Outsider (PG-13)

His name didn’t matter any more. Nothing mattered but survival. And those relentless sounds. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch. Moan. The sounds had wormed there way into his brain. They where everywhere. They chipped at his skull. Moan. He moaned with them, hoping that he was enough like them to pass unnoticed.

The sad part was that it was true. He was a tired, dirty, hungry, blood soaked shell of a man. He was never happy before The Change. But the moaning intruded his thoughts, the increase of volume swelling. The man reached for his gun. moan. He loaded it. Moan. He ran from his closet hiding place. MOAN! They were there outside the window of the house, there moaning reaching a starving crescendo, there bloody maws dripping. There hungry stares filled his stomach with a liquid fury so primal he screamed and shot. They had not excepted him in life, so he would deny them the only need they had.The newly crimson stained glass dropped to the floor, and the bone flecked rain alerted him of a good shot. He dispatched the others with a trained blankness. He jumped through the window and crossed the street. He shot a few more of the hungry and felt again that liquid anger. But it didn’t feel right. He was singled out once again, even in this perverse world were the dead walked.

He had tried to join groups. Smokers Anonymous. Fake stories of ashen lunged family disappointment. Cancer Club. Wasting away, feeding only on the sob stories of people waiting to die.  Then came the Hungry. Nothing changed. He was still alone, unaccepted. He stole a gun and learned to survive.

MOAN! The hungry were suddenly swarmed at him from all sides. They were every where, alerted by the shots he had fired. They bit, muscle and sinew giving way to jaws and teeth. He blacked out.

When he awoke, he knew he was gone from the dwindling population of the human race. But to his own surprise, he felt something he had yearned for for years. Acceptance.