Oblivion Dream

Redemption, a human concept. How much longer now, until no one was left alive to understand, to comprehend, or utter? On the inside of the bar, everything was in disarray. Hardly a table or chair was left standing, and already a layer of dust covered everything. Most of the bottles were either missing or stolen from the store, others were broken in the haste of escape. Forgiveness. For my part in this, I'm damned.

The moaning in the street was maddening, but not deafening. Only a few had found his little hidey-hole, but others would sniff him out soon enough. He had to move. I wouldn't still be here if it weren't for the roads. All ways out of the city had been blocked off by law enforcement or SWAT, possibly the military. He didn't know, he made it a point to avoid those areas in the earliest hours of the outbreak. He had heard later that the panicked guards had fired into the crowd, killing clean and infected alike. Dead is dead, shot or eaten - doesn't really matter.

The entrance and windows had been barricaded with chairs and tables the previous night, and the few useful things in the bar gathered. He knew, though, that he couldn't stay long. A siege only works out for the defenders if help arrives. He hadn't seen a living man or woman for almost a week now. Help didn't seem likely. He had to get out of this city, somehow. Sanity was not on the road out of town, that was for sure. All roads led to cracked-out, man-eating horrors that could have been his boss, co-worker, or his best friend. His wife and children had died in a car accident, when they swerved to avoid a man recently infected, on the first day of the outbreak. Mercy. He had contemplated suicide before, when all he loved was gone, when all he knew was destroyed. Somehow, he knew that is what the beasts' master wanted. He was sure now, only a malevolent force could have created the mutation in specimen X324. It was hunting him, if only by proxy. Rage was within him. Death was now a thousand times more a force of nature than before, but a man's spirit was an equal match.