As I have stated before I have always wanted to write my own stories, and I had at one point even started writing the first chapter of a book on here, big mistake by the way as the app crashed on me and i lost it, but I decided that from there on out I would begin writing somewhere relatively safe and luckily for me Google Drive as a built in MS office application. I have written a few short stories there for the Writing Prompt Subreddit, but I felt that this recent one that I wrote, Memoirs of a Zombie Hunter, was actually pretty good and I felt like posting it here. Anyway, I have made a few changes to the one that I posted, like making the ending a bit longer as it was kind of abrupt, but for the most part it is pretty much the same. I hope you guys enjoy.
Memoirs of a Zombie Hunter:
I was what you would call an outcast, a loner really. I was good at making things, whether it was repairing electronics, fixing cars, or building some kind of new quirky invention. I was pretty good at it, but even though I had gone to school for Computer Repair I was really struggling to find a job. As bad as it sounds, I wished for some kind of apocalypse type event, preferably one that didn't kill me. I saw it as a way to reinvent myself into somebody new, but what I wasn't expecting was what was to come in the next few years. Let me go back and start where it all began.
Everything began in 2023. We had just lived through the terrible spread of COVID-19, aka the coronavirus, and the number of deaths and cases had fallen quite dramatically from where they were in 2020. What many were not taking into consideration was what other diseases were lying dormant waiting to pounce on an already wounded society that was just getting back on its feet. It was early in 2023 when the first sightings of these creatures started to spread. Horrible hideous human-like creatures that if your blood got infected with their fluids, blood, saliva, etc. would turn you into them. As many were both unaware and incapable of protecting themselves, it wasn't long before major cities were overrun. That's what happens when you have so many people crammed into such small areas, at least that's how I looked at it anyway. It took less than a year for society to essentially crumble underneath the number of new, “cases”as I dubbed them.
The United States tried to shut its borders, but with many scared people out there, they had the right to be scared. That's for sure, it wasn't long until the virus found its way onto our shores. The first major city to fall was New York. The military was dispatched but this virus was crazy. It wasn't like your typical Zombie outbreak. It made you not only incredibly fast but strong too. One time I saw a newbie, a newly turned zombie, rip a man clean in half. I think it had to do with them still having blood pumping through their veins, but I never really ever found out what made them so much stronger. Anyway the military did not wind up doing much other than facilitating the spread of the disease quicker and on top of that just left high grade military equipment laying around like guns and vehicles. I didn't have a gun at the time, but after the amount of times that I had seen shows like The Walking Dead, and the countless number of zombie movies I realized that it might actually be good to learn to use a weapon with ammo that I could make. First I started with a bow. My Grandpa had been a bow hunter in his younger days and I used his at first, but I wasn't very good with it. Too many missed shots and I didn't really have the arm strength to pull the bow back all the time. You had to be stealthy because even though the zombies didn't have very good hearing they were incredibly strong and there were of course a lot of them. You definitely didn't want to get caught by a gang of them, that's for sure. I moved onto a crossbow. I know I know, ïts Daryl guys, the dude from the walking dead”. I heard that a lot from plenty of the other Hunters that were part of the NZHL. The difference between them and me was that I was crafty and smart. I didn't let my lack of physical ability stop me from trying to help society.
What's the NZHL you ask? Well that's where our story really begins. The NZHL was the National Zombie Hunters League. It began as a sort of joke on Discord when the outbreak began. As many of us were games and loved to game we used Discord as a way to communicate with other people across the country. I thought that it was a great way to get insight into which parts of the country were “safe” and which parts were no zones. Gradually over 2023 the discord exploded in popularity with people keeping count of the number of kills they had, and as I am a very competitive person I too decided to compete right along with them. As many people predicted, eventually powerplants failed and the servers went dark, but what had spawned in the NZHL continued. When people have something that they are good at they will find a way to keep that thing alive on matter how hard it becomes. People had set up an underground system that was designed to keep track of the number of kills you had gotten. I personally used a chest or head mounted camera, depending on what I was setting out to do, to keep track of the number of kills that I had. I would upload the footage to my computer every night and keep count.
Since I had hoped for an apocalypse, although I felt bad that it happened to be a zombie apocalypse, I had acquired some stuff over the years. I had built a small compound in my backyard, it was a shed that had a few addons, with a bunker I had secretly built underground. Luckily most of my neighbors were as antisocial as me and didn't ever bother to find out what I was up to. I had a few solar panels, some I had even ingeniously hidden inside fake rocks that I had put out into the area where it was the most sunny. I had built a pretty large fence around my yard that seemed to keep most of the looters out, but I also don't ever keep anything majorly important inside of my shed. I mostly made it look like an old shed somebody had previously lived in, but they were long gone. I knew how to keep myself safe.
Within that first year I had racked up at least two-thousand kills. I had figured out how to make something like the monkey bombs from Call of Duty Zombies. It took a few tries but they came out ok. I had easily moved to the number 1 spot on the Leaderboards, but there was fierce competition. Butch in Cali was my biggest rival. He had a Monster truck he had named Bertha that he had tricked out with a giant metal scoop on the front, spikes on the hub caps, and a giant minigun almost like a miniature tank. He had managed to get about 1900 kills but was hot on my trail. I didn't make zombie killing my main objective, but I certainly wasn't going to let one of them get in my way when I needed to go out and get things. There were times when I needed to vent so I would go on a massive zombie killing spree.
The League Lasted for around 2 years before the great awakening happened. It was a typical night like most when I got a call from Trevor, who was the guy running the radio towers in my area.
“Hey” he said, “Have you heard the news?”
“Nah manI hadn't heard anything yet, I was just getting ready for my nightly run. Why what's going on?”
“Apparently they've done it. They've created a cure for the virus. They've been spraying it all over the place with planes.”
“No fucking way…”
My heart dropped. I never figured something like this would happen. Many of us thought that the Government had collapsed. We hadn't heard a peep from them since the Military got essentially obliterated trying to protect New York.
“What's the news, has it worked? Are people turning back?” I asked him frantically.
“Yeah, ive got video footage from Butch showing people turning back.” he said a bit quietly.
“Guess that means the League is over Huh?”
“It sure looks like it dude. On the bright side though you did finish at Number 1”
“Wait though…” I said nervously, “what's going to happen to all the zombie hunters. Doesn't that mean we've been killing people?”
“I really don't know. I mean I guess technically they aren't really people, and the people infected with the virus did kill a lot of people so I don't really know what to say.” He said to me, “I will keep in touch with you though to keep you updated.”
“Thanks Trevor, I appreciate it dude.” I said before signing off.
Somber and pondering what I had actually done, I felt at least a little relief in the fact that what I had done was the right thing at least at the time. I was content with that knowledge and I figured that the Government would be on the same page as well and hopefully they wouldn't find out about what the members of the NZHL had done.
It was only a few days later when I heard back from Trevor with an update.
“Hey dude, you there?” he said crackling over the radio
I quickly hopped out of my cot and grabbed my radio.
“yea dude im here, whats up? Bad news?” I asked quickly, my ADHD really spiking as I was extremely nervous about what he might tell me.
“Well I can tell you that they have been doing more flights and dropping more of the powder over cali. I heard from Butch about a day ago, but nothing since then” he told me kind of nervously.
“Im getting a little scared, I feel like we fucked up pretty badly. I mean we killed a lot of people…”
“Technically” I said, interrupting him. “Technically we did, but how could we have known there was going to be a cure for all this? It was either us or them.”
“I know, but I'm still so torn over the whole thing. I am planning to leave the radio tower running, but I'm scrapping everything I can involving the NZHL and getting rid of all paperwork.” Trevor said matter of factly.
“That's probably a good idea. Even though I don't think we did anything wrong it's still a good idea to at least cover our asses.”
“Anyway this might be the last you hear from me for a while, i'll still have my portable on me but i'll be leaving and heading somewhere. It was great to get to know you Dan, but this looks like the end for us. Hopefully we will get to meet up again someday.”
“You too Trevor, stay safe buddy.” I said as I said my goodbyes to Trevor for the last time.
I heard nothing but static for a few days but nevertheless I kept my radio on the emergency channel just in case there was some kind of update. I decided to keep a low profile for a while as I had a good stockpile of supplies anyway, and I didn't really need to go out and scavenge for anything. I had created a pretty good security system setup for myself, it had been just over 4 years since the outbreak in 2023 and I had needed to do something with my time. I had hidden cameras setup around my city to allow me to keep an eye on whether or not it was safe for me to leave. It wasn't long, maybe February when I first heard the broadcast from my radio's emergency channel.
“This is an Emergency broadcast from the President of the United States of America. To all citizens still out there we would like to say that this tragic horrible time you have been living through is finally over. We have spent the last 4 years working diligently to create a cure for this horrible ‘monstrous disease. We are using planes to spread this vaccine across as much of the country as we can. We will be broadcasting the dates and times of which cities we will be hitting next. Please refrain from going outside and please refrain from attacking the infected. They can be cured and we would like to refrain from any more lives being needlessly taken. Unfortunately it seems that a group of people that we know only as the NZHL took it upon themselves to try and eradicate these poor innocent infected peoples. We are seeking any information regarding members of this terrorist group and there is a bounty for anyone involved. We already have captured a few of their members, but we would like to bring all of them to justice if we can. This is President Macllens signing off.”
I began freaking out. What had I done? I thought to myself. How many men and women, I specifically never killed any of the zombie, sorry infected children, would never get to see their families again because of me. I resided in the fact that I had done what I needed to to survive and that I did not know that there would ever be a cure. Luckily I took great care in keeping my identity safe. I had made a fake id that I had used when we had formally set up the NZHL and I had used my fake name for the entirety of the apocalypse, as I said in the beginning I had wanted to reinvent myself. I had also changed my appearance by wearing fake glasses, and shaving my head so many people didn't know what I actually looked like, and since we had done practically no video meetups in the last year nobody knew that I had regrown my hair out. I pretty much looked exactly like I did pre-apocalypse. Still though, i couldnt believe that in the blink of an eye I had gone from the Number 1 best zombie killer in the country to the Biggest mass murderer that the United States had ever seen. Little did I know that this would merely be the beginning of my story…
