We live in an area where not many people go. There are around five houses next to ours and we live down a long, narrow, gravel road. It may sound weird, but the view is breathtaking, the view of the water and sunset everyday is something I will never get tired of.  The house is huge and it has a ton of windows, but I feel at home here…unless I am alone. It was a normal Saturday night when I was hanging out with my family when my dad kept mentioning that there was car that had slowly drove down our gravel path but then turned around and left. We did not think much of it since we have a couple of neighbors and maybe the person driving just could not find the right house. It wasn’t until another car came down a couple hours later when we started getting a little spooked out. This wasn’t normal.

Around midnight a third car came driving down the path when they suddenly stopped at the house next to ours that no one lives in. The car then slowly started to drive closer to our house…they turned off their headlights and just sat at the end of our driveway. My dad and boyfriend quickly hopped in one of our cars and drove down to the car. My mom and I could hear them and my dad kept saying, “who are you?” “what are you doing here?” My heart was beating out of my chest, I was not going to sleep. At the time we had four little kids over, my little brother and my boyfriend’s three cousins. The four of them started to get freaked out because they wanted to know what was happening, but we couldn’t tell them so we just made up an excuse. My little brother is just too smart that he figures out everything, so he started to tell the other kids what was happening. This didn’t help the situation.

My dad and boyfriend came back and told us that the woman in the car wouldn’t show her face. She was crying and said she was lost. This, to us, sounded like a fake story and someone was really trying to rob our house. I wasn’t going to let that happen. Once she left, I walked outside to make sure that no one had gotten dropped off in the woods by our neighbors house. I didn’t see anyone, but as I was out there, I looked in the distance and saw a car just sitting at a house a couple houses down from ours. We immediately thought that they were robbing that house.

My parents decided to get in the car to see what was happening down there. I waited and kept the doors locked to make sure we were all safe. When my parents came back the news they had for us was something unexpected…

This little shack, where no one except for one guy lives, was having a MASSIVE party. How would we have known?! The guy is never there and no one really has parties like that down where we live. So, all three of those cars that kept creeping down our gravel road were just lost and couldn’t find the party house. That’s when I realized that I needed to stop thinking the worst and making the scariest assumptions possible in the middle of the night. I have never been so relieved to hear something like that in my life…I was able to go to sleep peacefully that night knowing someone wasn’t trying to rob us.

Mysterious things happen in the woods. It's the middle of the night, random cars creeping up, and you're trying to save/protect yourself and your home…#ds106 #theend106 pic.twitter.com/eakkBM63k2

— Alyssa Murrell (@AlyssaMurrell1) January 29, 2018

#WritingAssignments

Rapa Nui is the island I call home. Although today it is desolate, Grandfather tells us stories of when our island was lush and full of trees and crops to feed the thousands of inhabitants. When I drift off some days, I imagine myself running through the forest and rolling along the log pathways and standing strong next to the proud Moai, looking over our flourishing island. However, going outside my family’s hideaway is forbidden, the trees are gone and the once lumbering stone statues are sinking into the ground with nothing but shame to oversee.

Inspired by my grandfather’s stories of this beautiful island, I escaped one night to experience its beauty for myself. When I stepped outside, the land was barren. I could see nobody and nothing nearby, so I thought it would be safe to venture out further. Feeling my feet against the strong, rocky ground made me feel a connection with my ancestors who worked so hard over this land. Drawn to the bright moon in the distant, reflecting off the vast Pacific ocean, I slowly moved toward it before being snatched from my trance.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING OUTSIDE??” yells my mother as she dragged me faster than any speed I have ever experienced. “THEY’RE GOING TO EAT YOU!!”

“Who is going to eat me, Mama?” I inquire, but there is no response as my mother is focused on getting us back to the hideaway. I see shadows of beasts beginning to chase us and shout, “PREY! PREY! PREY!”, repeatedly, but I could not depict what the creatures were.

That night was the first and only time I had heard my parents talk about the tree that ended it all. After decades of using trees for moving the Moai and making rope and other daily Rapa Nui tasks, there was one tree left standing. The chiefs of the island told the inhabitants that the Gods would replenish the trees and save the people from all their troubles if they built the Moai. Much debate had stirred amongst the island about the final tree. Should they chop it down and use it for its resources? Or let it live and have that tree spread its seeds to grow a new forest?

The tree was cut, and after not much longer there was chaos on the island. There were no more crops to be grown and no more trees to use, and the island was devastated. Islanders began to break all law and eat the others to save themselves from starvation. Our people became animals, with no human instincts. This is why my family lives in the hideaway.

We have lived on small rations of food and deep soils that still hold some nutrients, but we are running low. I know we need to find a new food source, but it is dangerous outside and my family is afraid.

Tonight I will leave our home. I will be more careful than when I was a child and I will go to the ocean. From there I will find a new island and make a safe home for my family.

As I step out of the hideaway quietly, the coast is clear and the ocean is just as beautiful as I remembered, and the moon is just as bright as I remembered and the ground feels just as rugged and stable as I remembered.

“PREY! PREY!” I hear as I try to run, but I feel a sharp claw around my foot and I fall. This beast is not a human, but it is too late for me to warn my family as I see them appear out of the hideaway as I drift out of consciousness.

Every clang on the vault door wracked her conscience. She leaned against the door observing the pale walls of the vault, recalling the last four days of pleading to the wardens through tears and snot and spit, “Open the door you damn cowards, he’s going to die!”

But it was forbidden.

With a start, she realized the clanging had stopped, and began to panic. Springing up, her balled fists rang out against the door… he clanged in response, the same exact pattern he had all those four days. She experienced the brief relief of his response, only to be stabbed by guilt again. The lump in her throat grew with her loneliness- “I should be with him. I’m the coward,” she thought. So many generations had passed in the vault that the count was forgotten, but never forgotten was the myth of the world before radiation. He had faith that enough time had passed for the green in the world to return. When she refused to go, she never expected him to leave without her – to leave her all alone in this pale, lifeless box. Was he calling her, or was he wrong about everything? Did the vault keep her safe, or imprisoned? Her head swimming, she slid to the floor and warm tears stained her cheeks long before sleep grasped her.

Her dreams echoed with the odd rhythms of bone on metal, always the same… Always the same?

She jolted awake into the new morning. Dashing to the library, she scattered books whose grey pages blended with the floor. At last, her search yielded: Morse Alphabet. *clang* C *clang* O *clang* M *clang* E. “Come,” she gasped.

“What are you doing!” roared the head warden, bursting into the room. Grabbing the desk clock, and turning in a swift motion, she struck the warden, who crumpled. A quick frisk of the person produced the vault key. As she ran, she heard the cries of other residents, dull in her ears. Key inserted, the door creaked and moaned open while air rushed between the small opening. Straining, she tore away from grabbing hands and burst through the light-filled opening.

Collapsing momentarily, she first noticed her heavy breathing. Closing her mouth and inhaling through her nose, she caught the heavy aroma of dense vegetation. She was surrounded by it. Smells, and color too – so much color between the green ground and blue of the sky, dotted with white cotton shapes. Shades of violets, reds, and yellows dotted the valley before her, and the orange morning sun streaked scattered shadows across the landscape and made the dew sprinkled valley shimmer through the crisp air. Her breast heaved rapidly with emotion in lieu of the sight before her – birdsong rang out, and she joined them in her weeping…

*bang*

Jarred, she turned abruptly at the noise. The vault door had closed.

Her eyes shifted, and next to it there he was, only feet away. He gazed at her sorrowfully from where he had lingered all those days, his knuckles raw to the bone, the dew clinging under his pale eyes, and fungi already sprouting around his fresh corpse.

Tell It/Tweet It

After four days of his knocking, the fifth day she escaped the vault and joined him. He gazed at her sorrowfully from where he had lingered, his knuckles raw to the bone, the dew clinging under his pale eyes, and fungi already sprouting around his fresh corpse.#ds106 #theend106 pic.twitter.com/18m4bdWuBc

— Christopher Ringham (@Chris_tastrophe) January 28, 2018

Once upon a time, there was only Mother Earth and the Father Sun in existence. The Earth felt that she was without form due to being so far from her love for so long. Mother Earth grew very lonely and lost in time. She felt as if something was missing for so long and so she decided to do something about it. After 2,000 years of Mother Earth searching for that missing piece to give her existence purpose, she decided to go on a journey to find the perfect man to serve as the father of her children. Once she found an individual pure of heart, she took his life and buried him deep beneath the Earth’s crust in order to absorb the pureness of his soul and life force for the creation of her children.

Mother Earth gave birth to four children, born for each season of the year. The first born child was born during the spring and the second was born during autumn. The two younger children were born in the summer and then the winter. Each child was born with a special ability to manipulate one of natures elements thanks to the power of their mother flowing within their veins. The children grew to be more powerful the older they became. They were chosen to watch over the humans of earth in four quadrants and to maintain a balance of peace for the people. The Four Seasons loved their people more than anything. However, what they did not expect is for the people of earth to become consumed with their differences from each other, rather than what they had in common. These differences first began as thoughts, eventually grew to arguments, and finally war was declared between the four quadrants!

The Four Seasons had never experienced the feeling of hate. They knew of only love until the humans introduced it to them. Now the four beings that were made to exemplify love, were now consumed with the acts of war. Many people died during this war that seemed to have no end.

The Sun grew extremely impatient with the malicious acts of both the humans and the Four Seasons. He warned Mother Earth that the war was taking a major toll on her body and would eventually result in her demise. He foresaw that this was the beginning to The End. Mother Earth tried to convince the Sun that she trusted her children to eventually overcome the deception of their differences in order to bring peace on Earth.

The war lasted for 7,000 years before The End happened. One last battle between the four quadrants of earth caused an explosion so massive that it ruptured the Earth’s Core. This explosion caused volcanoes to erupt, earthquakes that destroyed all of the man-made architecture, and tsunamis rose high enough to make mountains disappear completely. The Four Seasons attempted to come together to try to save their mother’s destruction, but it was too late.

The Sun had lost his one true love and became consumed with anger at the Four Seasons for allowing this to happen. “You must be punished!” roared The Sun. He grew 4 times his size almost instantaneously and continued to grow so massive that the Four Season’s powers were neutralized due to the extreme heat.

“BOOM!” The Sun exploded, causing everything to be filled with darkness.

“So you … corralled all of these zombies into this mall?”

“I prefer to call them biters, but yes I did.”

I stand with a teenager named Kelly inside of an abandoned mall. Abandoned may not be the best word for it, since it is filled with dozens of zombies, or biters as Kelly calls them. Most light comes in through skylights, most pre-built and some are simply holes in shop ceilings themselves. Overhead lights flicker on and off. Generators, Kelly told me when I had first asked. Powered by the few still-working solar panels.

“And you did this all single-handedly?” I ask.

Kelly breaks eye contact with me to look at the cage next to us. Zombies incessantly reach out toward us.

via GIPHY

“I had help, in the beginning. A whole team, really. We got here about a year after everything started, and almost the whole place was already ransacked, in a few places the structure was crumpled. I know it sounds dumb, but we decided to make it a safe space for biters. First it was just our loved ones, then we saw just how quick people are to kill all the others, so we started saving any biter we could.”

“How exactly did you do that? There’s are whole stores filled with them.”

“At first, I wasn’t allowed to help with the difficult things, like making blockades and routes for the biters to be brought in, and actually transferring them. But when we had a system going I convinced everyone to let me join.” She begins walking past the store fronts, glancing into each one as if to see if every zombie is accounted for. “All the stores don’t just have the front entrance. We set up back entrances to bring the biters in.”

“How do they not crowd up and go out the way they came in?”

“That was part of my job. I’d make a bunch of noise and draw the biters up to the front gate of their store, so that the new biter could enter and we’d be safe.”

Kelly turns around and walks backward, facing me. She claps her calloused hands together, causing a rise in the noise and activity made by the zombies. The metal gates curve outward in response to the weight.

I can’t help but wince. Gnashing teeth and dirty hands desperate for a taste of me. Some hands have what looks like fresh blood on them. “Have the gates ever… broken?”

“Not because of the biters, no.”

She doesn’t say any more.

We bypass a gate with no zombies behind it, only a surprisingly well-lit area of concrete that turns out of sight. It appears to lead to a whole other wing of the mall.

Ehimetalor Unuabona

Before I can ask about the closed area, Kelly moves on and another question comes to mind.

“Going back a bit, what about that huge sign I saw outside when you brought me in? I think it said ‘Zombies were people too’?”

“It says ‘Zombies ARE people too’,” Kelly says curtly.

“Right. And the term zombies is used instead of biters.”

She sighs. “That’s the most common term w-I’ve heard. I hate demoting them to such a derogatory term, but it’s easier to get my message across.”

I glance at Kelly, whose expression is hidden by the baseball cap she wears. “And what exactly is your message?”

Kelly stops her slow walking and turns to me. “You sure do ask a lot of questions. The biters are dangerous. They try to bite and scratch anyone, even loved ones, but they just aren’t in control of their body! Just because people get infected and turn into biters does not mean they die!” She seems to realize she had started yelling and takes a deep breath before continuing. “They don’t die, not fully.”

At this, she motions for me to follow as we walk down a few store fronts. Nearly every storefront with steel shutters has at least a dozen zombies pushing up against them. We stop outside of what once was a jewelry store. Inside are only two zombies. One is ambling in the darkness of the back of the store, seemingly unaware of our presence. The other has its fingers wiggling through the metal gate, its fat hands too big to fit through the bars. Its striking red eyes are the only sign that he had Changed (besides the fact that he is grinding his teeth and clawing at the shutters to get to us), so he must have been infected recently.

via GIPHY

After a minute of silence, I ask quietly “Who wa-who is he?”

“My dad. He and my brother were bit when we tried bringing in too many biters at once.”

She balls her hands into fists and lowers her head, so I don’t press further.

Then I feel something hit me from behind. I look down and see a blade slicing through my shirt, coated in my own hot blood. I can’t tell if I feel pinching, tearing pain or nothing at all. A big hand grabs my shoulder and forces me to fall sideways onto the tiled floor. Kelly only looks down at me, sleep-deprived eyes from under a baseball cap.

“I’m so sorry, I know you thought I was saving you out there, and I was, I am. But biters need to eat too.”

Original Image by Matt Artz

I’m an outdoor enthusiast, hiking, kayaking, hunting… you name it, and I probably enjoy doing it.  Naturally when I heard they were reopening “Gander Mountain” as “Gander Outdoor” I was excited!  Friends mentioned that the store would be having its grand opening on a Wednesday, so I planned to be there.  

I had a busy week with getting back into the swing of things at school and was honestly a little stressed out so I thought, “What better timing to go do a little retail therapy?” and I left to head to the grand opening. I was excited and already planning out the sections I was going to look since the following weekend I would be going snow tubing!  I needed a good pair of snow overalls and some warm, waterproof gloves.

I walked in and it was SO nice!  I was very surprised there weren’t more cars in the parking lot or more people in the store but I figured maybe Wednesday was a hard day for people working to make it to the store.  I began my search for some good snow apparel and found a few perfect items including gloves, socks, and a warm hat.  An employee walked up to me and asked how I was doing and then I continued on my search thinking, “Wow! The customer service is great too!”

I was just about to try on some awesome snow overalls when another employee walked up to me and asked if I worked there… I was confused and said no… and THEN came the embarrassment.  Keep in mind, I have been walking the store for about 45 minutes now shopping.  The employee informed me that the stores grand opening wasn’t actually until the following day and that I would have to leave….

My face turned red and hot and placed down my finds and walked out with my tail between my legs.  I guess through all the excitement I didn’t realize that I was the only customer and maybe the first door I tried was locked for a reason… LOL

But I did return the following day and get everything I needed for an awesome trip snow tubing!

Long story short… I may or may not have gotten overly excited about Gander Outdoor’s grand opening and prematurely visit the store… I was then kindly but forcefully asked to leave @theEnd106 #writingassignments2160 pic.twitter.com/qfmrOVbrS9

— umwequestrianista (@umwequestriani1) January 24, 2018

I bit my lip, avoiding letting the words in my mind come out.

“What’s wrong, babe?” Malcolm asked inquisitively.

I sighed, looking down at the ground.

“There’s been something I’ve been meaning to tell you. I haven’t told you because I’m scared you will be mad.” I whispered looking at the campfire.

source

“What is it?” Malcolm said grabbing my hand, gently stroking my thumb.

source

He then screamed a blood curdling scream that echoed off the surrounding trees.

I quickly looked up from the fire and saw that he was holding a hand.

“What happened? Who’s hand is that?” I asked him, frantically looking around our camp.

He stood there looking at me in horror. He raised a finger and pointed to my side. I looked down and realized that my hand had come off fully. Panic set into my body as I saw him backing away from me.

source

“I can explain, Malcolm. I promise. I didn’t think this would happen!” I said with tears clouding my vision.

“You’re one of them! You lied to me, you said you wouldn’t do the experiment. I trusted you!” Malcolm shouted.

“We needed the money! Where did you think that rent money came from? I had to give up part of my brain for us. I didn’t think it would turn me into this–this thing!” I screamed back at him.

“This thing? This thing?! You haven’t even accepted it. I can’t believe it.” Malcolm said, disgust creeping into his voice. “Accept it, you’re a zombie. You betrayed us, you’re a sellout.”

I sunk to the ground, weeping. Of course I had seen the signs coming. My thoughts would creep into strange places. Sometimes my vision would blur and I would have an almost animal instinct to run.

source

The only time I ever acted on my zombie instincts was when I killed an animal while Malcolm was getting supplies in town. A weird blackout came over me and next thing I knew my hands were in a rabbit, my mouth covered in its blood. I had eaten the rabbit’s brain without even thinking about it.

I thought that it would stop there, that my symptoms wouldn’t evolve. But here we are, my hand fully detached from my body.

Malcolm looked at me with anger filling his eyes. He turned and threw my hand into the forest. The soft thump of the hand landing was the only sound between us.

“What did you think would happen? I mean you read what they were going to do to you during the experiment,” Malcolm asked harshly.

source

“They said that they were only taking part of my brain. Then they would replace the rest with the AI bot thing. Everyone else who did the experiment had their entire brain removed and replaced. That’s why I thought it wouldn’t happen to me. I promise Malcolm, I couldn’t have foreseen this,” I said.

“I would have foreseen this. I would have predicted this. You should have told me,” Malcolm whispered with a tear rolling down his cheek.

“I know, but I didn’t want you to worry. I didn’t need you to go through more than you needed,” I explained.

“Well, you know what I have to do. I can’t let you hurt other people. I’m so sorry…” Malcolm said with more tears streaming down his face.

He raised his arm, it was shaking violently. Malcolm was holding a shotgun in his hand.

source

“I’m sorry,” I said to him as he moved towards me putting the cold gun to the back of my head.

I could feel him hesitating, avoiding doing the deed.

“Malcolm, you gotta do it.”

“I know.”

With one last final sigh, he squeezed the trigger and made the world zombie count one less.

source

He stroked my hand lovingly & it fell off with a sickening noise. I lied to him. I didn’t tell him part of my brain was gone and replaced with AI. I was turning into them, a zombie. He had to do it, but he didn’t want to. Shaking, he took the gun and killed me. #ds106 #theend106 pic.twitter.com/EZLzZVfc1P

— cypherpunk106 (@cypherpunk106) January 24, 2018

Featured Image Source