Ok, Who Got Bitten?

Fake Faint

The city— downtown Sarasota— was a sprawling metropolis of concrete and metal, with more hotels and restaurants than I could count. It was a tourist trap. There were souvenir shops left and right, statues of dolphins and manatees at every street corner. There were large, colorful signs that read “Florida, the Sunshine State” with smiling mermaids and palm trees. The area, usually brimming and bustling with life (mostly old folks and middle-aged people with young kids in this area) was now a deserted wasteland of death and destruction.

A thick fog of pollution hung over the buildings— that much had been there before— which kept in the sweeping stench of thousands of rotting corpses soon coming into view as we made our way over the bridge. For awhile no one spoke, a sense of foreboding and tension creeping over us, thick as the fog. We kept our eyes peeled, shifting them at every little sound. At one point a crumpled McDonald’s bag skittered across the pavement in the wind, causing all six of us to jump and scream. Needless to say we made sure we left real quickly before we drew any unwanted attention.

Then we were amidst tall buildings and a clustered street of cars, the downtown area seemingly devoid of life. But that problem was at once solved as we turned a corner, coming upon a mass of bodies, pulsing and moving as if dancing to some inaudible techno music like an outdoor rave. A rave of death.

Deathrave.

All of these bodies were lying on the ground, blood splattered everywhere. Corpses piled upon corpses, even a few living people interspersed in the carnage. Whatever had happened here, someone had come heavily armed. Someone had mowed down all of these zombies, and then some.

We carefully weaved our way in between jerking bodies, their spasmodic twitches and grunts almost more frightening than a crowd of pursuing undead. Then we came upon a woman, a woman in the worst shape possible. She was still alive, still fully aware, but there was something wrong with her.

Her torso had been punctured repeatedly with bullet holes, blood seeping out in dark pools around her. She was a mess of exposed nerve-endings, her raw, twitching flesh glistening in the sun. She gasped when she saw us, but made no intelligible noise; she gibbered insanely, her eyes wide and pleading, one eye stained red from the blood seeping down from her punctured forehead. Her breath came ragged and slow. She was dying. It was a wonder she was still conscious.

I screamed and reeled back, shielding my eyes. I started to hyperventilate and the world began to spin around me. Madison clutched my shoulders and led me away heaving.

“Now is not the time to faint,” she whispered. The moans of zombies and civilians alike rose, all aware of our presence now that my scream echoed down the desolate streets.

Savannah knelt down to the woman and talked in a hushed, soothing voice to her. “You’ll be okay,” she said quietly. “You won’t die alone. We’re here.”

The woman let out what sounded like a relieved sigh, her soft sobs dying out. Her chest— or what little that was left to it— slowly stopped quivering, and we waited a few moments before we were sure she was gone. Then we closed her eyes and moved on.

We all continued quietly down the street, our faces pale and all reflecting the terror of the harsh reality we faced setting in. I kept searching the alleys to see if my outburst had attracted anything, but it seemed like the coast was clear.

There was debris everywhere. Cars choked the streets, bullet shells riddled the ground. Signs with directions and street names were peppered with bullet holes everywhere we looked, and buckets of blood stained the sidewalks. This seemed more like the appropriate reaction to the apocalypse. It was so wildly different from the suburbia we had left behind that the effect was almost overwhelming.