Memoirs of a Zombie Hunter
[WP] When the zombie virus broke out, you were prepared. You quickly became the country's #1 zombie hunter - until science found the antidote to the virus that turns zombies into healthy humans again, retroactively making you the #1 mass murderer.
*****
I was what you would call an outcast, a loner really. I was good at making things, whether it was repairing electronics, fixing cars, or building some kind of new quirky invention. I was pretty good at it, but even though I had gone to school for Computer Repair I was really struggling to find a job. As bad as it sounds, I wished for some kind of apocalypse type event, preferably one that didn't kill me. I saw it as a way to reinvent myself into somebody new, but what I wasn't expecting was what was to come in the next few years. Let me go back and start where it all began.
Everything began in 2023. We had just lived through the terrible spread of COVID-19, aka the coronavirus, and the number of deaths and cases had fallen quite dramatically from where they were in 2020. What many were not taking into consideration was what other diseases were lying dormant waiting to pounce on an already wounded society that was just getting back on its feet. It was early in 2023 when the first sightings of these creatures started to spread. Horrible hideous human-like creatures that if your blood got infected with their fluids, blood, saliva, etc. would turn you into them. As many were both unaware and incapable of protecting themselves, it wasn't long before major cities were overrun. That's what happens when you have so many people crammed into such small areas, at least that's how I looked at it anyway. It took less than a year for society to essentially crumble underneath the number of new, “cases”as I dubbed them.
The United States tried to shut its borders, but with many scared people out there, they had the right to be scared. That's for sure, it wasn't long until the virus found its way onto our shores. The first major city to fall was New York. The military was dispatched but this virus was crazy. It wasn't like your typical Zombie outbreak. It made you not only incredibly fast but strong too. One time I saw a newbie, a newly turned zombie, rip a man clean in half. I think it had to do with them still having blood pumping through their veins, but I never really ever found out what made them so much stronger. Anyway the military did not wind up doing much other than facilitating the spread of the disease quicker and on top of that just left high grade military equipment laying around like guns and vehicles. I didn't have a gun at the time, but after the amount of times that I had seen shows like The Walking Dead, and the countless number of zombie movies I realized that it might actually be good to learn to use a weapon with ammo that I could make. First I started with a bow. My Grandpa had been a bow hunter in his younger days and I used his at first, but I wasn't very good with it. Too many missed shots and I didn't really have the arm strength to pull the bow back all the time. You had to be stealthy because even though the zombies didn't have very good hearing they were incredibly strong and there were of course a lot of them. You definitely didn't want to get caught by a gang of them, that's for sure. I moved onto a crossbow. I know I know, ïts Daryl guys, the dude from the walking dead”. I heard that a lot from plenty of the other Hunters that were part of the NZHL. The difference between them and me was that I was crafty and smart. I didn't let my lack of physical ability stop me from trying to help society.
What's the NZHL you ask? Well that's where our story really begins. The NZHL was the National Zombie Hunters League. It began as a sort of joke on Discord when the outbreak began. As many of us were games and loved to game we used Discord as a way to communicate with other people across the country. I thought that it was a great way to get insight into which parts of the country were “safe” and which parts were no zones. Gradually over 2023 the discord exploded in popularity with people keeping count of the number of kills they had, and as I am a very competitive person I too decided to compete right along with them. As many people predicted, eventually powerplants failed and the servers went dark, but what had spawned in the NZHL continued. When people have something that they are good at they will find a way to keep that thing alive on matter how hard it becomes. People had set up an underground system that was designed to keep track of the number of kills you had gotten. I personally used a chest or head mounted camera, depending on what I was setting out to do, to keep track of the number of kills that I had. I would upload the footage to my computer every night and keep count.
Since I had hoped for an apocalypse, although I felt bad that it happened to be a zombie apocalypse, I had acquired some stuff over the years. I had built a small compound in my backyard, it was a shed that had a few addons, with a bunker I had secretly built underground. Luckily most of my neighbors were as antisocial as me and didn't ever bother to find out what I was up to. I had a few solar panels, some I had even ingeniously hidden inside fake rocks that I had put out into the area where it was the most sunny. I had built a pretty large fence around my yard that seemed to keep most of the looters out, but I also don't ever keep anything majorly important inside of my shed. I mostly made it look like an old shed somebody had previously lived in, but they were long gone. I knew how to keep myself safe.
Within that first year I had racked up at least two-thousand kills. I had figured out how to make something like the monkey bombs from Call of Duty Zombies. It took a few tries but they came out ok. I had easily moved to the number 1 spot on the Leaderboards, but there was fierce competition. Butch in Cali was my biggest rival. He had a Monster truck he had named Bertha that he had tricked out with a giant metal scoop on the front, spikes on the hub caps, and a giant mini-gun almost like a miniature tank. He had managed to get about 1900 kills but was hot on my trail. I didn't make zombie killing my main objective, but I certainly wasn't going to let one of them get in my way when I needed to go out and get things. There were times when I needed to vent so I would go on a massive zombie killing spree.
The League Lasted for around 2 years before the great awakening happened. It was a typical night like most when I got a call from Trevor, who was the guy running the radio towers in my area.
“Hey” he said, “Have you heard the news?”
“Nah man I hadn't heard anything yet, I was just getting ready for my nightly run. Why what's going on?”
“You might want to sit down before I tell you."
"Just tell me Trevor, you've really peaked my interest."
"Apparently they've done it. They've created a cure for the virus, and they've been spraying it all over the place with planes.”
“No fucking way…”
My heart dropped. I never figured something like this would happen. Many of us thought that the Government had collapsed. We hadn't heard a peep from them since the Military got essentially obliterated trying to protect New York.
“What's the news, has it worked? Are people turning back?” I asked him frantically.
“Yeah, I've got video footage from Butch showing people turning back.” he said a bit quietly.
“Guess that means the League is over Huh?”
“It sure looks like it dude. On the bright side though you did finish at Number 1”
“Wait though…” I said nervously, “what's going to happen to all the zombie hunters. Doesn't that mean we've been killing people?”
“I really don't know. I mean I guess technically they aren't really people, and the people infected with the virus did kill a lot of people so I don't really know what to say.” He said to me, “I will keep in touch with you though to keep you updated.”
“Thanks Trevor, I appreciate it dude.” I said before signing off.
Somber and pondering what I had actually done, I felt at least a little relief in the fact that what I had done was the right thing at least at the time. I was content with that knowledge and I figured that the Government would be on the same page as well and hopefully they wouldn't find out about the NZHL.
It wasn't long before the Government issued its own statement about what happened. Apparently they had sealed themselves off inside of their own bunker, and had been working on developing a cure for the disease over the last few years. There were a lot of test subjects so I'm sure it wasn't hard for them to make it so quickly. They had found out about the league that we had been running, and had issued rewards for information about those that had competed. So in the blink of an eye I had gone from the Number 1 best zombie killer in the country to the Biggest mass murderer that the United States had ever seen.
Little did I know this was only the beginning of my problems. The worst was still yet to come.
*****
THE END.
