CH 14: Just Some Guy
His name is Brian.
Not "Captain" anything. Not a survivor. Not yet.
Just Brian.
He wore khakis on the first day because he didn't know any better. He still thought it was a fire drill. A prank. Something distant.
By Day 8, he hadn't worn pants in two days. Not because of comfort. Because they were soaked with blood. Not his.
He didn't ask whose.
---
Day 1
The alert came at 7:42 a.m.
He had just sat down with coffee and cold cereal when his phone screamed. Not rang. Screamed. A tone he'd never heard before.
> EMERGENCY ALERT
Undead Activity Confirmed in City District.
Shelter. Do not engage. Do not trust the infected.
Brian stared at it.
Then, seconds later, came the sirens. Not emergency sirens—war sirens. Sirens that pulled something deep and primal out of his spine and held it over a flame.
Outside, screaming. Gunfire. A dog barked once, then didn't.
He closed the blinds. Turned the lock. Then the deadbolt. Then moved a chair under the doorknob. He'd seen that in movies.
---
Day 2
He hadn't slept. Not really.
His apartment building groaned all night—pipes, footsteps, a scream two floors up that stopped too suddenly.
At 3:17 a.m., something slammed against the hallway door. Then scraping. Nails? Claws?
He gripped a kitchen knife.
His hands wouldn't stop shaking.
In the morning, the hallway was quiet. But the hallway carpet… wasn't the same color as yesterday.
He didn't open the door.
---
Day 3
The power went out.
He hadn't realized how loud the fridge had been until it died. The silence was suffocating. Every floorboard creak felt like a footstep that wasn't his.
Someone—or something—banged against the elevator shaft for hours.
He moved to the bathroom and hid in the tub with the shower curtain closed. Knife clenched in both hands.
Outside, something was breathing. Wet and deep. Like lungs too rotten to understand rhythm.
---
Day 4
He opened the door.
He had to. The water stopped.
Brian crept into the hallway with his knife and a backpack. There was blood on the walls. Handprints. Smears. One looked child-sized.
He didn't think about that one.
Apartment 4C's door was hanging open.
He didn't go inside. Just looked. Saw a trail. Drag marks. Something dark and slick under the sofa. A broken coffee mug and a hand still clutching the handle.
He kept moving.
Down the stairs. One step at a time.
Something moved on the landing. He stopped breathing.
Then… just a shoe.
But it was full.
---
Day 5
He stopped turning on lights.
Not that they worked. But even his flashlight was dangerous. Shadows moved when he turned it on. Shadows that didn't make sense. Too fast. Too many limbs.
He heard whispering.
No one was whispering.
Right?
---
Day 6
He made it to the rooftop to get signal.
He didn't find signal.
He found corpses. Three of them. Torn open. The wind kept shifting their clothes, like they might sit up.
They didn't.
One was missing its head. The neck was jagged. Not cut. Torn.
The word "RUN" was spray-painted on the roof wall in red. Or maybe not paint.
But Brian didn't run.
He climbed back down and cried in the stairwell.
---
Day 7
He killed something.
It had been a man once. Wearing a nurse's badge. Eyes completely white. Mouth twitching like it was still practicing how to bite.
It came through the window. He stabbed it. Again and again.
It didn't die right away.
After, he sat on the floor for hours. Hands soaked. Shirt sticky. Eyes dry. Staring.
That night, he dreamt of the nurse whispering, "You're next."
---
Day 8
He opened the fridge.
All the food was warm. Something dripped down the back wall—brown and sour.
There was a note he didn't write taped to the door.
> "They can hear your thoughts."
Brian didn't know if that was a threat, a joke, or a warning from someone already gone.
He closed the fridge. Picked up his knife.
Then, hesitating, reached for the bloody bat he'd taken from the hallway.
A body was moving in the stairwell again.
He didn't scream this time.
He just listened.
Waited.
And for the first time… he stepped toward it.
---
Day 9
Brian stepped outside for the first time since it began.
The sun was out, but it was wrong. Too bright. Sky too still. Not a single bird. No cars. No people.
No normal people.
He had killed them, more than he can remember.
The city looked like it had been mugged by chaos and left to rot.
He walked past bodies. Some were burnt, some barely touched, some... twisted like they had died screaming into the dirt.
There were signs everywhere: SAFE ZONE – THIS WAY, with arrows spray-painted in opposite directions.
Another said: TRUST THE LEMON.
He didn't know what that meant. He didn't want to know.
But he would find out anyway.
---
He turned the corner of 12th, and that's when he saw them:
The Lemon Cult.
A dozen people, wearing yellow robes and veils of mesh citrus netting, danced in a tight circle surrounding some creature covered in red. Their arms raised, heads tilted skyward.
One of them held a lemon impaled on a kitchen knife like a holy relic. The juice dripped onto his robe like blood.
They chanted in a cadence that made Brian's skin crawl:
> "The sour shall purify. The rot shall sweeten. The rind shall rise…"
A man stepped out of the circle. His face was smeared with what looked like marmalade.
He locked eyes with Brian.
> "He is unpeeled!" the man shrieked.
"UNPEELED!" the others echoed.
Brian took a step back. Then another. He didn't run.
Not until they started throwing lemons at him.
The first one bounced off his shoulder. The second hit his forehead and burst. Acid stung his eyes.
He ran.
Behind him, they sang with maniacal laughter.
---
He stumbled into a strip mall parking lot.
Blood pooled beneath a crashed school bus. Wind rustled a child's backpack hanging off the open door. The sound of flies was constant.
And then... the jingle.
A warped, detuned melody rolled in with a tremble of bass and bells. At first, he thought it was his mind breaking.
But then he saw it.
The Ice Cream Truck.
It moved slow. Too slow. Tires crusted with gore. The front bumper had a femur lodged in it like roadkill.
Painted across the side in smeared red:
> "TRY OUR CHILLING NEW FLAVOR… SCREAMSICLE."
There was no driver.
Just a corpse slumped over the wheel, its eyes black, mouth grinning too wide.
As it passed, cold mist hissed from the back vents. Something moved in there. Something wet. Something that sniffed.
Brian ducked behind a burned-out sedan and held his breath.
The truck slowed. The music distorted, growing deeper.
It stopped.
The back door creaked open.
A pale, slender hand dropped out. Holding a cone.
Three scoops. One looked like flesh.
Brian didn't move.
Eventually, the truck rolled on, its jingle playing backward now, echoing down empty streets.
---
He turned left. Past the husk of a known Store.
That's when he saw them.
Two figures in the middle of the street. Framed by dust and haze.
One stood tall, calm, still — Delgado, though Brian didn't know his name.
Tattered military coat. Wide-brimmed hat. A weathered leather satchel slung over his shoulder. Eyes hidden beneath the brim.
The other was… the fish.
Massive. Gray. Shimmering with rot and reverence. Carried gently in the man's arms, nestled like a sleeping child. A crown of tin foil rested on its fishy brow.
Brian froze.
The man looked up.
Not startled. Not confused. As if he'd been waiting.
"You're not one of the loud ones," Delgado said, voice rough with something older than exhaustion.
Brian didn't respond.
Delgado took a step forward. His boots left no sound.
"This here's Peppino," he said, gesturing gently to the fish. "She's seen more than you have. Probably more than you ever will."
The fish blinked. Just once.
Brian gripped his bat tighter.
"Who are you?"
Delgado didn't answer. Instead, he reached into his satchel and pulled out a small, laminated card. Walked forward — slow, deliberate — and tucked it into Brian's front pocket.
"You'll meet them soon," Delgado said blankly. "The ones who think this is funny. Who laugh at the blood. Don't trust their smiles."
He looked back at Peppino.
> "She doesn't smile. That's why I trust her."
Brian glanced down at the card.
A hand-drawn map. Crossed-out streets. A marked location: "NODE POINT?"
Scrawled in sharp pen beneath it: "Burned but breathing. Don't knock."
> "Wait," Brian said. "Who are you people?"
Delgado paused.
The wind shifted. Far off, a scream. A different kind — gurgled. Ending fast.
He finally answered:
"We're the ones who still remember what not to become."
Then he walked past.
No parting words. No threat.
Peppino blinked at Brian as she passed, gills pulsing gently like whispers.
And just like that, they were gone.
---
Brian stood alone in the street.
Map in hand.
Head full of static.
The city creaked around him like bones in an old body.
And somewhere, far off, the ice cream jingle played again.
Slower this time.
Like it knew where he was going.
---
End of Chapter 14 – Just Some Guy
The Note (Delgado's Handwriting – Tight, Clean All Caps)
> IF YOU SEE A MAN AND GIRL WHO NEVER STOP SMILING — LEAVE.
THEY LAUGH THROUGH FIRE.
THEY SMILE THROUGH SCREAMS.
THEY SURVIVED SOMETHING THEY SHOULDN'T HAVE.
DON'T TALK TO THEM.
DON'T FOLLOW THEM.
DON'T LET THEM FOLLOW YOU.
— DELGADO
(Peppino refused to look at them)
---
Stamped on the back again, faint and smeared:
> "NODE POINT EXISTS."
"NOT FOR THEM."
---