The world was supposed to end when the moon went dark.
And when half the earth flooded. And when meteorites pelted the eastern hemisphere. And when all those volcanoes in Greece erupted. Everyone had been freaking out about the “end of days” for six months, and Jack still had to do laundry. You’d think that would be less of a priority than finding food or shanking guys who walked too close to the apartment. But to Maria, apparently, it was vital.
And of course, she was too busy and important to do the grunt work- sorry, the important task of washing everyone’s underwear, so he got sent to do it.
The river was close by, so it’s not as if it was a huge trek to the lake, but still. Laundry.
He didn’t have a lot of time before sundown. He’d spent the better part of an hour arguing with Maria, and then a sarcastic remark about her leadership skills had triggered a lecture from her second-in-command about “insubordination”.
He was pretty sure Donovan used to be army. That, or he watched a lot of M*A*S*H.
Anyway, Jack and Maria both knew he was going to do what she said, but he was going to be as difficult as humanly possible first. It was all they had for entertainment these days. There was no television in the apocalypse.
Today though, she just sighed and told him to do what he wanted.That made him feel like an asshole, and then he was pissed she made him feel like an asshole, so he was an even bigger asshole to get back at her for it.
By the time he got out the door, Donovan’s hands were balled into fists and his face was flushed. Jack could tell he was itching to punch him. As much as he loved antagonizing people, Donovan was twice his size and built like a brick wall. He left pretty fast after that.
The river used to be one of the main roads downtown. The only way you could really tell anymore was the couple of street signs that managed to remain upright during the storms.
From the bank all that was visible was a heavily graffitied stop sign and a marker saying the speed limit was fifty. The water was deep enough you couldn’t see the tart that made up the riverbed, and most of the cars that hadn’t completely sunk had been dragged off and stripped for parts months ago.
He dropped the duffle bags onto the muddy ground and started unpacking them, not bothering to hurry. No one was supposed to stay out after dark, especially not alone, but it’s not like they were going to get any more pissed at him. The group had to be used to his flagrant disregard for the rules by now.
He’d been with them pretty much since the beginning, when Maria found him in a liquor store while scouting. It had been hard to convince him to leave the overturned shelves and broken glass of it all, until she pulled an honest-to-god whiskey bottle from her bag. Then he was as easy to lead as a zombie on a leash.
As bases went, it was an unlikely choice. It was tiny, with three floors and a basement with a couple apartments on each one. They didn’t use the main floor. It was kept locked down with boards naked over the huge windows in the front entrance. The fact that it looked like an impossible-to-secure shithole worked in their favour, because for the most part it went unnoticed.
A few in their group had lived there beforehand. While they weren’t exactly thrilled with having their place commandeered, Donovan and his friend were good at shutting down arguments. Being six feet tall and toting semi-automatics tended to have that effect, in his experience.
Maria was a good leader, however much Jack resisted her authority. He used to be friends with her, sort of. They’d gone to the same school and had a few friends in common. Being two of five openly queer kids in catholic school bred solidarity.
Jack was halfway through the clothes when he became aware something was watching him. Maybe someone, but people didn’t have that many eyes.
He kept scrubbing the shirt he was holding, buying himself time before whatever it was figured out he knew it was there.
He ran through his options in his head, which didn’t take long. It was a short list. He could run, but ten years of smoking meant his endurance was nonexistent, and the thing across the river could be a hell of a lot faster. That, and running meant pinning him down and ripping out his throat a game instead of a meal.
He swallowed hard. Okay, running was out. He had a couple knives strapped to his belt. No one went out unarmed. Hell, most people didn’t sleep unarmed. That was one new rule he was wholeheartedly on board with. Knives would mean close range combat, which also seemed bad for his interests- mainly, keeping all his limbs attached to his body.
It would help if he actually knew what it was, but there were so many horrifying possibilities it would be impossible to narrow it down. He knew it had probably been human once. That or an animal. No one liked to think about how it happened, the shift from us to them. There was no easy horror movie classification for them, and no one monster seemed exactly like the last.
Some ate people, but they weren’t exactly zombies. They weren’t dead, tere was no rotting flesh or slow shambling walk. With those ones you couldn’t tell until they laid into some unsuspecting idiot who hadn’t learned to shoot first and talk later.
Some were marked. Their eyes would change, or their teeth, or their hands would turn into claws. Usually you didn’t find that out until too late. He nearly hadn’t, back when in the first weeks of the apocalypse.
He glanced up to see the dozen or so red eyes across the river blink in unison. He swore under his breath and dropped the shirt into the river before he straightened up, hoping it was one of Donovan’s. His knife was in his hand. He didn’t know when that had happened, but pulling a weapon was second nature for him even before things had fallen apart. It looked ridiculously small as he held it out by his side, watching the LED-bright eyes track his movements.
Then he did something infomercial level stupid.
He took a half-step forward, trying to get a better look at the thing.
And of course, something shot out of the water and grabbed his ankle. He barely had time to think Jesus Christ that hand is cold before the grey finger tightened their grip and jerked him off his feet.
He fell backward with a shout. The mud underneath him only made him slide down the riverbank faster. He struggled to sit up far enough to reach the hand with his knife. He didn’t manage to get more than an inch or two off the ground before he hit a bump and fell back again.
He threw the knife aside and searched the ground for something to slow his trajectory, a big rock, a handful of grass, anything that would stop him from being dragged into the freezing street river by the dead hand.
He found the duffel bag of clothes, which was about as helpful as you’d expect.
He was half in the water now and it was soaking into his jeans. He used his other foot to try to kick the hand off, but another shot out of the dark water and grabbed it. Apparently it had a whole body down there. Somehow, the thought of a disembodied hand killing him had been less disturbing.
A flock of birds took to the air from the treeline, evidently wanting no part of what was about to happen.
He thrashed against the grip, but to no avail.
He was fully in the water now and still being dragged down, which he knew somewhere in the back of his mind shouldn’t be possible. There was supposed to be concrete down there. But hey, since when did the universe care about trivial little things like reality?
He tipped his head back, trying to keep his face above water. The foul tasting liquid sloshed in his mouth. He choked. His whole body was going numb. He was shouting again, or maybe he just hadn’t stopped.
He had time to drag in a last, desperate breath before his head went completely under.
The world went silent.
Sin Lorcan 
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