"We are so screwed," Private Patricia Etienne said aloud, watching the hordes of the shambling dead which surrounded the town of Redoubt, the last bastion held by humanity. Redoubt, the fortified enclave with the sixty-meter-high cement walls, patrolled at all hours by dozens of armed men and women. Like so many others before it, in the end, Redoubt would fall, and planet Earth would belong to the Zombies...
Blinking away the last vestiges of sleep, Patricia Etienne braced herself for a long night. The night shift sucked but someone had to do it. Snapping on her night vision goggles, she inspected her gun, her ammo, and her emergency pack. Above all else, she wished she could use her head phones, but part of being a sentinel was using all of one's senses. Too bad this meant listening to the sound of...them.
When a Zombie spots prey, it moans, a rather disturbing sound that has the power to chill a living human to the bone. It can make brave men and women shake, and fills their heart with dread like an icy fist. Prolonged exposure to Zombie moans triggers depression in humans. When a million Zombies converge upon a place and moan, the sound which they collectively make can drive a human insane. It's simply hunger given voice...times a million.
"Defeatism has never gotten anyone anywhere," came a deep masculine voice, startling Patricia Etienne out of her dark musings. Patricia turned around and found herself staring at...him. Adnan Samatar, a six-foot-four, athletic and muscular man with dark brown skin, a slick goatee and a smooth shaved head. He still wore his army fatigues, and looked positively upbeat in spite of the late hour.
Patricia Etienne was surprised by Adnan's presence, to say the least. Indeed, the Somali-born former U.S. Army soldier had somehow gained access to the Redoubt rampart long after the retractable stair cases had been pulled as a precaution. There he stood, in his dark green uniform, with something of a wry grin on his dark, handsome face.
"Captain Samatar, sir, I didn't see you there," Patricia Etienne replied, and she actually managed a salute, much to Adnan's amusement. The Captain returned the salute, and sighed. Looking at Patricia, he grinned, showing teeth that always seemed too damn white to her for some reason. Human civilization had fallen worldwide, and things like toiletries were rare luxuries nowadays, but the Captain always seemed a bit too clean.
"At ease, soldier, just inspecting the ramparts, that's all," Adnan said, and he wished Patricia Etienne would learn to frigging relax. Tall and curvy, with dark brown skin, dark hair cut regulation short, her brown eyes filled with fright which she thought she concealed behind a stern expression, Patricia represented everything that was wrong with today's troopers, in Adnan's opinion.
In a world overrun by the flesh-eating Undead, with only one hundred thousand human souls left anywhere, Adnan Samatar wished that people would learn to relax. A positive attitude was a key part of the survival game. The town of Redoubt arose in the bombarded, ruined remmants of the City of Minneapolis, in an area that was once home to a thriving community of Somali-Americans. Adnan's people. Even now, Adnan Samatar could almost envision what had been.
With the State of Minnesota gone, along with the United States of America and the rest of the world, the Somalis of Minneapolis constituted the single largest ethnic group among the remaining humans. They made up eleven percent of the population of Redoubt, and this caused some tension among the others. Even with death literally at their door on shambling legs, a lot of people hadn't learned their lesson.
As far as Adnan was concerned, the time had come for the human survivors to stop thinking of themselves as Europeans, Africans, Latinos, Asians or Arabs. The time had come for them to be simply human...and try to survive the Undead. The old world was gone. Everyone they knew was dead. Europe was gone. Africa was most likely gone. Asia was gone for sure. No one heard anything out of Australia or the Pacific in ages. They were on their own.
The Zombies waited patiently in their hordes, and Adnan couldn't help but admire their efficiency. The Captain's keen eyes peered through the darkness, and he saw them, in their legions, side by side. Things that had once been men and women of all colors and all faiths, transformed by the Zombie plague into walking nightmares. Tall and short, pale and dark, male and female, chubby and skinny, rich and poor, the Undead didn't discriminate. They welcomed everyone into their ranks, and one bite was all it took...
"What do you think goes through their heads?" Patricia Etienne asked, her voice barely above a whisper, and the Captain almost rolled his eyes. The Undead could sense the living across great distances, and they were keenly aware of the living souls trapped inside the town of Redoubt, packed like sardines, while a walking plague waited to devour them. Zombies aren't predators they are a disease, Adnan Samatar silently reminded himself.
"Private Etienne, the Zombies are as thoughtless as a virus, they consume until there's nothing left, they don't need to think or feel, that's what living things do, not the shambling Undead," Captain Adnan Samatar replied while stroking his goateed chin. Patricia nodded, and scanned the crowd of Zombies, over a million thick, as they moaned and grasped for the sentinels on the high walls, patiently awaiting...what?
"Sometimes I wonder if some of them are regaining their intelligence," Patricia said, and the Captain shook his head vehemently. Patricia was born a couple of years after the Zombies began to rise, and she'd lived in their world her entire life. When America died, Patricia Etienne was born, the daughter of Haitian immigrants who settled in Minnesota after the xenophobic government led by a certain rich New Yorker collapsed.
In Patricia's lifetime, the world crumbled. The United States of America fell to the Zombies, as did Europe, Asia, Africa and other parts of the world. Patricia's parents, Lorenzo and Mariella Etienne remembered a world where people went to the movie theater, shopped at the mall, paid taxes, flew in airplanes, rode trains, and most of all, the dead stayed dead and Zombies were the stuff of bad movies and television shows.
To Patricia, fighting Zombies was as normal as learning to drive had been for her parents generation. She learned to inspect family members, friends and strangers for bites. She learned to aim for the head. She learned to move without making noise. She learned to trust no one. In a world overrun by the Zombies, a lot of times, a living human's worst enemy wasn't the damn shambling hordes but another human, one ruthlessly determined to survive at all cost.
"Private Patricia Etienne, if the Zombies ever learned to think, your species would become extinct," Captain Adnan Samatar said, flashing her a disturbing smile. Patricia watched as the officer walked away, arms clasped behind his back. Although she appeared calm, his words truly disturbed her. There was something strange about the Captain, but Patricia couldn't quite put her finger on it...
"Not the sharpest tool in the bunch," Captain Adnan Samatar thought to himself as he walked away. Patricia Etienne was cute, with a really nice ass, but he didn't give her much of a chance when the shit hit the fan. Adnan scanned the darkness that surrounded the ramparts, and his keen eyes saw more than just the Zombies out there. There was something else waiting in the darkness, and it's that something which Adnan actually feared...
After patrolling the streets of Redoubt, and greeting the armed sentinels he saw, Captain Adnan Samatar retreated to the catacombs, as they called the vast underground network that lay beneath the town of Redoubt's foundations. The humans sealed the underground, for fear of a Zombie invasion from below. Captain Samatar went there regularly in search of sustenance. The town of Redoubt had a thriving rat population, and their blood tasted wonderful...
"Hmm, nice," Adnan said, smiling, as he grabbed a plump rat, and sank his fangs into its neck. The hairy creature struggled, but to no avail. The Vampire's fangs made short work of the rat, and the apex predator drank his fill. As was his custom, Adnan buried the rat, for he didn't care to leave behind any evidence of his predations. Long ago, he'd sworn never to feed on humans, and he was still keeping his word, even during the Zombie apocalypse...
Adnan allowed himself a moment of respite as he sat on a bench in the cool darkness. He sat down, and relished the sensation of living blood coursing through his non-living body. Surrounded by the humans on one side and the Zombies on the other, Adnan desperately missed the company of his own kind. Too bad the Vampire community was starkly divided these days...
While many of his fellow Vampires saw the humans as a plague and relished having the Zombies consume them, Adnan and a few others felt that humanity deserved to survive. The Vampires were fighting their own covertly over this whole apocalypse mess, and the war was in a stalemate. Adnan loathed this state of affairs. Besides, with humanity gone, how would the Vampire community replenish its ranks?
"Wow, Adnan, look at what you've become," came a feminine voice, and Adnan shuddered, cursing himself for getting so distracted. He rose abruptly and turned around, and a vision of beauty greeted him. Before him stood Hodan Hamideh, a six-foot-tall, curvy, brown-skinned, absolutely stunning young Somali woman with dark hair and piercing brown eyes. Amusement danced in those eyes as they coolly appraised the startled Vampire.
"Salaam, Hodan," Adnan replied, and Hodan grinned, raking her tongue over her sharp fangs. Dressed in a black sweatshirt and blue jeans, Hodan looked even better than she had the last time Adnan laid eyes on her. Like him, she once called Minneapolis home, long before the Zombies arose, long before she became a Vampire. In her transformed state, Hodan was eerily beautiful...and dangerous.
