Slipped: Book One

Chapter One: Darkness

It’s kind of like the beginning of a day; a normal day. There’s the waking up at six and groaning about being awake because your alarm is such a douche but, hey, you’re the one who set it. Then there’s the shuffling of your feet to the bathroom and praying your body won’t give out. After you’ve managed to empty out whatever your body decided to create inside of your bodily systems, you take either a hot shower or a frigid one-depends if you live alone or not. Once you smell like an empire of flowers or whatever made up scent, you dress in either work attire or a casual outfit to suit your errands of the day. If you’re lucky, you’ll eat breakfast and brush your teeth afterwards but if you’re not, you’ll be sprinting out the door and hope no one notices that your morning breath is a monster all its own.

Except normal days haven’t and will no longer exist.

Maybe you’ll wake up screaming one morning because your ribcage is being ripped open or you’ll be the one fighting against what’s trying to attack you. Getting up at six no longer seems so horrible when your life is on the line and when you’re just trying to survive in a world covered in Hell. You don’t get fresh food; you become fresh food and it’s become the actual reality of a “dog eat dog,” world. But now, waking up and having to remember that today isn’t a normal day you’re used to. It’s a normal day you’ve become a stranger to.

                    May 12th, 2023

    The flashlights barely make a shine against the trees through the darkness as Clyde, Mandy, and Travis sneak their way past Blanks crowding a pond in a forest just past a local town in Ohio. Maybe it’s a woodland area but Clyde doesn’t care; he just wants to find shelter for the night so maybe his daughter can live another night. Mandy, with her knife gripped tightly in her hand and digging in the beds of her fingers, hitches her breathing and points at a nearby light to the left of the trio. Quickly before the Blanks notice, they swerve their feet and Travis quietly takes out a Blank in their way. It doesn’t help that their flashlights start to dim more as their batteries die but the flickering draws attention to the Blanks. One snarls behind Clyde and he quickly bashes its skull with his baseball bat.

“Just up that hill,” Mandy whispers and starts to climb the slipping dirt hill. Travis steps ahead and clears out two Blanks near the bank before pulling Mandy to her feet and offering Clyde a hand. He trips a Blank with his bat and shoves it down the hill so they can sprint towards the light. Blanks are stumbling everywhere they seem to step and one even grasps onto Mandy’s blonde hair. Her father immediately chest kicks the Blank away and lifts Mandy to balance so they can run. The light enlarges and Travis can’t contain a sudden giggle of celebration. The light belongs to a cabin, which is thankfully, not overrun and only the front window appears to be smashed in. Clyde shoves Travis inside before Mandy and himself in case of any Blanks lurking around. With only two found and then killed, Clyde and Travis begin to build around the broken window with tables and any other lone pieces of wood while Mandy keeps watch. The lights go out and the trio quietly steps upstairs and into a room with windows going out on the roof. Clyde shuts and blocks off the door with a bookcase that still surprisingly has some weight to it even though it’s barren of books. Travis offers to take first watch and perches himself on a window sill while Mandy corners herself off in a closet to sleep a bit.

“We can’t keep doing this.” Clyde sighs and slides down a wall onto the carpeted floor. “We shouldn’t have parted off from the group.”

“It was either we separate or we die. I don’t think you’d be able to live with yourself if Anna or any of the other kids died because we couldn't protect them well enough. Running from our settlement was better than dying in it,” Travis says as he watches two Blanks collide into each other. “I wonder if Ms. Krumen survived.”