Vroooooo—!
The steady sound of a moving bus accompanied the calming music coming from my earbuds. I looked out the window with a soft, blissful sigh as I adjusted the volume on my phone.
"Jax, hey," a female voice called out with a tap on my shoulder. Jax was my name, a simple yet uncommon three letter combination.
"Hm?" I took my earbuds out to hear what the girl next to me had to say. "What is it, Tess?" I was familiar with the girl, she's my classmate in college, though we aren't close.
Tess stuck her blonde hair behind her ear. "Do you have the notes from yesterday's class? I was absent yesterday," she anxiously asked.
"Yeah," I was already reaching down to grab my bag. "Do you need them?" I made sure I wasn't going to search my bag for nothing before I opened it.
"If you have them, yes. I really need them," Tess clasped her hands together as if she was praying for me to say yes.
"Sure, no proble-" I abruptly stopped talking. With a glance out the window, I could see a car speeding right towards the bus. My heart skipped a beat.
Screeee—!
"Aaaaah!" Screams from all directions erupted just before the car hit. I couldn't tell if my own were mixed in as it was-
Bang—!
...
"Ugh..." I felt like I had blacked out for a while. When I came to, I was lying on top of a pile of jagged glass.
Weakly lifting my head, I realized that the bus had flipped over, and I was lying on what used to be the window.
There were people splayed out all around me, yet I could see no movement. Not thinking straight, all I could think of was to crawl towards the shattered windscreen.
"Come on..." I felt pain each time I crawled a few inches forward. There were large shards of glass protruding out of my stomach, but that couldn't stop me in my delirium.
WHEEEEEEW—!
I recognized the sound of a police siren, or maybe it was an ambulance? Either way, I would keep crawling.
I knew that I wouldn't be the first one rescued even if the ambulance came. My injuries are too severe to wait for someone to come to me. I would have a better chance at survival if I get closer to the 'exit'.
"Just... a little further, Jax..." I weakly stretched my hand towards the shattered bus windscreen, but the shreds of consciousness I held onto were slowly slipping out of reach.
"Don't fall asleep..." I gritted my teeth from the strain, but I tripped on a seat which had flipped in the crash. I fell on my side helplessly. "No..." I weakly wheezed out.
I knew I should keep fighting to stay awake, but the lull of sleep was too powerful. There was no pain in death, and that was comforting to me. I slowly lost consciousness, succumbing to the nothingness of an endless dream.
...
"Krrrr..." An unknown growling stirred me awake. I looked around in a daze, my memory floating just out of reach. For some reason, I was mindlessly walking with a crowd of dozens of people.
People?
I blinked, feeling my reason slowly coming back. They all had red eyes, pale skin, and injuries of varying degrees on their bodies. Not only that, but they seemed to be extremely tall.
Or was I just short?
I looked down at my hands. They were small, and my arms were short too. I stopped in my tracks, faintly recalling what had happened to me.
Somehow, my own death didn't phase me as much as it should've. I had family, they did their job raising me. That was all I could say about them as they were never emotionally present for me.
"My... booody," I strangely elongated my words. I gently rubbed my neck to soften my unusually stiff vocal cords.
There were flashes of images in my mind, but they weren't my own. For some reason though, I felt like they were always there.
He was holding a woman's hand, she looked scared. Dozens of red-eyed people chased after them.
She gave Him a strange look and suddenly let go of His hand. He stumbled to the ground helplessly.
The woman ran away without Him, her back getting smaller and smaller until He could barely see it anymore. He looked over his shoulder, dozens of red-eyed people loomed overhead.
Pain.
That was all the last image registered as. He was bitten all over, chunks of flesh bitten and torn from His body.
I looked at the red-eyed people I walked with. Some of them had dried blood around their lips. Almost like they-
A gap in the crowd caused me to audibly gasp and lose my previous train of thought. I walked forward and pressed my hand on a glass door. Even when I saw myself from far away, I knew it was me in the reflection.
I looked like a little boy, maybe seven years old. There were multiple patches of blood on my clothes as well, but none around my lips.
No, His lips.
The most distinguishing factor was that I had eyes the same color as the red-eyed people. "Iiii'm a zombiiie?"
I panicked and felt the left side of my chest for my heartbeat. "It's stiiiill theeeere..." I mumbled. My heart was still pumping blood, though it was slower than it should be.
So I'm a living zombie? An infected human?
Buuuuhh—
Right at that moment, my stomach loudly growled. Some zombies turned their heads and peered at me with no intention of chasing me.
Still, I shook under their lifeless red gazes. Even though it probably wasn't my own, the memory of his flesh being torn apart still haunted me.
"Foooood," I awkwardly walked with my stiff, stubby legs. I tried to keep my mind focused on my memories, as they seemed to be more distant when I lost focus.
I kept my distance from the other zombies as much as I could, which was easy since I was small and zombies seemed to like spreading out.
Sniff-!
A smell wafted in the air, and it smelled good. It was weird because my senses were mottled, but I seemed to be drawn to this particular smell like a shark to blood.
The smell wasn't far away either. I could see zombies plastered to the doors of a gas station, trying to get in. I instinctively knew that the smell was coming from there.
I parted the zombies to the side and peered inside. It was a bit dark, but I could make out people inside; living people.
I got strangely excited to see another human and tried to pull the door, but it was locked.
On the other side of the glass, there was muffled screaming when I pulled the door.
That only seemed to make the zombies around me even more intent on breaking the glass doors and windows, startling me with their ferocity.
But I knew they couldn't hurt me, they wouldn't. I pulled on the door one more time to make sure that it was really locked.
Click-!
My ears picked up a strange clicking sound. I traced it back to the group of people inside. A man wearing a police uniform was holding a gun.
I opened my mouth and tried to speak, but the police officer pointed the gun straight at me before I got the chance.
Two women grabbed the police officer and tried to reason with him, but he was standing firm, his finger wrapped around the trigger as if he would shoot any second.
"...soooorry," I groaned, slowly backing away and allowing another zombie to take my place at the doors.
I took one last look at the people beyond the window and walked away. It would probably be a death sentence both for me and the people inside if I had actually opened the door, but I didn't think of that in my excitement.
To me, the zombies were dangerous, but it seemed that I needed to reevaluate the danger. Especially when considering the fact that I myself look like a zombie, even though I don't consider myself one.
The most dangerous things to me were people. Just because zombies appeared doesn't mean that human's place as the top predator had disappeared.
No, it only meant that humans would get more creative. In times of war, destruction brings bigger and better ideas.
I naturally passed by a dead body, pausing once I saw it. There were plenty of dead bodies around, mostly from humans who had been so mutilated that they didn't turn into a zombie like the others.
This one was different. This person's eyes were wide open, showcasing its red eyes. I crouched down and studied the body more closely.
It was a young woman with black hair. She was lying face-up and had a few bite marks on her body just like the other zombies. The thing which caught my attention, however, was the perfect bullet wound engraved in her forehead.
"Theeeiir weaknesssss is the heaaad toooo," I tilted my head, recalling the fictional zombies in my past life. In games and stories, their weakness was usually the head or the heart.
I rubbed my temples, trying to remember when the apocalypse started. Piecing the fragmented memories of the boy who used to host this body, it seemed to have started five or six days ago.
The boy died on the first day after he went shopping with his mother and unluckily came into contact with the first wave of zombies.
People seem to already know that a zombie's weakness is the head, which isn't unusual. It frightened me, though. They knew my weakness too.
"She issssn't rotting eitherrrr," I noted. I checked the female zombie's pulse just to make sure, but she was completely dead.
I stood up and found a zombified little girl around my current age. I checked her pulse too, but there was nothing. I repeated this with a few other zombies, but they all had no pulse.
I sat down on the curb and contemplated. All zombies except myself are dead. They didn't seem to rot nor get infected from their wounds.
Every zombie including myself are attracted to the smell of humans, and our sense of hearing doesn't seem that bad either; though I noticed no difference in my own hearing abilities.
"There haaas to be mooore people liiiike me," Surely I couldn't be the odd one out? I even got up to check more pulses, but still nothing.
I couldn't think of a way to confirm my theory, so I stood up. I was still on a mission to find food, after all.
Tap- Tap- Tap- Tap-
The streets were truly desolate. Looking around, there were splatters of dried blood, dead bodies, and zombies who didn't follow designated human pathways.
"Graaaa..."
I tilted my head. There was a horde of zombies all walking in the same direction. They didn't seem to move in such coordinated groups usually, so it was strange to see them like that.
Curious, I joined the horde and tried to get to the front to see what was leading them. After a few minutes, I felt like I had almost made it to the front, but it was still hard to see since I was so short. I could still smell, though.
Humans.
After a few more pushes, I finally saw it. There was a red pick-up truck at the very front of the horde, leading the zombies. Four people stood in the back, poking the zombies back with long sticks.
"How much longer?" A blonde woman half-shouted over the loud growling of mindless zombies.
"We can speed up in a bit, we just need them to pack a little closer," a black-haired man in his late twenties said, flinging a zombie to the ground with his own stick.
The blonde woman shook her head. "Can't we speed up now? These little shits are disgusting," she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand as if she was going to throw up.
Another black-haired man, this one in his early twenties lightly smacked the blond woman on the back. "Come on, Sarah. We just have to be patient. I don't like them either," he reasoned.
I listened to their conversation intently. What were these people trying to do? I got a little closer to hear them better.
"I think we can speed up now," the younger black-haired man said.
The only one who hadn't spoken yet, a darker-skinned lady with brown hair peered down and nodded in agreement. "I think he's right."
"Alright then," the older black-haired man patted the roof of the truck, and the driver sped up. "Grab the cans!" He shouted.
Feeling something was off, I stepped out of the crowd and watched from an open area. The group of people in the back of the truck grabbed red containers and poured its content out into the street, hitting the zombies too.
The older black-haired man then threw the container out of the truck and raised his hand. A flame conjured on the palm of his hand from seemingly nowhere.
"What?!" I yelped.
Fwooooosh—!
The liquid lit on fire, and in turn the zombies lit on fire as well. My jaw dropped as I watched the zombies turn into bipedal torches.
"Huuuumaaans are craaazyyy!"