"Ugh..w..what h..happened?" I mumbled groggily. "A..Am I dead?"
Feeling heavily disoriented, I sat up and rubbed my eyes, yawning a little. I looked around, and thankfully I wasn't dead or anything. I was still on the roof of the hospital.
I looked up at the sky; it seemed I hadn't been out for too long. It was probably midnight....no it was around the time of dawn.
Suddenly I remembered my phone and turned it on, squinting to look at the screen. Yeah, it was thirty minutes to 3 am.
Well, now that I knew that, I had to think of what I should do next. I was on the roof, and I was safe for now, especially since the door to the roof was locked safely.
So now what did I need to do?
"Ah!" I silently screamed in pain, falling to my knees and clutching my stomach tightly. My stomach rumbled and i curled up, trying to lessen the pain. For a moment my vision became blurred too and I felt a little dizzy.
What I had to do next was apparent.
I needed to get food, and I needed to get it quick.
I was too much in pain to bother to be annoyed by the fact this was probably the third time I was going to venture out in to the dangerous labyrinth of the hospital that was a collection of seemingly infinite corridors and zombies.
But I did notice something troubling. And I was trivializing this.
What was so unsettling?
The door was open.
But I could think about it later. Maybe it had just been the wind that had done this. I didn't know or care at the moment. I was too much in pain to think straight. My ability of rational thinking ceased to exist at the moment.
I didn't even make an effort of being quiet. I didn't care about anything, I just..wanted...food.
S..so h..hungry.
I picked up the pace, going from tiptoeing, to walking, to sprinting, and just like that I was at the room door. Or well, the space where the door should have been as,there was no door there anymore. That was lying on the floor a few feet away, and I knew too well how that happened.
The bed was still there where I had left it, and some good it had done to stop the zombies. I also noted to myself that if ever the world returned to normal, I would see to it that hospital doors only open inwards. Surely having them open both ways would make them dangerous like how it was for me not too long ago. It definitely qualified as a safety hazard.
Being so close to what I desired, I didn't bother about the bed and just climbed over it, and I just stood there for a moment, aghast.
The room had been totally trashed, and it was now no more in a better state than the room I had gone in to earlier in search of clothes.
Torn window blinds, sheets everywhere, and the emergency phone had been broken off the wall. But it didn't matter to me; I just wanted to get to that can of food.
"Come on, come on, where is the damn thing?" I thought, frustrated, trying my hardest not to step on the broken glass but at the same time trying to do this as fast as possible.
And not more than a few moments later I had found it! The item which I had so tirelessly sought after. The item because of which I had embarked on this dangerous journey.
I could barely contain my happiness as I picked up the tin of food and held it in my hands. My mouth watered just thinking about the food, and in an instant my hand was in my pocket, grabbing the dagger.
I dug the dagger deep in to the top of the can and twisted the can around, creating a clearly defined cut in it, and forced the top off.
"Yes!" I squealed, bringing the can to my mouth and forcing all the food down hungrily. If this had been at a regular dinner table I might have been astonished everyone with my rudeness and lack of etiquette. If anyone had seen me they might have deemed me mannerless.
But no one was there, and the food tasted so good. It was cold, and slimy, but it tasted like heaven after nearly starving. It tasted like nothing I had ever tasted before, it was literally bringing the life back in to me. It felt that good to finally eat something again.
I wolfed down all the contents of the can within a minute and sighed contentedly, wiping my mouth with my arm, glad that I finally had a full belly. Momentarily, I even forgot my current predicament; alone in a hospital and probably alone in a city infested by lifeless.
But the troubles very quickly came back to haunt me and I realized I had to get out of the room, and out of the hospital. The best time to go out and scrounge for supplies, and to look for help was during daylight hours.
I had plenty of those right now, but I couldn't afford to waste a single second. In this dangerous, post apocalyptic world, I had to utilize every moment I had in order to survive.
And...I really needed a shirt too.
Tiptoeing out of the room and down the stairs, once again keeping my dagger in hand, I reached the ground floor.
Once again, I was on the dreaded first floor, and this time, it would probably be the last time I saw it.
I found some comfort in that thought, and proceeded forward.
I didn't need to open the door. The glass in it was totally obliterated, millions and billions of tiny little specks of it littering the floor, glinting in the light as if they were diamonds. And I didn't want to leave any trace of leaving, as I didn't know how intelligent these undead creatures were.
I walked through the door frame, and took my first step outside of the hospital since I had woken up in this strange new world.
The glass scrunched beneath my weight, but I didn't notice. I was totally focused on what was right in front of my eyes.
The sight was just..purely well..it was beautiful.
I...I just didn't have words for what I was seeing. It was like something out of a fairytale, too breathtaking to even be close to real.
The sky was a light shade of pink, slowly blending in to a darker purplish pink as it approached the horizon. It was cloudless, and some of the stars were still visible up there, scattered randomly throughout like ripples in a lake. But the real sight was not that, no, not even close.
The roads beneath me, had constant, deep cracks running through it, breaking the road off in to different parts. Gaps lay beneath these parts of the road, and each part of these roads was at a different elevation, some sloping upwards, some slanting sideways slightly, and to the right of me, a very visible and huge crater in the ground.
Grass had overgrown to an enormous extent, seeping up through those cracks in the road and coming slightly on to the roads.
The fences lining the sidewalks on the other side were also overgrown with greenery and apparently not even the houses had escaped this.
I remembered when I had drove down this street with my mom a weeks earlier, before the car crash and before it all...
Nothing looked the same.
When we had drove down this lane, the streets had been bustling with people, and dozens of cars driving down the street every two to three minutes. It had been a lively place.
But now..now it didn't feel the slightest bit lively.
Instead, it felt dark despite the light, cold, and desolate.
I had always wondered how it must have felt living or visiting a place that had been abandoned for hundreds of years. I guess I knew the feeling now, and yet something inside told me that this place was more desolate and dark than any other place could be after any number of years.
There were cars for sure but...none of them had people in them. None of them were running. Some were crashed in to other cars, and others were parked in a random manner on the road, most having one of their doors open too.
It wasn't just cars, there were trucks too, and I spotted a school bus not too far off to my left. But all of the vehicles seemed to be busted, and not in working condition. And even if they did have gas, which was possible that most did, the engines would be dead.
It wasn't like I could anywhere by driving one of the cars anyway. The mess of vehicles scattered along the road made it impossible to get out from it.
I wondered what could have happened to cause such a huge pile up, and what had happened to force everyone to leave their cars in such a hurry. Obviously the zombies must have done this, but I wondered how it had all played out.
Did these people know about the zombie apocalypse before being assaulted by them? Perhaps.
Were they trying to flee the city to have a lesser chance of dying due to this? That could have been, but the open doors suggested that the zombies had most likely reached them before they could leave the urban areas.
Had anyone survived? There had to be some human out there who had survived this terrible event. I couldn't really be alone in this cold, cruel world, could i?
What had happened to my parents and friends? They couldn't have died right?
I looked down, quietly trying to convince myself that all my friends and my family were okay, and that they were just living in a new place now, so that they could be safe from the lifeless.
But deep down I knew that this must not have been the case.
I was seeing it right in front of my very eyes, if these poor people hadn't been able to escape, then how could everyone I knew have survived?
Taking another look around, I then spotted a car which had dried blood smeared all over the yellow hood, and looked away, trying to hold back tears. I couldn't have lost my loved ones, right?
A tear trickled down my cheek as I looked up at the massive skyscrapers up ahead that seemed to touch the sky, towering over me, with almost all of them tilted at an angle, some more than others. I felt so small..so insignificant.
Maybe I was better off dying. At least I'd be in a better place. Perhaps in a better place with my loved ones too.
I sighed and looked back down sadly, wiping the tear away and strolling forward at a somewhat slow pace, looking around me, just trying to take it all in. It was just...too much to take in. Did all this really happen because of the zombies? Well of course it did, but...I didn't want to believe it.
Houses lined up behind the sidewalk opposite me, and all of them had vines hanging down the walls, and the most of the roofs were almost completely covered by the trees that had somehow grown in the cracks in the pavement there.
Some of them had their front windows intact, most didn't, and from what I could see, a huge portion of them had their doors broken off.
But despite all this, and despite what I was feeling, I had to admit there was somehow beauty within all this destruction. It was hard to explain but...it was harder to deny the fact.
So now where did I go from here?
I looked left, and then looked right, and then back at the houses in front of me. Three options, three paths, and I had to choose one.
The houses didn't look very promising, and they were really scary, so I immediately cut that off the list. The left side of the road was tempting, but the crater on the other side caught my eye again, and I decided to go there first.
Making sure I didn't step in the cracks of the road, I started my little trek down the road.
It turns out the hole I had seen was not the shape I was thinking off. I was thinking more a huge circular indent within the ground, but as I got closer I could see that it actually was irregularly shaped.
I edged towards the edge of the huge, deep hole and looked down, instantly feeling a bit of vertigo. It was quite deep a drop.
I looked down again, this time trying not to concentrate on the drop, and saw a few cars at the bottom. I inched forward a little more to get a better look at everything, and suddenly, I heard some cracks, and the ground beneath me started slipping away.
"Holy hell!" I exclaimed, jumping back just in time to see the ground where I had been standing slip in to the abyss.
My heart pounded and I breathed heavily, putting my hand on my heart. That had been way too close. If I had been there a moment later I would have fallen to my death.
Suddenly the houses were looking a lot more interesting.
I turned around and started speed walking towards the houses, daring not to take my eyes off of the ground. I was much too scared the ground might slip away again.
In this state of paranoia I managed to get back to the place where I had originally decided where to go, and this time I turned in the direction of the houses.
The smell of rotting wood hit me as soon as I got near, and it seemed to be the dominant smell in the vicinity. It didn't bother too much, but this only added to my suspicions that I had been in coma for quite a while. A year at the minimum, and this thought or well..realization I suppose was quite terrifying; going to bed with the world as normal as everyone complaining about school, and waking up in this nightmare.
It was almost as bad as actually going to school.
I stifled back a laugh when I thought that, proud of myself for thinking of that one. But at the same time I couldn't help but feel that this world was not meant for laughs or happiness. After all, millions if not billions died in the time I was in coma, and well..how can anyone really remain positive after all that? Especially if you lose someone close to you, how could anyone stay happy after that?
I didn't even know if any of my friends or family were alive.
With these thoughts weighing down on me, I cautiously entered the house, and tried making my way around as noiselessly as I could. Of course I still had my dagger on me, and it lay in my fist, ready to be used at a moment's notice.
Luckily for me the floor wasn't creaking, which was one less thing to worry about, but I still had to get some supplies so I could survive on my own.
I wasn't returning to that dreaded hospital now, not after all that happened. I had to get some food and weapons, and get to a shelter before it got dark.
The layout of the house I was in was quite the interesting one to say the least. The front door led directly in to what I assumed was a combination of a kitchen and a dining room. It seemed pretty modernistic, not that I was an expert at home designing.
But enough about that,
I scrounged for any supplies I could find, and I searched the first floor completely, while also remaining stealthy.
Finding nothing of value on the bottom floor, I tried getting to the top floor.
There was only one problem though, and that was that the staircase had at some point completely fallen out, and now what remained of it was the rubble on the floor.
I looked around, trying to find some way of getting up there, and instantly my eyes gleamed.
The couch!
Quickly, I got to work pushing it so I could reach the second floor by using it as a stepping stone, and once it was in place I stood atop it, and jumped, grabbing on to the ledge.
Quite a few creaking sounds followed, and I paused hesitantly, wondering if the whole thing would collapse because of my weight, but a few moments passed and no such thing happened so I heaved myself upwards and lo and behold, I was now on the second floor.
The second floor had much more loot than the first floor did, and i couldn't believe how fortunate I was. There seemed to be an office on this floor, and it had quite a few useful things for me to collect. Some tins of food, a few bandages, and best of all, a backpack!
I hurriedly put everything in to the backpack and slung it over my shoulders, now feeling much more prepared for the dangers that awaited me. But just as I walked out of the room to look for more supplies, I heard a loud, blood curdling scream.
And it sounded pretty close too.