The Risen ( Part 2): The Risen, Part 2 by Smith Adam J

Author:Smith, Adam J. [Smith, Adam J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Zombies
Published: 2020-04-29T22:00:00+00:00

March 2029

Is this the story of a monster? Get called it often enough and you may start to believe it. And if you believe it...

... how does that effect your decisions?

Do you become the ultimate self-fulfilling prophecy?

It was a badge that whispered silently, following me wherever I went. If not at home, than in the village. If not in the village, than in my dreams. The caustic stares and sibling accusations. The private conversations not-so-private to my ears.

***

We spent the night elsewhere; that night Old Jack kicked his final kick. I grabbed the handheld radio first, hooking it to my belt, and then we headed back down the hill to the terraced cottages stripped bare of furniture and even doors by Old Jack and his family. It had been a roof for our heads but sleep came uneasy for those who needed it. I slept in bursts in the frame of an open window on the first floor, while Dale, Greg and John rotated watch. That became the trend in the following days and weeks. I was never trusted to keep watch by myself – I couldn’t tell if it was an overbearing sense of masculinity, or simply that I was untrustworthy. Didn’t help that I might vanish for a few hours before reappearing in a clearing, or around the next corner. Dale stopped complaining, especially when I began to appear with fresh kills to roast over a fire.

It was an odd time of year to be out, the twilight winter months before spring. Death accentuated in every deciduous offering to the earth that cracked or mulched beneath our boots. The dampness of the countryside; even after days of sun there could always be some dark, untouched shade where mud roamed between rushes of swamp water, reeds tipping their heads above the parapet. Out here; this was my castle. Crenulated boughs twisted their bare arms and waved flags of silken thread woven by wasp- and garden spiders. Oak and birch were falsely livened, bearers of climbing ivy. Dormice patted through moats. Squirrels climbed towers to escape my traps. Badgers dug deep and rats watched from afar, as if we were a band of roaming mutates and it was a sentry, warning others.

We walked public bridleways still marked by coloured arrows, lead by Dale and his map. Where the arrows were no longer visible and the map wasn’t clear, we took educated guesses, eventually returning to an arrow to point us in the right direction. It was a map I hadn’t seen before, and in the evenings I liked to pour over it, memorise it, for these paths were paths of nature, cutting straight through it where roads so often had to divert. These paths were the highways now, the safest routes. Roads brought buildings and buildings brought people, mutated or still alive. Both the dead and the living seemed to worry the group, as they made sure to avoid signs of activity. Every now and then Dale’s walkie crackled, picking up frequencies, and he’d dial it low and put it to his ear.

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