Return of the Undead

Submitted into Contest #60 in response to: Write a post-apocalyptic story that features zombies.... view prompt

2 comments

Fantasy

"Run! Run for your lives," screamed Fred, an officer in a small African Village in Rwanda as a nuclear bomb was dropped from an invading army. Fred, who was familiar with nuclear weapons though never seeing or using them because of how poor his village was, knew the dangers that were coming. So far, in the last six months, they had seen their crops devoured by locusts, a massive earthquake wiping out some nearby villages, and a huge outbreak of Ebola. If Fred had any guesses, he would be saying that the apocalypse was upon them. Unfortunately, most of the villagers thought he was crazy. Yet, Fred was able to convince a small group of villagers to follow him into hiding in the jungle near where they were staying. Some of the young kids were scared and it didn't take much for them to start crying or screaming out of fear.

"What are we going to do? We don't have enough food to last more than a couple of days," James said. He was always looking at the practical side of things to try helping with supplies. James knew that food was scarce and it was a matter of time before the group turned on each other.

Suddenly, there was a loud CRASH and bang on the immediate right and a flash of light appeared across the sky. A thunderstorm was starting. That bolt of lightning hit a cemetery nearby. The lightning bolt combined with fresh radiation caused the ground to open up and the corpses that were there began to crawl out.

When Fred and James saw this, they both knew they had to alert everybody in their group and the nearby village.

"John, you take our group near Mount Shishito and wait for me. I will try to warn the village of everything that is happening," Fred said urgently.

"Agreed. Let's move out," replied John.

John went to the group and urgently exclaimed, "We need to move out towards Moun Shishito now. Our lives may depend on it! They are coming!"

"Who is coming," asked Natalie.

"The dead are coming back. We don't have much time. We need to go now," John said.

The group of people had been prepared to move out at a moment's notice without question incase something else happened.

Meanwhile, Fred was riding his horse, much like Paul Revere did in that famous poem, shouting about how the zombies were coming.

"You have gone crazy, Fred. Once someone dies, the body can't do anything else," one old man scoffed. Suddenly, the army of zombies was starting to make their way through the village. Mostly everyone who thought that Fred was crazy was being bitten by a zombie and transformed into one of them.

"I've got to get to Mount Shishito quickly," Fred muttered to himself as he witnessed more zombies coming out of the huts. On his trusty steed, Fred decided to take the shortcut he knew to the Mountain and was hoping he would get there in time.

Meanwhile, John was leading the group as quickly as he could. He was thankful to have a couple pet gorillas in the group to help carry supplies to the mountain. Suddenly, there was a scream behind them. As John glanced back, he saw a couple of zombies had caught up to the group. John, wanting to protect everyone, started to urge everyone to run. Unfortunately, more zombies had appeared in front of the group. The kids were frightened beyond words and recognition. The adults were trembling. John looked to the left and recognized two zombies as people who were in the group just minutes before.

"Jane, George, I'm so sorry that this happened to you," John said as a tear fell from his eye. They were recently married and now they were zombies together.

Most of the adults were trying to comfort and protect the kids. Unfortunately, they didn't have any weapons or torches because they assumed they were going to arrive before nightfall at Mount Shishito. The zombies approached the crowd and began to bite them one at a time, until John was the only one left. He managed to escape by sneaking to a tree, climbing it and swinging Tarzan style to get away. He felt horrible because he was responsible for the group and now he was the only one left.

A short time later, Fred saw John arriving at the designated meeting spot.

"John, what happened? Where is everyone," Fred asked.

"We were ambushed by the zombies. They had us surrounded and caught us one by one. I got away by climbing a tree and swinging by a vine to get away. What happened at the village?"

"No one believed me. They didn't think they were in any danger and decided to stay put. It was a narrow escape, but I made it," Fred replied.

"So, what do we do now? We are the only ones left here that could warn people."

"That's true. And theres a possibility that there are zombies everywhere now. I just don't know what to do now," moaned Fred.

"We can't just give up," John said. "I don't know of any antidotes for this kind of problem, but we have to keep moving."

"I suppose you are right, John. I don't know what else to do. We tried to protect everyone and warn them that something was happening. Maybe we should just give up, I mean we don't know of any other people around here do we?"

"No, we don't know of any other people around here. We are not giving up that easily. After all, it hasn't been easy for all of us through this apocalypse happening, but we managed to keep each other and everyone else safe."

"You're right, now let's build a fire, get some food and look at the book we do have," Fred said.

John agreed. In a short time, they had a roaring fire going, they ate the vegetables they had, and they dug out the book and started researching what to do about zombies.

"Eureka! That's all we need now. I have a solution for us," Fred exclaimed. According to this book, we need either a heavy rainfall or a horrible disease to wipe out these zombies. The bad part is that we are in a drought."

"And we are all healthy. None of us had any disease," chimed in John. "What are we going to do now? We can't stay put and hope for them to turn us into one of them."

"I agree. I guess we have to keep moving until one of those things happens to the zombies," replied Fred.

And from that night on, Fred and John kept on moving around, making it harder for the zombies to find them. The last anyone heard was that they are still moving around now, as zombies because they died in the process of trying to protect themselves.

September 25, 2020 03:17

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2 comments

Lina Oz
02:25 Oct 02, 2020

Critique Circle This story is well-written and I love the characters of Fred and John. That ending sentence is mysterious, and as a reader, I do find myself considering what might have happened to them. I think you did a great job in answering this prompt creatively. I do think this story could have been elongated. I think you could also sink into description much more. I wasn’t able to formulate an image of the zombies; they’re simply briefly mentioned as coming out of the ground and people are terrified. But what do they look like? Ho...

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22:47 Oct 02, 2020

Thanks. It helps get some perspective to help improve my own writing

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