Three Years Post-Apocalypse

Daria's POV

One more day.

I can survive for one more day.

A crash outside my cell block vibrated the walls and floors, shocking me from my dissociation, and I rose from my thin, brilliant white mat on the sparkling white tiled floor as thick dark brown coils swung around my body. Several dozen circular scars littered the inside of my forearms; black and dark green trails tainted my veins and disappeared under my thin, rolled-up dressing gown sleeves, appearing again as they trailed over my shoulders and across my chest. Its clear destination drifts closer to my heart with each passing day, pushed faster by their constant experiments.

I could hear heavy boots banging on the floor in at least eight sets. I've never heard so many. Bursts of gunfire bounced around the hallway, causing me to jump out of my skin and run to the door, checking through the bars to see more men running down the hall. A series of bangs echoed around me, and I covered my ears in surprise and backed up from the door as dust gushed around the air.

The bursts of gunfire stopped for a moment, and a round of screams and men screaming 'run' had the heavy boot coming back up the hallway. The gunfire ricocheted around the room, causing me to cry as bullets flew around me and forced me to crouch down in the corner with my head covering my hands.

A cold breeze blew in from somewhere outside, pushing around the bars and carrying a symphony of moans and groans. My room suddenly filled with a bright orange light that flickered off every couple of seconds, the siren booming through the speakers and shattering my fucking brain.

"No!" I cried.

I won't be able to survive one more day. My scared, long fingers reached for the thick titanium collar wrapped securely around my neck, tiny clicks ringing in my ears as my nails taped against it. If I could use my powers, even just a spark would have been enough to get me out of here. What rotten luck? How could they have made these things so quickly? Were powers around during the time of peace when Zombies were a sci-fi trope that was a possible situation? Now, it's an absolutely happening situation, and I bet my life that this institute had something to do with it.

"Warning!" the facility's alarm screamed out of the speakers in each corner of the room, "The Necrosic Virus has been detected inside the clean area. All subjects will be terminated!"

I ran back to the door, my feet slapping against the floor. I grabbed the bars on the door's small window and watched the throngs of men run the other way. It didn't take a genius to guess their direction was towards the exit I longed for.

"Stop! These stupid collars won't kill us! Get back here, you pieces of shit," I roared, tears streaming out of my eyes.

"They don't care," a voice across the hallway sighed. His long, light brown muscled arms casually slipped through his bars to rest on them, and his emerald green eyes locked with my steel grey ones. My heart dropped into my stomach when he blew his mid-length black hair from in front of his face, a spark of annoyance flaring in his eyes, "We are lab rats to them, D."

I'm about to die, and this man has made me wet. Wait-

"How do you know my initial?" I hissed with narrowed eyes. A flash of surprise crossed his eyes before he tactfully covered it up and lowered his head a little, "We-"

A series of sharp clicks bounced around the hallway and through my ears. Our eyes widened as our collars began to burn hot and tightened before they released sharp bolts into every inch of my neck. My sharp, shrill scream mixed with the other lab rats, and the man across from me gave a sharp grunt before we were all cut off.

We lost the feeling from our necks down, and I fell into the door. Inhumane fuckers. I slipped down the door as it buzzed open, and the previous pain fell away from the rest of my body as my head smacked and bounced off the floor. I cried at the pain exploding through my brain. The sudden vertigo rolled my eyes around in their sockets for a couple of minutes before I could see past the black star spots in my eyes. If they had given us food today, I would have thrown up to create a pool of sick that would have drifted all over me. Silver linings and all that. I could see the other end of the hallway I had been living in for the past year, but the sudden bang above my head had my eyes rolling up in that direction.

The man in the room opposite must have been held up by his arms hung through the bars, and he had also slipped down the door. I bet that hurt like fuck. Wow, how degrading is this shit? He recovered quicker and much quieter than I had, in any case. He was admirable, but I am a baby. A gust of wind swept through the hall, and that was when we all realised that the Zombies were at the end of the hallway, groaning with strange rabid animal sounds. As they shuffled closer, the vibrations I could feel through my face grew harder and louder and started to clatter my teeth. The feeling of impending doom and dread washed over me; this is on my list of the worst ways to die. When the first patient began to scream, and the sound of crunching reached our ears, I knew that my fate was to die painfully, horrifically and last.

"Those motherfuckers, if there is a next life, I hope I get the chance to kill them all," I hissed, tears rolling down the side of my face and disappearing into my hair.

I'm not ashamed to admit that my tears became incredibly ugly as the screams of the second, third and fourth patients began to fill the air, drowning out my pathetic cries and sending image after image in my mind of a Zombie eating my paralysed body. Oh god, will I have to watch them eat everything until they reach my head? There were only two left before they got to us, doors slamming as too many Zombies were piled into the hallway. There were only two doors left, but as a little girl in a blue polka dot dress squeezed through the gap between them, I knew she was the high-level leader of her horde, here to take the first bite.

"Look at me," the man across from me, so close but out of reach, whispered. His bright green eyes filled with an emotion I had never seen before, and my face frowned deeply as his eyes began to mist up.

I felt incredibly uncomfortable. My body wanted to react and shuffle into his arms to die together. All I could do was follow obediently as the little girl changed her direction with a slight shift of her foot. The sound scraped through my ears as her dirty blonde piggy tails swung wildly through the air. As much as he had taken my attention, I could still see her in my peripheral vision.

The skin down the entire left side of her body was gone, likely eaten away, if the giant chunks missing from the muscles in her legs and arms were anything to go by. I'm also not ashamed to say that when I saw the streams of blood and chunks of flesh tumble out of her mouth and add to the stains already covering her dress, my eyes widened in horror at the look of unabashed glee on her face as she saw me.

What the fuck?

"S-stop! Don't stop looking at me!" he blurted out, desperate to catch my attention and fill my heart with a strong sense of familiarity.

It worked!

The little zombie dropped to the floor before me, but I didn't dare break eye contact with him. In the corner of my eyes, I could see a zombie with half his left arm hanging from the joint along with his jaw coming through the gap to stomp in his direction.

"No! Don't- Don't look. Keep looking at me," I cried, my high pitch calling the little girl to launch into my stomach.

Fuck, if you told me a year ago that, I would be glad they paralysed me. I'd have laughed in their faces. I screamed at the sounds of flesh being torn away from muscles and bone – my flesh, my muscle and my bone. Being paralysed didn't remove the terror, but I kept my eyes on the man mere inches away from me, never faltering as the Zombie man dropped to his side and used his dirty, long fingernails, strong even with one hand, to rip through his grey patient issued top and create a hole in his tattooed side.