Today's #flashfiction The Other Survivor

“Gimme a hand.”

Igor* #quote

     I invited Jessica over this weekend, and since CJ is also comin' over it looks like it'll be a shenanigan extravaganza.

The Other Survivor

          Terrance dashed between the buildings. The zombies walked along the asphalt and climbed over cars. The creatures were slow and dumb, but more like humans in a dazed stupor from the brains rotting than complete idiocy. They held the presence of mind to break into places, even though in the impractical ways. Sometimes they even managed break into warehouses and open up cans and bags of food. They consumed all, not just the flesh of humans.

         And Terrance often exploited them opening up doors for food, as he had no thumbs. He witnessed beginning of the outbreak, as he lived in the lab where the virus was being developed. It's original purpose was much more benign. Along with many other things in facility. He didn't know what, he couldn't really read, but he understood human speech enough to understand when the disaster began and to run when his owner opened the door to his room for him. He and the other dogs being genetically engineered for high intelligence ran. They all started together as a pack, but their numbers dwindled as they learned their lessons for survival the hard way and now only he remained.

          In the facility they kept his fur well groomed and cleaned. Now two kinds of brown spots covered his white fur, natural ones, and ones from the dirt. The teeth that the scientists once kept clean now covered themselves with blood of all kinds of prey. Though he preferred not to hunt, but to scavenge through human supplies. Begging for food was not an option. Because of the zombie attack the remaining humans no longer held generosity for animals. They shot and ate one of the members instead of giving their pack food.

          Terrance found one thing over and over again while exploring over the months. His pack lost a few members to it over time until they managed to evade it completely and eventually Terrance realized that the entire city was surrounded by it. A defensive perimeter of soldiers in gas masks. He recognized the human form and gas masks as scientists had worn them before. But until his pack made the fatal errors and he saw the soldiers shoot at even humans he didn't quite understand it all. Barbed wire laid all over the ground in front of the soldiers. The soldiers only gave a warning to humans before shooting them and they shot zombies on sight.

         Most of Terrance's upbringing had been to teach him how to understand human speech and eventually communicate through some sort of sign language device they were going to have him operate with his paws. He could understand what the soldiers said, but couldn't communicate back if he wanted to. He slowly started to pick up some meaning from the words.

           People, food, dead. Those words littered the soldier's conversations. Terrance wanted to get past the soldiers to find more food, and he noticed they talked about it quite a bit. The conversations he didn't understand was the soldiers merely chatting to pass the time and trying to make the situation less bleak. The word people and food and dead was mentioned a lot, but actually Terrance was mostly missing the “un” sound of “undead”. The soldiers, when not chatting about mundane things, were actually talking about the survivors and their plight. How long would it be before everyone remaining ran out of food sources?

         The virus spread in the air from infected individuals The military could easily eliminate all the zombies by bombing the area and the virus would die out. However the military did not consider the survivors as collateral damage and only shot them when they neared the perimeter so they wouldn't spread the epidemic. The soldier's gas masks couldn't protect them if the infected got too close.

         Though an animal raised above his species's normal intelligence, the true nature of the situation escaped the comprehension of his canine mind. All he knew was that food was running out. Without a cure however, the military did not open the gates to the outside world so easily.

         Food kept depleting and depleting. It became more dangerous to forage as the surviving humans became more competitive. They even ate animal food. Terrance eventually decided to go to one place the survivors never went to for food because they never were aware of it. He went back to the start of it all, the lab where the virus was created. His managed to find the secret door to the place again. It didn't have the old security measures as the zombies broke them. The lever that opened the passageway in the library no longer had operational genetic scanners.

        Terrance managed to find food. Despite it being where the zombies originally appeared, since humans filled the entire facility the zombies didn't go after the food supplies, especially the dog food in the back. They occupied themselves with spreading and fighting the still living. Terrance turned his home into a safe house. However a few days into his feasting a tranquilizer dart hit him.

        The military spent a long time trying to find a way to fix the problem. Trying to find where the virus came from. And Terrance, in his quest for food, revealed to them the way to the lab. They constantly sent drones to take pictures of the place and used every spy method they had to take pictures of every single place. And with the location of the lab they sent in operatives, recovered the data they needed, and found a cure. Poor Terrance had to take a nap with a dart in case he was contagious, but in the end their cure managed to save the dog who saved everyone.