A Story To Tell: Season 1| A Zombie Apocalypse Story (Completed)

Day 11

Hula

I wake up in my RV, checking for anything news-related on my phone, any sort of update on what's happening, but I remain unanswered. The servers must have gone down or overloaded. Only a few days ago was Twitter blowing up with these crazy encounters. What's left of their souls must be gone. It has to be.

 I've been holed up in here for a few days.

I take the large arrowhead that I had gotten at a Pow-Wow out of the drawer. It stretches wide enough to be useful to make considerable damage with some sharpening. Something tells me that this thing isn't gonna end anytime soon. I go out of my RV and into the woods surrounding the plot of land I bought. I look around the woods to find a stick. A stick long enough and strong enough to be a walking stick.

After looking around for a while, I find a thick stick, almost like a small branch. It might've broken off back in the winter when we had that ice storm. I drag it into my land and get my hunting knife out of the RV. It takes a while but I use the knife to carve the bark off the branch, leaving the smooth inner surface of the stick. After a while, the bark is all off, so I use a saw to cut the branch down to a good height. I can't remember the last time I used these manual tools to make something.

I cut an indent on the top deep enough for the bottom of the arrowhead to fit in snuggly. I wrap some fishing wire around the crevices of the arrowhead. Then I put the arrowhead back into the indent and wrap the wire around the wood plenty of times until the arrowhead was firmly set in the stick. After a few knots, I was sure that it was secure enough to stay in place.

I reenter my house, deciding to go straight to the closet where my regalia is stored. I take the deerskin pants and put them over my blue jeans and I take the leather poncho made of deerskin as well. I also take the simple feather headpiece and my medicine pouch. I didn't want to take out any of the nicer pieces, not wanting them to get messed up in combat. I feel a closeness to my ancestors wearing my gear to take on the dangerous world. To commemorate when this started, I sit down with my knife and start working at the tallies.

"One. Two. Three... Ten. Eleven," I say out loud. I look at the small tallies and blow the shavings off. I stand up, walk outside, and lock my door, rattling the handle to be safe.

I see one of the risers emerge from the woods. People have been calling these infected different things for days. I was hesitant at first when this all started, but after a corpse rise from the ground after being shot in the heart, I knew things were far more serious. It all happened so fast, but because I didn't move in fast enough to help, it attacked a senile man. A helpless man. I tried to help. I tried to help everyone escape from what was happening in the retirement homes. I used to work there. Instead of helping these lives like I was supposed to, I allowed them to die. 

Trying to help was almost the death of me. The place became overrun quickly after. But I'm ready now. I'm ready to come back and clear it out. Give them the mercy I couldn't grant them before. There are supplies there and I don't like the idea of those elders and people just being there, well, not people. Living dead. Most people don't know that these people, the risers, are lost. Gone.

The lurking figure is at an arm's distance, its shoulder bone exposed, and jagged flesh over his neck revealing his trachea. I don't do any fancy footwork, or anything similar to that to rid of them and free them. Instead, I remain straightforward. Pride is the greatest downfall of man. I position my spear and run toward it. I thrust the arrowhead it into its skull, pushing the riser against the tree. I pull it out with one pull.