Maneater :: A Twisted Zombie Tale

To go to town or not?

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I love this story. I spend all day thinking about what was going to happen next!

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I woke up, confused as to why my back was aching so badly. I looked around and then everything from the night before came rushing back and I felt scared again.

'How am I going to get out of this? I can't just climb down and walk away!' Thoughts raced through my head as I tried to figure out how to get out of this. I heard growls and moans coming from the ground below me and my heart sank even further, they obviously hadn't left in the middle of the night.

I reached into my bag and pulled out an apple from my bag and bit into it. The sweet juices ran down my chin and I licked them up quickly. I had only a few apples in my bag so I had decided to only have them for breakfast.  I leaned back into my hammock and thought about how I would make my escape.

'I guess... I'll have to use the trees.' My stomach sank at that thought; this wasn't going to be easy at all. I would have to climb for at least a half mile away from the nest. Otherwise they'd smell me and I would be screwed all over again.

After I'd finished my food I climbed out of my hammock and packed it away.  I stared down at the Maneaters below, my stomach churned at the sight of their hungry faces and the dried, crusted blood all over their bodies. I couldn't believe that they had once been girls just like me or a mother who had children who loved her.

"Well, better get started." I muttered, climbing carefully across a branch that led into the next tree. It was slow going because sometimes there were not any branches strong enough into the tree I needed so I would have to go into another tree and loop around.

 My hands started to bleed after a couple hours and tears hovered in the back of my eyes. Thankfully I was far enough that the zombies that they didn't really smell my blood.

I heard a strange sound that almost sounded metallic. 'What in the world...' Glancing up at the top of the tree I saw that the branches were thick enough to hold my weight. So I climbed up until my head popped out of the trees and I could see around for miles in every direction.

The view stole my breath away as I took in the beautiful mountains that surrounded the forest on all sides. I hadn't known I was in a valley but then again I was asleep when my parents had fled from the city. There was snow on the tops of the mountains.

I turned around and froze at what I saw. There was a huge factory with a small town below it surrounded by a wall. Shit that must be where the sound I’d heard earlier came from. Fear and longing filled my body.

I knew that if I went there looking like this I would most likely be caught and stuck into a birthing prison. I couldn't allow that, not with what my parents had sacrificed to keep me free. So that meant I would have to dress up like a boy. Not that hard to do because I was wearing cloths that could be for either sex. But my face was too pretty to pass for a boy so that meant a bit of work on my part.

"I'll go tomorrow and get some real food and see if I can find my parents." I decided before climbing down again. My stomach flipped, I hadn't seen another human being in four years. I climbed all the way onto the ground and took off running towards the town which was most likely 10 miles away.

Tomorrow was going to be exciting to say the least.

After a couple hours I slowed down and noticed that the trees were a lot thinner here and the whirring noises were getting a lot louder. I was still 4 miles at least away so I knew that it was going to be almost deafening when I reached the town.

“How can people live like that?” I wondered as I settled down onto the ground and pulled out a knife. I sighed sadly and pulled my hair down. Cutting my hair wasn’t something I wanted to do but there was no way of hiding it under a hat because it was way too thick, someone would surely notice and I would be screwed.

‘Just do it Poppy… Just do it.’ I kept telling myself and finally I sliced through the thick, brown, hair. Tears sprung in my eyes but I ignored them and continued cutting.

When I finished it was resting on my shoulders. Sighing sadly I brushed off my body and threw the cut hair into the bushes next to me. This day really sucked and I was completely exhausted.

I knew it was only 5 or so in the afternoon but I climbed up the tree next to me and hung up my hammock and fell asleep quickly. Worry filled my mind about what I was going to do tomorrow, I could get caught and then my life would pretty much be over.

My parents had told me stories about the birthing prisons.  You were forced to have sex with whoever could afford to buy you for that year every single day. The richer men could have you put in their household but either way you were a prisoner.  Scientists had come up with a way that would ensure you would have a baby pretty quickly; barren was a word of the past.  My mother said that she’d visited a prison once in disguise and the girls were kept in small white rooms with a bed and a chair and a TV on loop of old sitcoms.

“They seemed like hollow shells, I tried talking to one and she just stared at me and went back to watching the TV.” My mother had said, her eyes filling with tears at the memories.