Severed-In the Beginning- Volume One

A starving
Sparrowhawk
coasted into the city. She rode the thermals conserving precious energy. Her keen eyes spotted the shambling forms on the pavements. She spotted the black clouds of acrid smoke from the many fires around the city. A slight twitch of a wing was all it took her to avoid the pockets of superheated air.

She swooped low at the promise of a meal from the green space of Peterson Park. Her eyes caught the movement of a legless human sliding along the ground. She banked away from this new type human that smelled only of death.

Further into the park she spied a small scurrying form and swooped down to claim her prize; with the ruthlessness of a true predator, she ripped the mouse to shreds and swallowed the hot tasty flesh in a few quick gulps. With a flap of her powerful wings she was once again airborne with blood still adorning her hooked beak.

As she flew in search of new prey she spotted a lone human form on top of a building looking down.

The end of the world came not with a bang or a whimper but with the use of diet pills.

EZ-Thin pills passed all clinical trials. They were hailed as
they
new wonder pill to tackle the western world’s growing obesity problem. Millions of people took them. The media called them a wonder drug and women everywhere started to lose weight. They continued to lose weight as the powerful appetite suppressant motivated them to eat less. The drug was not supposed to be addictive but people found themselves unable to stop taking them. There was one other terrible side effect. No one knew what went wrong. Unknown contaminants were blamed on the first batches. Some said it was an act of terrorism. People who had been taking the pills for a few weeks started to get a craving for human flesh.

At first all but the weakest were able to resist.
But as time went by the craving got stronger and stronger.
Their unholy desires got the better of them and the media started to publish the horror stories.
Husbands waking up to find their wives chewing on their legs.
Others were less fortunate in their partner’s choice of things to chew on. Those bitten soon found themselves with an insatiable desire only for human flesh. And so the decline of the human race started.

Several years on…

London

A sea of smoke hung above the ruined streets. A lone pigeon sat regally on a high ledge and surveyed the devastation that was now London. The stillness of the day was occasionally punctuated by the sounds of screaming and the muffled sound of distant gunfire. The pigeon did not even start at these sounds; they were everyday sounds and unexceptional. Flames licked up at the sides of Big Ben from dozens of burning vehicles. The great clock tower had long since stopped and was accurate twice a day. There was no one around to care in the desolated city. The pigeon preened himself briefly and took flight to hunt for food.

Paris

Notre Dame Cathedral lay in ruins. Eric scrambled through the wreckage of the once magnificent building looking for scraps of food or useful tools. His clothes were ragged and his ribs showed through rips in them. At only twelve years old he had seen more of life than any one young boy should. His piercing blue eyes were hard, cynical and determined. A loud crash from nearby made him look anxiously over his shoulder. A door from a nearby building had crashed to the ground and several shambling forms lurched from the doorway into the bright daylight. Some limped along on broken legs dragging their ruined limbs slowly along. One or two were missing an arm and tilted as they walked, as if they lacked the brainpower to compensate for the missing limb. Broken guttural groans issued from their mouths and it sounded eerie and at odds with the bright sunny day. Eric climbed up the pile of rubble as fast as his wasted muscles would allow. He skinned his hands on sharp stone and the blood dripped from them. He barely noticed as he climbed for his life. The ruined creatures slowly, but surely followed.

Somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea

The Spirit of Adventure’s engine coughed, spluttered and her mighty engines finally stopped running. On every deck, the last remaining humans fought pitched battles with zombie attackers.

Arthur smashed a fire extinguisher over a creature’s head and it fell writhing to the floor. He slammed it repeatedly down into the beast’s skull before it could rise. Eventually, the thrashing limbs stilled their twitching. Arthur felt a sharp pain as another creature sunk its teeth deep into his neck from behind and they both fell to the floor. Arthur never got up again and soon he would join the ranks of the
undead
. Gradually over the ship, all signs of resistance slowly faded as the vessel came to a complete stop in the pitch black night.

Egypt

Adofo
stood at the very apex of the great pyramid of Giza. Empty shell cases littered the steps around him like hundreds of dead metal insects. His AK47 was blisteringly hot and it lay cooling beside him. The sun had begun its downward climb and he was grateful at least for the drop in temperature. The night was still except for the groaning of the hundreds of zombies that were expending the precious energy to get to the top of the pyramid. The object of their efforts and their next meal,
Adofo
, took a final puff on his cigarette. He watched the sun go down and surveyed the scene around him. Dozens of dead zombies littered the steps nearby. A swift bullet to the brain stopped them as surely as if they were a human attacker and not the diseased
undead
that they were. He threw the butt of his cigarette to the ground and crushed it under his boot heel. He slammed his last magazine into the AK. He patiently waited for the next zombies to come within range as the last of the sinking sun’s rays glinted off his Ray Bans.

New York

Around a vast sea of smoking rubble, the upper levels of the Chrysler building stood, amazingly, largely intact. A compound had been created around the building and machine gun nests at each corner kept out would-be looters and zombies.

Randy
Bueller
, the CEO of Health-
Pharm
, the manufacturers and distributors of the EZ-Thin pills, puffed on a cigar as he looked down sadly upon the ruins of what was once New York. His charcoal grey suit looked crisp and well pressed. His greying hair was combed neatly. He was in excellent physical shape as his personal trainer worked him hard, even through this mess.

He gave a single brief sigh.

The opulence of his office and his living quarters on the next floor
were
rare in this new zombie plagued world. He pressed a buzzer and a tall blond woman brought in a glass of wine and small pot of caviar. She wore a simple toga and her long slender legs were eyed hungrily by
Bueller
.

“Thank you my dear,” he gushed as his eyes devoured her full breasts. The woman smiled but the smile did not reach her eyes. It was a high price to pay but the safety of the Chrysler compound was not free.

Near Lake Cherokee,
Orlando
, USA

Judy lay panting with the exertion, her chest rising and falling rapidly as her green eyes darted from the door to the window. She had shaken them she was sure and the zombies weren’t exactly hot stuff when it came to deductive reasoning. So the twists and turns she had taken to get to this little apartment should have shaken the accursed evil creatures.

She walked up to the window and admired the view. The small apartment building sat on a hill overlooking the beauty of Lake Cherokee. Although small, this place might have fetched a pretty price before the zombie apocalypse. Amazingly, the place was in pretty good shape. Looters had left a lot of stuff still in place.
Orlando
had been hit hard and maybe folk had gotten out before they had time to strip the place bare.

She looked around the room and spotted a small dusty picture of a little boy on the wall in the corner. She wiped it with a sleeve and wondered sadly where he was now.

 
Suddenly, with a dull little thud, something dropped from behind the picture. Judy jumped in shock. The very real danger of a zombie attack had honed her startle response to a sharp edge. Bending, she picked up a small booklet. It appeared to be in good condition.
A journal of some kind.
Looking once more apprehensively at the door, she wandered to the hallway and climbed the stairs. After a quick once over, she found the rest of the place unoccupied. Sitting in an intact armchair upstairs overlooking the lake, she opened the book and started to read…

Not exactly sure of the date, but I guess around January 1, 2017

I remember the end of the world like I remember a bad dream from a few nights ago. I know how it made me feel, but the details are fuzzy. I couldn’t tell you
now
how it even happened.
Something about some pills or terrorists.
Don’t blame me for not remembering though, that was five years ago and I was still a kid. I’m nineteen now, with a family to take care of. My name’s
Zac
, if that even matters.

Hell, it’s been six months since anybody around here has even seen a zombie.

We don’t worry so much about them anymore. They run out of energy pretty fast and there aren’t many mobs like there used to be. No one ever really got things back under control. The zombie apocalypse sort of ran its course like a common cold.
A highly contagious, violent common cold.