The delicious smell of walkers, who should never have been allowed in his presence in the state that he was in, awoke him from his slumber. Tiny feet stabbed into his flesh, like little prodding needles, and the smell and squeals of the tiny beasts heated his hunger. Sighing, he tried to bash the annoyances' away, and a fountain of pain splashed across his body. Fear and anger took over his thought process. They had allowed him to hibernate for far too long.
He was then aware of how thirsty he was. The term "Cotton Mouth" would have been a short-coming to how it felt. He tried to yell for water, but it came out as a raspy croak, in which no words could be distinguished from. Nothing came at the summons, and his anger reached a boiling point. "Where are my guardians?" he thought with menace. "They should never leave a sleeper alone."
With a groan of irritation, he forced himself to roll over, and smacked his head into one of the tiny beasts, stunning it. He knew what he had to do, and in the state he was in he would relish it. Without a second thought he bit into the creature, feeling the glorious feeling of its hot flesh and thirst-quenching blood dribbling down his throat.
His hand shot out again and again, capturing the fodder and devouring them with three bites. As he finished he slowly pushed himself back into a sitting position. The creatures had only given him enough strength and energy to move slowly, but it was enough for now. "Where in the seven hells was he?" he thought and tried to open his eyes. He felt startled; he could not open them. Had someone blinded him as he hibernated?
Lifting his arm, he softly traced where his eyelids met his skin. He could feel the hard crusty mucus that held his eyes shut, and began to pick his eyes free. When he finished he opened his eyes and could see nothing but darkness. His kind could see in the dark, but there needed to be some kind of illumination, and there just wasn't any here. "This is not my room," he thought to himself; he was in a cave and he was very deep within.
Taking a deep breath, he listened to his surroundings and picked up the voices that had awakened him. The distinct voices of two humans, a male and a female, cascaded down the walls of the cave towards where he lay.
"Dad, why are we going so deep into the cave?" Eve said exasperatedly to her father. "I know you heard something, but usually when you hear something in a dark cave like this, you want to go the other way." Her father turned his large 6'5 frame towards her with a large smile displaying from his dark brown beard.
"Eve, I told you earlier that you could have turned back," he raised and waggled a finger tauntingly at his daughter. "You can still turn back if you're too 'scared' to go on, but I am going to keep on rolling on." With that said, he turned his back to her and kept following the rays of the flashlight deeper into the cave.
Genevieve or Eve as most of her friends and family called her, sighed in reluctance. "Fine, but you can't say that I didn't warn you. This seems way too much like a horror movie for my taste, but me letting you go alone into the den of a Hollywood monster would make this whole thing cliché." She felt better with that said and followed her father's massive frame deeper into the cave.
Her father John Lanter was and always would be a naturist even though he looked like a gang member from the notorious Hells Angels. With his height at 6'5 and a body like a gorilla, many mistook him as such, and would avoid him. This in turn made many of her former boyfriends avoid her as well. She laughed out loud which made her father turn around with a questioning look upon his features.
"I was just thinking about Donald's face last year when he came to the house and you opened the door," Eve said still laughing.
John smiled. "Yeah, I think I remember that. He was that tall skinny kid with the gold hoop through his ear wasn't he? The one that had the horrified expression on his face when I answered the door?"
Eve laughed and went past her father to take the lead and talked over her shoulder. "Yeah, that's the one, but I don't remember you just asking. You had that wooden bat in your hand, and growled at him before you even asked what he was there for. When he told you he was there to pick me up, you told him if I wasn't home before dark you would shove the bat up somewhere unpleasant." John chortled and followed his daughter. What she had said was true. He loved her very much and was extremely protective. What good father wouldn't be? He knew what all boys her age were after, and he wasn't going to allow that until she was at least fifty.
Suddenly Eve stopped. "What's wrong?" John asked stepping forward flashing the ray of his flashlight ahead.
"There's a door," Eve choked. John looked away from his daughter's fear-stricken face and up ahead viewing a large wooden door with a design that was too old to distinguish. "Should we open it?" Eve whispered? She now truly felt like she was in one of those old-fashioned horror films and she could always remember saying how stupid the people in the film were when they opened the forbidden door where everyone knew the monster resided.
A sound behind the door made both of them jump and take a step back. "Who's there?" John bellowed threateningly moving Eve behind him. He knew that if something happened to them it would be his inquisitive nature's fault. A sound came again from behind the door, but this time it sounded like someone's muffled speech. "I think someone may be stuck behind the door," he whispered to his daughter.
Eve still looked like she was scared, but she nodded her head. She too had heard the voice from behind the door and hopefully it wasn't a vengeful ghost looking to take souls with it to the netherworld.
He saw the rays of light coming from underneath the door, and a hot flash of anticipation shot through him. The door handle rattled slightly, and the door began to sway open. Its rusty hinges squealed in protest, and he saw the form of a very large man step through the doorway. The walkers did not carry torches like he had thought they would, but sticks that beamed out light. These magnificent contraptions caught his attention until the beam of light hit him and a girlish scream yelled out "Ghoul". He could hear the sounds of light footsteps running away in the other direction.
The large man looked back over his shoulder and sighed, and took a step forward. "Are you alright?" he asked.
The words shot through the being on the ground's mind, before the words were absorbed. These walkers spoke English, but how was this possible? He was in the new world which was inhabited by the nomadic tribes. He gave a short grunt but said nothing. It would have taken too much energy to speak and he was not willing to do so until he knew more about this creature.
"I am John Lanter," the big man said, "and you're in a cave in the prohibited Uninhabited Area. Do you understand me?" I gave a small nod and the man called John smiled. "What is your name?" he asked.
I looked at the walker for a moment and knew that his smile was genuine and decided that if I was to survive he was my chance. I could already feel my body going numb. "My name," I rasped, "is Michael." I blacked out with the man standing over me with concern in his eyes.