Fall Stroll

I hadn’t had time to think about my surroundings in a long time. I was resting on a once pristine and beautiful brick wall that had now started to assimilate with nature. The bricks had dulled over time from the constant beratement of weather. There was nothing to stop the forces of entropy from acting upon the bricks. They still were able to maintain a uniform appearance while still being apart. Patches of grass slowly creeped into the cracks and the moss discreetly hid away from the sunlight. I gently traced my index finger over a crack spanning two off colored bricks. Somehow the bricks still managed to keep their smooth and gentle quality throughout the onslaught. 

I was startled mid thought by the incoherent growling of the infected, always present. I gracefully hopped down onto the broken and cracked sidewalk in front of me. It was the golden hour right before the evening and the sun was showering sharp rays through the soft ruffling of the reddening autumn trees. I always loved the golden hour as it made everything around you feel ethereal. All of the abandoned and hollow shells of buildings start to look like they had life in them agai- The infected growl of a once human person that sounded like a muffled scream for help shot into my left ear. I always hated when I had to deal with the freshly turned.

 I turned around me to see a female of average stature start walking towards me. Her motor functions were still sharp, well as sharp as an infecteds can be, in an almost off way. You could tell they were infected from their walk forward by the unnatural and painful way that they moved their feet. It's like seeing a deer move in a way that would be made by a parasite that was trying to hide it had consumed the once lively and vibrant animal.

It is interesting how the white houses start to get that off yellow color after being stunningly white as snow. You’ll never notice it until you remove yourself from the situation. The only white house on this street was really old to begin with, but time seemed to grasp that house harder than other things in this world. I could go explore inside of it but I don’t want to ruin the mystery of the building I always pondered about from a distance. It wouldn’t be fair to the beauty of the house or myself to rob us of the luxuries of this world. 

This woman's skin resembled the coloring of the ancient white house. Her cheeks were sickly yellow and her whole skin was slowly decaying right in front of me. She strained out a “please stop and come here” with a slightly feminine tone that was drowned out by the rigidness of her words. I wish the infecteds hair didn’t fall out because I always wondered what her hair color would have been. I never knew if the infected were still alive in there or like a cockroach when you stomp its guts out and it violently flips to its back and grasps for anything. People will still say that was only a natural reflex but to me they seemed like they were in denial. Hoping that if they made a desperate enough attempt, filled solely by emotion, they wouldn’t have to face their unavoidable fate.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Her body contorted and screamed at me as if it wanted nothing more than to end my existence out of pure hatred and anger. However, her eyes glistened in the sun and a glimpse of despair and anguish escaped from her brown eyes. Brown eyes always glistened so well in the sun. I grabbed a loose brick from the wall and with all my might launched the brick right at her forehead. The brick crashed into her feeble skull and crumbled apart from the impact. The brick left a lethal gash where it had struck showing a now whitening brain from the outside. The force from the brick caused her to be pushed to the side, making her take a jarring step that snapped her ankle. As if she were a rag doll she fell face first down onto the concrete like a rock.

 There was a brief moment of silence between us as I looked at the motionless body I had created in front of me. I started walking toward the body to inspect it. Her arm swung forward and grasped tightly between the dirt and concrete to pull herself forward. She looked up at me and glared with the same feeling displayed in those brown eyes as before. Then she crawled her way towards me with her hands as her final option for success. I walked forward and put my boot right on top of her head. She was sprawling around grasping at anything and everything to try and get ahold of me but was forcefully restrained by the crushing weight of my boot. I could feel the fluctuation in her skull from where I had split it open with the once whole brick.

I sometimes still laugh to myself about how stressed I used to be about things in the old world. *Stomp* Worrying about if my clothes matched when I went out, *Stomp* scared to make eye contact with even the friendliest of faces. *Stomp* Thinking about things 10 years in the future and what I was going to do with my life. *Stomp* I was granted total freedom in this new world yet I felt like I had no freedom at all *Stomp*. I suppose a part of me longed for the ball and chain put around me that I once hated so much *Stomp*.

The once moving thing in front of me was now just a pulp of already decaying parts grasping together to barely function. I made sure to be thorough and destroy the eyes as they were the only part still working in the whole system. I reached down and traced my index finger gently between the connecting skin and pulp. The skin was still relatively soft and non-leathery like the old infected. The pulp was slightly warm and had a nice slimy texture as if you were running your hands through a piece of freshly harvested meat. The contrast between the two is all that my brain could focus on. How are the bricks able to keep their form yet this lady was not able to? 

There was nothing more I could get out of this corpse so I roughly whipped my hand off in the tall grass next to me and continued to walk towards the rays of light between the red trees. I sadly had my time to think about things beyond the present but I needed to get home before it became dark outside. You never know what you will find lurking in the dark and I am not trying to end up as another corpse. Once I passed the trees I heard the sirens blaring from behind me, I had no time to question only one objective, survive.