Yet Another Zombie Story

Josef looked out across the barren, depressing Siberian landscape, at the cold, harsh environment that lay splattered in front of him. He could not see very far because of the almost unforgiving snow storm that soon forced him to back away into the deeply hidden underground bunker. He forced the old and rusty steel door shut, made sure that it was completely secure, and moved through the metallic corridor; he moved through the shadows, he hated the shadows, almost as much as he hated the cold outside, mainly because the shadows held dangerous secrets that he did not like to be left on. As made his way to the second metal dungeon he realised how pathetic an existence he lived. Like a tunnel rat he and his comrades would crawl through raw sewage to hide from the horrors that stalked them. He hated himself almost as much as he hated those things that crept outside, waiting to pounce. But why exactly did he hate himself? Was it because he, unlike so many others, had survived the traumatising and fatal events that had dominated his solemn childhood? Maybe it was the way that he had lived, drinking the sewage water, eating the rats that hid within the cracks of the walls? He did not know all he knew was that he was alive and that they were dead and being dead seemed so much better than being alive.

He sighed with relief as he entered the warmth of the control room. After carefully closing the door behind him he took off his large over coat and gloves, but left his boots on in case of an emergency, he looked around the cosy room, it was heaven. As Josef made his way through the roughly carpeted deck he noticed that no one was manning the security system. His relief soon converted into pure aggression, how could they be so foolish? He asked himself deep within his mind, how could I have been so stupid to let them man the cameras? He mentally stabbed himself as he walked towards the old box that had once, a long time ago, been called a computer. He sat himself down on the creaky chair, peering at the glowing glare of the screen. As he watched the blurry footage Josef Toloski stroked his white, curly and untamed beard as he watched the erotic scene.

Taras Egorov lay, motionless, on his bug ridden bunk staring wide eyed at the mouldy paint that gradually peeled off of the dorm’s grey ceiling. As he focused he noticed a tiny spider that crawled across the damp lumpy surface. He wondered what it must be like to be such a being, without worry, fearing little in life yet accepting that a man such as himself could extinguish its life at any given moment. He saw the creature’s freedom and felt only jealousy towards it, he hated it, loathed what it represented, but yet he aspired to be like it, to be rid of the world that man knew.

As he pondered over his life, he could only wonder why he just kept on going living when there was so much to die for. It seemed that there was nothing for him to live for as he had no family and few people that he would call friends. At the age of only twenty two Taras Egorov was already considering suicide. He no longer cared for himself or the effect that his absence would have upon the small, closely knit group that hid themselves away into the old rusting bunker that they had all called “home”. But, it occurred to him as he lay glanced emotionlessly at the spider as it began to spin itself a web, how could he kill himself? He was but a simple cook who kept his fellow lost souls fed, he had no access to any form of weapon, other than a wooden spoon that was used to stir the canned soup, and an old microwave oven that rarely worked properly. He was in a no win situation, he could not die and he could not live, he was merely a simple drone, nothing more and nothing less. Yet they needed him, even if he felt as though they did not, because he did feed them and he did clean after them, he was an essential cog in the machine.

After only a few more moments Taras slipped quite steadily out of the top bunk of his shared dorm. He put on his boots and brushed of any dust which settled on the faded husk that was his uniform, he did not pull the rags onto himself as they were already placed upon his back, as it was advised by the General not to remove army uniform in case of an emergency or, if the men were really unlucky, a simple weekly drill that could of taken place at any time during a normal working day, although almost every day seemed to be a working day, for Taras at least. He slipped through the steel doors that led him to the main corridor of the bunker. He made his way very carefully through the dimly lit, shadow ridden corridor which would eventually take him to the kitchen. He made sure not to tread on the huge hairy rats that lazily clambered through the damp haze that one would presume to be a floor, but was in fact a surface of hard mud, dried to solid crust because of the unbelievably humid environment of the underground shelter. These conditions were by caused a century old pipe system that had coiled itself around the concrete mass, choking it like a man hung by a rope.