The sky was as beautiful as it had been two years ago before all this started. It was blue and the sun shined bright just as it had before. But instead of happy people walking the streets of Portland exchanging stories of their days past there was desolation and horror, bodies flooded the once lively streets but these bodies weren’t alive in the first place. You see our fair city had been contaminated by a dreaded virus, a virus that had brought the thing that nerds everywhere joked about for years on end, The Zombie Apocalypse.
I was sitting around the camp where my team and I had stopped to rest after 3 days of moving through the city trying to find any survivors… So far we found none. I was walking around not paying attention to where I was going when someone came behind me and gave me a soft jab in the shoulder.
“Look alive Chris” He said as he put his arm around me and smiled. It was my friend Brian who was with me when the outbreak started and was the first to suggest that we go “Hunting” as he called it. He was about average height and was ripped and I mean ripped! I mean the guy could go toe to toe with a rhino and beat it to death with ease. He was wearing a white shirt and blue jeans and his hair, which was dirty blond, was shaggy and his long beard was as well.
“Hey Brian, sorry I was just thinking” I said forcing a smile.
“About the outbreak?” Someone said jumping down from the pile of junk he had been sitting on (we set up camp in a junk yard) “I’ve been thinking about it too.”
“Ahh Vance I thought you’d gone out to look for some brain maggots a while ago.” Brian said walking over to him.
“Nah, I got back about an hour ago, and stop quoting Call of Duty I told you it isn’t funny.” Vance said smiling; he was always the comedian of the group.
“Yes,” I said chiming in on Vance’s previous comment. “This is just all so weird” I paused looking up at the sky which even though the world we knew changed it never did. “I just don’t know why this is happening to us.”
“Because Chase thought it would be great to drop the proverbial soap and get all of us f***ed.” Vance said cracking a smile, but I could tell he was serious. “This all started because he thought he could play god… what a Dumba**.”
Chase was our long time friend (key word being was) He was always trying to be higher and mightier than everyone always trying to best them, Vance made a comment one day that the one thing he couldn’t beat was cancer (Chase had brain cancer and had about 5 months to live) while Vance was joking trying to make light of the situation as he always did, this fueled chase’s lust to beat every challenge he was faced with and made it his duty to cure brain cancer and save himself to prove that there was nothing he couldn’t beat. However, one day while he was getting ever closer to the cure testing his new concoctions on unwilling test subjects to see if the cancer cell would deteriorate, one of the subjects got loose and attacked chase while he still had a vile of the serum in his hand. The struggle caused Chase to drop the vile and it shattered on the ground. The fumes went into Chase’s blood stream and rather than curing cancer it created a new disease. The cancer cells fused with the unstable serum and turned him into a blood thirsty monster. He attacked the would be test subject and passed the disease to him. This started the worst chain reaction in the world’s history. The Zombies were stronger than uninfected humans and were very hard to kill; bullets were in short supply, and some of the people infected took to the disease in a different way than others. Some became larger or more agile than others, and instead of the slow brain dead zombies that were portrayed in the movies, well let’s just say they have never seen a real zombie apocalypse, zombies were fast as all hell and it was almost impossible to out run them. Out think them however was a different story. Where ever we go we always take a scan of our surroundings seeing if there is any way we can slip away easily or set up a trap to lure a group away, or just take out 30-40 of them.
“I can’t believe chase did this.” I said making a fist and tightening my hands.
“You can’t believe that dumb ego maniac couldn’t handle the fact he was going to die, which caused him to kidnap people and test an unstable drug that ended up causing the end of the world YOU CAN’T BELIEVE THAT SON OF A B**** WOULD DO THAT?” Vance said looking away at one of the traps.
“He’s right Chris, you should have seen it coming” Someone said. “You should have seen Chase being attacked by some guy that feared for his life, you should have seen that the vile he had was going to infect him and turn him into a flesh eating monster” The sarcasm in his voice made me crack a smile.
“Hello Joseph” I said chuckling. Joey was always the sarcastic type, but he never meant any harm by it, mostly using it to lighten a situation Vance failed to; however unlike Vance, Joey was serious a lot more often than not. Joey was sitting in a chair near camp and was parting his long red hair out of his eyes, it was apparent he had just woken up, the chair he sat in didn’t exactly fit his size (but I mean how many amazing chairs are we going to find in a junk yard, since we move a lot we could care less about anything that isn’t essential) Joey wasn’t the smallest guy in the world and although pretty big could move if and when he needed to, much like myself.
“All of your Complaining and moaning woke me up” He smiled as he raised his bat and examined it “Just as well we should go, we have been in the same place for far too long.” He started walking toward camp to collect his things when something jumped in front of him. It landed right in front of Joey and caused him to fall to the ground. The figure was slumped over and blood dripped from his mouth and everyone at the same time groaned. The figure turned and pounced on Joey who was surprised at the time and had his guard lowered. The Zombie clawed and scratched at Joey and while he was screaming, a loud bang was heard, the zombie fell off Joey just as quick as it had gotten on. All of us looked at the zombie who lay on the ground limp; I looked around to see what had slain the beast and smiled when I noticed who it was.

Up on a ledge holding a rifle was a tall light skinned man with a shaved head and a clean face. The smoke from his rifle showed he was the one that shot the zombie off of Joey, thus saving his life.

“Thanks for the assist Mike.” I said waving a hand to him. Mike jumped down and placed the rifle down and went to check on Joey.

“Are you bitten?” He asked looking over Joey’s body. He looked on his neck, arms, and legs; anywhere he could have been bitten.

“I’m fine” Joey said as he stood up and dusted himself off “Just got blindsided is all.”

“Well you’re lucky I was here and not still asleep like Isaac is.” Mike said chuckling and pointing to the dead asleep Isaac. Now don’t get me wrong he is a key asset to our group, he takes point whenever we move and we wouldn’t be this far if we didn’t have him.

“Yeah well… I could have pushed him off” Joey looked down at his feet and we could tell he was upset at himself and embarrassed to allow a lone zombie to take him so off guard. “Anyway we gotta go, kick that little Asian and get him up.” Joey walked back to where he had slept and got his area together. In a little under an hour we were ready to make our move to find any survivors out there in the city we once knew as Portland.