to make it go away but the deep and terrifying laughter kept intensifying, right then someone touched my shoulder, startled I opened my eyes and I saw Helen, “who are you talking to?” she asked me, I quickly backed away, “get away from me you demon” I said shaking, “Francis, relax, I’m here, I’m real” she said holding my hand, I paused, shifted closer and touched her and she was real, “oh my gosh, Helen!” I exclaimed standing up to embrace her, “you’re alive, how did you get in?” I asked her, “There was a broken window on the ground floor, “what of Sophie? Where’s Sophie?” I asked curiously, then she bowed her head to mourn, “I’m sorry Francis, I tried my best but Sophie didn’t make it” she said sadly, I felt physical hurt in my chest, the emotional pain was overwhelming, “what do you mean she didn’t make it?, somehow you survived and you come here to tell me my little sister didn’t make it? I trusted you” I blurted angrily yielding to tears, “I’m really sorry, I truly am” she said genuinely. I was angry because I should have never let Sophie out of my sight in the first place, I promised her I would be there to protect her and I failed, sadly I sat on the floor and Helen sat alongside me without uttering another word because she felt guilty, it took a while for my train of thought to start running again, and the first question on my mind was how did she know I was here? I had to inquire, “Helen how did you find me in the first place?” I asked her, she looked at me and smiled, “well it was pretty easy to track you down here” she replied, “oh so now you’re a tracker” I said rolling my eyes finding it difficult to believe, “I just recently discovered that the infected don’t like being around water” I told her and she looked confused, “why are you telling me this?” she asked, “It just hit me that if we’re to make this our home, we should put some safety measures in place, and I thought that might help” I said, now the idea behind this was to dig up a deep trench that encircled the factory, so no screamer would be able to get past it, Helen was down for the plan the minute I explained it to her but she was still curious as to whom I was talking to before she found me, I told her about the frightening things I saw and she became concerned, “when was the last time you ate or slept even?” she asked, but I couldn’t answer because I honestly couldn’t remember when last I ate something solid, “you’re starving Francis, and its causing you to hallucinate” she said opening her strap bag and bringing out a pack of food with the intention of giving it to me but I snatched it from her hand immediately, opened it and gobbled the entire thing. Shortly we began work on the water barrier designed to compass the building, it had to be at least eight feet deep and twelve feet wide and the project took us ten years to complete during which time we didn’t experience any attacks from any infected whatsoever, the time went by so quickly and now the year was 2032, which made me 26 years of age and Helen was 29. The work was done and what was left now was to fill the barrier with water, surprisingly the factory still managed to have water supply after all these years. We found a hose in the factory and channeled it into the trench ready to turn on the faucet before a group of scavengers interfered, five men and two women all carrying guns, “don’t move a single muscle” they commanded aiming their guns at us, and we stopped right away, “look guys, you can take whatever you want and leave okay? we don’t want any trouble, “sit” one of the guys instructed shoving his gun in our faces and we obediently sat down, “where do you keep your food?” he asked with resentment, “common man we’re all friends here, you don’t have to be so aggressive” I muttered, “shut up and answer the question” he kept insisting, “look, we hunt for our food on a daily basis, lately we haven’t been very lucky” Helen said to him. The man seemed to be the leader of the group; he stared at us for a while as if trying to determine if we were telling the truth before instructing his followers to search the factory, “what about ammo? Guns?” he asked, and we both nodded our heads to signify negative responses, he then lowered his gun abruptly, “so tell me, why do you dig a trench around this building?” he asked, and we explained the whole thing to him, he found it hard to believe at first but after pondering it for a while he realized there was no logical reason for us to lie about it, we offered them a place to stay and shortly after, we all became friendly. “So where have you guys come from?” Helen asked as she offered them some water to drink, “Lesfield” one of the men declared, “that’s where I’m from” I immediately responded, “it’s a goddamn wasteland now” said the leader, “my name is Mason” he introduced himself, “and this is Sebastian, Hunter, there’s Scarlett, Nolan, Jose and Nova” he said introducing the rest, “we stumbled onto one other a few days after the outbreak and since survived it by the strength we’ve found in each other” he concluded, “it’s good to see that there are still other people who have survived for this long” Helen said, “it really was starting to get lonely out here” she said facing me with a smile, “no offence” I muttered smiling back at her. And right in that moment we found a snake crawling in the corner from where we sat, the first thing on my hungry mind was food, Scarlett got up immediately about to shoot it when I rushed in to stop her, “no, no don’t shoot, it’ll attract the screamers” I suggested thinking they should have known this by now, Scarlett looked disappointed, “who knows how to kill a snake?” I whispered, and as expected Hunter got up to represent his name, “dude is Hunter even your real name or did you just give that to yourself for this very reason?” I asked him jokingly but he didn’t react, his face was still tightly squeezed as it was the whole time, he slowly approached the snake and grabbed it by the head before it could make another move, then he took out a knife from his back pocket and cut the head off the snake’s body, and we all did a little cheer because we were all starving then we set up a little campfire afterwards, cooking it and eating every last bit of it, feeling completely grateful although we weren’t exactly satisfied.

The night was now upon us, Helen came over to me, “What about the trench? Have you changed your mind?” she asked with interest, “what? no, we didn’t dig it up for this long to abandon it now” I replied, so I went to turn on the faucet when all of a sudden I heard Helen whimper behind me, I turned to see Sebastian firmly holding her with his hand over her mouth and she was struggling to free herself, “the hell?!” I exclaimed, “Let go off her man what in worlds name do you think you’re doing?” I asked angrily and right before I could utter a second word or make another move someone grabbed me from behind as well, “not so fast friend, be calm” I heard the voice of Mason, I struggled to free myself but I couldn’t, he was way stronger than me, the rest of them came in to carry us to the second floor where I saw a pot of boiling hot water, “what? What is this?” I asked seriously struggling to free myself from their grasp, “let us go man, common we offered you a place to stay, welcomed you into our home with open arms!” I started yelling, “stop shouting!” Mason commanded me, weary that I might attract the screamers into the factory but that was exactly what I had in mind seeing that we were about to be cooked alive, I might as well just bring them in to kill us all together, Helen sensed what I was doing and started yelling as well, “shut up, shut up now both of you” Mason got angry pushing me to the balustrade that barricaded the liquid below me and I laughed softly, “hmm what do we have here?” Mason said looking at a little sign on the balustrade, “I can’t read but I’ll let you have a look to see for yourself what will befall you if you make another sound” he said pushing my head down and making me have a look at the sign, ‘anti-matter’ it read and there were a couple of other elements compromising of what it was made off, “It’s anti-matter” I said to him wondering how I didn’t notice the sign hanging there all these years, it was a really small sign. “Good, now be obedient and keep quiet, maybe we will make this easy for you” he said mischievously, “so this is how you all survive? By eating other people” Helen said and spat on the ground, “you are worse than the beasts that prowl this wasteland” she added and Jose slapped her brutally, “you know what? Since after all my warning you decided to be the first to open your mouth, you’ll be the first one in the pot” Mason said pulling out a knife to begin cutting off her clothes, and suddenly we all heard screams. In that moment I smiled mischievously, the screamers were coming; they broke in through the windows and were flooding the entire factory. Out of fear Hunter who had been holding me then pushed me into the liquid and ran for his dear life, while I fell into it, Helen got up from where she was and ran to save me from dropping into the anti-matter, I saw her jump in and grab my hand but it was too late, we were now both falling into the liquid, we both looked into each other’s eyes as if saying our goodbyes before getting consumed by the substance, we fell into it still holding hands. I suddenly felt cold, my body got sucked into something travelling faster than the speed of light, there was a split second of darkness then a surge of bright light, I opened my eyes and I could see myself laying on the corner of a street in broad day light, cars were driving by, pedestrians were walking as though the world had gone back to normal, I looked beside me and there was Helen lying beside me, she was just as confused as I was, we both got up from the ground, “hey sorry, please excuse us” we said, randomly stopping a pedestrian who kindly complied, “how is everything back to normal all of a sudden?” I asked him curiously and he looked at us like we were crazy, “I don’t know what you’re talking about” he replied, then I stopped and looked around for a second then asked, “What year is it?” I asked him, he paused for a moment and said, “It’s the 31st of December 2021”.