I awoke to the stench of death and decay, only to realize it was me.
Something felt cold. Metallic. Hard and uncomfortable against my back and spine. I was laying on something. A table I think? Where was I? Everything was dark. I couldn't see. I wasn't blind, but something was obscuring my face. Something like plastic. It was heavy and obscuring me from the world. I didn't like it. This feeling of being hidden away and forgotten. I wanted it off.
My arms and wrists obeyed the command and twitched violently in cracked spasms as they slowly regained life and movement after so long inactive. I shifted under the covers as everything started to work again one after another. My legs shifting under the covers, my toes wriggling, my mouth opening and gasping for air it no longer needed. My arms grasped tightly to the sides of the bed for support as they strained to raise me up for my rebirth. Slowly, bit by bit I raised myself from oblivion.
There I stood that day. Or was it night? Sitting upright on the bed shivering and slouched over. Dead arms, dead legs, Dead everything. Cold. Cold everywhere. My matted hair covering my face and a thick layer of dust scattering off of me as the sheet at last fell and crumpled to the floor leaving me bare. I wasn't breathing. My heart wasn't beating. And yet I was alive. In a sense. I felt numb and the feeling would not stop. I hated that lack of feeling most of all.
Who..who am I? That was the first thought that occurred to me. Where am I? I glanced down at my forearm and was able to comprehend a large bite mark. It was strange. Did I do this? It looked as if it was both rotting and...healing itself? Something felt wrapped tightly around my toe, too tightly. A coroners tag. I hunched over to take it off and tried to read it. To see if It, If I had a name. But...the words were blurred together. They didn't make sense to me. Not anymore.
My eyes strained and squinted, trying to adjust and read further in the dark as I slowly swung my legs around and jumped to the floor. I collapsed face down. My legs still weak and untested after so long inert. Straining and grunting, I willed myself up using anything within reach to keep me standing. I took one step. Then another, stumbling and weakly I kept moving forward. To where I didn't know. My hand grazed some faded fabric along the wall. It felt like a hospital gown of some sort. I covered and shifted myself into it as best I could, my fingers stumbling clumsily with the knots. I'll take care of that later. Just as long as this feeling of cold stops. Any warmth provided was nice even if it was minimal. I tucked the tag in a pocket sewn into the base of the gown for safekeeping, not wanting to lose it.
I left the room. Glaring green fluorescent lights were flickering all around me. Their loud hum buzzing like wasps in my ear. It was confusing and upsetting me. The sudden overwhelming stimuli. It was too much at once. I closed and opened my eyes periodically to let them adjust and kept walking forward. I think I'm in a hospital. Or a morgue of some sort? Its hard to tell. Everything is scattered about, beds, medical equipment, a lot of it is piled at entrances to form piles. No. Not piles, barricades. Barricades that didn't hold.
I shambled and climbed over the pile to slide down to the other side with a loud thud. I grunted loudly at the effort. This would take some getting used to.
I stumbled my way along the walls lost in the dark like a newborn, grasping and sliding my hands along the corridor to feel where i was going and avoid falling over. At some point I stepped on something sharp with a loud crack that slashed my foot. It felt like glass, it hurt, but stranger still it didn't all that much. Weird. Like walking on eggshells. A minor nuisance and inconvenience at best. But nowhere near life threatening anymore because i don't think I'm alive. not anymore. I kept on walking, trailing single footsteps of thick black blood behind me. Not knowing where I was. Or who I was. But I knew I was alone at least so I had time to get my bearings.
But I wasn't.
In response to the sound of the broken glass, I heard a faint delayed moan down the corridor back the way I had come from. A moan that was unsettling. I didn't like it.
Hello? I called out behind me, but nothing escaped my lips. My hand clutched to my throat confused and in a sudden panic. I couldn't speak coherent words. Nothing but a weak raspy noise. I knew what I wanted to say. The thoughts were in my head, just getting them out was the hard part.
I tried calling out again regardless, trying to communicate. The other voice was slowing getting closer in response to my desperate attempt at connection. And it was growing louder. More vicious and untethered. Soon enough I saw him enter out of darkness to share the flickering green spotlight with me.
He just stared. Curious at first, then growing more agitated as he sniffed me trying to get closer. He was testing something. He was testing me.
I was frozen, terrified as we stood face to face. He shambled closer, almost to the point of touching noses and I could see every detail of the pores of his face. The sunken in eyes, decayed grey and green flesh that clung to his bones, the flies buzzing about his face that soon began circling me as well. He smelled awful. Far worse than me and it made me sick. I didn't like him. He,... it frightened and repulsed me in a way I could not explain. I decided to walk away. It followed after me not wanting to let me out of its sight. His moaning wail echoing throughout the halls of the hospital for all his friends to hear.
I had failed his test.
Soon enough the others heard.
I don't want to be here anymore. I want to leave this place. And I want to leave it right now. Was all I could think.
I stumbled faster along the hallways, or at least as fast as my withered body could allow, hearing the sounds of the truly dead converging on me from every corner of the hospital. Those that were too withered limped. Those that were too damaged crawled. I was starting to feel danger. And for the first time in years. Fear. Fear at not belonging. That thing had been disappointed by what it saw in me, and now it was angry. They all were. The veil had been lifted. And I had been found wanting.
I rushed past broken windows and open doors as one by one more dead stumbled out after me in bloodied ragged hospital gowns wanting to get a closer look. I glanced briefly back and saw that there were now dozens. dozens following me. And dozens blocking my path.
I stopped. Silhouetted by the light of a bright blue and green medical monitor. They all just stared and inched closer one confused step after another. And with each step forward they grew more restless.
They were beginning to realize I was not truly one of them. They didn't like how I looked, didn't like how I smelled, how I moved or behaved. It all felt a bit too animated, just a tinge to alive. A bit too...human for their liking.
They all lunged.
I panicked and ran down a sperate corridor with both groups merging as one mob after me. I was running! Or at least a quicker pace than before, but I didn't know if it was enough. I was barely outpacing them. I turned a corner and burst open a door at the end with my shoulder to reveal a flight of stairs, I stumbled and tripped constantly on my way down the steps they were so difficult to navigate but slowly I remembered how stairs worked. One foot after another. The others were having an even harder time luckily. They tripped and bumped into one another before finally falling over the railings to crash at the bottom, still reaching up after me as they fell. I slowly remembered how stairs worked. They didn't. Thank god for that.
I opened the door at the bottom ecstatic, only to be blinded by a sudden painful burst of daylight. I shielded my eyes from the sudden influx of light. I hated the sun. It hurt. As did the rest of them by how we all flinched and shied back away into the shadows for a moment but still they followed after me. I had no choice. I entered out into the world with them hellbent on rectifying the error that was me.
They would chase me for days.
They were the longest days of my new life.