The World Through

The World Through
Derrick McCain

The world through my eyes hadn’t changed much since the reanimation of corpses. Capitalism still reigned, with food being the new essential rather than money. Sex still sold though, definitely as it has and will over civilizations for millenniums to come. The only problem other than that was the undead. Several factors played into their existence, first being their hunger. At first populating themselves by biting to the point of spreading the plague, they were finding that they no longer have the luxury. Instead, when one of the luckier ones does find a human pray, they end up devouring them to the bone with a malnourished savagery. This in turn is making them a dying breed. While this may be beneficial to the humans, it also tends to be problematic. While we started building our civilizations again, we started realizing the decrease of infected parties invading our grounds. This fearfully made us question whether or not the virus was dying completely or if they were just hiding a lot easier the bigger the cities became.

And that’s where we start. In the slums of New Haven, the new purgatory between hell and humanity where those rich of food and prostitutes flaunted it with armored trucks and armed guards covering them while the normal people scurried to find the last few canned goods left. I myself lived in the alleyways, the backstreets, and the dirty sidewalks in the city where the undead might hide. While paranoia was constant in my heart, I also had to deal with the constant pain in my stomach of longing for a meal. Today, a fourth hole had to be cut on my belt in order to get it to hold my pants up. Without government aid, people like me where known to disappear often for unknown reason, but usually in pursuit of something better. I myself don’t see anything else to compensate with other than what I have before me.

In order to live, my daily rounds usually consisted of begging; not receiving, then picking up what little of people’s scraps people left. At the age of 17, I was at an odd place where I was not perceived fully a man by society, but was not boyish enough to obtain sympathy. Many nights I spent cold, hungry and sunken in both defeat and shame of how low I had sank, my lack of morale to become a go-getter when it came to surviving, and the shape I had gotten in. Things wouldn’t look up for me until I met The Scientist.

It was a peculiar manner, the way we met, I was crossing the outskirts of the town, considering leaving, when I found an old Victorian looking mansion. Almost in disbelief, I moved closer to discover squirming in a bush.

“Don’t move any closer, he’s got a rifle.” A voice that I couldn’t trace said. I froze in my tracks.

“Your pockets. Empty them.” The gruff voice ordered and soon my pockets were inside out, showing him I had nothing.

“Alright, come here.”

I approached, finding the voice could be followed to the front door of the mansion.

“You look thin” He said.

“You can see me?” I questioned.

“Of course, I could see you though the peephole.”

That’s when I realized the world through that peephole must have been so soothing. So stable and luxurious, at least for this day and age.

“Do you have room in there?” I asked.

“Of course I do.”

“I?” I clarified.

“Yes. I’m alone, other than my guard there.” He pointed at the bush.

“Well… could I get a room in there?”

He laughed and there was a pause.

“What are you willing to do?”

“Just about anything”

“How about killing?”

There was a pause, my judgment began kicking in.

“Would it make you feel better if I assure you that they’ve already died once?”

That changed everything.

“I’d need equipment…”

And soon, the Scientist was instructing me to kill a female infected and bring her hand to him. From the top window, he threw down a small pistol, a hacksaw, and a garbage bag. I stalked the night, bag tucked away in my back pocket with the hacksaw and pistol in my front ones, waiting to find one of them. As I’ve mentioned before, it was very hard trying to locate one of the Reanimated with their heads still in tact, so I stayed in the most dangerous part of the New Haven, hunting.

And then, by a stroke of luck, I found her.

She swayed, hypnotized by hunger. She had a sallow, miserable appearance that almost made us akin. For a moment I lamented the light blue tint to her skin, the cataracts glazed over her eyes and the residue of blood and flesh that were probably wedged either under her fingernails or teeth at this very moment. I regretted it all because I knew that these criteria justified me sending her to her final death. So without hesitance, I reached into my bag, grabbing the pistol given to me. With a slight sound, I provoked her to turn around which is when I shot her point blank, sending the bullet directly through her head. After that, I proceeded to grab the hacksaw, which I was going to use to obtain her hand. The only problem with that was I feared I wouldn’t make a clean enough cut to keep the hand in good condition. With this in mind I soon found me guiltily bringing my knee down on her shoulder and upper arm, making the severance steady. “No. No” I heard in my voice, as if she could speak. But with my eyes shut tight, I finally managed to cut past bone and remove the hand.

The heartless moment I had obtaining the hand soon subsided ten minutes after walking back to the Scientist’s residence. I began feeling anxiety and fear instead. What if the hacksaw cuts into me and I become infected? What if somebody finds her body and hunts for me? What if there was a cure for her that I didn’t know about? Questions rushed into my mind, giving me the overall disappointment that I’d never have the answers. However, I was glad that they provided such a lengthy distraction for me to wonder about on the way back. When I got to the mansion, I soon rang the bell to have him welcome me in the same fashion as before.

“Greetings” He said once again through the peephole.

“Hey… I got the hand.”

“Excellent, let me see it.”

“I’m not pulling it out of the bag.”

“Very well, one moment please.”

Silence for a moment before a rope dropped from the second floor. He instructed me to tie the bag to it and he’d hoist it up. I did so and there was a silence. Soon enough the sounds of a welcoming creaking door were replaced with the sight of a new bag being thrown with a clean hacksaw and the pistol again.

“What’s this for?”

“A male species. I need a foot.”

“You’re kidding.” I contemplated shooting him, but chances where, I’d miss him, he was hidden behind the window and I didn’t know what he was working with weapons wise.

“You don’t expect me to extract data from just a female basis, do you?”

A brief pause. “But you said…”

“Look, I’m sorry, but I didn’t even think that you were even going to get me the first subject’s limb. You can consider that the test, this is just one last thing I need you to do. For me. For the human race.”

“… I’m hungry.” The only words I could muster with the immense sense of defeat residing inside of me.

Another pause. He was excellent with these. But soon enough, a box of assorted snacks landed at my feet. Treats with no nutritional value, but it didn’t matter. It was food. And sugary food, not some body's scraps. I smiled and examined the house. It was beautiful and worth one more infected. After all, he was right. This was to preserve people, not to injure them.

“I’ll be back with your infected foot.”

I found myself departing once again, but this time, with a mouth full of sugary cakes and cookies. At this moment, life was fantastic.

As I walked, I decided it’d be best to just retrace where I had taken the woman’s hand. Through the alleyway, I crept, hand gripped on pistol. And then I discovered something interesting.

The girl was gone.

A trail of blood, however led to her current whereabouts and I soon found myself following the long line of it. The farther I got, the darker it was becoming and the deeper within the slums I got. But eventually my trail led to an end point. Her sitting there propped up against a wall. That’s when I finally understood, this wasn’t a mistake of the infected’s stupidity. It was the exact opposite, indeed. It was a trap.

A snarling guttural growl made itself present as a quickly dodged out of the way, one of them charging to get me. It missed and happily, I realized that it was a he. I had found myself a male subject. Dropping to one knee, I pulled the pistol out, waiting for it to approach me. Once again, it barreled at me, breakneck speed, and soon met his fate by two bullets I shot. One to the throat, one to the head, he paused for a moment before dropping. I stood to my feet, scanning the area for more of the living dead, suspected that if he had set it up, there had to be more. Surprisingly there weren’t. With that reassurance, I once again wielded the hacksaw.

Marching home, I whistled. Within a day, my outlook would soon turned around. I’d see myself complete with a house to stay at for serving a scientist in his pursuit to conquer the sickness. It was an honorable thing, I thought by now of it. By no means was it fun to extract the parts, but all for good causes. I found myself at the door and knocked.

“Is it you?”

“Yes”

“Evidence?”

“Throw the rope down again”

He soon did and was surprised to see that inside the bag was the infected foot.

“One moment please.”

He came back downstairs. “Excellent job, I’m letting you in, okay?”

“Alright.” I said, trying to hide my immensejoy that I was going to make it in.

The door opened and with great delight, I took one large stride into the mansion in which I immediately found surprisingly deteriorated. Confused I turned to the Scientist to see one of them: bluish skin, sallow figure, the only difference being that he had a gun to my head.

And that’s when I realized…


———————————————————————————————————————

“Dinner!” The infected called. Soon he found his wife and son were downstairs with him, feasting on the next foolish person to believe that this was some sort of sanctuary.

“So why did this one take so long?” His wife asked, so hungry, she was tearing large tendons and major veins from his neck.

“Because,darling, he was special. He held out a bag, and like a present she excitedly tore through it.

“HONEY!!!” A pause before she reached in and grabbed it. “A hand for me?” She held it where her old hand would’ve been, had she not lost it a long time ago. “That’s not all.” He hobbled his foot and stub, grabbing the severed one the boy had collected earlier.

“I’ve got the sewing kit. We’ll attach them tonight.”

"Great. And what about the body? The wife said"

'The body' she was referring to of course was the man they were harvesting, left bound, trying to break free outside in the bushes.

"Oh." He contemplated. " We'll save him for another time"

The World Through That Peephole Was So Incredibly Skewered.