Elijah

To begin, I will say that the next few stories I submit are a few years old, and I hope to create more like them with more frequency in the coming months. I hope any readers who stumble onto these stories will enjoy them, or have valuable advice to offer for future undertakings.



It was over in seconds, in a flash of gaping maws and blood-stained teeth, of snarling howls and moans...All over. In the wake of the attack there was a line of scattered bodies, one after the other mauled, slashed, and eaten alive, a blotched spatter of corpses like a drop of blood fallen from heaven. Truly, God must have been wounded, too. The groaning mass of attackers stumbled on in pursuit of their prey, of the imminent carnage to gorge themselves upon. A twitch, a flicker of life, or something like it, came into the broken fingers of one man. His eyes were clear but dull, lacking that glimmer of vitality, that depth and sheen, replaced by a murkiness like swamp water, thick and shallow. His chest didn't heave for breath, even as he rolled slowly to his side and clumsily pushed himself up to sit. Every memory he'd had in life was gone, leaving only the vague idea that he had actually been alive at all. He knew he'd known a woman, that she was important somehow, and that he'd died for her. He'd died...

His brow furrowed for a long moment in a struggling sort of confusion, trying to grasp the memories that were slipping quickly away from him, managing to keep hold only of her face; a pristine, angelic, glowing kind of portrait. It used to make him weak in the knees. He looked around himself at the bloody aftermath, hobbling to his feet and swaying, losing balance as he went colliding against the asphalt again; a snap, and his arm was broken. A soft moan shuddered from his throat, blinking dully as he sat up once more. Try again, would have been his conscious thought if he remembered any words to think in. Now, he only imagined himself getting back up, and he followed the example of his mind, his instincts reaching out to take his subconscious hand and guide him back to his feet. He swayed again, tottered, and caught himself in a large step, a vague sense of accomplishment overtaking him as he swung his other leg forward, stepping stiffly one foot after the other, walking away from the pack of undead that plundered their way through the streets, progressing ever-committedly toward the heart of the city. He had no concept of them or of himself, the kind that had wounded him less than the others, enough to cast off mortality, but too little to rob away his soul.

A singular urge, coupled with the memory of the woman, was the only thing that drove him on, a hunger in the pit of his stomach and the unpumping caverns of his heart. He had to find her or all was lost, all the urgency of the world around him forgotten save for that goal, that last obligation he'd had in life. And the need within him, the taste of his own thickening blood, brought another state of dedication, another fumbling, vague-minded conclusion that he must find food. He lurched with every step, any feeling he'd had in the broken arm gone, letting it flail limply at his side from the impact of his steps, the bone sliding sickly in and out of his flesh, a peeking flash of white with the stain of red and dark brown marrow readily drying in the air. He felt no pain, only a dull sense that his arm wouldn't work, wouldn't respond to the impulses still sparking in his brain. He weaved almost drunkenly between bodies that lay themselves open to be baked by the sun, dogs and birds jolting to rob them of sweetbreads and blood. A grand feast presented itself to the unharmed scallion of nature, and the bugs would join in soon. Flies would come to mate above the rank carrion, and spread their tiny, wriggling seeds of life within the ironic hosts, their first tasting sensations to be slaked at the cost of the dead. The man knew nothing of this, however, came to no thought or care as to what befell the corpses he'd known and now knew not.

He walked for miles silently, no howling or moaning as his festering brothers and sisters had, only the drag-thump-drag-thump of his feet against the ground and the quiet twitter of birds. He kept her face, the angel's, in his mind, his lifeless eyes staring blankly ahead, going toward some unknown destination as he kept hold of instinct's hand, letting it lead him where habit would go. He trusted his instincts completely, more than a lover, than a child did its father. It was his sole companion now, a silent, shapeless thing that was, as far as he knew, the closest thing to God. But whether he knew or not made no difference, he would not search the deteriorating wrinkles of his mind. Must find her, must eat..must find her, the simplistic, juvenile thoughts turned to images in his dying mind. Then, a sound, a shuffling of feet made him stop and blearily focus toward something at his side. It was small and moving in a peculiar way, whimpering and pulling its clothes. A little girl in miniature jeans and a flowery t-shirt paced circles around her dead mother, her feet hissing through the grass as old tears were beginning to dry on streaked cushions beneath her eyes. She looked up and gasped, a painful expression of horror, and before he knew it he was on her, tearing her, and listening to her scream. His first meal of warm, tangy meat, the blood giving it salt, a metallic boquette in his nostrils, only seemed to deepen the pain in his gut, the relief lasting mere seconds as he tore the small body and ate what he found. He was diligent yet clumsy as he hollowed her out, his stomach too full to take more, the task of it bringing on the chill of nightfall.

He could barely feel it, barely sense the prick of night when the warmth of day surrendered, his skin rising in bumps that perplexed him, lifting the one up he could still control to inspect the involuntary reaction. All night he sat and almost slept near the bodies of woman and child, no regret to pain him, nor guilt to drive him as it might have when he was alive. She was not a girl in his listless eyes, measuring her worth more like something of a rabbit, meant to be slaughtered, meant to be eaten, meant to be enjoyed. And how the rabbit had screamed...

Day again, and his stiff muscles slowly stretched as he hobbled back to his feet under the warmth of the sun. His glassy eyes rolled up in their drooping lids, tilting his head back as his mouth fell open, gaping at the sky as he shuffled down the street with that drag-thump walk, his head lolling from side to side inebriatedly. He wasn't sure where he was going, or why any of the homes he passed looked familiar, a small, empty neighborhood strewn with the decorations of decay. Must find her...must find her, again and again he thought of her face, of those black, shimmering eyes, and rich auburn mixed with brunette that formed a mane of locks that poured over her shoulders in tumultous waves, her skin pale and fair, as it should be, as it always was since the day he met her.

He pressed on, stumbling, the addled child who could not entirely control his limbs, tottering against the grip of gravity until he became garishly marred by the street. Black, oozing blood stained his dead, ashen skin, riddled with deep purple wounds that spread like clouds in the sunset sky, plumes of erupting color. That hunger came back into the pit of his stomach, commanding him to eat, to find some form of life to feed upon. The neighborhood street overflowed with the dead, as though they'd leaked up from the pores of the very earth like the sweat of decay, beads of crippled bodies. None of his own were here, all gone, all swarming to the buzzing light of the city, a thousand flies to the beauty of neon light.

It was all too familiar, too close in the lost memory of his clean slated brain, the remnants peeking through the whitewash paint that reminded him he was dead, and that he'd been alive. He knew it in the way an animal knows what it is, knows its own kind and picks out the differences between companions and prey. No word was assigned, no real image of himself in his mind, only that instinctual awareness that still kept him human. He caught movement in the corner of his yellowing eye, soles scraping against the loose, sun-melted asphalt as he made a turn. Something alive fled back into its home, slammed the door shut on him, and left him standing alone and awkward. He might not find another living being for miles, and with that knowledge he willed his legs to move, the sick crackle of a broken ankle grinding on torn tendon, forcing his foot to give out. He faltered and fell, cushioned by blood-stained grass, and righted himself again, groaning softly as he reached for the door and scraped gray, grimey fingers against the grain of wood. The barricade foiled his pawing attempts at entry, his mouth drawn in a tight, frustrated frown as he tried to work loose this puzzle of a thing that kept him from his food.

His hand hit smooth metal, cold despite the glare of the sun, and he looked upon the shimmering thing with perplexion. He touched it again and blinked as it moved, and a crack of paint flecked off of his mind as he remembered the trick to the door. Broken fingers curled mishapenly, gripping the barricade knob, and with an old, weathered creak it gave way to the motion of his wrist. Pride flooded him from learning this new, yet familiar thing, a sensation made short as the door was flung wide from within. A flurry of movement, and he had no time to think, to react, or to move. Down a cold, metal barrel were two flickering eyes, glittering onyx set in alabaster stone surrounded by waves of darkness. A crack of the rusty trigger scraped into his ears, and the reverberating sound of a jet's aftershock plummeted into his head, sending an echo through the chasms of his mind.

His eyes went wide as he recognized the face that stared shakily back into his bleary, dead orbs, and reached with distorted fingers to touch the pale skin, but shuddered instead, his legs crumpling uselessly beneath him. He began to utter the name that came screaming louder than the gun in his ears, and echoed far more powerfully, betrayed by his failing voice that uttered only a moan. A haze of white flooded his eyes, just realizing he was in the grass again, and as the feeling in his body was all but gone, he managed a clumsy smile.

There in the doorway, his angel stood, the last person left in what had become his small world. Her hands quivered as she lowered the gun, the dull thunk of metal, like the sound he had made, crashing into the grass as she stared with horror upon the mangled man that had once been a husband, and she his wife. The smiling undead gazed back with quiet, happy eyes.

Found her...found her...


Elijah by Ashton J. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.