An Undead Nightmare

Rude Awakening

I.

"Get up!" ... A light push. I groan. "Get up!!" A slightly harder push, still not enough to give me an intention of waking up. "GET UP, YOU BUM!" Pushed right out of bed, lovely. 'I'm awake! I've got this!" as I'm yelling, totally disoriented and not knowing where the hell I am. As my eyes are scanning the room and the make-shift bed I was lying on. "Oh, yeah. Hm." My bed was made up from my sweatshirt as my pillow and a wooden plank as my matras. 

A sharp pain shot through my head as I looked outside at the sunlight, as reflexes told me to look away instantly. 

"This sucks, before this shit happened, I never had a hangover, NOW it happens? Loving the irony of it all." I sat down and started collecting the empty three bottles that were still lying around. You never know, could come in handy. "Glad to see you were so quick to your feet, bro." Steven said, as he smiled, clearly amused to see me in hangover-agony. A dry smile back on my face, "Glad to see you're enjoying the view, at least someone is!" 

He chuckled and double-checked all his stuff as well. "Yeah well, this would be a lot harder without you, you know." 

I smile again, this time acknowledging the compliment I just received. "You ready to go?" he asked as he lifted his backpack over his shoulder. I pushed the last bottle inside mine and got my sweatshirt back on. "Sure am, if I can't walk straight for a while and we should come across any of 'm.. Just leave me to die. I swear I'll give them alcoholpoisoning!" We both started laughing out loud and very carefully opened the door we barricaded yesterday with a small cabinet in front of it. "I'll check!" He opened the door calmly and poked his head out in the hallway. 

"Looks good, let's go." We made 'camp' for the night in an abandoned appartment, not so far from Tienen. 

It wasn't supposed to happen like that, we'd just went on a supply run but got cut off from the main group and we had to make due with what we had. Lucky we still had some bottles of booze and a couple cannisters of food. 

Thanks to all this, I've begun to really appreciate white beans in tomato sauce. "Heard anything from anyone else yet?" I asked as it seemed obvious that he was already awake a lot earlier than me. "Not a thing, let's just try to head back to camp." I paused him and pulled him back behind a wall, signaling he should be quiet. He didn't understand until it was completely silent around us. A slow, moaning became louder and louder as it came up the hallway. Without any weapons, if it should be a group, we're screwed. We didn't expect any encounters, just straight in and out for supplies. "Any ideas?" he whispered while trying to keep from making any further noises. "Let's just stay... quiet... For now." I replied slowly as the moaning was only a couple of feet away from us. There we were, in the corner of what was once a supply closset for the whole floor of that appartment. There wasn't even a door to protect us anymore, just open hallway and us in a closet. Lovely. Every muscle in my body stretched and tensed up as I heard it coming by. What was once possibly a father of a lovely family, maybe a teacher or a fireman, who cares, just shuffled by. Now nothing more than a mindles, soulless, undead monster. His cheeks completely dislocated and one eye hanging out of it's socket, with the bitemarks of it's original attacker still oozing at his neck. He looked at me as I started to lower my backpack slowly, got to my knees and opened it. The three glass bottles were clattering against each other as I tried to pull one out of the pack. "What are you doing? It's gonna hear us!" Not answering, I took the bottle firmly in my hand, smashed it against the lower shelf of the closet to break it and ensure it would be razorsharp. "We've got to take him out, bro, the stairs are that way, remember?" He nodded. The shuffling was getting closer again, no doubt, it heard the breaking of the glass and instinctively came closer to check it out. And, as expected, he shuffled a few steps away from the closet as I stepped out. "Hey, ugly, over here." With slow, measured steps backwards, I kept my distance from him but guiding him away from Steven. "You're losing space!" He yelled, I watched behind me and sighed. The end of the hallway, a big window with a view on the highway lying next to the appartment. "Great, wonderful." I rolled my eyes and lept forward, with the bottle up front, trying to smash the glass instantly in it's skull. Pieces of glass were sticking in it's forehead and sides, but it didn't seem to notice, or care. "Ah, crap." it moaned and reached out to grab me, dislocated jaws trying to bite anything it could get it's teeth in to. With both hands, tyring to keep it at distance, but without any further weapons to defend myself. Looking at the window behind me again, an idea came up. Pulling my right hand back and gaining more force on the left side, the zombie lost balance to the right. I led him closer towards the window, with a few fast pases and threw him out. The window shattered as he fell through and his moaning died down, along with the glass falling down. I sighed and fell to my knees. A hand on my shoulder. "You okay?" I looked at the window again and smiled. "Yeah, I'm good." - "Your hand not so much, though. Better tie it down with something to cover the bloodloss." Not knowing what he meant, I looked at my right hand, where the bottle was in. It was bleeding dark red, druplets on the ground. A cut over the palm of my hand was noticeable. But it wasn't to me just a few minutes ago. "Adrenaline, I guess." a painful smile over my face, the pain was coming through as the adrenaline rush was clearing away. I grabbed my sweatshirt and ripped a piece of cloth off it. "Any more alcohol?" Steven asked. I looked at him sceptically. "This will do for now." the cloth tightening around the wound so I could feel it throb.  "Let's just go. Before any more show up, we've already lost a lot of time." he said as I threw my pack back on followed him out.