Decaying Humanity by James Barton Read Free Book Online

walked over to the table in the dark, Harvey still trained on the man’s chest. I picked up the black and white notebook and tapped my pen against it. “Kill him? Not yet, he is going to help us fill a couple pages in our book.”
     

Chapter 3: Open Doors
        Things had gotten worse in the days that most people spent holed up in their homes. The number of zombies had increased and while their numbers were not overwhelming they were relentless. They were durable as hell and you’d be fooling yourself if you thought shooting the brain of a staggering assailant was easy. Some people had devised traps or methods that seemed incredibly effective against zombies, but the dead weren’t the only hungry ones out there. The combination of starving people and zombies made for a mix that spelled disaster all around the country.
        Most people, when faced with the knowledge they were bit, would hide it. Don’t get all high and mighty, claiming you would be truthful. Even without real knowledge of how it happened, people had seen the movies and thought they knew what was going on. Honestly revealing a bite would result in your immediate death. You can’t blame someone for hiding it; we were hardwired for self-preservation. We would hold onto life as long as we could, trading the lives of our friends and comrades for an extra thirty minutes of air.
     
     
        “Dude that is twisted,” Harvey said with concern in his voice.
        “Just patch him up so he can hold on a bit longer. We aren’t going to get another chance to learn this without him,” I responded coldly.
        “Why do I have to patch him up?”
        “You took that class last year, plus I have to barricade the doorway,” I said pointing at the gaping hole in the wall.
        The injured man had slipped out of consciousness and there was a steady trickle of blood still running down his limp fingers onto the plastic flooring.
        “I only took it to get closer to Carrie. Fine, I’ll do what I can,” Harvey complained.     Harvey went in the other room to gather some medical supplies and returned to begin his work. I used the oversized bookcase to block the doorway, which now had been desecrated by their intrusion. I put the two halves of the door in the living room. I wasn’t sure if I could find a use for it, but these days, trash pickup was running a little late. The bulky plasterboard bookshelf protruded into the narrow hallway. This was actually a benefit to us, because if anyone from the outside tried to push it over it would get wedged by the hallway. It actually looked like it might hold, although I would have still preferred a door.
        I told myself that I wasn’t a monster and this man wasn’t a poor orphan, he was a killer. This was only logical and he would have shot us dead anyway. Like most people, I had my day dreams of getting revenge on people that had wronged me, but this was different. What he was doing was cold, impersonal ransacking and murder. We had questions about the zombies and he could give us the answers, in a roundabout way. It is funny how quickly our minds changed when times became desperate.
        Harvey had argued with me, but his argument felt mandatory. There was a group of people on the news a year ago that had their yacht capsize. They had gone missing for weeks and when they were found four of them had survived by eating their friend. I’m sure when it was suggested that they eat a recently deceased or dying member, that everyone thought, “
Yes, I would like to live,
” but had to get past their morals. There had to be an argument, you had to put up a fight or it just felt,
wrong.
Harvey and I got along so well because we had a lot of similar views. When we didn’t share the same perspective we were adult enough to accept the other’s opinions for what they were.
        There was a surprised gurgling scream that came from the kitchen before being promptly muffled. I