Surviving
“The creatures come out at night. Be home by dusk” his mother’s words ran through his head to the tune of his feet slapping against the asphalt, each word matching with each smack of his feet. The sun was low in the sky, barely visible now and he was still miles from the little shack he called home.
His mom was long gone, taken by one of the creatures years ago. It was just him in his tiny little shack, his safe haven after his mom was taken. He thought about all he still had to do when he got home and he knew the tension wouldn’t leave him until after The Lockdown, as he called it.
The sun was setting faster now and he kicked it up a gear and started running faster. As he ran down the empty road he whipped his bag around and pulled out his 9 mm. One that he found in his neighbors unlocked gun safe after the creatures took them. If the sun set before he was able to lockdown his shack he was going to need it. Depending on the creature, his weapon could save his life or be completely useless, but it still felt reassuring in his hand as he continued to run.
Only two miles left.
“The creatures come out at night. Be home by dusk. Charlie did you hear me? Be home before dusk!” He remembered waving her off and running out the door to his friends house for a school project. It had been late by the time he finished, and instead of risking it he stayed the night. When he made it home the next afternoon after school the home he had known his entire life had been torn to pieces and his parents were gone. He hadn’t even kissed his mother goodbye before he ran out the door.
He could see his shack now, the last rays of light setting beyond the horizon. Only half a mile left, but he could hear stirring in the trees surrounding the road. Whatever creatures he encountered tonight he would be ready. With a clear shot to his shack he veered off the road and into the trees. Out of the corner of his left eye he saw a shadow start coming towards him. He dodged to the right and turned, firing two quick shots into the creature’s chest. He heard a howl and knew his bullets had hit their target. As the creature’s body thudded to the ground he slipped the first key into the first lock of his tiny shack.
After years of practice the seven locks didn’t take him long. But by the time he finished he could hear other creatures breaking through the tree line directly towards him. Quickly he slipped inside and without turning on the lights, started The Lockdown.
The steel bars clanged as they fell in front of the windows. Window after window he shut the grates and locked them with the biggest Master Lock locks he could scavenge at the hardware store. After the bars came the steel doors. He had made small versions of garage doors, using an old garage door to cover the windows.
This had been his original plan but before he could complete them, one of the creatures had broken into his shack. Luckily it was only, what he called, a level 1. Though the creature had been easy to kill it had still managed to leave its mark. A two-foot long scar ran from his collarbone to his hip on his left side. The next day he spent welding together steel bars to cover the windows and the tracks for the bars were easy to mount to the wall. They wouldn’t hold the smarter, stronger creatures but they would do until he got the doors done. The doors were harder than he expected. He had gotten his parent’s garage door out to the shack but figuring out how to cut it into pieces stumped him for a few days. It wasn’t like they had the Internet anymore. He tried the torch he had used on the bars and it just didn’t work the same. He tried a grinder and all that did was make a lot of noise and wake the creatures up during the day and almost light his forest on fire. On his final straw, unable to cut this door he was wandering around the nearly empty Home Depot trying to find smaller doors similar to the garage door when he stumbled across a plasma cutter in the back room. He knew his dad had used one at the construction site he had worked at before the Madness. On a whim he used an abandoned truck in the parking lot to haul it home. He had a few creatures on his tail as he drove, he had never actually learned to drive, but quickly he disposed of them and hauled the plasma cutter into the woods. He had to work quickly; the cutter was loud and drew the creatures towards his little shack. After four days of cutting and keeping the creatures at bay he had his windows secure.
His eyes hardly strained in the darkness of night as he looked around his shack. Bars locked, roll doors down, all seven locks on the door locked and three two by sixes barred the door. It wasn’t much but it kept the creatures out, for now. A small light shone from his wrist. A solar powered watch he had scavenged from a K-mart lit up to let him know the sun was set and they would be out for him soon. With one last look around his shack he moved into the cellar.
Grabbing the pull chain on his way through the door, the small cellar filled with a dull yellow light. He could hear the small generator kicking on in the corner closet, what used to be a coal chute. There along the three walls facing him stood his armory. He lost track of how many years he had been living like this but those years had provided for him. After the initial appearance of the creatures the world had turned to chaos, enough for him to name it the Madness. The Justice system went out the window. There were murders and people just taking things from stores. It was a real life apocalypse, something he had only read about. Biding his time hiding in his parent’s abandoned house he waited until everyone had either died or become one of the creatures. He had lived off of canned fruit and beans, things his mother always bought when they were on sale. It wasn’t until he ran out of food, months after the initial chaos did he venture outside.
Waking up in the basement of his parent’s house, he could see small shards of light from the tiny windows. His stomach growling he scoured the basement for the last can of beans before remembering he had eaten it the night before. Groaning he crept his way up the stairs, ready for a creature to jump out at him at any moment, but he didn’t see any. Even wandering outside he saw no one. He spent the next few months jumping from house to house, occasionally skipping one if he found dead inside. Once he had made it two blocks away he started bringing things back to his parents house. A sense of homesickness drew him back to his parent’s house. Something he couldn’t explain, even to himself. It wasn’t long before the creatures realized he was there and started breaking in to the house. As he heard the shattering glass from the first floor he initiated his escape route. The rope ladder he had made in anticipation of this moment was thrown out the window and quickly he climbed down, tugging it with him as soon as he hit the ground. The short few yards to the shack in the back felt like miles, but it was the closest thing to home he could get.
Back in the cellar Charlie went over his Weapons Check. Any weapon would take down a Level 1 creature. He had his thick wooden spears stacked above the basic weapons and ammo for the Level 2 creatures. To the right on the wall that faced the door was his silver knives and silver bullets for the Level 3 creatures. The silver worked more effectively though an entire clip of any other ammo will still work. Underneath his silver was his iron. Iron tipped arrows, and iron knives lined the bottom of the wall. He had made the knives and arrowheads by hand so they were rough and poorly made, but sharp. It took a long time to learn to shoot a bow and arrow but if he could avoid getting close he would. His ideal for these creatures would be to find a crossbow. Most of them had been scavenged in the beginning of the Madness but he was always on the lookout for one. The third wall to his right was empty. The Level 5 creatures had continued to stump him since this all started. They were not one of the original creatures but seem to have only appeared within the last few years. It was possible that they originated elsewhere in the world and migrated to his neck of the woods. Charlie had so far been unable to find any weapon that actually took down a Level 5 creature. His best option for them was just to run.
After making sure he had enough of everything, because in times like these weapons and ammo disappeared quickly, he grabbed a can of pears on his way to his workbench to make some more of the silver bullets he had used trying to get back in to the shack.