Chapter 1-1: Eric Davis
849 Words
“Boom! Boom! Boom!” Eric Davis, shirtless and red-eyed, held a rifle that looked like a giant cannon, spraying the three zombies in front of him with bullets.
In a poorly-lit alley of Kings City, he was faced with more than a hundred zombies, drooling and showing their teeth. Behind him… a dead end! On both sides of the wall were mutant zombies: ‘Lickers’, who clung to the wall with scaly limbs and attacked Eric with their long, venomous tongues.
Eric stood alone against the tide of zombies with only a rifle, as they slowly closed in on him.
At last, a zombie put two hands on his shoulders, it’s white teeth brushing against the tip of his nose and then biting into the artery in his throat. With a loud pop, his blood sprayed onto the wall like water from a fountain!
“No!!!”
“Where am I...?"Eric, who had a splitting headache, seemed to have just climbed out of a huge black hole. His mind was blank and weary. Fortunately, it was just a dream, of him fighting against zombies in Resident Evil.
He looked around. Wasn’t this his office? There was a thick layer of dust covering everything around him, from his computer to a pile of business cards he hadn’t distributed yet.
Trembling, he rose from his seat and looked around the room. The 300-square-meter office had been divided into more than 60 individual workstations, which was the hub of the company’s sales group.
The expensive, imported carpet on the ground was covered in dust. What? The boss always made a point of keeping the office clean. If there were ever any dirt on the carpet, this guy would literally run down the hall and yell for half an hour. So what was wrong with him? Why wasn’t he screaming the place down about the layer of ash on his precious carpet?
The hall, which on weekdays was normally bustling, looked as if it had been ransacked by robbers. What’s more, it seemed Eric was the only one there. Besides, the ceiling lights, sumptuously decorated, were all off. What was going on?
Eric pinched himself hard. It hurt! Piercing pain! This was no longer a dream, but reality. So what was going on and where was everyone?
It was all too weird. There must be something wrong!
He called out, “Mr Smith! Tim!” But no one answered him.
He opened the old computer on his desk and clicked on the page of the national news website. Suddenly, he noticed in the corner of the screen the date. It said it was 1:00 PM on August 7th 2025! Eric was sure that it was only May 13th 2025!
He returned to checking the news website and found the main headline in big, bold letters: “Doomsday Strikes: Human Catastrophe: “10 Things You Need to Know About the Zombie Doomsday…”
No wonder he had been dreaming about zombies. Damn it! Surely this wasn’t the classic “zombies filling the cities” scene, like in the science fiction novels? What had happened in the last two months?
Eric ran quickly to the terrace by the hall. When he looked down from the vantage point, he couldn’t help gasping. The building was located in the CBD with the highest population density in Kings city. Ordinarily, a throng of white-collar workers with their lunches would be out there, but right now, the ground was densely packed with “people”!
The difference was, however, that these ragged, pale-looking figures were no longer human! They were zombies! Just like the zombies in Eric’s dream!
Eric, who had read lots of novels about zombies, knew that this was not a joke, but that he was indeed in a doomsday situation, with zombies swarming everywhere!
He was so frightened that he instantly dropped to the ground.
I’m trapped in my office on the 35th floor, with a horde of zombies down below. I’m just a regular guy! What should I do?
Weapons! Food! Water! These three things immediately popped into his head as being the foundation for his survival in the dire situation he was in.
Eric knew that above all, he had to calm down and think. He could not be attacked and bitten by a zombie, or else he would become a zombie himself.
Eric went over everything in his mind. He was on the 35th floor. The elevator and the office door didn’t allow anybody without staff cards to enter. Since the office was empty at present, it meant that he was in a relatively safe environment.
At that moment, he realized that he was thirsty, so he picked up the half-empty bottle of water on his desk, and then opened the news page to read more about the situation...
He gradually came to understand what kind of world he was now living in.
- Writer
