Prologue: The Final Mission
776 Words
I knew it wouldn’t ever be the same after this. The blackness of the night was so pure but I could feel them closing in on us, like little tingles sent through the earth. We could handle them; I hoped. Five of us against an army of the undead? Easy, in theory. The one that called them forth was another deal altogether. He stayed barely on the outskirts of my psychic reach. Close enough to sense the energy he produced, but just as I’d grasp his location, he was gone. He was playing with us first. His smug confidence was almost tangible.
If I could just help keep the corpses at bay, we could make it to our destination. This entire journey had led us to this moment. For six years we had battled our way here and I knew I couldn’t let him stop us. If not just for our small group of survivors, then for all of humanity that remained. We had to find the sanctuary which held his power source, to bring an end to his undead scourge on earth. We had to stop the bridge that funneled the power of each lost soul into his own. Our only chance was to completely close him off. Theoretically, the undead would simply drop once his dominion over them was gone. If that didn't happen, we had no more options and everything had been for naught. So we had to hope and pray that this would work and that we could activate the doorway.
Zombie shows get something wrong, I mean sure, every now and then they’ll talk about the smell but it's soon forgotten in the drama. That smell that now permeated everything and everywhere. The smell of decay. Not just death, but true decay. Skin rotting and sliding off of sinewy muscle with wet thunks. Fecal matter that has been exposed and rotting in moist flesh for who knows how long. It stings the nostrils and sticks in the back of your throat, making each breath worse than the last and leaving a bitter taste that you cant truly wash away. There is a feeling that accompanies such a smell. It’s almost as if the body instinctively knows what it means and the urge to escape is almost unbearable. It’s not a smell that you ever get used to. It feels like a sickness in your mind, it even follows you into your dreams.
The smell always hits before the sounds. It always depends on the level of decay and the ways they died, but the sounds touched on different nerves altogether. Ranging from wet squelching noises to crackling sounds like popping popcorn. They simply push past broken bones and joints, dragging limp limbs along behind them as if they don't exist. The sounds are equally appalling. Combined, it all creates the sound of nightmares. A sound that reached into the depths of your being, to create a terror you would never feel elsewhere. A wall of death that is just waiting to welcome you into its soulless ranks. It never gets any less terrifying but with each mistake and each loss, those of us that survive, learn. We learn new skills that will help us next time we have to push past the bone deep fear that came with this new world. We learn what not to do when the fear bubbles up and threatens to spill forth and endanger not only your life but those around you. You learn and you keep going or you die. As they stepped close enough to make out silhouettes, we prepared ourselves for the fight of our lives. We could do it, but would we all make it?
I swung my machetes at the first to reach me and felt the give of soft flesh breaking underneath my blades. Before I could even pull my blades from the soft flesh, another corpse took its place. It was a chaotic symphony of clanging blades, the soft whizz of arrows as they flew by, and the groans of the dead as they thudded around us. It felt like the bodies would never end as the empty spaces continued to fill and there was no break in the bodies I could see. We were slowly being pushed back and into an ever shrinking circle. As my back hit something, I quickly glanced behind me to find my second in command behind me and the rest of our group closing in on us. There was nowhere to go. There was no going back now. God save us
- Writer
