Collegare, Young Writers of Earth [graded readers TXT] 📗

and hands and numbers surrounded him. They were on the walls. His tie had clocks on it. His socks. His undies. Clocks were everywhere!
Tick, tock.
But how could he escape? He was, after all, the Clock Man. Clocks were what he did. What he has always done. What he would always do. Just like his father before him. And his grandfather before him. And his grandfather’s father before him. And on and on and on all the way up to the Great Rebirth. When the Council chose everyone’s occupation and station and status and their sons were to have the same occupation and station and status and their sons and their son’s sons and on and on all the way down to the current Clock Man.
He supposed he could have it worse. He could be a Street Sweeper. Or a Grave Digger.
Tick, tock.
Perhaps being a Grave Digger would be better than this though… Maybe then he wouldn’t hear
Tick, tock
All day.
But still. If he had his choice, he would be an Inventing Man. Oh, how he loved to invent things! That was his favorite part of being Clock Man, all the parts that made up the clock were great for playing around to see what he could do with them. He had already made so many little toys with them! He wished he could make more serious things with them…
Tick, tock.
What he really wanted to do though, was build a time machine...


OH BROTHER, COULD YOU SPARE SOME FLESH?
Zachary Hoopaugh

The helicopters had all gone soft for the night and the silence of the evening air had been restored, if only for a little while longer. The few survivors that remained had obviously given up their search for remaining human life and decided to return to the safety of the Fort Jackson compound for the night. Every survivor knew that if you wanted to safely escape the horrors, you had to take shelter at Fort Jackson. But then again, every smart survivor knew that the trek to Fort Jackson was nothing short of a death journey. There were no yellow brick roads that led to salvation here. Here, if you wanted to survive, you had to stray off of the beaten path and stay alert if you hoped to live another day longer. And that’s all that was promised to us few that actually still had warm blood pumping in our veins: another day.

I couldn’t hear their rumbles anymore, but I knew that the dead weren’t far off. Their stomachs all seemed to collectively growl at this time of the night and the corpses would be on high alert for any small piece of meat that they could find. The stench of raw flesh was beginning to choke me and the South Carolina heat only ripened the aroma. I should be used to the smell by now, but the odorous stink of rotting flesh is something that you never quite get used to.

The roads were all clear, which was a rare occurrence in the nighttime. The creatures must have found someone to feast upon. The vile bastards always gathered and swarmed on the littlest bit of food, desperately gnashing at any living, breathing, moving form of sustenance with healthy meat on its bones. It was in these moments that I felt especially lucky, even though the circumstances of said luck meant that the world was down one less survivor. And lest you think me a fool whose eyes flood salty for any poor creature unlucky enough to become a meal, I can assure you that my interest in survivors is purely selfish.

I sat on the railing of the Gervais Street Bridge, using the reflections of moonlight in the flowing river to acclimate my eyes to the perfect darkness around me. The bridge was an old haunt that I used to spend my down time at and had become a favorite vantage point of mine ever since the outbreak had occurred. The bridge was the safest place during this, our darkest time. If one stood in the middle of said bridge, one would have adequate time to escape what was coming. There are no obstacles to hide behind and if the creatures trap you in the middle of the bridge, heaven forbid (if such a place exists), the easy escape is over the rails and into the water. The view from the bridge was also one of beauty. Beauty was hard to find these days and every now and then it was good to be reminded that such a concept actually existed.

I heard nothing in the air, save for the sounds of lightly running water. All was safe for the time being, or so it seemed. I grabbed my bag of supplies (which largely consisted of flashlights and batteries), draped my grandfather’s old rifle upon my back, took grip of the katana he had bought me when I was eighteen-years-old, and put foot to concrete. For a while there was nothing but the soft tap of my shoes against asphalt and the dull winds as they blew in from the east. All was lonely as most of the days and nights tended to be.

The town was in disarray, like it had been since the outbreak. Abandoned buildings polluted every corner and chunks of flesh and bone littered the streets. It still pained the heart to see such chaos and destruction in a place that I spent my youth. Even now, the memories still resonate through the blood-soaked pulp of the city.

In the distance rests a parking lot where I first kissed a woman that I truly loved. I had fancied others before, but none so much as her. I still remember her lips and how they tasted like pure pomegranate. I remember the electric shock of her blue fingernails as they touched my face and sent shivers of bliss down my spinal column. I breathed a little easier and walked a little taller that day; the day a man truly expressed his love for someone beautiful. And now, the scene of this once great memory had become just another place where the dead things played with their human toys. I shall never again make, unmake, or revel in memories upon this pavement that is now likened to that of a craquelure-ridden painting. It’s such a pity when pretty things disappear and the ugliness of extreme chaos can stain our minds so severely.

Traveling down the cracked road amidst all the flesh and abandoned cars, I eventually came to a dilapidated shell of brick and mortar that had, at one time, been a grocery store. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect as my stomach had begun to growl and the fatigue from a hard day’s walk was starting to burrow itself in my muscles. The window, which had once held a thick pane of glass that separated the bystanders from the shoppers, now held only shards of shattered glass caked with dried blood and dirt.

I put my leg through the window and the floor moved beneath my foot as hundreds of insects swam amidst their bundled legs, each one desperately searching for some form of sustenance, much like I was. I could hear the cracking of Thoracic plates and insect legs beneath my feet as the hard splat of guts fired forth from the body, smacking the linoleum floor and sending shivers up my spine. Cockroaches have disgusted me since I was old enough to remember.

All that remained in the store were the canned goods. Anything boxed had been invaded by the crawling pests and anything cold or frozen had spoiled long ago. I opened the duffle bag that I had draped around my shoulder and proceeded to load up any canned goods that I could find: string beans, corn, spam, tuna fish, and a few six-packs of soda. As I loaded up my bag, I heard a stirring close by. It wasn’t the sound of the cans being dropped into the bag or the fresh sound of insect death beneath my heel. This was something different…something ominous.

I zipped up the duffle bag quickly and sheathed my katana, replacing it with the rifle, and stopped to listen to the rustling. With the rifle firmly in my grip, I inched my way upon the backs of insects living and dead. Turning the corner of the aisle, the nose of the rifle caught light from the moon outside. I saw nothing in the store. The noise stopped and I breathed a sigh of relief.

I made my way slowly to the bread aisle, the smell of stale yeast polluting my nostrils. The packages of bread had all collapsed and turned fuzzy. Dead rats littered the shelves trapped amongst clumps of rotten dough with death mask grimaces. I heard the strange noise again, but only for a moment. It was closer this time, as if it came from the aisle right next to the one I was in. It was a shuffle or a groan…or perhaps a whisper.

A shadow flickered through a hole in the metal shelving unit. Someone or something was stirring amidst the spaghetti sauces on aisle two. One of the creatures had holed up in the store and was craving a feast, no doubt. The movement was slow, steady, and precise. The creature must be operating on the last bit of strength it had left. I raised my rifle, brushing aside various clumps of mold and rigor mortis rodents. Through the hole in the shelf I saw a bloody finger that was missing the nail. I couldn’t see much else, for the gap was much too small. My rifle trained ahead, I craned my neck to look through the hole, desperately searching for the rest of the creature. There was a cacophonous crackle that sounded like glass shattering.

I jumped back, startled, and my finger squeezed the trigger. The rifle blasted, leaving the soft roar of ringing in my ears. My eyes went dark for a moment and sprites of color swam through my corneas. There was a soft thud and it was all over. I rubbed my eyes, chasing the color dragons away. My vision returned and I peered through the fresh hole that my rifle had made. There was no creature on the other side. There was only a mass of blood, blonde hair, and the corpse of a young woman amidst broken jars of spaghetti sauce.

***

I sat on the sidewalk outside of the grocery store with my mouth full of cold green beans. This was a tricky situation, deciding what to do with the body. Had I known that the girl was in there, I would have persuaded her to seek shelter at my home, which was the usual plan when I met survivors. But now she was dead and I aimed to guess that there would be no other survivors in the near vicinity. Getting her body back to the house would be tricky. The walk home is a six mile trek through the streets and that’s not accounting for circumstances beyond control. I have to find a way to get her home. I don’t