In the beginning was nothing.
Nothing? No. That implied the existence of things. There were no things.
Blackness? Too light a word.
Emptiness? Too much form to the word.
Death? Even death would run from this state.
The Void; that, even if too Biblical for my tastes, dared approach the state.
So, fine. In the Beginning, there was The Void.
*
My eyes popped open. That is how I knew I existed. I smelled nothing. I tasted nothing. I felt nothing. Hearing was ghostly. Sight was a smeary blur; all I could see was blue & white above.
Oh...sky; that was the sky.
Therefore, I must by lying on my back, outside...somewhere.
My body had a spasm or fit, & I found myself twisting myself into a slumped position. Angry, I pushed with my mind, ordering my muscles to work, to push me into sitting.
My spine worked until I was upright. Yay! Power of the will.
My head flopped, & I saw a red ruin where my intestines used to be. What?!
I wanted to scream, panic, jump up & look for my guts to, I don't know, cram them back in me before going for a hospital.
Instead, I let out a low moan & my body jerked again & again, until I was standing. A delicious scent woke up my nose & eyes to sharp clarity, something in the place of my former stomach growled & I had enough of my mind to think, "So it really does smell like barbecue," before the Void swallowed me.
*
Blood, flecks of glass, flesh shreds & spangles of light form quite the intriguing kaleidoscope of red, orange, rainbows & yellow that moves & blurs each time you look around or blink. Something was dripping right in front of me, but I could not see it.
So, fighting my body again, I managed to push back.
I'd been leaning on a broken door frame, a spinal cord clutched in my one hand & the rest of the body...
The rest of the body?
Something shivered in me, & released a long, low, foul blast of air that went way beyond normal. Shouldn't I be gasping for air?
The burp-monstrosity ended & my body sighed.
No. Just no. I was not eating a whole body & digesting it; one was bad enough. Carefully stuffing a finger down my throat, I pushed to throw up. Two great heaves racked my frame, before the urge vanished.
What? Wait, no!
Since I couldn't scream, panic or throw up, I thought angrily, *Why? What happened to me? Why am I eating people...?*
Click. Words were impossible. Agitation grew rapidly to fear and anger.
Hello, Void.
*
Shuffling. I was shuffling in the middle of a great herd of people like me; red, tattered, eaten. They ranged the gamut from a legless torso dragging itself along with half-arms, to a gray person with only one little infected bite mark on her bare breast. Cover up, you dumb cow! Too bad I couldn't actually say that. As we shambled, someone lost an arm; when I tried to move over to pick it up & give it back, I found myself packed too deeply in the herd to do so.
I let out a groan of frustration. I couldn't even exercise my humanity?
The herd stopped cold. Noses working, they started looking at me with confusion. One set of eyes lit up in hunger.
A wave of anger/frustration. Something across my mind like a bitch-slap.
Again, Void?
*
The city woke me up in a vast array of good smells, & all of my senses were on hyper-intensity. The false-stomach-thing growled & I started sniffing rapidly, my head swiveling back & forth rapidly as shimmers of blue, green, yellow, orange & rarely red washed over my eyes.
There? No....green.
There? No...blue, cold, less than nothing. Even though to me-me, it was a joy; East of Eden, in hardcover, old, would fit right in my purse. Gritting my teeth, I dove down, grabbed it & barely managed to stuff it in & zip my purse before I was shambling away in a hurry, away from all those other books that could distract me.
Up there? No, only orange...can not go up to reach.
Reach what, I wanted to ask this thing inside me.
Instead, my head went extremely to the left, I heard screaming, smelled sanguine fleshy desirability, & a bright flare of red had me shuffling at a crazy stumble. Even as I battled inside with will alone, the body went over broken things, bodies, flayed paper things I vaguely knew to be newspapers & over a fallen lamp post before I was in an alley.
Two! Red! Best! The big one behind the little one, garbling out something like "the yu r bit wan o d here y go," he gestured again. Another peak of smell & suddenly she was in my arms. He was running, but why chase when food was right here?
Me-personally, I wanted to ask if she was okay & if I could help. But the monster-inside, that false stomach, was howling in something way past starvation & the body lunged. As little red screamed & tried to claw my face, I tore her throat out & began feasting upwards. My mouth & throat so sensitive. I felt every drop & bite sliding down an oddly smooth passage, to that roaring thing. Felt absorption.
When I tried to pull away, stop this sickness, the Void swallowed me.
Who didn't see that coming?
*
Shuffling. The herd around me, now much vaster. We were a carpet of icky covering the ground, now.
I'd managed, at one hospital, to clean the stomach cavity of all flesh, pus & bugs. Once it was completely empty, I washed it with alcohol, applied mass amounts of Betadine, put in bandages to let the flesh heal, & then stuffed cotton in it to pad me before, oh gods, sewing up the great, horrid rip & grabbing clothes in a patient's room so I was less obviously, well, this thing.
The others did no such thing. Could not, I guessed. I saw feasting maggots, burst eyes, withering limbs, bruises gone necrotic & other things that made me gibber inside just a little.
Now we were in winter hills. Others were beginning to fall apart, now, unable to cope with cold. Me? Oh, yes, I was fine. The more I was in this dead thing once called my body, the more I gained control when I needed it most. On seeing people falling apart, I started stealing clothes & layering. Had a ring of boots around my waist; if one set fell apart, I had replacements. When I started noticing my senses awakened, I gratefully let the Void take me, so the stomach-abomination could feed without me. That seemed to ease the whoever who took me over & put me into the Void, because I actually had moments to sit, relax...even read.
That is, when I wasn't shuffling.
*
Mountains were bad. I was not a climber. The Void had to guide me up & over. I hated waking up at foothills with no memory of going, but at least I wasn't brutally mangled as several others were. As I looked around, I smelled green stuff...no, it was p...pi...yes!...pine. The air was clean & crisp.
Wait, I was feeling, & there were no red...I mean, living people.
The Void pounced.
*
Animals would do, but failed to make the stomach-monster very happy. I got the food, but something was missing. What...
Chi? Life force? Soul? It was something we lacked, animals had in limited doses (mammals having the most & only reds- humans carried. Wh- no. No fading! Fuck you, I will...
*
Farmland. Broken gates; we shambled through, those at the edges piling into the heavy stone walls on either side until the ones in front are turned to paste. I began to shove over, twist, weasel, until I was going through the middle of the gates. Good. Before us, a pretty huge place, my goodness...was that Taliesin West?
Before, a huge mass of people back-to-back, always turning so people can shoot then rest. Very clever. Most of my companions scattered, each choosing its own victim, for what reason I knew not, & ran forward all teeth, hunger & moans.
Me? I forced back the other so far that I was, for a brief moment, free.
In that time, I fell down & covered my head.
Everything stopped. The zombies dropped collectively, the people stopped shooting, & from the house came one beautiful brunette. Before I was dead, I so would have come on to her in a bar.
Now? I hated her. Because I felt her will reaching out, cupping around my self like cool fingers, pulling me back to obeying her. We walked past the other humans, who were arguing - some in amazed revelations, other in disgusted scorn. Apparently, some thought I was a good sign, while others doubted the woman, and others still just wanted to kill us all.
The woman spoke in a voice of smoke & lavender. "Jermyn, you may kill all of the ones in the yard. I will even release a few so you may avenge your family. But this one is mine!"
The red-faced one bowed deeply, then stalked out to kill the zombies.
I was taken to a stone side building, down several levels, to a huge white lab. Suspension tubes held mostly sleeping bodies; a cage held a raging zombie who kept flailing to get the woman.
She just laughed, led me to a side room, my senses snapped back. My will was mine. I could speak. When she gestured for me to sit, I did so half in anger & half wanting answers.
She spoke again. "Finally! I knew that the ZOM formulas were off. I knew they needed the Scopolamine to truly work; otherwise, the soul slips away, & what use is that?
A slow, deadly, smile.
"Hello Emily."
I hated being called Emily. She knew I only liked being called M.
Wait.
I knew her.
I remembered who I was. My life, my job at the ER, my friends, my love...and Marisse, that bitch of an ex who always promised she would own me.
"Told you," she sang.
The Void rippled visibly, a horrible wave of yellow from her eyes to me, & I was engulfed.