2061: The Undead Read online

  “Disgusting,” he told himself and puked on the lawn.

  That was the second puking in two days. He hoped it wouldn’t be something he had to get used to.

  His shirt and pants were full of blood.

  “So much for trying to disinfect myself earlier …”

  He removed his shirt, trying not to touch his head with it and he took off his jeans. Good thing it wasn’t too cold, it was actually a very hot day. He looked on his contact lens to see that it was actually 90 degrees. He stood on the grass wearing only his boxers.

  Not really knowing what to do next, he returned in his car and sat there for a while. After five minutes of thinking, he said “Wal-Mart” and the car started driving. His contact lens indicated that Wal-Mart was only a 3 minute drive away. He needed some new clothes and if he were to try and save Hannah, he needed more ammunition. He had already used six bullets to kill three undead and Hannah said there were hundreds of them outside her house. He definitely needed more bullets, which any good Wal-Mart carried.

  After 2 minutes of driving, the car stopped suddenly. There was an undead standing right in the middle of the road, 6 feet in front of the car. These automated cars would stop to let pedestrians pass when one was on the street.

  “Damn it, I hope there won’t be too many of them on the road to Hannah’s or it’s going to be a long ride.”

  Without hesitation he got out of the car and was ready to shoot it in the head.

  “Damn it! If I shoot it this close the car will be full of blood …”

  So he quickly walked away from his car to attract the undead. It followed him very slowly. After walking about 30 feet from his car, and the undead being about 15 feet away from himself and the car, he shot it in the head. The undead immediately collapsed on the ground. Erick and his car were free of blood. He got back in his car, but it wouldn’t drive.

  “Please put your seatbelt on.”

  “Stupid car, I don’t think seatbelts are really that necessary at the moment …”

  Obliged by his car to put his seatbelt on, he complied and the car started driving again. He must have been distracted by all this undead killing and forgot to put his seatbelt on.

  30 seconds later, the car stopped again. He could see the Wal-Mart, along with lots of people …

  “Holy crap! That’s where everybody is, or at least, was …”

  CHAPTER 4

  There were hundreds of undead all around Wal-Mart. It seemed like that’s where the whole town was when the virus struck. It made sense, everybody wanted to gather up on supplies when they saw the emergency broadcast. Erick was in trouble, there were hundreds of them only 30-40 feet in front of the car and a dozen really close, only 6 feet from the car. There was no manual overdrive on these cars. They had stopped making manual cars 15 years ago. There wasn’t even a steering wheel.

  “Stupid car!”

  “What the hell am I supposed to do now?!”

  The undead started to surround Erick’s car. They weren’t really strong enough to break the windows, but his vehicle was almost surrounded. He quickly grabbed his backpack, plunged in the back of the car and shouted, “Trunk!” The trunk opened and he immediately got out of the car. Fortunately, his car was a hatchback. He ran as fast as he could for 2 minutes, he then turned and looked behind him. He was safe. The undead were far away walking in his direction, but he had no car and was still almost completely naked. It was going to be a long walk home …

  After a three hour walk home, his legs were aching. Erick really wasn’t used to walking that much. He went upstairs in his bedroom and plunged in his bed. It felt great and he slept until the next morning, when his contact lens woke him up with a new veed notification. It was Hannah:

  “Hi Erick, I hope you are still alive. I’m still pretty much living upstairs in my parents’ bedroom. I don’t want to go to my room because my mom is in the closet and I’m scared to go downstairs because there are all these undead all around the house. I really don’t know what to do. I have enough food and water here to last for days and probably weeks, but this is no way to live. What if they successfully break in? My mom is still going strong in the closet … She is making so much noise. They seem to have unlimited energy. Please help me! I don’t know what to do.”

  “I have to save this girl,” Erick told himself.

  All of Erick’s attempts to do anything had, so far, completely failed. He tried to find his brother—unsuccessful. He tried to stock up on ammo from Wal-Mart—unsuccessful. At least he was still alive. But he needed a win. If he could save Hannah it would boost his morale.

  How would he reach her? It was a challenge just to go to Wal-Mart. There would probably be thousands of undead on the road between him and Hannah. He had another car in his garage, but it was good-for-nothing. These automated cars were way too dangerous. He almost died the day before because of his stupid car. These high tech cars were completely useless in this chaos, what he needed was a good old manual car. The only manual vehicles that existed were either collectable or race cars. He knew one of his neighbors had a car collection with a race car from the 2030’s. It could go 300 miles per hour, but only do 1,000 miles on one charge. Since Hannah’s house was about 350 miles away, making a 700 mile round trip, Erick figured he should be fine. He put on some fresh clothes, grabbed his backpack and went to his neighbor’s house.

  It was a big two-storey house, probably around 4,000 square feet. The car was in the garage around the back. All cars since the 30’s worked with a chip to turn it on. You just needed to approach the car and it would detect who you are, unlock itself and start on its own. Erick hoped that the owner would still be in his home so he could shoot it in the head and cut his arm off to bring only the arm to the car. That’s where the chip was to start the car. There was no other way he knew to turn on the car. There were professional car thieves out there, but he had no idea how to steal a car. He grabbed a medium sized rock from the ground and threw it in the window. This would most likely trigger the alarm system within one minute, but he had no choice. He hoped the owner was dead or actually undead and would be attracted to the sound of the window breaking. He waited patiently one minute, to see if the guy would show up at the window. He did. His theory ended up being right. Erick thought that everybody was most likely undead in their house and that they couldn’t even get out of their own home because they were unable to open doors. However, he had no idea why he and Hannah were still alive. He didn’t think it was worth taking any sanitary precautions anymore. If he had caught the virus, he would be undead already. It looked like he was somehow immune. He got his gun out and shot his undead neighbor right in the head.

  WEEEOOOO WEEEOOOO WEEEOOOO WEEEOOOO

  The alarm went off. It would automatically call the police as well, but chances were no live police were coming. Erick entered in the house through the window, went in the kitchen and grabbed the biggest knife he could find. He then approached the dead body and stabbed at the shoulder as hard as he could several times. He couldn’t believe he was doing this. His entire life all he did was stand in front of a computer and program. He had changed into a murdered fighting for his life, or at least, Hannah’s life. He pulled on the arm and it came right off. Once at the garage the door opened on its own, detecting the chip from its owner. Normally it wasn’t so easy to burglarize. You couldn’t just kill someone, cut off their arm and steal whatever you wanted. Live people simply had to think about 911 and their contact lenses would make the call, sending their camera feed and geo position. The police would be there in minutes.

  However, this was a whole new world. Police officers were most likely all undead. Along with programmer, it was one of those jobs that required humans, because it consisted of too many unique, complicated situations. Robots couldn’t make the appropriate split decisions that cops needed to do, but scientists were working on it and maybe with another 10 to 20 years robots would have started doing the job. Not anymore. Not in this world.

&nb
sp; Erick hopped in the car and it started automatically, recognizing its owner’s chip. He quickly reached for the car’s computer and added a new authorized driver to it.

  “Driver Erick Lawrence successfully added,” the car said.

  “Manual Override,” Erick said.

  Even cars from the 30’s were automated, but they had a manual override. They had a steering wheel, pedals and everything necessary to drive manually. New cars didn’t even have that. He threw the arm out the window and started driving, or at least tried. Last time he drove a manual car was when he went to the race track with his brother two years ago. He set the GPS system for Richmond while driving, and sent a message to Hannah to let her know he was on his way and asked for her exact address.

  Not even two minutes after he started driving he encountered a big problem. There was a horde of hundreds, potentially thousands of undead coming in his direction. They must have been attracted by the house alarm. How could he be so stupid? He’d forgotten about that little detail. These undead were really attracted to sound and they were all coming towards his neighbor’s house, which was only a few minutes’ walk from his home. Erick’s house would be completely surrounded by undead, there was no coming back. He turned the car around and took some other road.

  CHAPTER 5

  “Hi Erick, thank you so much for helping me, I don’t know what I would do without you. But how are you going to get me out of here? There are undead everywhere, thousands of them. My address is 584 Chad Street. Be careful on the road.”

  That was Hannah replying to Erick’s last message. Thankfully she was still alive. He replied right away:

  “I should be there in a few hours. Don’t worry about how I’ll get you out, I have a plan. Just hang in there.”

  He drove on country roads at around 200 mph because he didn’t feel safe going faster. Automated cars normally drove at around this speed, but it was a completely different story to be driving it manually. Computers could see miles in advance and automated cars could communicate with each other.

  There were absolutely no cars on the road, which was really strange. He had seen stranger things these past few days, but it was just unusual to see the roads deserted. Nonetheless, it was normal to see no cars since everybody was dead and all cars were automated. There was no reason why a car would had been stopped on the road. Unless there were undead standing in the middle of it.

  The exit for Interstate 95 was only 5 miles away, so he slowed down to about 50 mph in anticipation. This new world was highly unpredictable and Erick wasn’t used to it at all. It looked like cars were all stopped up ahead, about 3 or 4 miles before the exit. It was a giant parking lot on the highway. Erick had never seen such a thing. It looked like a traffic jam from the early 2000’s. He drove on the shoulder passing all the cars. There were undead people locked up in their vehicles. These people had caught the virus while staying in their car. The virus was maybe airborne then, entering the cars through the ventilation. This was another clue that Erick might’ve been immune. Was this a terrorist attack? It looked like everyone got infected at more or less the same time, which seemed unusual for a natural virus.

  Erick kept driving for miles and miles on the shoulder along all the parked cars on the highway. The shoulder was normally used by the automated cars in case of a rare accident or more likely a mechanical failure. These were very exceptional occurrences, but in the chaos there could have been such an accident. He kept driving at around 60 mph, just to be safe.

  It was almost dawn and he was barely half way to Richmond. So far he hadn’t encountered any cars on the shoulder. He was very hungry and thirsty, so he thought he would stop by a river to fill up his Life Saver water bottle and munch on one of his power bar. The GPS system indicated a river only 1 mile ahead.

  Once at the river he stopped his car on the overpass. There was a big merchandise truck in the right lane on the overpass so he stopped beside it on the shoulder. These trucks didn’t have any drivers so at least there wasn’t any undead too close to him. This would be a safe place in case undead would attack. If undead were to attack, they could only do so from 2 ways instead of being surrounded. He planned to sleep in his car for the night there. It seemed too dangerous to drive at night. He filled up his water bottle at the river, got back in his car. While eating, he wondered if this merchandise truck could be carrying food. He liked his power bars, but he honestly was getting a little tired of them. There was one problem though; he had no idea how to open up a merchandise truck. The door on these trucks would only open once arrived at destination. There wasn’t even a handle on it or anything, they opened automatically.

  Sigh …

  All this automation was getting on his nerves. It turned out to be quite useless in this chaotic world. He could probably go to the grocery store, which was open 24/7 all operated by robots, powered by solar panels and geothermal energy. His GPS even indicated a rest area 15 miles ahead. But this rest area would most likely be crowded with undead. He decided to just stick with his power bars for now.

  It took quite some time for him to fall asleep. He was too scared an undead would attack him. The car’s windows were probably strong enough to withstand an undead attack, but the thought of waking up with an undead trying to get in his car frightened him. His eyes finally closed on their own at around 4 a.m. Unable to stay awake anymore, he finally fell asleep …

  SMASH!! An undead broke the window on the driver’s side. The car was completely surrounded with undead. Two of them were trying to get through the window to bite him. He tried to start the car and drive, but it wouldn’t start for some reason. He was fighting against these two undead trying to bite him. One of them successfully bit his jugular. Blood was pissing everywhere. All the undead surrounding him were climbing on his car and jumping on it, breaking every windows. SMASH!!! SMASH!!! SMASH!!!

  “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!”

  Erick woke up in disarray. It was a nightmare. It was 5:00 a.m., he had slept only one hour. He started the car and drove.

  CHAPTER 6

  After another 3 hours of driving, he finally made it to Richmond. He took the exit and arrived at an intersection. There were cars everywhere and no more shoulder. This was the city, it would be impossible to continue by car. His contact lens indicated Hannah’s house was a 30 minute walk.

  As he walked in the streets of Richmond he saw a few undead here and there, but nothing alarming. However, he remained extremely careful because he knew Hannah’s house was surrounded. His strategy was to go 200 to 300 feet away from Hannah’s home and trigger the alarm from a house. This would hopefully attract all the undead around so he could go get her out of the house. He went ahead and walked a few streets away from her house. There were a lot of undead and several of them saw him and started walking towards him. There were too many of them now so he had no choice, he would have to continue through the houses’ backyards. It would be a difficult task, jumping over every fence non-stop, but adrenaline was driving him and there was no way he would abandon Hannah.

  His contact lens indicated he was only 10 to 12 backyards away from Hannah’s house. He was on the same street and on the same side of her house. He called her:

  “Erick? Are you alright?”

  “Hi Hannah, I’m fine, I’m real close to your home. I’m going to trigger the alarm from a house so it will hopefully attract all the undead. Then I’ll come and get you and we’ll get the hell out of here. Do you have a gun?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Ok, that’s alright. Just take a backpack and stuff it with food, but nothing too heavy, in case we have to run.”

  “Ok, but where are we going?”

  “I have no idea, as far as possible from here. I should be there in 5 minutes. Unlock the door in the back, I’ll be coming from the backyard.”

  “Ok, will do.”

  He hung up, grabbed a chair from the patio and hit as hard as he could on the patio door. The glass successfully broke and shatte
red everywhere. He had 60 seconds to get out of there before the alarm went off. Almost every house was equipped with an alarm system. It would detect any window breaking on the house, triggered the alarm and alerted the authorities. 60 seconds were given to the owner to contact the alarm company in case of a false alarm.

  He jumped over the next fence, and the next and the next, until the alarm went off. It was a success, he saw the undead on the street walking towards the alarm. There was at least eight more backyards to go before Hannah’s house. He was really starting to feel extremely tired, but he kept on going, finally reaching her house completely exhausted. He wished he had bought one of those flying cars last year. He almost bought one, but changed his mind because they were expensive and he didn’t really need one since he was always at home. Only the wealthiest people had a flying car, they were a relatively new technology and it was still very expensive.

  Hannah was already at the patio door in the back, waiting for him. She opened the door and let him in.

  “Oh my god, are you alright? You look completely exhausted”

  Erick was breathing heavily, completely drained from jumping over all those fences.

  “I’m alright, just a little tired,” he collapsed on the floor, passing out.

  CHAPTER 7

  “Erick? Erick?”

  He woke up slowly, hearing Hannah’s voice calling his name.

  “How long have I been out?”

  “Just 5 minutes. How are you feeling?”

  “I’m feeling pretty good actually.”