Feral

I lost track of how long it's been since the world ended. I just wander from ruin to ruin looking for food and anything else I can use. I was lucky enough to find a Zippo lighter, shotgun, and Army MREs in some former militant's home. I also stumbled across some weird silver locket shaped like a heart that was in one of the bedrooms. The locket shined brightly enough that it also blinded me. I realized that something like that could expose me in the hellscape I'm stuck in. I don't know why, but I felt compelled to hang on to it regardless.

I knew better than to stay in that house. It just wasn't secure. If I could get in, “they” certainly could. I loaded up with as much food and ammo as I could carry and left as soon as the sun went down. Fortunately, my night vision is excellent; years of eating carrots clearly paid off. Moving at night also made it easier to spot “them”. Their eyes tended to glow somewhat. Traveling at night was only part of the plan. The area I was in was mostly forest. I learned to stay just inside the treeline when I traveled. Staying in the open made anyone easy to spot, and getting deeper in the forest kept me from seeing anything, night vision be damned.

After about two hours of sneaking between the pines, I came across a fresh corpse in the middle of a road close to the treeline. After checking to make sure none of “them” were around, I slipped out and crawled to the body. His limbs were all torn off, but I spotted one of his arms half-eaten a few feet away. I turned his torso over to frisk it for supplies, but his head stayed put on the ground. I guess “they” decided his head was worth ripping off but not worth taking with them for a snack. Unfortunately, exposing myself to check his remains turned out to be fruitless; he only had a blood-stained machete and a couple of energy bars on him. I wondered if someone had already picked over his corpse. However, I noticed that he didn't have a rucksack on him nor did it look like he was carrying one when he died. “They” wouldn't have taken it when they killed him, and anyone else would have just grabbed what they could've out of it and left the bag itself. I figured that he must've been part of a settlement; that was the only conclusion I could reach. I decided to follow the road to see if I could find where he came from.

I followed the road through the treeline. It was slow going, but I had to be extra careful. If there was a settlement nearby, surely plenty of “them” would be around, as well. After what felt like at least two hours of very quiet sneaking, I caught a glimpse of some bright lights. I couldn't help but cringe upon seeing them since I had spent hours in near-total darkness. I barely had time to let my eyes adjust before I had to duck out of the way of a gunshot that hit mere inches from my feet.

“HOLD YOUR FIRE!” I yelled as loudly as I could, hoping that it wouldn't get a crowd of “them” on my back.

“WHO ARE YOU?” a young female voice yelled back.

“JUST A TRAVELER,” I shouted. “I THINK I FOUND ONE OF YOUR GUYS A COUPLE MILES BACK.”

A few tense moments passed where I wondered whether they would start shooting again. I took a look at the settlement. It was an old Kroger distribution warehouse that looked like it had already weathered a few too many sieges. Barricades at the front door were in pieces, and the boards covering the windows looked like they had taken a few blows, as well. I was convinced the place's currently meager defenses wouldn't withstand another attack.

“TRAVELER! APPROACH THE FRONT DOOR WITH YOUR HANDS UP!” the young voice called after a worrying few minutes. “TRY ANYTHING, AND THOSE THINGS CAN FEAST ON YOUR FACE!”

I knew better than to argue. I strapped my shotgun to my back and stepped out of the woods with my hands up. A spotlight on the roof turned to shine right in my face. I wanted to tell them to turn that light off as it was basically putting a bullseye on me for “them”, but whoever's there would've probably gunned me down before I shouted a syllable. I just kept walking straight ahead blind, hoping there aren't any of them between me and the front door.

When the light stopped blinding me, I was already at the ramshackle defenses. They were in such poor shape that I clambered over them without a scratch in about thirty seconds. The front doors had most of their glass smashed, but they were still in the frame and locked. I was about to reach through one of the holes to try to unlock them when a young woman appeared out of the darkness on the other side with a pistol pointed at my face.

“Not gonna wait for us to open it?” she snidely asked.

Putting my hands back up, I replied. “Look. I'm not here to cause trouble. I found a fresh body back down the road. I think he probably came from here.”

The woman lowered her weapon, and I lowered my hands. She unlocked the door and let me in, locking it back up behind me. I looked incredulously at the door.

“You think that lock is gonna keep them out forever?”

She sighed. “I know it won't. However, we've got little else. Follow me.”

She led me through an old security checkpoint to a pair of metal double doors. She banged on the doors five times in an awkward rhythm. It must've been a signal as the doors were unlocked and opened from the other side. She pushed me through quickly and entered herself before slamming the doors and locking them again.

I took a look around. The shelves for nonperishables to be sent to grocery stores were almost completely empty. Sleeping bags and blankets littered the floor close to the doors. There were less than a dozen children present using a pick line as a table. Even the young lady who met me at the front looked just old enough to be a college freshman.

“Nobody else?” I asked the eldest.

She shook her head. “Our parents left days ago to find more supplies. They haven't returned.”

I nodded my understanding. Before I could ask for more details, I heard a cacophony of growls out the window. I ran to the closest one and looked through one of the cracks in the boards. Up the road I followed near the treeline, I saw a huge crowd of “them”. Their eyes glowed, their flesh was mostly melted off, and some had fresh blood dripping from their mouths. The eldest joined me at the window.

“They must've followed my scent here,” I reasoned.

“What can we do?” she asked. “You and I have weapons, but we can't take 'em all ourselves.”

I went over to the nearly-empty racks and looked around. Though I couldn't see any food or first-aid supplies, I did manage to find a few other household supplies. A plan formed in my mind.

It took a few minutes to set up the foyer near the security checkpoint, leaving the silver locket there as a lure. The college kid had my shotgun trained on the crowd, but I told her to hold fire until I gave the order. By the time I got back in the double doors, “they” were charging toward the main entrance. They hopped the barricade outside in slightly more time than I did, stumbling somewhat. They plowed right into the main doors, and the glass cracked. Three more rams, and the doors gave. The leaders of the pack charged toward the security checkpoint... and slipped, falling over with the followers collapsing on top of them.

Before they arrived, I had sent the kids to the back of the warehouse and coated the foyer floor with two of the things I found in the racks, barbecue lighter fluid and lamp oil. As “they” fumbled around in a heap on the floor, I opened the double doors long enough to throw another bucket of flammable liquid atop the crowd followed by the lit Zippo. The crowd were set ablaze, and the stragglers still outside the barricade shrieked and started running away.

“FIRE!” I yelled to my young partner. She started shooting at the remainders, felling at least six before they disappeared into the night. When I was sure the impromptu bonfire was no longer a bunch of living creatures, I grabbed the nearby fire extinguisher and put it out.

When I closed the doors back up, the kids ran up to me cheering. I lost count how many times I got hugged.

“Aaron?”

Everyone wanted me to recount what happened. I didn't know where to start.

“Aaron?”

I saw my young partner coming away from the window, giving a thumbs-up to confirm the danger was over. I reached into my rucksack ready to share some of the food I grabbed before. Suddenly, someone grabbed my shoulder.

“Aaron, wake up!”

I jerked up, nearly falling out of my chair. The warehouse was gone, replaced with the quiet of an employee breakroom. I looked to my left to find my young partner. Wait, no. It was Melanie, my nineteen-year-old co-worker. While she was looking down at me, her silver heart-shaped locket fell out from under her shirt where she'd always stash it when on-duty.

“Were you up all night playing Fallout again?” she asked.

It took me a moment to realize what she was asking.

“Yeah,” I replied, yawning. “I was stuck at this one spot with a horde of feral ghouls.”

Melanie sighed. “Well, break time's almost over. I thought you'd want to wake up before that bell goes off.”

“Yeah, thanks,” I said while rubbing my eyes. I picked up the remains of my lunch and threw it in the trash can. While waiting in the line to go through the security checkpoint to get back to work, I found myself checking the floor to make sure there were no traces of the flammable liquid I remembered dumping there before telling myself it was just a dream.

I returned to my usual spot on the pick line and disappeared into my usual anonymity. Yet, I couldn't help but smile a little. While I may be just another cog in the machine normally, it was nice to feel important, if only for a little while.

I hope you enjoyed this little story. Let me know if you want to see more, and take care!