The Birth of the New World

-Chapter II-

Still Alive?

Consciousness drags my heavy mind back to awareness, but it is pain that forces me awake. My entire body aches in pain and it is difficult to breathe, like there is an incredible weight resting on my chest.

Groggily, I try to peel open my eyes. They are heavy with fatigue and seemingly crusted shut. I can feel that something has dried all over my face. Like a layer of paint that was left for too long on my skin. With each movement of the muscles in my face I can feel the dried material chipping and cracking.

As my senses continue to slowly wake themselves up, I’m overcome by the smell of dirt, old sweat and blood. It feels like my nose is clogged with death and rot.

Still finding it difficult to breathe with the pressure on my chest and my nose clogged up, I start gasping for air. Finally, I manage to wretch my eyes open only to immediately wish I kept them closed.

Right in front of my face is an open maw full of teeth and blood. Terror makes my mind freeze and I stare in shock at what might as well be a gate to Hell lined with knives.

It takes a few moments for my paralyzed mind to realize that the thing I’m staring at isn’t even moving, let alone breathing. Its tongue is hanging uselessly out of its mouth resting on my ruined clothes and covered in dried blood.

It’s a dog. The dog... That damn poodle!

I’m awake now, no more sleep is muddling my mind. I remember what was happening before I blacked out. I was being chased by a mutated dog. A fucking mutated poodle at that!

And now it’s dead?

Trying to look down at the beast doesn’t accomplish much more than getting my face closer to its open maw, so I quickly give up on that and instead focus on trying to move it off of my body.

To put it plainly, the fucking thing is heavy. It’s easily two hundred pounds of literal dead weight. My entire body protests with the effort from trying to move its carcass. And to make matters worse, I don’t seem to be able to properly move my left arm.

Planting my right arm against its chest, I wriggle my way slowly out from underneath its carcass. It takes far too long and by the time I am finally free I am laying spread eagle on my back gasping for air. Each breath carries a fresh wave of soreness and pain through my body, my only thoughts are about how much I would love to fall back asleep.

After a couple minutes of catching my breath, I finally force myself to try and get up.

Leaning heavily on my right side, I slowly get up into a sitting position, every muscle in my abdominals and back screaming at me for doing anything other than laying down.

Finally, free and more focused, I can look around and examine my surroundings.

I’m in the office and the door is closed. It’s very dark in here, with the only light being the glow from my flashlight that had been dropped and rolled some distance away, thankfully still turned on. Both the dog’s corpse and I are sitting in a puddle of dried blood.

Slowly I scoot myself over and retrieve my fallen flashlight. Shining it on the dog’s corpse I quickly find how it died.

My knife! I must have stabbed it when it tackled me. Did I get it in the heart or something?

Reaching up and grabbing the edge of a nearby desk, I pull myself up onto my feet despite the complaints of my body.

Walking over to the dog’s corpse, I’m reminded of just how huge these things can get. I had seen wolves when my family and I went to the zoo some years ago. Back then I found them to be quite intimidating but also beautiful creatures. This thing easily has a good foot in size compared to the wolves I saw back then and is ugly as sin.

Its skin is a ruined mess of matted fur failing to cover its leathery skin, most likely the result of mange. Beneath that is muscle like a body builder's and bundles of cancerous growths; the largest of them forming a hump on its back between its shoulder blades. Its face is like something pulled straight from a nightmare and is ugly enough that even the most loving of mothers would have drowned it out of despair.

Standing tall and proud, like a flag planted in freshly colonized land, is my knife. It is sticking from between its clearly visible ribs, having been forced all the way down to the hilt.

Planting my foot on its chest and grabbing hold of the handle, I pull my knife free from the dog’s carcass. It is covered in blood, both dried and wet, and bits of fat and hair that were stuck to the blade. Wiping it on my already ruined pants hardly makes it any better so I just return it to its sheath and resign myself to having to clean it later.

Now with my possessions returned and my life not in emanate danger, I finally take some time to take in my surroundings and check over myself.

The office I am in is a complete wreck with only two things that are really worth noting. There are two doors in this office, the one we came crashing through, and one that is a bit further in the back.

The door we came through is thankfully closed and is probably the only reason that I am still alive. We must have hit the door while coming through, causing it to close. With the door closed and no noise coming from the other side, the other dogs must have ignored it in favor of chasing after the other scavengers.

With the room surveyed, I give myself a look over. To put it plainly, I feel like shit, and I look like shit. The back of my head is ringing like a bell, my muscles are in full protest and all demanding to be heard at the same time, and my left arm is hanging uselessly at my side pulsing with enough pain to turn a drunken Sailer sober.

As for my clothes, my jacket is ruined. The left arm looks like it just went through a shredder and the front and back are coated in blood. Considering how my face and jacket is covered, I am pretty sure that the dog vomited up a mouthful of blood on me as it died. Disgusting.

I clearly can’t travel in this state. I am delirious and tired, and I am obviously wounded. My first priority is to check my injuries and see what I can do.

Clutching my dangling arm, I slowly limp my way further into the office towards the second door. Peeking through and shining my light I find the old employee’s locker room. On the far wall is a small window that’s letting through the last few rays of the setting sun.

It was just before midday when the dogs attacked, so I must have been passed out for a few hours at most. If the sun is already setting, then it would be far too dangerous for me to travel home as I am. Scarier things than mutated dogs hunt when the sun goes down.

Resigning myself to having to camp out here for the night, I move myself into the locker room, shutting and locking the door behind me.

Shuffling over to the bench in middle of the room I start working my way out of my clothes and backpack.

It’s a struggle to remove my bag with my arm being uncooperative but after much pain and cursing I finally manage to slip it off. Next is my jacket which thankfully comes off with little fuss. I choose to leave my shirt on. Despite being summer the days have been getting colder after the apocalypse and the nights are even worse.

Trying to roll up my sleeves ends up being a painful process, so I instead choose to cut open the sleeve of my shirt. Working my knife into to fabric close to my elbow, I slide the knife down a tear open the sleeve revealing my mangled arm beneath.

My arm which used to be covered in pale white skin is now caked in dried blood and turned an ugly angry purple, surrounding a series of holes that look like they were made by daggers rather than teeth. Black pulsing veins have been pushed outward by the swelling. Each pulse, accompanying my heartbeat, is a fresh wave of pain that shoots up my arm.

This does not look healthy. I’m not sure if my arm is broken, but it could be fractured. Who knows how much force was behind that things bite? All I do know is that I need to clean the wound. The last thing I need is an infection.

Digging though my bag with my one good arm I fish out a bottle of water. Opening it up I wash most of it over my arm trying to clean away as much of the blood and filth as I can from the wound. Once I have it cleaned as well as I can, I finish off the rest of the bottle. With everything going on, I hadn’t realized just how thirsty I was.

Next, I dig out a bottle of rubbing alcohol. This is going to suck.

Cursing, and trying not to scream, I pore the alcohol directly into the wounds on both sides of my arm. By the time I’m finished I have tears running down my face and stars in my vision. It was nothing like disinfecting a normal cut or scrape. The inside of my arm is screaming at me as if I just murdered its mother and feels like I just lit it on fire.

I have to take a minute to collect myself before I can keep going. My head is spinning and the only thing keeping me from passing out is the pain lancing it way up through my arm.

Catching my breath, I slowly dig out another bottle of water and a roll of gauze bandages. Mom and dad always made sure that I never left home without some medical supplies in my bag. Without doctors and modern medicine, infections can be a potential death sentence nowadays.

Downing half of my water bottle, I get to work on wrapping my arm as best as I can.

I have no idea if my arm is broken or fractured, I’ve never broken a bone before, but I do know that it won’t be a good idea to have my arm just hanging around unsupported. I need to make a splint and put my arm in a sling.

Not seeing anything useful around me, I force myself up onto my feet and search through the lockers. After a bit of searching, I find some old clothes and a yard stick ruler.

Shuffling back over to my bench, I sit back down and use my foot to snap the ruler in half. Using some more gauze and the two halves of the ruler, I wrap a splint around my arm. I make sure to wrap it around my wrist and hand to keep everything stable and straight.

With the hard part down, I tear apart the ugly pink shirt that I found in the locker and get to work on tying a sling with nothing but one hand and my mouth. A tedious and annoying process.

You never really think about just how hard it is to do things with only one arm. Gods, I hope that my arm heals properly. Life’s already hard enough as it is.

With nothing else left to do and the setting sun’s light quickly starting to fade, I resolve myself to camping out for the night. Digging back into my pack I dig out the bag of trail mix that mom made for me and some dried squirrel meat.

Enjoying the small meal, I tuck myself into a corner and cover myself in my poor ruined jacket. Soon darkness fills the room and exhaustion thankfully lulls me to sleep despite all the pain I am in. The last thoughts going through my head being that of home.