Fleshers

Heidi Benet was getting ready for the first shift of her new night-clerk position at a local theatre the day that it happened. She was nervous but excited. Heidi was only 19 and this was her first real job. She was also an English major at the local university. She was known to be a little uptight and “stuck-up”, but she was also a little kind. She expected a lot from herself and wanted to make her mark in the world one day.

As she looked in the mirror at herself, she practiced her “professional” face whilst applying the finishing touches to her makeup. She was the kind of person who did not enjoy the quiet. Stillness had always been eerie to her, as if the silence meant that something evil was near. Therefore, she would always turn her television on, even when she was not in the room. It gave her comfort. That day, as Heidi puckered her lips and applied her rose-red lipstick, she heard an emergency services alarm sound loudly from the TV. She paused for a second, but decided that it was probably just a test – and she had more important things to worry about, because at that moment she noticed a huge pimple forming on the outer-edge of her small nose. 

“OH MY—AAARGH!” exclaimed Heidi, feeling like her world was literally crumbling beneath her. Heidi had always been a very beautiful girl but was extremely self-conscious. This was definitely not ideal for her, especially on this day. For about ten seconds, she even contemplated quitting the job that she had not actually started working at yet. Deciding that quitting was not the answer, she gathered the rest of her things and slid on her new heels – she was off to the pharmacy to deal with the catastrophe developing on her face.

Upon exiting the front lobby of her building and turning towards the street, she first noticed the awkward silence that was unlike normal. Then, she noticed a man standing near the entrance of the apartment building facing hers. He looked to be in pain almost, but Heidi couldn’t make out if he was in distress – and she really needed to hurry in able to make it to the pharmacy in time. So, she turned away and stepped briskly towards her car. She came to a stop at the rear-end of her electric-blue coupe and popped the trunk to put her things away. Suddenly, she heard a scraping noise behind her. At first, she didn’t think much of it; then a low, deep growl penetrated the air behind her and Heidi whipped her head around, startled. What she turned to come face-to-face with was nothing that she could have anticipated would add to her already stressful day.

Heidi, with her back to the trunk of her car, stared in shock as some kind of thing stared back. It was the man from across the street that she thought looked sick; however, now that Heidi saw the man up-close, she knew that this was not any kind of regular sickness. He had blood dripping from his ears and nose. His eyes were a glassy blue and he had a twitch, making his movements seem amped. He had a peculiar smell, unlike anything she had ever smelled before; it was like freshly rotted meat, with a hint of sweetness.

Something much more sinister was going on, and Heidi’s mind could not comprehend it. She did not breathe for what felt like hours. In reality, it was only about three seconds because, as she stood there in shock, the thing lunged towards her with haste. Heidi barely had the time, or breath, to scream as the growling man grabbed her and fell on top of her. She tried to catch herself, but her small, feminine body was no match for the raging man who seemed to be fixated on her, like a predator to its prey.

They fell into her trunk, with Heidi under the man as she screamed as loud as her lungs would allow. The piercing screams did not phase the man at all; in fact, the screaming added to his rage as he began tearing the flesh and muscle tissue from the same forearm she was using to push him off. She stopped screaming, in complete shock, for a moment and watched her pale, tender flesh be pulled from her bone. He devoured the bloody meat of the young woman as her warm blood ran down what was left of her arm and splashed onto her face. She snapped back to reality and pulled her arm away but again, was nowhere near the strength of the maniacal thing. 

Heidi screamed in terror as the man again came towards her with his snapping mouth, sinking his teeth into her chest and ripping away the top half of her breast. Sobbing, and barely able to catch her breath, she kept pushing the man away but it did not stop him. He started to gnaw on her face, like a horse grazing. He chewed on her lips, and then chewed her nose off of her face. She did not stop fighting for her life until he finally shredded through her neck, severed her jugular, and she finally bled out into the trunk of her vehicle. 

The minutes crept by as Heidi’s once beautiful body laid bent into the rear-end of her tiny coupe, bloody and mangled with most of her face ripped from her skull. If this were a comedic narrative, one might suggest that “at least the zit is gone”. However, there was nothing amusing about the situation at all. 

Close to an hour after she laid lifeless and sticky with blood, Heidi’s fingers and toes started with a light twitch and gradually became more severe. Blood started to slowly trickle out of her ears. Her nose was gone, but there were drops of new blood along with the dried. Her fleshless jawbone started moving, making her teeth clack in haste. All of a sudden, her eyes popped wide-open and they were the same crystal blue as the man who had attacked her. She clumsily pulled herself up and out of the trunk, her body moving as though she was a puppet of some sort. She stood there, motionless. After a minute or two, her instincts must have developed fully because she unexpectedly, and rapidly, turned to face the apartment building where she resided. She sensed something intriguing, and without hesitation Heidi flung herself towards the front lobby door while growling deeply.

Using all of her strength, she busted through the glass door. She was now fully infected, ready to grind the nearest uninfected thing with her pearly whites; and she did. Her first meal was her elderly building manager, a nice lady who Heidi had adored before that day. Once she tasted the warm, juicy intestines of the lady, Heidi started ripping her apart very aggressively until all of her organs had been tasted and thoroughly enjoyed. She feasted until her pearls were blood-stained with flesh stuck between them, and she no longer cared about how she looked. She only cared about her hunger, and after turning this old woman inside out, she was still starving for more.

Heidi would never know due to her untimely death, but what she had experienced was quite literally the end of the world as it was known. The thing that treated her body as if it were a Sunday meal and turned her into a savage would come to be known as a “Flesher”. A Flesher is a human who has contracted the illness from another infected human and hungers for living, breathing beings. Heidi was only one of the first – out of billions – who would not survive the onslaught of the infected, who could smell the iron in warm blood and saltiness of nervous perspiration from miles away. 

The first day was, of course, the roughest and took out much of the uninfected population. Unfortunately, so many became infected at once that it was hard to escape them once they sniffed out their dinner. They quickly took over entire cities. They would often travel in waves, taking over territories by their sheer strength and aggressiveness until there were no more meals to be found; then, they would move on to find more non-Fleshers and other warm bodies to shred through.