The Waking Dead

And then one day, I woke up.

That's how it felt. Mid-sentence, almost, the latter half of a sentence that had taken me – how long? Five years, ten maybe? I don't know. I woke up to this wasteland, a place where the clocks had stopped, the lights were dead, the cities blown-out carcasses. Nobody there to keep track, not that I know if anyone could. World's gone crazy.

I musta killed people. I mean, I must have. If nothing else, I must've turned them. Made them... like us. You know? I even woke up with meat in my stomach. Heh. Brains, maybe. You know, like in the old movies? But I don't know what they eat. What I... ate. I don't think they're picky. They don't seem to be. They just eat.

That's why, I guess, there aren't a lot of them. Most people never have time to get infected. Most people just die, ripped apart by the damn things. Like my friends were. Like I nearly was. But I, well, I was a coward. They shoulda put a bullet in by brain, but I never told them about that bite in my arm. It's healed, now – there's barely even a scar. I must have been under for a very long time. Last thing I remember, my head was swimming with a fever, and now- boom! Here I am. Mid-sentence. Somewhere. The city's called Fullerton, but the state, I've no idea. Indiana, maybe, judging by the plates on most of the cars. No idea how I got here – I must have migrated, with the rest, in search of more prey.

They're different, nowadays. No more mass migrations. No more mass anything. I suppose they must have run out of fresh meat, because the ones that's left, well... they're eating each other. You might have noticed. I'm surprised there are even any left.

But then there's me. I didn't get eaten. I got infected, just a bite, just a tiny little scratch – and then I died, and then I got better.

Nobody thought this was something you got better from. And what do I know? Maybe I'm the only one. But I'm alive.

I'll stay alive. Those idiot things don't seem to know about canned food, and the survivalists left behind plenty. Crazy as it seems, they ran out of bullets 'fore they ran out of beans. Poor suckers must have been swarmed from all sides by those things – by me. By us.

Well, that's how I got all this stuff. I found the shotgun, though it doesn't have no shells, and the shovel, and the chair, and the handcuffs. Thank God for the handcuffs. I don't know how I woulda gotten you in here without them. Risky enough, using myself as bait, and well... I don't want to have to kill you.

Please, fucking fuck you please, say something.

No?

I can't be the only one. You're in there, I know you are.

So wake.

The fuck.

Up.