Bane of the Undead
Gripping the blade, I stared into the sightless eyes of the shambling corpses of whom I had once loved in what now seemed like another life, another universe, and seeing through my heart the gentle loving souls they had once been. With every swing, tears streaming down my face, I wanted more than everything left in my soul that the sword in my hands had the power to bring them back. That this fucking nightmare could end if only I slayed them all. I closed my eyes, only for the moment before I understood that my attack must come…
XXX
“Go ahead. Open it.” He said, nodding towards the long wooden case sitting on his kitchen table. It looked as though it had come from the attic, as it had about an inch of dust sitting on its surface. Had Grandma been alive to see this dirty thing on her kitchen table, she’d lose her shit.
“My birthday isn’t for a couple months, Grandpa.” I said, rather confused, as I stepped into the kitchen. He waved a hand.
“This right here isn’t a damn birthday gift. This is, shall we say, just a special occasion. Yeah… let’s just leave it at that. Go ahead and open it.”
I looked at him for a moment before stepping up to the box, wondering how my frail grandfather got it onto the table in the first place. Grandpa was stronger than he looked, but it was still concerning.
“I’ve seen the writing on the wall for a while now, and I understand that I’m not going to be around forever, so we may as well get started.”
I was beginning to question him when I finally got the lid open. Placing my fingers around the worn wooden lip, I heaved it up. The hinges squealed with rusted protest, but it swung open, revealing a ruffled, crimson blanket. I cocked an eyebrow at my grandfather.
“Under there.” He said, waving his hand again. I pulled the sheet back and stared at the item that lay beneath. The gem encrusted hilt of a glistening longsword lay beneath.
“A sword? You’re giving me a sword?”
“Not just any sword, kid.” He said with a hesitant laugh—the one that I was used to and missed dearly after he was gone. “This sword has been in our family for ages. And it kept our ancestors safe when the dead came back to life during the plague.”
I just looked at my grandfather, probably with incredulity because he shook his head.
“It’s fine if you don’t believe me. Your dad didn’t, and that was fine because the end wasn’t going to happen during his time. It is to happen very soon now under yours, and though you may scoff at the notion, you must understand that what I speak is truth, and I wouldn’t lead you down a road of bullshit. You have to know that about me.”
“I do… It just sounds… crazy.” I had told him. It did sound absolutely nuts. I was a service attendant at a 7-Eleven, and now wielded a sword handed down to me by my ancestors to stop… what? The undead?
“I mean, it’s beautiful.”
“It’s not about how beautiful it is. The point is that it’ll keep you safe during... during whatever the hell happens.”
I was stunned into silence by the tear in his eye. I had never seen him cry before, not even when my father and grandmother died.
“Alright. I’ll start practicing with it today.” I had told him, not knowing that the world would collapse in two months. This wasn’t a lot of time to practice with the sword by any means, but practice I did, and somehow, as if it responded to my movements all on its own, I became very proficient with it. Perhaps the use of it was encoded in my DNA somehow, as my ancestors had used the blade before, or there was something else at work.
A form of magic?
Now I lean towards the latter.
In the last week before the end of it all, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, at least in the day-to-day of those around me. I grieved for the loss of my grandfather, who had died only a week earlier, but that didn’t stop me from my training. I doubled my efforts, almost possessed by the blade, as it called to me at every idle moment. I slept with the sword by my side and that week became the breeding ground of some of the worst nightmares I have ever experienced. Looking back, I see it as preparation for the waking nightmare I was about to inhabit.
The end did come, and when it did, the sky seemed to explode with a massive brilliance of reds and yellows, like some demonic Aurora Borealis. The transformers on every street began to spark and catch fire. No one’s lights would come on.
They would never come on again. It was from that moment on that I left my former life behind. The current world was alien, full of monsters and walking corpses. It wasn’t that the dead didn’t stay down—a lot of those who died after the lights went out did—but there was still plenty of pain so rooted within their souls that even death itself wouldn’t let them rest. So, many of them would wander the streets, screaming in agony and letting out their fear and anger on anyone still living, not eating the flesh, but fueled by a rage that the living couldn’t begin to comprehend, they ripped flesh from bone, tearing a living person to bloody pieces for merely existing.
I did my best to save those I could. The faces of those who died in the midst of one of these horrible attacks haunt me when the sun goes down and those of us who still remain hunker down for yet another restless night of watching. Of waiting. Just trying to survive. I have saved many, but sometimes it feels like a labor of futility. There is no way to bring back the vengeful dead after they have turned. The only thing I can do is to slay them with the gift of my grandfather. To help those I find and bury those who I failed.
XXX
The sound of my blade slicing into the flesh of the undead is something I will never get used to. I hope to never attune my ears to it in a hope that one day I may be able to go back to the life I once had. The life of friends, family, hopes and dreams. All have been absorbed in the blade I hold in my trembling hands. Nine corpses, three of them children, now lay at my feet, all of whom had been dead for weeks now. All of whom had tried to tear my body limb from limb. The ruined and eviscerated remains of what was once my grandfather lay among them. All engulfed in an otherworldly rage that I pray to whatever deity remains that I will never experience.
I wander onward, through this world of darkness and despair, kindling the hope that one day I will find a semblance of a peaceful life. It’s what he would have wanted. Society will try to rebuild, what remains of it anyway. My hope is that in the process, it doesn’t forget those it had once left behind. The many left out in the cold while the few at the top lived in opulence. The tower of our world had grown top heavy, and when the lightning struck it brought us all down to the same level of Hell, and the pain of our indifference consumed us all, keeping the dead from resting. Regardless, I see the kindling of hope now in the several settlements of survivors I’ve passed through. As with all things, the world will heal. It always does. The true question remains:
Will we?