"Don't do that, it's exactly what they want," I thought, shaking my head vehemently. I stood there, watching as the Others continued their slow, steady march toward a hail of bullets. Slowly, steadily, with unwavering resolve, the Zombies came at them, the ones with the guns. They moaned and shambled onward even as they got mowed down. I got clipped in the chest, and it knocked me down. I was smart enough to stay down, unlike the Others.
"Sanitation frigging needed here," came a female voice, and I kept my eyes open and carefully blank as the Breathers came, one by one, and they shot the Others. Sanitation is what they call it when they shoot us in the head, to end our unnatural lives, and they feel pretty damn good about it. I know this, but I don't know how I know this...
"Clear," another voice, a male, barked, and I looked at them, as they stepped over me. They even stepped on me, though, numb from head to toe, I felt no pain. I had blood on my forehead, it splashed over me when the walking corpse next to me got clipped. Indeed, its blood splattered all over my face. This was a stroke of luck, for it convinced the humans that I was already dead. Well, ahem, deader anyway.
I waited until I couldn't smell them anymore, the Breathers. I waited until they were gone. Then I waited some more. Slowly, I rose to my feet, and looked around. Hundreds of us were littered across the landscape, slaughtered by the Breathers. I looked at a corpse, and saw something hanging on its hip, a revolver in its holster. For reasons unknown to me at the time, I took it.
It felt good, to have the revolver in my hand, even if I scarcely remembered how to use it. I walked through the corpse-filled field, and followed the Breathers. As I sniffed the air, I sensed something...different. The Breathers, there were two different kinds, one slightly stronger and faster than the other, and they were working together against the Others, against the eternally hungry ones like me.
I closed my eyes as memories assailed my fragmented, rotting mind, as they often did these days. Days, nights, it's all the same to me now. I never sleep. I never rest. I walk on, always, driven by hunger. I can never make it go away, the Hunter. I've eaten the flesh of humans and that of Mutants. Nothing can satisfy my hunger...ever.
I wish things were different. It makes my whole day when I can remember...before. The firefight triggered some memories buried deep inside my mind. I remembered the creche, the lab in which I was made, not born. I remember emerging from it, the clean, beautiful laboratory, and onto a world of permanent darkness, of radioactive gray skies, a disgusting, nightmare world.
I remembered the joy I felt among my own kind, those that looked human, but were smarter, stronger and faster, the ones like me. Well, ahem, like I used to be. Mutants, that's what they called us, the normal people, those who were not special, the mundane. We numbered in the hundreds in those early days, but soon became thousands, for we were designed to be better than them in just about every way...
The post-Apocalyptic world in which we live is an ugly, barren place, but it's also home. I remember feeling thankful for it, for it's a world where my kind actually stood a chance. With their numbers drastically reduced thanks to Nuclear fire, the humans were rudderless when we took them on, and hit them hard...
I remember joining a newly formed Clan, as the males and females of my creche banded around a charismatic leader. I remember the leader's face. He was tall, blond-haired and blue-eyed, and he had a certain magnetic presence, even in a room full of supermen and superwomen. I remembered pledging myself to him. What was his name? Magyar, yes, that was his name. Alexander Magyar, the one that my kind, the Mutants, called our Liberator.
It's funny, remembering this specific name, when so much of who and what I was has been lost. I remember fighting alongside my Clan members, supermen and superwomen of every hue, black, white, brown, yellow, every skin color and every type of facial feature, hair color, hair texture. The former masters of the old world wanted us to be their genetically enhanced shock troops, able to infiltrate every type of enclave, every society, every culture.
I fought against the humans as my kind, the Mutants, spread across the face of the Earth. We slaughtered the humans by the thousands, by the tens of thousands. Humanity fought back, and we suddenly had a war on our hands. One day, we discovered that we, along with all non-botanical life on the planet Earth, had a brand new enemy...
As Mutant and human fought over what remained of post-Apocalyptic earth, the Hungry Ones, also called Zombies arose. They indiscriminately attacked human and Mutant, devouring anyone and everyone that couldn't get away from them fast enough. One day they came for me and my Clan, and I fought back. We were vastly outnumbered...
"Yolanda, watch out," said one of my acolytes, a tall, blonde-haired superwoman. I thought, and her name suddenly came to the forefront of my befuddled mind. Sheliza Hauser, who'd joined the Magyar Clan late, having been found long after the First Of Us rose from the bunkers where we'd been created by scientists from a bygone age.
"No," I cried, as a Zombie, who'd once been one of my fellow superhumans, sank its teeth into my arm. I yelped in pain even as Sheliza blasted the Zombie's head off with her rifle. I looked at my wounded arm, and Sheliza looked at me, her eyes moist, her lips trembling. I saw her face contort in resolve, and she raised her rifle, aiming for my head...
"Don't kill me," I yelped, even as Sheliza got ready to kill me, and I ran. It wasn't a brave thing to do. I'd been a brave woman all my life. Wounded with a fatal virus which would kill me and then reanimate me as one of the Undead, I fled. Sheliza fired after me, but her round went wild, striking my shoulder instead of the back of my head.
At the time, I thought that Sheliza missed, but I have since learnt better. Sheliza was an Infiltrator, trained since early on to become the best killer, the best spy and the best social chamaleon that our Clan had to offer. She couldn't miss a shot if she tried. In hindsight, I guess she let me go. I fell among a pile of bodies, both the truly dead and the reanimated dead. When I came to, I was...changed.
"My name is Yolanda," I said to myself, as I walked through the field, discretely following the Breathers. They're more organized these days. For the time being, the humans and the Mutants have achieved a sort of truce, they realized that with our numbers on the rise, we who are called Zombies are a threat to every type of human, the mundane and the artificially enhanced.
I don't follow them out of hatred, I simply must feed, and I am always hungry. Once upon a time, I was alive. I had dreams and goals. I wanted to find a worthy mate, a strong male, a fellow Mutant, and I wanted to wanted to become his wife. I wanted to have offspring by this once and future mate of mine. I wanted our offspring to have bright futures as rulers of the planet Earth.
For that to happen, I wanted my old Clan, the Magyar Clan, to succeed and become the dominant group among my fellow Mutants. I wanted us to lead all the Mutants on the planet to total domination of the planet by finally subjugating the humans once and for all. Humans are weak and stupid. Prowler, soldier, mother, I had it in me to be all of these things and more. Whatever my kind needed me to be...
Now I am just another face among the Undead horde. Actually, I don't even have a horde to be part of anymore. The Others got slaughtered, mowed down by the human/Mutant alliance, thanks to their sheer stupidity. I remember feeling lonely among the Others. Like me, they were slow-moving, and driven by the eternal hunger. Unlike me, they seemed incapable of intelligent thought.
