Chapter 1 - The First Dream and the First Zombie

It was a dark rainy night like any other. I should’ve listened to my mother, but like a stubborn child throwing a tantrum, I didn’t. ‘On nights like these, make sure to double check your locks, no matter how tired you are. Especially on nights like this! You never know what goes through some folk’s heads.’

‘You were right, mom,’ I thought to myself as I laid on the cold hard floor, broken glass littering my vision.

I was angry. My mom and I got into an argument when she found out that I got fired, again, for the twentieth time in my twenty-five years of life.

When I left her house I just ran through the rain to get to my apartment as quickly as I could. When I got here, I just slammed the door and laid down on my bed. I was tired. I didn’t care and just wanted to sleep. I wanted the day to be over. But look where that got me.

I tried to stay awake, my head was pounding and there were cuts and bruises all over my body. Everything hurt. But no matter how much I tried to move I couldn’t, I struggled, but my body remained motionless, a lifeless statue.

“..r.…ou…….out….his?” I heard the voice of a man say.
“We……ect…………ny…..a…..” the other replied to him “….t…ur….p”.

I couldn’t make out what they were saying, only bits and pieces of words that made no sense.

Through my hazy vision I saw them moving towards me. They kneeled down, one grabbed my left arm and rolled up my sleeve while the other took something out of his bag. I didn’t realize what it was until I felt a prick on my arm followed by an excruciating amount of pain.

I couldn’t scream. Why can’t I scream even though if feels as though all my limbs have been crushed and my head bashed in?

I wasn’t even given the time to process that question as everything went black.

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There was something standing in the distance. It looked like a person. I looked around and took in my surroundings. It seemed like I was in one of the many slums in district five, but what was that?

Even though I didn’t want to, my body approached the figure. That’s when it occurred to me, how did I know that I was in district five even though I’ve never been here before? Why isn’t my body listening to me?!

I was panicking ‘What the hell is going on?!’ But the words never came out. I was merely screaming into my own mind as I approached the figure.

An unfamiliar, malnourished arm reached out tapping the man’s shoulder “Hello?” The unfamiliar voice resounded from what I thought was my body “I know there’s not a lot of food to go around here, but you can’t be standing here spacing out like this. You’re scaring away all my customers.”

This isn’t my voice nor is this my body. That is all I got from this interaction.

‘Am I dreaming?’ I asked myself. But that was impossible, the last thing I remember is being attacked in my apartment. That was real so what the hell is going on?

As the unfamiliar woman kept trying to get the man’s attention, I kept trying to piece things together. My thought process was interrupted when I saw that the man was finally making a move to turn around. At least that’s what I thought it was.

The woman had no time to react as the thing grabbed her outstretched arm and bit into her neck, then pulled, hard, blood spilling everywhere. What was once her neck became a fountain.

I don’t know what kind of nightmare this is but I want to wake up. Why can’t I wake up?!

It kneeled down to the woman’s corpse and bit it again. This time it swallowed. It was eating her, and I couldn’t look away.

‘A zombie’ that the first thought that came to as I continued to watch the scene before me.

A scream came from behind me but I couldn’t turn around. The zombie however, wasted no time as it ran after the source. Soon multiple screams erupted from all around me yet I was frozen in place, my gaze fixated on the woman’s corpse.

At least, she looked like a corpse. But corpses don’t get back up after having their neck ripped out and guts eaten. And that’s just what I was witnessing here. The woman, a grotesque mockery of life, rose again, blood still seeping from her ravaged neck and stomach.

Then she lunged at me and everything changed.

I was now in district one. This time I was sure it was me, the outstretched arm that held the black gun was definitely mine. “Why?” came my voice as I questioned the person. I couldn’t see them, their entire being was just a big blur.

But it wasn’t just the person who was a blur, everything else was as well. It seems like this scene wasn’t going to last as long as the previous one as everything quickly blurred, then faded and I was met with darkness once more.

I jolted awake, grabbing my neck and stomach. The nightmare still vivid in my mind.

“May?” came the familiar voice of my mother.

I turned to my left and looked at her in shock “What…? Where….?” I didn’t know what to ask, everything felt so confusing.

“May…” my mother said again as she pulled me in for a tight hug, tears spilling out of her eyes.

“Mrs. Z, I’m here with the doctor to-” the girl’s voiced trailed off as she ran and hugged me as well. “You stupid idiot! Do you know how worried we were?!” Rina screamed at me as she cried her eyes out.

Eventually the doctor managed to pry them off of me and did a full body checkup to make sure everything was okay. Apparently, I was in a coma for one month. The doctor didn’t expect me to wake up so soon, or at all, based on how they’ve been questioning me and behaving.

Not long after the district police officers came to take my statement. Before I could tell them anything Rina interjected and filled me in. She could see how confused I was with how fast everything was happening. Normally DPOs don’t take breaking and entering cases, just the local investigation officers. However, they suspect that the perpetrator for my case is someone who recently stole some classified information as they were spotted in my area quite a few times.

Rina had gone on to explain that I was found the day after the attack by my neighbor, they were leaving to go on their morning jog when they decided to check in on me. He claimed that he heard a lot of glass breaking last night and was worried. Though when authorities interrogated him, he said he did check the night of but my boyfriend answered the door.

“Wait, what boyfriend?” I asked with a bewildered expression.

“That’s what I said when I heard the story as well. They couldn’t take my response seriously because they said and I quote ‘A lot of women around her age are known to be promiscuous in these times. It wouldn’t be strange if she has a secret lover or two that she didn’t tell you about’. I almost punched him but your mom beat me to it” she said dead seriously as she mocked what the officers told her.

I glanced at my mother who was equally pissed off when Rina continued filling me in.

For two weeks the IOs couldn’t find anything and the doctors didn’t have any hope for me. The head injury was extremely serious and some of my cuts got infected. But if that wasn’t enough, they found something strange in my bloodstream and when they tried to analyze it any further it went to my brain. This caused me to go into shock and I kept getting a seizure every two hours, this happened for three days straight until they finally stabilized me. After that, they decided that they wouldn’t run anymore tests on me out of fear that I may react negatively again.

A numb sense of detachment washed over me as I absorbed Rina's words. The events of that night seemed distant, as if they had happened to someone else, not to me.

Finally, after ten long minutes of silence I gave my side of the story.

That night, about an hour after I got home, I heard glass breaking. This made me jump awake. I was scared to check what made the sound but I couldn’t go back to sleep if I didn’t, so I picked up the cold baseball bat that I kept beside my bed and approached the noise.

I didn’t have much time to react, as I almost made it to the source of the noise someone grabbed my hair from behind and hit my head into the wall multiple times. I felt my warm blood oozing down my face, blurring my already foggy vision. When he thought I was unconscious he dragged me by my hair and him and his compatriot tore up my apartment looking for something.

As I finished telling the two officers my story they glanced at each other “Is that all?”

I hesitated. As I finally decided to answer them a sharp pain shot through my head. I held it as the doctor and Rina ran to help me. I tried to speak again “They injected me with something. And I had a dream, I thought it was a short dream, but I think I’ve been dreaming for the whole month” The detective’s look turned grave as these words escaped my lips.

He prompted me to go on and that’s when I explained what I saw. Though I left out the last part where I held someone at gun point.

The detective let out a sigh of relief and got up. “It just a dream kid, stop watching so many movies. We’ll continue looking for the perps, in the meantime take this” he handed me his card and walked out of the room.

Head Detective Maurice Henry of District 3.

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Five days have gone by since I woke up and I’ve been staying with my mom. Rina visits me every day to check up on me. Though I tell the both of them I’m fine they insist that I stay close to them until the culprits who attacked me are caught. Detective Maurice also calls everyday and updates me on the case, though it’s not much of an update since they haven’t found anything yet.

Rina, my mom and I sat down in the living room to watch a movie, they wanted me to relax a bit and get my mind off things. We didn’t have a movie to watch but we were changing channels when my mom stopped at the news. She does this now and again to see if anyone is saying anything about my case.

“This is D4 News and we’re here live at D5. Today, I Henrietta Viola, will take you on a tour of the miserable lives of the D5 residents. I hope this shows you all that the future of the D5 residents rests in our, the people’s hands.”

This wasn’t anything new, everyone knew how the residents of D5 are treated but does nothing. No matter how advanced technology becomes people will always suffer. My mom sighed and Rina told her to change the channel when a familiar scene appeared.

“Wait!” I exclaimed, startling my mom and Rina.

“What the hell May?!” Rina said as she clutched her chest.

I ignored her, focusing on the TV screen and the all too familiar scene. ‘Please let it be a coincidence’ I chanted over and over in my head. As I was about to let out a sigh of relief the news reporter let out a loud shriek.

“What the hell is that?” The cameraman asked as he ran backwards, filling the thing that was chasing them.

“Drop the stupid camera and help me Ed!” screamed Henrietta as she stumbled and fell.

And drop the camera he did. Ed ran as the thing lunged at Henrietta. People who were approaching to help her quickly turned their backs to save themselves.

We all sat in shock as the program was interrupted. That man looked exactly as I described to everyone five days ago – deathly pale, balding, tattered and bloodied clothes with a tattoo on his face.

“Ma-maybe it was just some prank, right guys?” Rina said awkwardly, but we all know what we saw. And that was the scene of a zombie eating a woman, then chasing another, the very scene that I described To them.

A few minutes later D1 News released a statement: “Everyone is to stay indoors. No one is to leave their house without permission. All districts are on lockdown as an outbreak spread from D5 to D4. If anyone leaves their home without permission, they will be tased by their ID watches and then detained. That is all.”

My mother and Rina hurriedly got up and locked all the windows and doors as I caught glimpses of the notice on some buildings. I sat there frozen. I heard the scream in my dream. I heard all of those screams and I saw that very scene.

Before I could get lost in thought my phone rang. It was Detective Maurice. As I stared at my phone dread filled me, that was a zombie, the very same zombie I saw in my dream and described to the officers, doctor, Rina and my mom.

Today is March 12th, 2518 and on this day the world saw the first zombie.