The three shadows split apart, one going after each group. I readied my spear and I heard Anna notch an arrow behind me. My grip tightened as I finally saw them in the glare of the setting sun. It was even taller than the other ghoul, almost seven feet tall. Unlike the ghouls though, the creature was shaped more like a gorilla, huge slabs of muscle covering its entire form.
A twang! and an arrow flew just over my shoulder and struck the hunter in the knee. I'd seen the an arrow fired at full draw sever smaller limbs on animals. A hit to the chest might not be fatal but could knock a full-grown elk to the ground. Against this behemoth, I expected a shattered kneecap. Instead, the arrow glanced off harmlessly and the monster continued charging toward us.
"Put it in the head or the eye!" I said, hoping not have to go toe-to-toe with this thing.
It got to within a hundred feet before Anna released another bolt. No way she misses at this range, I thought, feeling my nervous grip relax slightly. Then the monster jumped. Not a lunge or a dive like a lion might when tackling prey. No, it was twenty feet in the air and still climbing when it occurred to me to look up. It took another second for me to realize it would come down on top of us.
I shoved Anna and rolled in the opposite direction. The hunter landed with a heavy thud, feet and fists sinking a couple inches into the ground. I thrust my spear toward its chest, hoping to pin the hunter long enough for Anna to stick it in head with her spear. The taller ghoul was right through - the spears were sharp but didn't have the weight to hold it as the point of the spear barely stabbed into the hunter's dense muscle. I tried to drive it further but the creature's muscle wouldn't budge. Anna's spear unfortunately met with the same result as she stabbed at the side of the hunter's head.
The hunter roared and, seeing me first, reached out a massive arm. I shut my eyes, imagining great fingers wrapping themselves around me, pulling me to it, just a snack for this beast. Instead there was a loud crack! and I opened my eyes to see the hand hanging limply, the arm broken at the elbow. A club swung and shattered the hunter's leg, dropping it to a knee. The ghoul swung a third time, two-handed, bringing the club down on the hunter's head. It must've been enough, the force shattering skull and destroying the zombie's brain. The hunter fell.
I panted, terrified, until I heard Raymond cry out. I turned in time to see a hunter maul Raymond, bringing him to the ground and disappearing under the hunter's mass. Turning away from the gore, I looked over to see the other trio. The hunter lay motionless on its back while Tristan drove his spear into the monster's head. An arrow stood tall, probably a miraculous shot right through its eye and puncturing the brain. I let out a sigh of relief and began turning to help kill the last hunter. Then Denise screamed.
Turning around, a zombie draped itself over Karl's back with its teeth sinking into his neck. A set of hands wrapped around Denise's ankle, bringing her to the ground. Tristan stood transfixed, spear still in the hunter's head.
"Help your friends. The rest of the horde approaches. I'll take down the last hunter." The taller ghoul ran, Anna following right behind him.
I ran to Tristan, knowing too well that Denise and Karl were already among the dead. I got to Tristan, still standing in shock, and yanked him behind me. "Run back to the bunker!" I shouted before putting my spear through the heads of the two zombies. In the shadows of the trees, I could see a pack of zombies, almost two dozen of them, shambling toward me.
I found myself shaking, sobbing, looking down at the mangled forms of Denise and Karl. Though we weren't necessarily close before we went into the pods, we knew we would be all each other had when we awoke a thousand years into the future. We are all each of us has left. "There's nothing you can do. There's nothing you can do," I repeated to myself as I raised the spear over Denise's skull. I closed my eyes. I tightened my grip. I took a breath. A great roar shook me, the spear point burying itself in the dirt several inches away from my target. I looked over to see the ghoul delivering a fatal blow to the last hunter, similar to the one it delivered just a little while ago.
Quickly, I inhaled the sigh of relief I was letting out as smaller cries came from the treeline. Within the trees, zombies shambled out of the forest: skin withered and decayed, some missing limbs, their teeth an endless chatter. Amongst their ranks, cloaked figures moved unheeded between the corpses, delivering death blows with logs and stones. The zombies took no notice of the ghouls killing their brethren, all their focus on me and the other living humans. "Maybe it won't be too bad to travel together for a while," I said aloud, staring in wonder as nearly half the zombie horde is brought to the ground by a force seemingly invisible to them.
Two hands gripped my ankle with surprising strength. I try to jump back before realizing I'm anchored in place by a zombiefied Denise. "Shit!" I shout at my own carelessness. Of course they would change faster in the future as the virus progressed further and further. A thousand years ago, it took almost an hour for the change to complete. Looks like now it could take as little as a minute or two. I brought the butt of the spear down hard, fracturing the zombie's jaw. I did the same to its wrists, freeing my leg. Carefully I lined up the spear tip then shoved it through it through the eye.
As soon as I completed the task, another pair of hands wrapped around my waist and hot breath hit the back of my neck. Panicked, I dropped the spear and tried to pull away to no avail. I heard the snap of teeth close like a bear-trap but the pain never came. I looked down to see a pale hand unclenching the zombie fingers that held me. "Free yourself," said the smaller ghoul once he'd pried off enough fingers. I stumbled from Karl's hold and saw his teeth digging deeper into the ghoul's other arm, the leather-bound book lying in the dirt. The zombie fell to its knees, the ghoul's arm still hold in its teeth. With a free hand, the ghoul held the zombie's head back, exposing its face. "Finish it."
I picked up the spear, lining it up with the zombie's head again. Behind the head though, the ghoul struggled to keep hold of the head against his midsection. "Are you going to let go? I'd rather not stab you too if the spear goes through the head," I said.
The ghoul's head tilted quizzically. "I'm already dead," the ghoul simply replied.
For a couple more seconds, the zombie's head wrenched this way and that, trying to get to me though it still had a mouth full of the ghoul's arm. It was taking too long and I wasn't sure how quickly the rest of the horde would arrive, or how many of them. "If you could just hold still for a moment," I said quietly through clenched teeth. For a moment, it seemed that Karl could actually hear me and stopped struggling. Or the ghoul just managed to hold him a little tighter. Or I just focused a little bit harder. Either way, I managed to line up the spear for a second, enough time to lay Karl to rest.
The ghoul dropped the corpse to the dirt and I handed him back his book. We regrouped near the bunker entrance with the larger ghoul and the other surviving humans, six of us in total. In the trees, I could see cloaked figures standing statue still, their cloaks the only things rustling in the wind. Scattered on the ground, the bodies of zombies and their mutated brethren. It was more than we thought we'd find when we awoke but we'd do what humans do best, I thought as I took the book and opened it to unreadable pages. We were going to survive.
Based on the Reddit Writing Prompt: to survive the zombie apocalypse you put yourself in a hibernation pod for 1000 years only to discover an advanced zombie society. This might be the first prompt that I wrote a story all the way through (about a month ago), realized it was trash, and went back to re-write it completely differently. It wasn't that bad (by the standards of this blog which isn't that high at all) just not that good. Originally I took the zombies from another story I wrote that would get smarter the more brains they ate. In the end though, virus-type zombies can't really build a future society as their whole motivation is consuming everything. Then I spent time thinking about different types of undead, and there's so many I forgot about. And then, like with most ideas if I'm left alone with them for too long, it just fucking spiraled out of control to this thing. But of course, why end it when you can have one type of zombie interacting with other zombies, says the part of my brain that wants to continue this thing though I've threatened to cut it out several times already. From what I learned during the editing process (and if you're reading this you're thinking "Wait you go back and edit? Then why is this thing so bad?") I could stretch certain spots out to increase tension or suspense, but what I think I need is to shorten/ tighten sections to move along the story (did you enjoy that in a story about zombies it took forever before they were even mentioned?). I did mean to sort of end it with the main character (who I just realized I didn't name) and friends going off to look for other humans to sacrifice and free the ghouls, or something like that. Edit: crap, I didn't actually write that part into the story because I just wanted to stop writing this one already, especially since it's already taken up so much time already and the reason for no post last week. And the worst part is that I may go back to put it in if this fucking thing keeps going around in my head and bothering me to write it. I take that back, the worst part is that I'm already working on another, separate zombie story. No, I don't understand how I got on this binge of zombie stories, but hopefully I can stop after this one.
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