Apocalypse Witnessed

(c) 2002 Nick Thomson All rights reserved)

Our nightmare had come true in one war of impossible occurrence. It was the summer of 2002 when it all started; the dead began to walk. The first report came from a hospital somewhere in Virginia and then within the first week of the crisis, eight more reports came in from hospitals dotted around ground zero in a thirty-mile radius. Whatever it was that was now plaguing us, it was something we had never seen before and hoped to God that we would never have to see again if we lived through it.

When it all started we were at the climax of the war with terror after the attacks in 2001. The world was in an organized and smothered chaos as the United Nations struggled to keep a hold of itself as more and more members fled from the situation, hoping it might go away if they just ignored it. But it didn't, as more nations fled from the conflict, America and Britain were almost left alone at the head of the operation, but a few nations remained at their side. For months immediately after the disaster in New York and Washington, bombs fell on Afghanistan and its immediate area as more and more Americans and Britons fell victim to Anthrax as it swept through the populations like a hot knife through butter. By the eve of 2002 the situation had almost reached a head. With thousands dead, most littering the Afghan terrain the United Nations felt extreme action had to be taken swiftly and immediately.

It was the 5^th of January when the swarms of ground troops were sent into Afghanistan to seek out the root of the evil that had plagued the world for the past few months. The operation was unsuccessful and the enemy remained unfound amidst the mountainous terrain of Afghanistan and its surrounding area. The ground troops had no help from the Northern Alliance who, after a long period of talks with America, failed to secure any form of ally and so, the ground troops were walking into their deaths. By the 1^st of February the ground operation was over. It had been a total failure and the enemy of the civilized world remained missing, unable to be caught by all the force and technology in the world.

The world fell into a period of recession as the effects of the terrorism took its toll and eventually the world was in need of something big to happen, some sort of luck to befall it to put and end to this chaos which had so abruptly fallen on them in late 2001. However, what came was no message from god. Apocalypse was the sent and with the mass scale of death on our hands the dead walked. At first in the middle of America and then almost exactly one week after that, in Afghanistan and then closely followed by all the neighbouring nations, spreading out in a giant radius from ground zero and the new found home of terrorism.

Within a month a serious epidemic had struck the world and had it by its throat, throttling the nations of the world with a deadly grip only ever witnessed before in the Bible.

Cults soon arose, violent religious sectors came out of the woodwork and began to tear up the land proclaiming the second coming of Jesus and his disciples, but as their word spread, so did the disease that ravaged the countryside as it did the major cities. Widespread fallout was quick and painful. The cities began to shut down as the remnants of government desperately tried to contain the spread of disease. All shipping orders were cancelled, all mail delivery was ceased and any travel in or out of the countries around the world was stopped. The people of our nations were left to rot where they were stuck. They had no place to run to and no place to hide. Resistance of this new disease seemed futile. So why fight it? Many had this very thought and it was mostly the religious cults spread out around the underground of society that gave themselves up, letting the walking dead eat them alive, increasing their number. At this stage, Martial Law was put into effect in all counties across America.

The situation grew ever more grim by the day as more and more of those walking corpses began to rise all over the world. Hospital morgues crawled with the cold hands of the moaning cadavers as they effortlessly recruited more and more people to their side in viscous encounters. Cemeteries where the recently dead had been buried were soon crawling with corpses in the above ground tombs while those fortunate enough to be buried simply clawed at the inside of their coffins in a vain attempt to feed their hunger.

By July 4^th there was little hope left for mankind and looters and criminals alike were spread all over the cities, robbing, raping and pillaging everything in site. The cities were shambles in no time at all, shopping malls destroyed and looted clean, cars were turned over, smashed into buildings and other cars, torched and littered all over the place. Even New York which was still a scene of much wear and tear from the previous year was looking even more disastrous, the scar of the absence of the Twin Towers leaving a gaping wound in the New York skyline.

The walking dead were everywhere, all homes and private residences were eventually all broken into and all that remained were the fat cats and high and mighty governmental organizers who hid in their bunkers and the few civilians who had managed to escape the terror and make their way to rescue stations. However, the majority of those stations were over run and eventually whole cities and even states were totally dead, not a living soul among the rubble of a life long since past away.

I was one of the lucky ones. I had originally, back in February, boarded my house solid and was living on the first floor to try and hide away from the hoards of walking dead that tirelessly scratched at my windows and doors, moaning and wheezing outside in the cold air of winter. I remained there, rationing my little food and water to hopefully last me out, but when food was drastically low and my water supply was very low I had to make a move. I ventured into the ground floor of my home, the eyes of the dead watching me through the small gaps in my boarding job all the way to the door to the adjoined garage. The door was solid as a rock and could be opened automatically from the inside of the car, so I was safe to escape, I just hoped that my car hadn't rotted away in my absence for the past month. Fortunately it worked and the door squealed open to the garage letting the morning sunshine of spring pierce the air revealing the figures of at least a hundred of those zombies outside my house. I never looked back when I left. I wanted to remember my peaceful life for what it was, peaceful, not surrounded by the walking dead and their pale, expressionless faces, dulled expressions and bloodthirsty minds.

I lived in the outskirts of Rapid City, right in the middle of the whole mess. Middle America was about the most unlucky and dangerous place to be in all this mess, I'd imagined the luckier ones on the coasts took boats and fled to some exotic island with as much food, water and possessions as they could carry. All those with choppers and planes or any form of transport must have fled before they fell victim to the dead at their destinations perhaps. Whatever the case was, they sure as hell weren't here anymore.

I made my way further into the outskirts and before I knew it I was in Minot South, the hoards of walking dead in the fields and cities all around me acting as some form of time-stopping hypnosis, their slow and occasionally gentle movements were mesmerizing. Minot South was just as dead as Rapid City, but at least here I was able to find one of the few remaining rescue stations in operation. They took me in like a bird of a feather and wrapped me in blankets; my journey had been long and tiring. Before this moment I hadn't slept in over 24 hours.

I remember my first day at the Greggor's Pass County Community Hall rescue station as clear and as crisp as my last anniversary before my wife past away. It was an early spring morning when I awoke to the sound of at least a hundred people milling about inside this one big hall, no privacy, just a sea of people swarming in the dim light; it seemed to be lunchtime. That first meal there reminded me of my child hood days in school, that canteen food was worse than eating a live toad to my recollection, and this slop was strikingly familiar. At least that was something, a mild comfort in this new world of terror and death and destruction. A memory of my peaceful childhood many years ago right here in my mouth, slopping around as I mushed it around to thin out the cold lumps. Was this porridge or some cruel experiment I was eating? Was this what it felt like to eat the warm flesh of the living? I shuddered to have such thoughts bouncing around in my head, but in the current state of things I wasn't surprised. This whole mess baffled the government and it baffled me. Quite what was going on was beyond anyone's comprehension.

The dead had risen suddenly, without explanation or reason in a time of war. Was it something to do with that? Did our violent deeds anger God in some way? Did our chemical experiments spill out into the water supply or something? Was there a madman on the loose re-animating the dead? Well, the first two at least. As they had risen suddenly out of the blue, I hoped and prayed every night I would wake up one morning to find that they had all died again and it was all over. But with every disturbed night's sleep came another morning of dread as reports of more and more cities across the United States and the rest of the world had fallen to the curse of the dead.

On the eve of my first year in the rescue station spirits were low. More and more areas of the country were no totally dead and there seemed to be no hope that the dead would die or at least go away and not want to tear us apart and feast on us. It was that evening that news of Minot North's over-running came through from the scouts who had been out all day in trucks and choppers, the few remaining modes of transport which the rescue teams had snatched before the selfish ones and those so overwhelmed with hysteria got a chance to. We were sitting there in Minot South wondering how long it would be until the dead came knocking at our door, as I figured it, we had no chance in hell of escaping this mess of shit. We were sentenced before we had even begun breathing in our first breath as babies.

What with the news of Minot North being taken over by the undead, the rescue workers and anyone who was in sound enough mind or strength decided to start preparing for a possible war with the dead at our front door step. I volunteered to help and before I knew it I was walking perimeter around high steel, chain linked fences that the others had erected quickly having stolen the materials from local hardware stores in town. It was my first night on watch that the first of the dead came knocking; however, I was under strict instructions not to fire any shots unless absolutely necessary. I wasn't about to go out there and tackle the thing to the ground, but I was sure ready to use the magic pole I was given. This pole was basically a five-foot rod of wood with a spear like head. This was used for smashing in the skulls of the dead at the fence without making a sound. It seems the best methods were the oldest. And so all the watchmen were given these magic poles and we were soon just walking around with them alone if we were inside and away from any danger. But when one watchman was bitten, even through the fencing, we all went back to carrying our guns too. I had been doing that already, no way had the dead walked back in the caveman era, so sticks with sharp ends weren't going to do us much good for long.

The world had faded fast so it seemed and there was almost nobody left alive with any hope for their future. As far as we were concerned it was a day by day basis of life. If you lived to fight another day you were lucky. If you lived to the end of this shit, then you must be invincible.

After my first year of living at the rescue station everything seemed to be like normal all of a sudden. Walking the perimeter with my big, sharp stick, eating cold slop once or twice a day. I seemed to be settling into this whole mode of living, but I was unsure why I'd survived this far. I had been in plenty of scrapes when running a truck into town to get supplies for new plans and ventures and others had died at my side. What the hell was so special about me? Why was I surviving? Some things it seems are not for us to know. So I just went on living life day by day. At this stage however, we had abandoned all hope that there was anyone left alive, we all thought this was the end and we were the only handful of people left. This was it, this small rescue station crammed with people, but fading by the day was what was left of the world.

But then things changed all of a sudden again and when we were out on a scavenging trip we blindly stumbled across another group of scavengers like us amidst the whole mess. We couldn't believe our eyes; we had found survivors just as suddenly and as abruptly as the dead had risen and taken over. There was this strange feeling buzzing inside of me as I met the two survivors out searching for supplies. There was a man and a woman, obviously not the best of friends the way they looked at each other throughout their trip to town, but I couldn't help but keep looking at the young woman who was there in the truck right next to ours. We were talking and I managed to convince them to come to our rescue station to check it all out, if she thought it was a good idea, she would bring the rest of her survivors to our station. She said there was only a dozen or so of them and since we had lost at least twice that number, we were glad to have some new faces. Maybe it was the nature of this situation that just left me in a constant dreamscape, but I felt the strange feeling in the pit of my stomach when I had met my wife so many years ago, and so soon before her cruel death and departure from me. My god, I think I was falling in love with this woman. I had abandoned all hope of ever finding love again, but this sudden encounter had set of bells in my head and my heart. I knew she was special somehow, she reminded me so much of my wife long gone, god bless her. Something was new and buzzing inside me. This was strange.

The beginning of 2004 was of little comfort to us. We hoped for a change in the situation, but all we got was an invasion of the dead we had been waiting for some time. They came lumbering up the road towards our position up in the hills. We had little chance of escape, and for many of us, that was indeed the case. However, a lot managed to escape as the others died. We took our trucks and cars, all piling in on top of each other so as to save as many souls as possible. The vehicles were loaded down with supplies as well as frightened people. I barely made it out alive. The previous day, Melissa, the woman that was the leader of the other band of survivors, tripped and fell hard when in a tackle with three of the undead at the gates. The zombies had managed to break into the compound and Melissa, being the one on perimeter was there immediately to try and deal with the situation. However, she lost control of the three unruly walking cadavers and she was screaming for help when I came. I pulled her from the mess and told her to run as another four came lumbering up behind the immediate three. As she ran she tripped over on her own feet amidst the terror and broke her ankle. The invasion that came the day after left her defenseless against the attacking dead. I had my truck in the back of the compound and I went looking for Melissa. I scooped her up and carted her out to the awaiting truck. We followed the others to wherever we were going, that I didn't know.

Our new sanctuary was north east of our position in Minot South. We were heading for Lake Superior, from there we hoped to stop and rest to move on to Hudson Bay to try and sail away somewhere if we needed to, but when we got to Lake Superior we found a good dock to seal off as it was on a pier. We parked our trucks just inside of the gates so that if the dead got through, the trucks would block them off. It was here that we would stay for another six months until we had to run once more. This time it was Hudson Bay or nothing.

Fortunately, we got to the bay and we found an even better pier and docking area on the waterside. Again, it could be sealed off and there was a large stock of meat in the industrial freezers there. There were even a couple of freighters tied up and each contained ample supplies. Before the shit had really gone down this seemed to be relief supplies for the rescue stations. Judging by notes we found in the offices at the very end of the pier, the dead had attacked and killed every living soul in the pier and by the looks of things had left. Because as it seemed, Fort Severn was completely dead.

It was in this place, Fort Severn, that we remained in the final few months, using the ample stock of meat to gorge ourselves silly at times. There was tons of sealed, frozen meat for just a mere 53 of us. We had it all to ourselves. We hadn't seen a single sign of life, or death for that matter, in days when it began to strike us. We were convinced this was quite literally the last of humanity, as anyone would know it. 53 humans in the whole of the United States were what remained so we thought, and perhaps the world. We didn't believe it too strongly, having found this safe haven away from it all and with an easy method of escape, we were fine where we were. We had found a nice slice of paradise away from the troubles of the world.

It was the beginning of November 2004 when we saw the first zombie we had seen in weeks, months even. It just lumbered over the hills in front of us and came all the way down to the gates of the dock where it just stood. It remained there and didn't even try to break in. After a week some of us walked up to the gates and were literally a couple of feet from it, granted a large steel gate was between us, but at the distance it might as well not of been there. This zombie that stood in front of us was on its last legs it seemed. Both of its arms had long since rotted and fallen away somewhere on its travels. Its lower jaw was missing and it only had one softened eye left. Completely bald, this grotesque vision of a world one lived eventually fell to the floor after another two days. We were all totally puzzled at this occurrence, but we thought little of it as strange things happen these days.

By Christmas day 2004, 27 more zombies had reached out gates and the surrounding area and just crashed to the floor without even attempting to break into our safe haven. Were they dying? After three years, were these monsters dying? Surely this could not be. Had we won the war against the undead? Were we the sole survivors and glorious victors of this whole disaster? Whatever the outcome of all this, the enemy seemed to now be almost a knock over. They didn't try to break in, they didn't try to eat us, and they were barely capable of walking anymore. Rot it seemed had set in and these monsters were finally collapsing. Their brains mush and their instincts shattered. They were only horrid vessels of their past lives and the new generation that had swept across the world like wild fire.

New Year's Day brought more joy for us. Since Christmas several scouting parties had been out in their trucks to comb the area for 20 miles and had only found the rotting corpses of the walking dead, all fallen where they had last stood in their cruel lives. By now, 2005, the dead were finally dead. We had won and it was soon time to venture out from our closed off area. We found a chopper in Fort Albany some way south from our position at the bay's edge. Using this we scouted out each day for a week in a hundred-mile radius searching for survivors, but most of all, any living zombies. We found not one single living corpse and we were able to locate three pockets of survivors dotted around the states. In Denver, Minneapolis and Boston we found the survivors in just one week of searching and soon enough, we all moved out from our sealed off haven at the docks. Most wanted to return to our hometown, Rapid City. So we decided to make a move back home in March.

Rapid City, having once been a thriving community of many was now in a state of disrepair. Rotting bodies of the dead lay everywhere and in almost every building. Rapid City was once totally dead, but now it was living again and the few of us who remained from the original population set up house again, back in our own homes if they were still inhabitable after all this time.

Amidst all this madness and chaos, I had found love again and within the first two weeks of living back home I asked Melissa to marry me. She said yes immediately, not wanted to waste another breath in this new-world where anything could and did happen. Life was for living now and we both wanted to live for every single day we have left. We were married on a mild spring day in May as the sound of birds chirping filled the air and the new smell of a new-world filled our lungs. We like all the others who had returned to their lives, had found life once again and were living it to the fullest. People are not the same anymore, and we like it like it is now. I just hope we don't deserve anything like the plague that was sent unto us. But in this new place and time, anything is possible and we all know it.

It is now September 11^th 2005. Four years ago our lives changed and a new wave of terror had swept across the land. People died for their cause and people died unnecessarily, but shortly after people just died. However, as we celebrated our new found independence tonight with fireworks and a large party in the centre of town, toasting to our new lives and glancing back at the old ones we once led in an overpopulated, greedy world where money was everything and love was almost abandoned for the capitalist ideals of the many. But if I had a choice, I wouldn't have lived any other way, because if I had of done, then I would almost certainly be dead right now. As I see it, for myself and the other survivors, everything worked out fine. We may have made our mistakes beforehand but if we had done anything different, who knows what might have happened, we could be dead right now, or we could be alive. But whatever the outcome could have been or would have been, I am glad that I am here right now and that I have lived through the greatest war man has ever known.

The world has changed for the better in my eyes and I'm sure everyone else feels the same. We all went back to work again, doing the jobs that needed doing in our own little cities, but we only venture outside our hometowns to get the supplies we need from the big, money-munching cities. New York was ravaged and nobody lives there now, not many want to live anywhere like that anymore. We all want to live outside the system and just remain peaceful in our own little worlds dotted around the world. Things are better this way and in some respects, time has gone backwards and we're living in an era of peace. We all respect each other and we all get along now, despite how corny and clichéd that seems.

Life is now much better; it's kinder, easier and simpler. Nobody wars with each other anymore, we're all just glad to see the living again instead of the emotionless faces of the dead. Although the scar of the war with the dead has left a lasting impression on us as well as the landscape, it is a testament to the duality of man. The cities may be crumbling as we speak but in the end of the day, nobody really cares anymore. The cities, the large ones anyway, are just an example to the greedy nature of man before the war. That life we can do best without.

Time is ticking by and slowly we are getting back into our old ways of life. The television stations are back on, well, just a few of them out of the hundreds we once had. The makers are dead and the actors are history too, so we just look back on old reruns of shows from a by gone era. It's funny to see the cities in all their spectacular glory, thousands and millions of people occupying every inch of space, every building. Filled with feelings and emotion, but now they're all dead. Not one of those souls we witness on our TV screens now is alive. They're all dead. All the big movie stars, all the big directors, all the news crews, everyone's dead. Except for just us average Joe's left over. I guess God favours us, but whether I like that or not remains to be discovered.

However, I still yearn for the good old days when things were as they were. People went to work to earn money for their big cars and big houses and big families in this big world, everyone working as a minor cog in the six billion way of seeing things. At least in that world you knew where you were going, in this world now there is no certainty. The doctors are dead and all the professionals are long gone too. We have little technology left to use either because it rotted away in our absence or we don't have the skills to deal with it. So really, we're in a peaceful version of hell perhaps. But I don't really know and I don't have the knowledge to make an educated guess. I'll just keep existing and see where it takes me. But in any case, our lack of skills at the important professions is showing and mass recruitment for such jobs as doctors has begun all across the country and in fact the world. We have to learn from books on the subjects and practice a little before we have to brave the actual job, which when done has been roughly 50/50 successful. The plague of the dead didn't kill us, but our lack of doctors to care for our sick sure will if we don't manage to learn what we need.

Procreation is encouraged to increase the population once more and the men sometimes find themselves being forced to visit other towns where men are in short supply. It seems a little bizarre, but it is necessary for our survival. The first baby of the new world should be due soon by my reckoning. I wonder if this world will be any more peaceful than the last. I certainly hope so.

In the last world, my life was hectic. Work consumed a lot of my time and my wife was a vision I rarely saw. I was striving to provide for her, but when she died I had little to work for. That last life was one of misery and then the dead came and started knocking on my door. That's when all our lives changed, on the whole for the worse, but in the end for the better. I now have Melissa and we're expecting a child sometime at the beginning of 2006.

Like the others in our new communities, I have tried to provide for my coming family and I have secured one of the best houses in Rapid City now that there's barely anyone left to occupy them all. We all live like Kings in this new world it seems. Cars are in vast supply; there is now plenty of food to go around from the stocks found on the coastal regions and elsewhere in the deep freezers. We've even begun farming the land, growing crops and rearing animals again. Everything seems to be going fine. My new home is large and has a huge garden. We have three cars, them all just having been waiting in the garages of the houses in my cul-de-sac. A Mercedes, a Jeep and a rather nice Lexus. Although this may seem great, I can't help but feel the greed spreading again, so I only drive the Jeep mostly, the others are for the weekends when we want a bit of fun and drive around the abandoned streets in the nearby cities. Myself and a few of the other car-crazy men are thinking of setting up small races in the cities for fun. A little normality and fun for the weekends has proved to be a nice escape from the hard work of the week.

Melissa is happily working at the head of the Rapid City bank now, she almost runs the entire thing herself as there are so few of us left to really use money, or wish to. Mostly people trade goods and services and it seems to be working out fine. Despite all this technology at our fingertips, we have taken a few steps backwards in time.

Our safety is assured, but I'm not so certain sometimes. Reports of criminal factions in some of the far away cities has come through from gossiping around the country. Whether it's true I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if some are already starting to weaken and give into temptation and looting again as the opportunity is there with little chance of getting caught. If you had the chance to steal for your own luxury and knew you wouldn't be caught as you were in a city with nobody else, would you?

The dead had risen suddenly and had come out from nowhere. They burst from the hospital's doors first of all and then they began to spring up all across the world. Afghanistan was totally dead in next to no time and from the ground zeros it all radiated outwards and swept across the world in under a year. Only the lucky or well endowed survived the initial attacks and from then on it was down to us. I think all the well-to-do sorts died sometime into the second year of the invasion. For all their money and power, they had little skill or anybalanced head on their shoulders. Finally, their lethargy of living in luxury had brought about their comeuppance.  

To this day we are unsure as to what actually caused the zombie plague. Scientists had been working on it all the way through the invasion for years and they had nothing. Not a single shred of sense came out of all this mess in their results. The cause was almost random it seemed. People were bitten, they became one. People who died of natural causes became them. Was it something in the air? Was it something in the water? Nobody left alive knows.  

Our lives were torn from under our feet in a matter of a few months and by the end of the first year the world was totally unrecognizable. Where once stood mighty corporate giants in the big cities stood the mindless drones of a new disease. Clawing at the glass of the buildings, wondering up and down the stairs amidst chaos and rubble. They were purely motorized instinct and all they wanted to do was kill, kill and kill. They never slept, they never grew tired of their goals, and they never complained or spoke or thought. They were the perfect soldiers for bloody combat, but their wrath was devastating.  

In the early days of the invasion when the scientists were on the television discussing what was going wrong and what these things were, a lot of wild theories were being thrown around the arena. Some wanted to experiment with them, possibly create armies or train them to do our will. Others wanted to bomb them to hell, to destroy the cities with nuclear weapons. Others just didn't care and wanted it all to end suddenly when no one was looking, much like what happened in the end. I guess they got their wish. The scientist's theories were basically superstition or fable readings, perhaps guesses at their best. I never really trusted their judgment; my fate in their hands was something that didn't rest easy with me, or many others for that matter. The threat of the dead as well as the maniacal plans of the leaders of the armed forces who wished to bomb us back to one celled organisms was consuming the world. It created chaos across the land and in the end when the dead rose to strike their almighty blow barely anyone trusted anyone else except for those just like themselves in this place of doom and destruction and death. That was certainly the case for me. 

Love is a tough thing to find anywhere let alone in a world where the dead walk and the people you once knew and loved before are walking in their state of limbo. But amidst all this madness and mayhem I found the wonderful Melissa to rescue me from it all, it was a glorious day when I met her. Her hair flowing in the wind, no matter how dirty it was. Her entrancing green eyes glimmering from underneath all the pain and suffering she had seen. Her voice was shaken and her actions were fuzzy, but underneath all the chaos she was consumed in, much like the others as well as myself, she was a glowing beacon that gave me hope and reason to live for, as did I for her. If we hadn't of met, I doubt we would be here today. If I hadn't of killed myself I would have surely been eaten alive out there if I had not of met her by chance. 

Is life a plan laid out before we all are born? Are we merely just automated figures in the game the creator plays, or do we have some purpose on this earth? We can think and we can breathe. We take care of ourselves and we take care of others. In my opinion we are not the tools of someone else, we are our own actions, thoughts and feelings. We relate to others and we interact with others, independent of some puppeteer in the heavens. I don't believe in heaven, I believe in hell on earth and have lived through it to tell the story of it. I don't believe in God anymore, no life-giving person or being would ever wish that upon their creation. A father would not wish harm on his child. So in my view, God doesn't exist and he never did, in this world he's just a piece of shit made up by those who wished to influence the masses. I say we do what we think is right without the influence of the masses. This is our world, so let's start living it by ourselves.

- THE END -