Be Careful What You Wish For: A Zombie Apocalypse-Chapter 440: Five Bodies; Five Directions

Caspian stood in front of the pit, looking down at all the dead bodies below. The thing was massive, at least two football fields, and it was almost three-quarters full. It was depressing, all the lives that had been taken since this shit started.

Before the apocalypse, before everything, seeing something like this would have been a crime against humanity. People would have revolted, rebelling against a callous government that could treat its people like that.

Not to mention the inhumane conditions, but having it open like this, smelling the corpses all the way to the Sanctuary and beyond when the wind was blowing in the right direction. There was something sick and depraved about all of it.

And it was definitive proof of just how far humanity had fallen in the last four years.

"You know what they say about staring into the abyss," muttered Walt, clasping Caspian roughly on the shoulder. "Don’t let it make you a monster."

"Make me a monster?" replied Caspian, his voice soft as he studied the bodies. Men, women, and heaven help him, children, were just tossed in there like garbage... their lives completely meaningless. "I think I’ve been a monster for a while."

"Nah," chuckled Walt, pulling his friend away from the edge of the pit and toward a massive rock. Handing him an opened bottle of bourbon, he waited for the other man to drink. "No true monster will ever admit to being one."

"What are we doing, Walt?" sighed Caspian, taking a long gulp of the liquid. Letting it burn down his throat until it settled in his stomach, Caspian closed his eyes and sent up a prayer. However, just like every other time he had done it lately, there was no response.

"Drinking?" smiled Walt. "Honoring our fallen soldiers?"

"Is it worth it?" mused Caspian, handing the bottle over to Walt. "Is it really worth living if we’ve become nothing more than a shadow of what we once were?"

"I think it is," shrugged Walt. "Is it the same as it was before? Of course not. But any day that I wake up breathing is a good day, as far as I am concerned."

"How can you say that? Look at what we’ve become," snarled Caspian, his temper getting the better of him. "We are no better than animals who eat their own young."

"Here’s a question for you then," chuckled the other man. However, the look in his eye as he watched his friend descend even further into madness was nothing short of disgust. "How many people in that pit do you think would give anything and everything to be alive right now?"

Caspian froze for a second, blinking rapidly. "I don’t know."

"I do," continued Walt. "Every last one of them would have given everything they had to live just one more day. Even in this shitty world, even with all the shitty stuff that happened to them, as long as they were living, there was hope that the next day would bring something better."

Pulling the bottle out of Walt’s hand, he chugged the fire until his emotions became numb. "You don’t know that."

"Then why are you still alive?" sneered Walt. He didn’t mind, normally, talking people off the ledge like this. It wasn’t easy fighting every minute of every day for your life, but sometimes, enough was enough. Caspian was... something. The words needed to describe the soldier weren’t ones that Walt could think of...

But the pity party had to come to an end... one way or another.

"You want me dead?" blinked Caspian, taken aback by that comment.

"No," admitted Walt. However, the only reason why he had given that response was because that was what was expected of him. If he was being completely truthful, Walt didn’t care one way or another what Caspian did.

It was more of a ’shit or get off the toilet’. Every Friday, Caspian was here, contemplating life and death and the order of things... and Walt was tired.

"All that I am saying is that... maybe you need to do something," shrugged Walt. "If you don’t like how things are, then change them. If your issue is the pit, then start cremating the bodies."

There was also the option of feeding them to the gators, but Walk didn’t think that a sensitive soul like Caspian could really deal with that option.

"We need Bishop back," sighed Caspian at last. Closing his eyes, he tilted his head back so his face was looking up at the night sky. "It wasn’t this bad before."

"It was," Walt promised, "you just didn’t see it."

-----

The bodies on top of her were pressing down until every breath she took was a struggle. Opening her mouth to gasp, a finger fell into her open mouth, causing her to gag.

Her own fingers twitched. First, the movement was subtle, less than a millimeter, before she couldn’t move it again. Then her movements became more controlled as she pushed the bodies away from her.

She needed air, she needed to feel the breeze against her skin, she needed the stench of the pit to be washed off her body.

She needed a lot of things.

’We can give you all that and more,’ promised a voice in her head. The sound of it was harsh, clicking, like a thousand people were speaking those eight words all at the same time. ’We can make you a Queen.’

The woman moaned as she fought to claw her way through the bodies on top of her. ’We can do whatever you want. We can give you eternal life... you will never be hungry...never die...never feel pain. We can do that for you.’

The woman stopped, the voice in her head becoming too much for her. ’What do I need to do in return?’

’Nothing,’ clicked the voice. There was one that was a lot stronger than the others. ’You just have to surrender. Stop fighting. Let us take care of you.’

Jasmine relaxed, the desire to fight disappearing from her even as something foreign seemed to take over her mind and body. ’You won’t regret this,’ clicked the voice. ’You won’t regret us.

-----

That night, as Caspian and Walt talked about the good old days, neither one of them noticed five bodies crawling out of the pit. Each one headed in a different direction. One to the North, one to the South. One to the East, one to the West.

And one went straight to Sanctuary.