Gothicincarnation
02-27-2011, 04:41 AM
Warning! This is LONG at 4+ full 6.5"x8" pages!
Long ago, when the outbreak first began, no one knew what was happening. People thought that it was just some sort of disease that made people violent and that a cure would be found soon. No one really panicked much, no one really prepared for anything either. A few did, but most just tried to ignore it and assumed it was just isolated instances and that it wouldn't happen to anyone near them. By the time people started to realize just what was really happening, it was too late. The infection had spread everywhere and no one was really ready for it. Of course, how do you really get ready for the living dead swarming over the world?
In those early days, before it got bad, a few people tried to get ready. Survivalists mostly, paranoid conspiracy theorists, a few military personnel, and a handful of others. Most of them didn't last long after the walking dead started to outnumber the living. A few made it quite awhile, but in the end most of them joined the ranks of the zombie hordes. This story isn't about them, it is about one man who did survive. A man known only as "Hunter."
Hunter is a legend now, everyone knows of him world wide. It is said that he can not die. It is said that he is immune to the infection. Some even say that he isn't human. Truth is he is more human than any of us. I knew him, long ago before all of this started. I even knew his name before that day when the zombies came. But that doesn't matter anymore. The man I knew is, for all intents and purposes, dead. Now only the hunter remains. He can die, he even wants to, he just won't. He isn't immune to the infection either, he just hasn't ever been infected. He doesn't want to be a legend, or a hero, he just wants the pain to end though he knows his pain will never end... But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me tell you how it all began.
The Legendary Hunter began as we all began, as a simple man. He was 35 when the outbreak began. His years to that point were full of honor and glory in the military. His career ended as a Major in the United States Army when he was injured in the line of duty. It was on his first tour in Kuwait, when he took a bullet in his head. To this day that bullet is still lodged in his brain. Though the wound healed and the bullet does not effect him in any way, the Army gave him an medical discharge due to the possible complications such an injury might cause at any time. He was notably upset by his discharge and felt the Army was being unfair, but he didn't let it get to him too badly. Instead he became a law enforcement officer in his local police department. He remained a cop until the outbreak got bad, and it got bad fast...
Everything was fine that morning, news reports of the "disease" was in all the papers and all over the TV. But nothing was happening even remotely close his area. Or so everyone thought. He was sitting at his kitchen table when a report of a disturbance at the local supermarket came blaring across his police radio. He got up without hesitation, grabbed his jacket and hat, kissed his wife and 9 year old daughter, and left out the door.
I don't know what happened to him at the supermarket exactly, but from what I could tell it was bad. The infection had reached our small little town in a big way. Apparently a military convoy, transporting infected people had crashed releasing more than 50 of them on the countryside. And they spread faster than anything I have ever seen. By nightfall three-quarters of the town was infected and the other quarter had either left or had barricaded themselves in their homes. Come the next morning, he finally made it back home. I don't know exactly what happened when he went inside, and from what I found later, I didn't want to know either. But what I saw and the note I found told me more than enough. But I won't speculate, I'll just tell you how it was.
When he went inside he closed the door and locked it. An hour or so later I heard him barricading the doors and windows. Then... nothing. For more than 24 hours I heard and saw nothing. I tried to call him, to see if everything was alright, but the lines were down. Then I heard... something. I am, to this day, not sure what it was. Best I can say is that it sounded like a bar room brawl. Things breaking, scuffling around, and sounds like someone getting the breath knocked out of them... and the moaning. This God awful moaning. It went on for an hour or so, then I heard a door slam shut hard inside his house. Then... silence, again. I knew what it was, just didn't want to think about it, and I still don't.
It was two days later when I next heard and saw anything. The first thing I heard was the sounds of furniture being moved. Wasn't sure then what it was, but when I saw the front door open and he walked out, I knew it was the sounds of him removing his barricades. When he stepped outside, he was wearing an unusual outfit for him. I recognized all the items. They were gifts from his wife for his last birthday. A long, black leather duster; black skin-tight leather gloves; black, half-calf leather biker boots; and a black leather, wide-brimmed fedora hat. Under that, he wore a black dress shirt with a mandarin collar and black cargo pants. Standing at six foot four, weighing a bit over 200 pounds - all muscle, and dressed like that, he was actually incredibly imposing and even a little frightening. I had only seen him dressed like that when he rode his motorcycle, a beautiful Harley Davidson '67 Silver Bullet Classic. Another birthday gift, this time to himself. It almost made me feel like everything was normal again, almost. But that faded quickly...
I watched him walk straight out to the middle of his yard, staring dead ahead yet looking at nothing. Then he just stopped and stood there for what must have been only moments, but it felt like hours. I knew then, oh God, I knew. Then I watched as he fell to his knees, raised his arms to the sky leaned back and... I will never forget that sound, that scream, that rage, that... pain. I can still hear it. A sound unlike anything I have ever heard before... A sound that would have made the devil himself weep and all the wailing souls in hell fall silent in shame. Could any sound crack the sky open and make the Heavens cry, that sound could... and it did. As he fell into silence again, it began to rain. Slowly at first, then harder as he rose to his feet and walked back inside, leaving the door open.
A moment later, I heard the shots. Two, loud, resonating gunshots rang out. For a moment I thought he had shot himself and my heart caught in my throat. Then I realized there were two shots, and I knew what had happened. And I am sure you do as well. It was some time later that I saw him emerge from his house once more. As he walked to his driveway, the rain came down harder than ever and the wind kicked up something fierce. As if the Earth itself was enraged at the atrocities being wrought on it that day. His coat flew wildly around him like it was a living being, and I saw he carried a Japanese sword of some sort strapped to his back and two large, bright silver, shining guns strapped to his hips. I am not much of a gun enthusiast, in fact I know very little about them, but I remember him showing them to me once, He said they were Desert Eagles .50 caliber AE Hand-Cannons. Apparently one of the most powerful handguns in the world. I never saw him use them, and as far as I ever knew he never fired them till that day.
I watched as he mounted his motorcycle and kick-started it. He just sat there for a moment, looking down at the gauges. Then he looked up and right at me. His eyes were dark almost black, and totally hollow and empty. You might not believe me, but his eyes were dead. There was no life in them at all. No, he had not been infected, but he did die. At lease his soul died, if not his body. There was no expression at all on his face, his body language was silent too. Then, he just put his bike in gear and drove off at break-neck speed.
I didn't want to know what happened in that house. Even though I already knew, I didn't want to know if for a fact. But I couldn't stop myself from removing my sofa from the front door, walking out into the torrential down pour and hellacious winds, and going into his house. The place was a disaster. If it was able to be broken it was. If it could have been tipped over it was. It looked as if a category five hurricane force wind had blown through the house. Everything was damaged and tossed askew, everything except one chair and a small writing desk in the corner. I thought that odd and went to look closer, when I smelled the gunpowder. I followed that smell, I didn't want to, but I did. Down the hall to the far back bedroom. The door was shut, and I told myself not to open the door, but still my hand went to the knob, turned it and pushed the door open...
I then proceeded to violently vomit everything I had in my stomach, and, it felt like, everything I had ever eaten in my life. There, on the floor was his wife and little 9 year old baby girl. They had obviously been dead for days, and had been infected. And there they laid, truly dead now, each with one clean bullet hole right between their eyes. I couldn't see the backs of their heads, but judging from the... mess... on the back wall, I could tell that there was nothing left. After I had ceased vomiting, I closed the door and sat down, no fell down, on the floor. I must have sat there for hours trying to recover myself. Would have likely sat there for hours more, if not forever, if I hadn't remembered the writing desk and chair in the front room.
I slowly stood and carefully walked back to the front of the house. My knees didn't want to hold my weight. What he went through, what must have been going through his mind, having to do that. Not only to his wife, but his baby girl too... I still can not even begin to comprehend what it must have been like for him, I can't even get close to understanding any of it. But I can imagine, and that is bad enough.
When I reached the front room, and got to the desk, I sat heavily in the chair. It creaked and groaned under my weight, threatening to give way and drop me on the floor. It had not escaped the wreckage of the rest of the house, it had simply not broken entirely and was replaced in its proper place. When I looked at the desk, I saw a single sheet of paper. On it was a letter, addressed to no one, in his handwriting. I'll let my story end here, and let his letter speak the rest of the story. I will leave you with this, since that time, he has become a legend. An unstoppable killing machine sending the dead back to the grave. Pray for him, think of him, and know he is still out there... Still hunting.
They are dead. My family is dead. My wife and little baby girl are dead. Yet they are still banging at the door of the bedroom I locked them in, trying to get to me. My wife attacked me and my baby girl tried to bite me. She is... was, only nine and she's dead... no, not dead, but not alive either. She is so young, was so young. If I had known, before I went on that disturbance call at the supermarket, what I know now... I don't know... I don't know what I would have done. I didn't know, and now there is nothing left to do but... I know I have to, but I don't want to. God forgive me. God... That's a joke. If there was a God who let this happen... He is no God of mine. There is no God, even the devil wouldn't... couldn't....
No. I know what I have to do. I have to end this horror, this plague, this infection of the Earth. I will send them all back to their graves, back to hell! I will not rest until every last one of them is put down! I will not stop until the world is clean again! And I have to start now, with my...
There, that's done. If you are reading this, and you have survived this long, however long "this" may be, then you have a chance. Find somewhere safe and hide. Keep your friends and family as far away from this plague as you can. Help everyone you find and save as many as you can on your way. Because if you get infected, know that I will find you, and I will kill you.
I suppose you might want to know who I am. I am no one. I am nothing. I used to be in the military, then I was on the police force, now I am a hunter and nothing more. My name? I have no name. Not anymore. The man I was died a short time ago with my wife and daughter. I can, however, tell you what I am not. I am not a hero. I am not going to save you or anyone else. And I am not suicidal either. You have to care to be or do those things, and I don't. Stay away from the plague of the living dead, and you will never see me, never hear me, never know me... and you don't want to. I hunt the dead, I send them back to their rests, I care nothing for the living. For though I breath still, I am not living anymore. I am something else. Something dark, spawned from death and pain. I am rage. Warn all you meet of me. Let the dead know a storm is coming... Let them know that I am here. That I am not waiting but that I am coming for them. Hunting them. Let the dead know fear. I am pain, I am death, I am... Hunter.
The Legendary Hunter
The Beginning
The Beginning
Long ago, when the outbreak first began, no one knew what was happening. People thought that it was just some sort of disease that made people violent and that a cure would be found soon. No one really panicked much, no one really prepared for anything either. A few did, but most just tried to ignore it and assumed it was just isolated instances and that it wouldn't happen to anyone near them. By the time people started to realize just what was really happening, it was too late. The infection had spread everywhere and no one was really ready for it. Of course, how do you really get ready for the living dead swarming over the world?
In those early days, before it got bad, a few people tried to get ready. Survivalists mostly, paranoid conspiracy theorists, a few military personnel, and a handful of others. Most of them didn't last long after the walking dead started to outnumber the living. A few made it quite awhile, but in the end most of them joined the ranks of the zombie hordes. This story isn't about them, it is about one man who did survive. A man known only as "Hunter."
Hunter is a legend now, everyone knows of him world wide. It is said that he can not die. It is said that he is immune to the infection. Some even say that he isn't human. Truth is he is more human than any of us. I knew him, long ago before all of this started. I even knew his name before that day when the zombies came. But that doesn't matter anymore. The man I knew is, for all intents and purposes, dead. Now only the hunter remains. He can die, he even wants to, he just won't. He isn't immune to the infection either, he just hasn't ever been infected. He doesn't want to be a legend, or a hero, he just wants the pain to end though he knows his pain will never end... But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me tell you how it all began.
The Legendary Hunter began as we all began, as a simple man. He was 35 when the outbreak began. His years to that point were full of honor and glory in the military. His career ended as a Major in the United States Army when he was injured in the line of duty. It was on his first tour in Kuwait, when he took a bullet in his head. To this day that bullet is still lodged in his brain. Though the wound healed and the bullet does not effect him in any way, the Army gave him an medical discharge due to the possible complications such an injury might cause at any time. He was notably upset by his discharge and felt the Army was being unfair, but he didn't let it get to him too badly. Instead he became a law enforcement officer in his local police department. He remained a cop until the outbreak got bad, and it got bad fast...
Everything was fine that morning, news reports of the "disease" was in all the papers and all over the TV. But nothing was happening even remotely close his area. Or so everyone thought. He was sitting at his kitchen table when a report of a disturbance at the local supermarket came blaring across his police radio. He got up without hesitation, grabbed his jacket and hat, kissed his wife and 9 year old daughter, and left out the door.
I don't know what happened to him at the supermarket exactly, but from what I could tell it was bad. The infection had reached our small little town in a big way. Apparently a military convoy, transporting infected people had crashed releasing more than 50 of them on the countryside. And they spread faster than anything I have ever seen. By nightfall three-quarters of the town was infected and the other quarter had either left or had barricaded themselves in their homes. Come the next morning, he finally made it back home. I don't know exactly what happened when he went inside, and from what I found later, I didn't want to know either. But what I saw and the note I found told me more than enough. But I won't speculate, I'll just tell you how it was.
When he went inside he closed the door and locked it. An hour or so later I heard him barricading the doors and windows. Then... nothing. For more than 24 hours I heard and saw nothing. I tried to call him, to see if everything was alright, but the lines were down. Then I heard... something. I am, to this day, not sure what it was. Best I can say is that it sounded like a bar room brawl. Things breaking, scuffling around, and sounds like someone getting the breath knocked out of them... and the moaning. This God awful moaning. It went on for an hour or so, then I heard a door slam shut hard inside his house. Then... silence, again. I knew what it was, just didn't want to think about it, and I still don't.
It was two days later when I next heard and saw anything. The first thing I heard was the sounds of furniture being moved. Wasn't sure then what it was, but when I saw the front door open and he walked out, I knew it was the sounds of him removing his barricades. When he stepped outside, he was wearing an unusual outfit for him. I recognized all the items. They were gifts from his wife for his last birthday. A long, black leather duster; black skin-tight leather gloves; black, half-calf leather biker boots; and a black leather, wide-brimmed fedora hat. Under that, he wore a black dress shirt with a mandarin collar and black cargo pants. Standing at six foot four, weighing a bit over 200 pounds - all muscle, and dressed like that, he was actually incredibly imposing and even a little frightening. I had only seen him dressed like that when he rode his motorcycle, a beautiful Harley Davidson '67 Silver Bullet Classic. Another birthday gift, this time to himself. It almost made me feel like everything was normal again, almost. But that faded quickly...
I watched him walk straight out to the middle of his yard, staring dead ahead yet looking at nothing. Then he just stopped and stood there for what must have been only moments, but it felt like hours. I knew then, oh God, I knew. Then I watched as he fell to his knees, raised his arms to the sky leaned back and... I will never forget that sound, that scream, that rage, that... pain. I can still hear it. A sound unlike anything I have ever heard before... A sound that would have made the devil himself weep and all the wailing souls in hell fall silent in shame. Could any sound crack the sky open and make the Heavens cry, that sound could... and it did. As he fell into silence again, it began to rain. Slowly at first, then harder as he rose to his feet and walked back inside, leaving the door open.
A moment later, I heard the shots. Two, loud, resonating gunshots rang out. For a moment I thought he had shot himself and my heart caught in my throat. Then I realized there were two shots, and I knew what had happened. And I am sure you do as well. It was some time later that I saw him emerge from his house once more. As he walked to his driveway, the rain came down harder than ever and the wind kicked up something fierce. As if the Earth itself was enraged at the atrocities being wrought on it that day. His coat flew wildly around him like it was a living being, and I saw he carried a Japanese sword of some sort strapped to his back and two large, bright silver, shining guns strapped to his hips. I am not much of a gun enthusiast, in fact I know very little about them, but I remember him showing them to me once, He said they were Desert Eagles .50 caliber AE Hand-Cannons. Apparently one of the most powerful handguns in the world. I never saw him use them, and as far as I ever knew he never fired them till that day.
I watched as he mounted his motorcycle and kick-started it. He just sat there for a moment, looking down at the gauges. Then he looked up and right at me. His eyes were dark almost black, and totally hollow and empty. You might not believe me, but his eyes were dead. There was no life in them at all. No, he had not been infected, but he did die. At lease his soul died, if not his body. There was no expression at all on his face, his body language was silent too. Then, he just put his bike in gear and drove off at break-neck speed.
I didn't want to know what happened in that house. Even though I already knew, I didn't want to know if for a fact. But I couldn't stop myself from removing my sofa from the front door, walking out into the torrential down pour and hellacious winds, and going into his house. The place was a disaster. If it was able to be broken it was. If it could have been tipped over it was. It looked as if a category five hurricane force wind had blown through the house. Everything was damaged and tossed askew, everything except one chair and a small writing desk in the corner. I thought that odd and went to look closer, when I smelled the gunpowder. I followed that smell, I didn't want to, but I did. Down the hall to the far back bedroom. The door was shut, and I told myself not to open the door, but still my hand went to the knob, turned it and pushed the door open...
I then proceeded to violently vomit everything I had in my stomach, and, it felt like, everything I had ever eaten in my life. There, on the floor was his wife and little 9 year old baby girl. They had obviously been dead for days, and had been infected. And there they laid, truly dead now, each with one clean bullet hole right between their eyes. I couldn't see the backs of their heads, but judging from the... mess... on the back wall, I could tell that there was nothing left. After I had ceased vomiting, I closed the door and sat down, no fell down, on the floor. I must have sat there for hours trying to recover myself. Would have likely sat there for hours more, if not forever, if I hadn't remembered the writing desk and chair in the front room.
I slowly stood and carefully walked back to the front of the house. My knees didn't want to hold my weight. What he went through, what must have been going through his mind, having to do that. Not only to his wife, but his baby girl too... I still can not even begin to comprehend what it must have been like for him, I can't even get close to understanding any of it. But I can imagine, and that is bad enough.
When I reached the front room, and got to the desk, I sat heavily in the chair. It creaked and groaned under my weight, threatening to give way and drop me on the floor. It had not escaped the wreckage of the rest of the house, it had simply not broken entirely and was replaced in its proper place. When I looked at the desk, I saw a single sheet of paper. On it was a letter, addressed to no one, in his handwriting. I'll let my story end here, and let his letter speak the rest of the story. I will leave you with this, since that time, he has become a legend. An unstoppable killing machine sending the dead back to the grave. Pray for him, think of him, and know he is still out there... Still hunting.
The Last Letter of 'Hunter'
They are dead. My family is dead. My wife and little baby girl are dead. Yet they are still banging at the door of the bedroom I locked them in, trying to get to me. My wife attacked me and my baby girl tried to bite me. She is... was, only nine and she's dead... no, not dead, but not alive either. She is so young, was so young. If I had known, before I went on that disturbance call at the supermarket, what I know now... I don't know... I don't know what I would have done. I didn't know, and now there is nothing left to do but... I know I have to, but I don't want to. God forgive me. God... That's a joke. If there was a God who let this happen... He is no God of mine. There is no God, even the devil wouldn't... couldn't....
No. I know what I have to do. I have to end this horror, this plague, this infection of the Earth. I will send them all back to their graves, back to hell! I will not rest until every last one of them is put down! I will not stop until the world is clean again! And I have to start now, with my...
There, that's done. If you are reading this, and you have survived this long, however long "this" may be, then you have a chance. Find somewhere safe and hide. Keep your friends and family as far away from this plague as you can. Help everyone you find and save as many as you can on your way. Because if you get infected, know that I will find you, and I will kill you.
I suppose you might want to know who I am. I am no one. I am nothing. I used to be in the military, then I was on the police force, now I am a hunter and nothing more. My name? I have no name. Not anymore. The man I was died a short time ago with my wife and daughter. I can, however, tell you what I am not. I am not a hero. I am not going to save you or anyone else. And I am not suicidal either. You have to care to be or do those things, and I don't. Stay away from the plague of the living dead, and you will never see me, never hear me, never know me... and you don't want to. I hunt the dead, I send them back to their rests, I care nothing for the living. For though I breath still, I am not living anymore. I am something else. Something dark, spawned from death and pain. I am rage. Warn all you meet of me. Let the dead know a storm is coming... Let them know that I am here. That I am not waiting but that I am coming for them. Hunting them. Let the dead know fear. I am pain, I am death, I am... Hunter.
Maybe someone will do a character card for him? It was a good tight narrative. Quite filmic in fact. I would like to hear about him in action with that Japanese sword!