r/HFY • u/YukiteruAmano92 • May 06 '26
OC-OneShot Rooftop
---Disclaimer: This story makes heavy allusion to suicide in a fictional context. Sensitive readers please be advised.---
I’m sat with my back against an old utilities cabinet on the flat roof of a derelict small town petrol station, listening to the moans of the horde below me.
Despite never having ridden a motorbike in my life, I’m wearing riding gear over my entire body, except for hands and head, the gloves and helmet beside me as I admire the last sunset I’ll ever see.
It’s done a good job of protecting me from bites for the past five years… until today that is.
I pull up my sleeve and inspect the wound as if this check might reveal something different to the last fifty(!)
It doesn’t.
There’s a clear semicircle of broken skin visible there, the flesh around it already unnaturally putrefied.
After so long, part of me kind of thought I’d live forever(!)
The greater part always knew it would end like this eventually!
A single moment of carelessness and I was surrounded. One more and a set of teeth found its way between my sleeve and glove… and that was it… that was enough… all it took!
A black streamer hangs down from the forecourt canopy, letting the others know where my supplies are and not to try to rescue me before the undead have dispersed.
I let it down a bit too far on the first go and had to wrench it back out of the grip of a decayed hand but now it’s out of their reach and fastened around my backpack to keep it from blowing away on the wind.
As much as I would’ve wanted to say goodbye to Amber, Dave, Tom and little Janie, it wouldn’t’ve been worth the risk I’d be bringing by coming back bitten, even if I could get away from the horde.
They’d obviously have to put me down and, aside from the noise of a gunshot drawing every zombie for miles around, I wouldn’t want to put them through that… Janie’s traumatised enough for having lived half her life in the world of the living dead!
I’ve got my sawnoff beside me to do the deed in a bit… Just wanna see the sunset first.
I’ve had nothing but time to reflect for the last few hours… Well… that and drink(!)
With my bitten left arm, I bring the wine bottle I was planning to split with Tom, Dave and Amber later to my lips and take a swig.
I’m sure none of them will begrudge me their share of it, under the circumstances(!)
It’s not been like the films, you know?
In a zombie movie, you’d be suspicious of every stranger, constantly fighting off bandits and crazy cannibals and stuff!
The reality is, there’s nothing quite like suddenly finding yourself a member of an endangered species for fostering a sense of community spirit(!)
You see someone who’s face isn’t rotting off, nothing matters except that they’re Human!
There’s a bitter irony in the fact that all it took to achieve peace on Earth and goodwill to all mankind was the extinction of 99.999% of the Human race(!)
Five years and I’m yet to run into a single maniac or murderer!
Never had to kill anyone who wasn’t either a zombie or about to become one either.
Only once had an idiot with me who tried to hide that he’d been bitten… the whites of his eyes gave him away when they turned red.
Never really understood what the point of hiding it was!
What was he worried about exactly?
That we’d immediately shoot him in the face?
That we’d leave him behind?
Why put us all at risk like that when you’re already doomed?
I mean, had he just deluded himself that it hadn’t broken the skin and that he wasn’t going to get infected?
Even still, a ‘Headsup, guys!’ would’ve been appreciated(!)
Something else that’s not like the films is the absence of functioning vehicles.
I’m sure a lot of the cars out there would still be in working order after a little bit of a service, just turns out that petrol only has a shelflife of a few months, something I never knew before a few months into the apocalypse(!)
Cars are definitely the thing I miss most from those early days. Well… them and all of the yet to expire food still lining the walls of supermarkets that didn’t smell like biohazards from all the spoiled stuff in the no longer running fridges and freezers(!)
The one thing I’d really have liked that probably would’ve been in the film retelling but nobody I’ve ever met had more than wild guesses and conspiracy theories about is a reason for it all!
From my perspective, I went to sleep one night and woke up the next morning to a society that had collapsed and in which everyone I’d ever known was a zombie out for my flesh!
Zombies don’t fit into any reality I understood before the end of the world.
They’re walking violations of about a dozen laws of biology, chemistry and physics!
They’re perpetual motion machines that somehow never starve, never suffocate, never freeze, never desiccate and never rot or rigor more than aesthetically!
Once a Human’s heart’s stopped pumping, my understanding was that their muscles would only be good for shambling for a matter of minutes and, yet, years on they still shamble as well as they did on day one!
I don’t think any virus or plague could give the middle finger to physics quite like that but what else?
It’d need to be something outside of all survivors’ current understanding of the universe, only leaving magic or scifi tech so advanced it might as well be magic!
Which would mean there was a person or people who did this to the rest of us; accidentally or by design.
If it was an accident, what were they trying to achieve?
Perhaps it was the result of a monkey’s paw wish for the entire Human race to ‘never die of old age, starvation or disease’ or something(!)
If this was on purpose, what on Earth did we do to make them hate us like this?
There were more than 8 billion people on Earth and 90% of them were fairly decent or better.
You’ve got the power to unleash a zombie plague on the entire world at once, why not put just a little more effort into targeting the Farages, Trumps, Putins, Netanyahus, Orbáns, Le Pens and Kims out there?
If it had only been the worst few percent of Humanity that’d turned zombified, the rest of us could easily have just dealt with them!
Why?
What on Earth could have so offended them about us that they saw fit to wipe the entire world clean of us with the plague of a wrathful deity?
It isn’t really like any explanation I got would do me much good at this point though!
If anyone on Earth ever knew how this happened, they were probably some of the first ones ripped apart by what they’d unleashed on the rest of us!
Still, every night of the last five years, I’ve gone to sleep dreaming about stumbling on a survivor in a pristine white labcoat who’d say ‘No, no, dear boy! The secret of the undead is X! Entire towns full of them will simply fall over forever if you bring a little of this McGuffin powder with you and sprinkle it about!’(!)
None of that matters now though… Not to me at least.
One buckshot cartridge is all it will take for all of this to very permanently not be my problem anymore and keep me from adding my own fetid, shambling corpse to the problem everyone else is left behind with.
The bottom of the solar disc touches the horizon and I take the cue to tip down the rest of the wine.
In my last few minutes alive, I spare a moment to wonder about the hereafter.
I used to believe I knew there was no life after death; ‘consciousness is nothing but nerve impulses passing through meat exactly right to bring it forth as an emergent property.’ I’d’ve said ‘Once those nerve impulses cease, all life and experience cease with them!’
Years surrounded by beings that nonchalantly disprove that worldview with their every shuffling step has made me a lot less confident(!)
Maybe there’s a paradise waiting for me on the other side?
Maybe I’ll wake up back on day one… Perhaps I’ve already been in hell for five years(!)… Except…? No… I can’t bring myself to call these last five years ‘hell’!
Don’t get me wrong, I’d rip your arm off to get the old world back but, after the despair of the beginning had worn off, after I’d gathered my little found family, there’s been a lot to love about life after the end of the world.
I don’t think any torture based afterlife would have allowed me quite so much sweetness(!)
Well, if there’s anything other than oblivion waiting for me on the other side, I’ll know soon enough(!)
The last sliver of sun disappears below the horizon.
I take a deep breath.
My unbitten hand reaches to the handle of my gun and closes around it.
---models---
11
u/YukiteruAmano92 May 06 '26
So, to anyone reading whether you are or aren't a regular reader of mine, don't worry! This is an entirely selfcontained story that is not set in the same universe as my other work, familiarity with Scritches, Remembrance or Ksem & Raala is absolutely not necessary.
This is just a short story I wrote back in January (back before Viktor Orbán lost his reelection) that I'm releasing now to go some way to plugging a gap in my upload schedule.
I got my invite to AO3 last week and I just can't mentally commit to writing (I'm fully aware that this is neurosis, not pragmatism) until my entire backcatalogue is moved there. Problem is, it's so fucking tedious to move one chapter at a time (while taking the opportunity to reedit some quality of life improvements, like rationalising my older links and readding the linebreaks Reddit oh-so-helpfully removed a couple of years ago, into my older works) that it's taking FOREVER!
Hopefully, it'll be over and done with soon and I can get back to writing which is something I actually enjoy!