User:Cub McBub/Outbreak: Cub's Chronicle Volume III
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This story is part of the Malton Chronicles. This story is fan-made, and is not officially part of any background history for Urban Dead. |
Present Day: Revived!
The boy’s eyes fluttered open.
He could see a dark sky and the top floors of the nearest building reaching towards that sky…
He could feel soreness and aching… everywhere…
And he could hear moaning… no… groaning…
Cub realized by now that there was a difference. Humans moaned… Zombies groaned…
As the connections within the boy’s brain began to fire again his eyes moved from side to side… taking stock of his situation. Instinctively he did not move, for fear of being found… alive!
Cub was laying on his back… his legs on the sidewalk while the rest of his body was stuck out on the street. He was sore and ached terribly, but otherwise he could not sense a serious injury. He wiggled his toes inside his sneakers… no problems there…
Moving his head ever so slightly, he could see that the building that he was laying in front of was a police station. The area immediately in front of the police station had many bodies lying about. Some stacked on top of others. A lone zombie was groaning and banging at the planks of wood that were used to help barricade the front door.
“Only one there…”
Cub slowly turned his head in the other direction… and saw a few more bodies scattered about the street… but no other Zeds. A gust of wind blew some dust at Cub… making him squint… but as that cleared…
“Wait… is that? Could I have?”
A couple of blocks down the road… resting on the sidewalk… stood a little red wagon.
“Did I actually tow that around… as a Zed?” Cub search his mind for an explanation… he didn’t want to believe that he would have any real thoughts as a Zed…
“Maybe it was just habit,” he thought. “Maybe my guns are there.”
“GRRRRAAAHHH!!!”
The young boy turned his head towards the police station. The undead creature that had been thumping at the barricades somehow had noticed that he was alive now…
“That gust… IT caught my scent! I must smell different when I’m… alive.”
Cub struggled to get himself up as the THING staggered towards him. Luckily IT tripped over the other bodies lying about the police station, allowing Cub to easily put some distance between them. It hurt like hell… but Cub was happy with the pain. Pain meant he was alive. THEY don’t feel pain… or at least… not to the same extent.
Cub managed to get to his wagon just as the Zed has cleared the pile of dead bodies near the police station as was rising to it’s feet. He smiled… the toolbox was still there… and so were a couple of shotguns and a couple of pistols.
Raising a pistol to eye level... pointing it at the Zed staggering towards him…
Click! Click! Click!
“Bogger! Remember now that I was out of ammo… when I… died…”
The THING was getting close now. Cub grabbed the handle of the wagon and started running down the street… smiling as he again gained some distance…
Suddenly two more Zeds rounded the corner at the end of the block. They saw Cub… making the boy stop in his tracks… his smile forgotten…
They bared their teeth… growled… and started trotting towards the child…
“Bogger! Coming from both sides now!”
Cub saw an alley, and while running down alleys was always a risky venture… it seemed to be the only route where he didn't have to run directly past a Zed.
The boy ran down the alley, pulling the wagon behind him. Darting around one corner the wagon tipped and toppled over, causing a loud clanging…
Looking... Cub realized that he had dashed into a dead end.
“Caca!!”
“GRrrroann” The three zombies where shuffling down the alley… getting closer…
Cub trotted to the end of the dead end, trying to be quiet. The boy crouched into the darkest corner, letting the building’s shadows be his cover.
He waited… trying to be quiet… slowing his breathing. He could hear the shuffling of the undead as they got to the turn off to the dead end… and their low grunts…
To Cub they seemed to pause there. One looked down at the overturned wagon as it almost tripped over it.
Then… miraculously… they didn’t turn in towards this dead end. They kept walking…
Cub waited… five… ten minutes… it was hard to tell, but he couldn’t hear the groans anymore…
The child stood…
“OUGH!!”
A sudden sharp pain pierced Cub’s head and he dropped to his knees. With the pain came the trace of a memory. It was only a flash… an instant… but it was of him… leaping at a man’s throat. A memory of death… death he caused… as one of THEM!
The pain subsided as the memory faded. Cub shook his head and stood…
“I… um… did some bad things…” His eyes welled up, but the boy sucked in a deep breath… wiped the bottom of his right eye with the back of his hand… and stopped himself from crying…
“Ok… better get…”
Cub stopped in mid thought and slowly spun himself around; carefully looking at where he was… something about this place triggered another memory… of about three years ago…
“This is… where… how… why… sister… Nick…”
Memories flood his mind… memories of the past. This overloads his brain, which is still recovering from its undead state. It’s too much…
He collapses… replaying the memory in his semi-conscious state…
Trapped!
Cub’s memories take him back to the fall of 2006. It had been a couple of weeks since the young boy’s house had burned to the ground… a couple of weeks since he had lost his grandmother… a couple of weeks truly on his own…
During that time Cub moved about frequently… never staying in one place long… always in an attempt to avoid contact with… THEM.
His meals were sparse, consisting predominately of snack foods and candy found in convenience stores. If you had asked Cub a month earlier, he would have sworn that he would ever get sick of candy and chips… but a month ago was a lifetime away…
Cub could tell that his body craved nutrition, and was suffering for the lack of it. Yet obtaining the food and preparing a proper meal was beyond Cub at this point.
Fear paralysed all but the most basic of actions… running… hiding… eating.
He was afraid… always afraid… afraid of staying in one place… afraid of moving… afraid of noise… afraid of smelling… but most of all… Cub was afraid of sleeping…
The boy tried to keep himself awake as much as possible… just taking short fitful naps, jumping up at the slightest sound.
After a couple of weeks it caught up with him… his young body couldn’t take the lack of sleep combined with minimal food…
At the end of the day… when dusk came, Cub found an abandoned office building… crawled under a cubicle desk and laid himself down for what he thought was going to be a short nap…
But sleep… deep sleep… overtook him. In that sleep he smiled, for he dreamed of his family. Getting up in the morning and going downstairs for breakfast before school… having cereal at the kitchen table… his mother and father talking… punching his sister in the hip and having her slap him… he cries and gets her in trouble. Dreaming of these normal events of a family made him happy inside… because family… and even normal… seemed to be long gone.
“GRRAAaaahhhh!!!!”
Cub’s eyes darted open and his head lifted slightly…
“How long have I been sleeping?” he thought. It was pitch dark, that was for sure.
“pant pant pant”
The boy felt panic already overtake him. The Zed was close. It’s breathing could be heard. IT was in the same room, which was a maze of office cubicles, their dividers about four feet tall.
“GRRRAAAAHHH!!”
It roared even louder! It sounded like it was getting frustrated navigating the cubicles. But it sounded like it was slightly closer.
“What’ll I do!? What’ll I do!? I think it’s getting closer. Somehow I know it knows I’m here. Mommy… please Mommy just show up and fix it all.”
Cub looked up at the window beside the cubicle he was laying under, then noticed the moonlight shining off the metal coat hanger standing beside that window.
Acting on impulse Cub sprang to action… panic fuelling the urgency…
He stood and grabbed the metal coat hanger… it was heavier than he thought it would be… and lifted if over his head, lowering the bottom end onto the glass window.
CLINK!
The glass chipped but he hadn’t the force to break it.
“GRRAHHH!!”
Cub could hear the creature’s roar… so close… but didn’t want to look back. He just wanted to focus on getting through this window…
Pulling the coat hanger away from the window the child turned it to face the opposite direction.
“Grahh!” THUMP CRASH! “grahh…rah!”
IT was thrashing about in an attempt to reach Cub, crashing and knocking into office furniture and cubicles. Cub could tell it was coming for him, and getting closer, but didn’t want to look… afraid that he would freeze in fear.
With all the might that he could muster he threw the coat hanger like a spear at the chip in the window.
“AHHH!!”
CLASH!!
The glass came falling down like shards of rain, sending Cub reeling back a couple of steps, covering his eyes with his arms…
“GRRRAHH!!”
IT was just behind him! Cub ran at the opening and jumped on the window ledge. Pain bit him as the jagged glass cut his palm and knee. He then let himself drop out of the window to the sidewalk below…
THUMP!!
“OUCH!” he winced and his eyes welled as he landed hard on his back. He wanted to cry, to react like a boy should, but pulled his tears back inside himself.
“GGRRRAAAHHH”
Opening his eyes he saw the Zed… teeth bared and eyes full of hatred… looking down at him from the window he had just come from...
Rolling himself over Cub staggered to a standing position, almost falling mid way as a dizzy spell hit him.
“GRRAHHH!”
Looking up he saw the Zed climbing through the window.
That was when he turned to run and noticed two more Zombies shuffling down the alley towards him, obviously attracted to the noise.
Cub turned the other way and ran, but only a few feet… for he now noticed he was at a dead end.
He stood there and started to cry and the Zeds approached from behind…
