-Okay so here it is, my first go at writting a short story. There are probably a few grammar and punctuation errors that I haven't gotten around to correcting yet. Nontheless, please read it and give me your impressions, what you liked, what you didn't, s'all good. Thanks for taking the time to read it at least.-
We both sat on the floor up against the wall, vacantly gazing across the garage. Neither of us had said anything in a while, I didn't have any words for what was happening. The only sounds to be heard was the banging and crashing of what was going on outside the garage walls, of those things that were trying to get in, to get to us. We sat in silence for what seemed like hours. Kurt was first to speak.
"Light me a cig. I need one bad. I'd do it myself, but, you know, my arm..."
I reached into the front pocket of his jacket and pulled out the carton of cigarettes. When I opened it there were only three cigarettes left, figures. Kurt had been a regular pack-a-day chain smoker for as long as I had known him, which was only about a week and a half ago, just as the outbreak started. It was funny how his constant nicotine intake never seemed to slow him down. Maybe he was just running on 100% adrenaline, who knows? I put the smoke in his mouth and lit it with my own lighter. I don't smoke myself; it's just for survival purposes. God knows it's come in handy the past few days.
"You know, its dangerous keeping me like this. We never let any of the others wait until they turned. What makes me the fucking exception?"
"You know damn well why." I said bluntly. "You've kept me alive through all this, so I'm just repaying you the best I can."
Kurt laughed dryly. He tightened the grip around his bleeding arm. It was rancid to look at. It was only about two hours ago that the zombie had gotten hold of him. I felt guilty as shit just looking at it. We were holding up in the garage for the night, until morning. I told him the room I had swept for undead was clear, but there was still one left in there. It got a hold of him when he went for a piss in the night. I heard him yelling and when I got there, the thing was just gnawing on his forearm. Kurt the tough son of a bitch managed to gore out both of it's eyes out and threw it off himself, before I took up the pressure and shot it in the head.
Kurt said it was the end of the road for him, and I knew he was right. Being bitten by one of the undead was an outright death sentence. For some reason, Kurt didn't seem afraid of death at all. We had seen plenty of it on the way here. My family and girlfriend are all dead, all long gone. Whatever family Kurt had was probably gone to. We went looking for any other survivors we could find before the masses of undead became too large. We banded up to make it to somewhere safe, somewhere north, near the border. There was about seven of us to begin with, but one by one they all fell behind, infected or killed, until it was only me and Kurt left. Kurt's rule was to not to wait for a bitten person to die from the infection and let them come back before finishing them off. That would be careless, could cause too many problems. Now Kurt was dying, and soon he would turn. He didn't want to wait, for my sake, but killing my last friend, my last contact to humanity wasn't something I could do lightly, so waited for him to turn before killing him.
"Sunrise in about an hour, it's the best time to get moving. You know where you're headed after here?"
"Yeah, I got the truck fuelled and prepped. I'll head out after... you know."
"After I turn into a zombie and you shot me?" Kurt chuckled and winced under the pain, his cigarette now almost burnt all the way through. "Look kid, don't worry about me. In this kind of situation, I was always fucked from the start, we all were." His speech slowly became softer and slurred. "But you still got a chance of making it to safety; just don't be a clumsy fuck, like me, you'll do alright. You're a fighter like me, prove me right, and get the fuck out of dodge. You've got good aim. You've impressed... me... out there. "
The butt of the cigarette dropped from Kurt's open mouth as his head lurched forward. I stood up and brushed myself off. It usually took a minute or two before the infection brings a person back, but to me it seemed like an eternity of waiting. It would have been smarter to get out of there right then, the hordes of undead outside were starting to wear down the garage walls. I could hear them bang at the wall, but I wasn't listening. I was just alone, alone with my thoughts and nothing else, just me and the corpse of my last friend in world.
The sun started shining in through the cracks in the iron walls when Kurt started to stir. I decided to end it there and get it over with. If zombies had any sort of memory, Kurt's last vision would have been of me standing over him and pointing a 9mm at his head with a tear in my eye. One shot through the forehead. Nothing special, nothing impressive, there was no-one left to impress. The blood was pooling around my feet when I finally made the effort to move away and get into the truck and get out. I opened the door the garage with the remote that Kurt had found and drove out into the morning sun. With no at my side, but the thousands of undead lurching at the truck, I drove out into the new day, searching.
