PLAYTHING

This piece of work was originally featured on my Live Journal. I decided to add it here because I received several requests to. It is, in fact, my work.

Day 0

It was one of those things that, at first, I was in complete denial about.

I mean, come on; a freak infectious outbreak that turns the overwhelming majority of the population into zombie-like beings? Only a handful of survivors make it and are forced to gun their way through waves of what might as well be corpses – or at least will be when we get done with them – in order to be rescued?

Seriously, Zoey- it sounds like the plot of some cheesy B-rated horror flick, or some point-and-click computer game. Grow up.

I guess, after a few hours, I just kinda stopped trying to convince myself that I was going to wake up.

“Zoey, you doin' alright?”

I turned my head and looked at Louis, shaking off an ominous feeling I had in the pit of my stomach. “I'm fine. Let's keep going.”

We'd managed to climb to the second floor of a decrepit office building, hoping we could use the piping on the floor above to get to the hospital next to it. None of the doors on the ground level had been open, and most of them were made of steel so it wasn't like we could just shoot our way through them. We could try, but we all know that we'd attract a horde that way. Not the best of ideas, really.

I guess that going through the office building hadn't been much better of an idea.

As we rounded a corner, I got puked on by one of those disgusting, bulbous Boomers. Francis easily put a spray of shotgun bullets through him, but I had already been hit. Damn it, I hated those things. Puke is pretty gross as a general assessment, but puke that attracts a massive amount of zombies sucks way worse. The four of us managed to wedge ourselves against a partition between rooms, and we emptied more than a few clips of handgun ammo in the process of ridding the room of the brainless bastards. The after effect of the vomit only lasts a few minutes, thankfully, but it's still nasty. The dead bodies that lay in heaps before us didn't really make me feel any better.

We moved around another corner, and fate decided to punch us all in the face.

You always hear a tank before it approaches. Always. The fuckers are called 'tanks' for a reason – they are nearly as big, just as loud, easily as mean, and don't really have too much going on upstairs as far as intellect is concerned. They chase you, and they smack the shit out of you. If you manage to run fast enough that they can't catch you, they throw giant slabs of concrete at you. I'm not really sure what's worse: a ham-sized fist to the face or a chunk of asphalt to the head.

The tanks' hulking arms came into view as it charged down a hallway toward us. Francis and Bill moved one way, Louis and I dodged another. Most likely pissed off that we wouldn't stay in one place for it, the tank let out a low roar and peeled off toward Francis and Bill. I took out my handgun and emptied the clip in the back of the tanks' hulking body. It didn't serve much good, as a tank is pretty much solid muscle, not to mention as hard as rock, but every little bit counts.

Louis veered off one way, dodging a stray office chair the tank had flung backwards in its attempt to reach Bill. I turned the other way, hoping to cut the tank off and introduce him to the business end of my shotgun-

But, like I said, fate seemed to have it out for me.

I knew it was a smoker who had gotten a hold of me even before I tripped on the nasty, long tongue it was trying to wrap around me. His scaly tongue had gripped both my legs all the way up to my knees, and the bastard was constricting the muscle as tight as he could while he pulled me closer. I fell face first, the flipped over on my back as quickly as I could.

Crying out, I reached out toward the others, hoping someone had watched me fall.

No such luck- everyone's back was turned against me as they fired bullet after bullet into the raging beast that was the tank.

I turned around, desperate to get free, and aimed my handgun toward the smoker. I shot the rest of my clip at the bastard, and managed to blow a hand off- my aim was off and unless I killed him, he wouldn't let go. I struggled to reload, but the smoker jerked me toward him and I found myself falling dangerously close to the edge of the building. There was no window, and I noticed in my near-panicked state that I was being shredded from being dragged through the shards of glass that littered the floor.

I plugged my last clip into my gun and unloaded.

Too bad the smoker had watched me. He jerked his head at the last possible second, but I had already pulled the trigger. The bullet I fired missed his head, but I managed to blow the bastard's arm off.

Yeah. He didn't like that too much.

His head gave a great jerk as his whole body convulsed – be it in pain or shock I didn't really care – and, with his remaining arm, groped dumbly at the stump at his shoulder.

I think I preferred being drug across the glass, honestly, because the next breath I took was while airborne. The spastic muscle movement from the smoker had proven to be just enough force to launch my body right out of the window. His tongue pulled back and I felt the pressure around my legs cease as I began my inevitable descent toward the ground.

Well, I admitted to myself, falling off a building was one way I hadn't really thought of going, considering it had been masses of zombies I'd been pumping full of lead all day. Funny how that goes; the house is burning down and you drown in the bathtub.