Quiet with nothing but wind to disturb this silence, a grunt quickly broke the serenity of the place.
Through a gaping hole, where sunlight went through, a buried form was slowly emerging from its slumber.
Under a mountain of wreckage, Lisha woke up gasping for breath.
Gazing at her outstretched arm toward the sky, her eyes fluttered open with a questionning look. She looked around her and only noticed an unfamiliar scenery: Atop the remains of a fallen ceiling and surrounded by books... this place was by no mean what she last remembered where to be.
It was neither on the school ground nor atop the bus surrounded by zombies and as she tried to think deeper about this situation something seemed to snap inside her head.
"Ugh, my head!" Were it not because her body was stuck she would have fallen on the ground and squirmed like a worm. Five seconds later she stopped feeling pain and gasped for breath.
'What the hell?!' Although hurt, the girl still remembered what she wanted. She should have died atop the rooftop of a bus or worst.
'How is that possible?' She remembered. She was bitten... because of those bastards!
"Aah! Damn, it hurts!" If she had dealt with this bunch of cowards earlier then none of this would have happened! She had people to reunite with! Her sister, her brother, her parents... everything had once crumbled after the catastrophe then she gained hope with her group and now it happened again.
"Fuck! Why?!" With her face distorted by the pain, she tried to wiggle out of her buried state. Three times, seven times, fifteen times... albeit a little she could see some improvements. But such frenzy would cause more harm than anything. She didn't even take into account the state of her body and just move recklessly among the wreckage.
Through the hole in the ceiling, a gale of wind came up and as a saving grace, helped her to clear her mind. Lisha could gaze at the sky outside the building after some times.
"..." A question popped inside her mind. An obvious one at that. But one she didn't want to tackle but her inability to get out quickly forced her to think deeper about her situation.
She was bitten and she knew it. The sensation of teeth plunging inside her flesh. More than anything, the pain was of no concern but along with the bite, she fell her dreams be ripped out of her body.
She didn't want to know why she was alive. She didn't want to know how she landed here. The pale color of her skin, her lack of sight from the left side, the blood under her nails, the taste inside her mouth... all of this... hammered a truth inside her head.
'Yeah, I was bitten.' Lisha wasn't stupid and although she didn't have a mirror to confirm her fear, she knew. While taking a deep breath, apathy took over her. If she was truly what she was then she could deduce what entailed in this space before her awakening.
Looking at the deformation on the ceiling, it was most probably due to an explosion so by someone. The fact that an explosion happened inside a library meant that it was intentional, so part of someone plan. Back then the only reason to use something so noisy and big of the scale was to get rid of a horde of walkers, probably 'her' horde.
'Ah! Even among the deads I still had cockroach-like ability' What a bad joke she thought.
But although she understood her buried state, she couldn't fathom how she came up to be still conscious after transforming.
Thinking about her situation she realised that she wasn't in a hopeless situation. Because of the panic, she didn't realise the entanglement of remains around her could be solved. Albeit it seemed like an impossible mikado, at first sight, she could notice a way of getting out.
Little by little she moved the fragments of wreckage around her and as time continued to flow so did her thoughts. As incredible as it could be, zombies was one of the lesser danger of this new world.
"At least I'm not out in the open else my head would have been munched off."
2031 was the year where people started to take notice of the changes. Fish started to rip out nets, birds became bigger and fiercer, forests became danger zones and so and so on. The trigger was during a corrida and although many signs could have prevented the catastrophe no one paid attention to it. Neither the excessive drolling nor the red eyes alerted them and so it happened.
300 people died because of that evolved taurus and it died not by the bullets of the police but by sheer exhaustion. The autopsy of the now 10-meters-taurus showed the presence of a new organ that would bring the end of all: the core.
What was a core? The result of millions of years of evolution hidden inside the genes of living organisms. Scientists hypothesized that this evolution started in reaction to the threat of eradication led by humans.
Starting from then, everything spiralled out of control to today situation. Among that mayhem, humans got the shorter end of the stick and with their core. Activating only after death, human's core turned them into undead. Only a minority of people got a different evolution and have their cove evolve while alive.
But for now, she was there.
'I guess, it can only be the explanation for how I am today.' her core, most likely didn't evolve in a normal way as it usually did with the rest of the world.
'From the last reports of scientists accessible this type of evolution had 1 out 60 billion chance to happen in the wild. From the standpoint of all living organism on Earth, this catastrophe was inevitable. But if this situation was then applied to humanity, it's safe to say that I'm the only girl on Earth who remained sane after turning undead.'
What did her core allow her to do? Lisha put this question on the back of her mind she couldn't do anything about it. Not if she remained stuck in this wreckage. As of now, she was close to free her other arm from the steel wreckage.
She now knew what she was but she still didn't know how she was. From what she could see her left arm was... okay. At least for it should be. After few more seconds, she felt a breeze and a sort of leeway that let her disengage her arm. After bracing herself a little more, she glanced at it and nearly puke. An open arm with a bone protruding out with torn flesh and blood welcomed her.
If her arm was like this what about the rest of her body? The mere thought frightened her. The only best point of her being half-buried was that it forced her to calm down and think about her situation, else she would have gone mad.
Then she touched her face with a quivering hand. If she were to discover that her face became a creepy pasta, she didn't think she could remain conscious. Little by little she went on.
Mouth, okay.
Cheeks... okay.
Nose...! Okay...
Ears... good!
Wow it was winning streak...
Eyes... eyes?
Frozen, she waved her hand but didn't see it... she missed her left eye.
"AAaaah! N-no...! Fuck!" Scared to death she scremed like an idiot. Only after 5 minutes, which is extraordinary enough given the circumstanes.
"I... I can manage." Not in the mood to further check, she tried her best to empty her mind like her brother taught her.
It was then that she realized that she didn't even try to know where she was too. It seemed like she was more depressed than she thought to not even think of this first. By looking at all the shelves around her she was sure to be inside a library but which one? In her search for any distinctive features, she continued to move the wreckage around her.
"Oh, a logo! Finally, I'll know where...? No way?" In a corner near a door hidden in her back, she recognized a logo know by anyone inside New Paris: The Great Library Pantheon.
"Yes! YES!" If there was one place that everyone dreamed to be in this period of apocalypse it was there. Here at the third level of New Paris.
"But... How the hell did I reach here. Did I, while a zombie, took the elevator? The heck." While ruminating on this fact and the madness of the situation Lisha finally got freed from her steel prison and walked down the mountain of remains. She never looked at her body and tried her best to not pay attention. Although it was unavoidable she wanted to enjoy her sensation of liberty, of being alive.
At the bottom, basking in the open light, a smile drew into her face and a small laugh escaped her lips. She was alone and in a dire situation maybe 'enemies' were somewhere around here but right now she was at peace, at least for this minute.
At three she decided to look down at herself for real and clearly how messed up her situation was. There was a steel bar impaled in her stomach. A real one. It's not as if she didn't realize it while walking down but she didn't want to disturb her minute of peace.
Yet...
There was a bubbling rage inside of her. On top of the mountain, she couldn't process the situation clearly and got focused on freeing herself but not anymore.
There was so much she wanted to do in her life but all of that she ended short because of shitheads and this world.
Dreams squashed, friends dead, a family lost, people to kill...
Lisha gazed at the sky and swore, that all which was lost would be reclaimed.