"You wake up, still drunk, the morning after your first big college party. A zombie apocalypse happened overnight, but none of the zombies seem to be giving you any notice. You soon realize that the alcohol in your system doesn't make them sense you are human..."
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“Quick!” I gestured to the girl, pointing at the ever-growing pool amassing on the floor. She stood motionless, instead glancing at the dead man next to the shattered wine bottle. I hopped over to him and rolled his body out of the way. There was no time to deal with him.
“Quickly, come on, it’s alright,” I grabbed her by the hand and pulled her closer to the floor.
“Mummy says I shouldn’t drink that stuff,” she said innocently.
“Mummy’s not here, so you have to listen to me, okay? It wasn’t okay to drink that stuff before, but it’s good for you now, understand?”
She stared back at me blankly. There was no way I could get through to her with words, and we were just wasting time at this stage.
“Look, it’s perfectly safe, I’ll show you,” I bent down and started sipping at the red ambrosia. I didn’t need to look up at her; I could hear her bending down and following suit.
“Good girl,” I whispered, wiping the liquid off my lower face. She needed it more than I did. I calculated that I still had some left in my system, for the time being. She, on the other hand, well… she hadn’t had anything at all. I wondered how she survived for so long.
It was quite early on that I figured out it was the alcohol keeping me alive. On Day One I had woken up later than usual, not even hung over but still drunk. The night before was my first ‘letting loose’ event, and being a petite girl with absolutely no tolerance for alcohol, it managed to stay in my system for a while. In any other situation I would have been terribly ashamed of myself, but this time it was the key to my survival.
When I left my dorm room, I noticed it was unusually quiet, but I thought everyone else was just hung over. It was only after a bit more wandering around that I realised a lot of people were just dead. I first came across the zombies stumbling their way slowly through the hallways, gurgling incoherently guttural sounds, and wearing clothes that looked a little worse for wear. To be frank, I just assumed they were all hung over from the night before.
It was only when they started attacking the Non-Drunks that I realised something was terribly wrong. Day One was a big blur for me; it felt so long ago. All I can remember was the terrible looting that followed. When people started raiding the liquor stores before the grocery stores, I realised it had something to do with the alcohol.
During the raids of Day One, I managed to grab a couple bottles of vodka. My small stature allowed me to go quite a bit undetected amongst the chaos. And the high alcohol percentage of the vodka meant that it would last me for quite some time. I knew I was going to run out soon, though, and I couldn’t get my hands on anything else, so I went and grabbed a trolley-full of liquids, be it water, cordial, juice, milk… you name it. After all, you could die faster from dehydration than starvation.
At night, I made my way to a friend’s house nearby to the college. They were filthy rich, and I knew they had a wine cellar. When I reached their house, I found it abandoned save the young son dead in the cellar.
The house was littered with empty wine bottles, but luckily there was still a few days’ worth left in the cellar. My guess is that as they began to run low, they attempted to obtain more, but were attacked by the zombies. And since the zombies didn’t go for the alcohol, that left a decent amount to me.
The girl finished sipping the wine, and sat up.
“What do we do now, miss?”
“Well firstly, that was my last bottle so we will need more of that; it’ll help us. If you’re tired you can sleep first but I may need to wake you up to help me later.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to set up some bait.”
I walked off, grabbing all the empty wine bottles that were sporadically placed in the house. I started filling them up with other liquids; the vodka bottles with water, the white wine with diluted apple juice, and the red wine with red cordial. I stared at the red wine bottles. They were the bottles I had the most of, and the red cordial was a poor imitator. I figured I may have to put some blood in them.
I went back down to the cellar to grab the dead man. The girl was asleep already; I guess the alcohol helped in that. I figured she drank enough to keep her safe while she slept, so I had no issues with leaving her alone in the house.
I struggled to drag the man up the stairs. It would have been easier to carry everything out in the cellar, but I didn’t want the girl to wake up to a messy pool of blood. The stain of the red wine on the floor looked bad enough as is.
By the time I managed to drag him up the stairs, I was exhausted. But every second counted, so I quickly got to work.
I had strangled him, so he wasn’t already bleeding. I’d have to make a cut somewhere.
I went back down to the cellar to grab a piece of broken glass from the bottle he had smashed into my head shortly before he breathed out all the air in his lungs. There were plenty of empty bottles around, but he just had to choose my last full bottle. Once he died I couldn’t even think about the gravity of my first murder; I had to get the girl to drink.
I sat back down, cradling his head in my lap. I placed one of the red wines at an angle, close to his neck, and made a cut. The blood oozed out, and in the bottle it was already starting to look more like red wine.
There was plenty of blood in this man to distribute amongst the red cordial, and by the time I was done I was quite happy with my efforts.
The sealing of the bottles were much more difficult to pass off as the real thing, but I figured they would look okay from a distance.
I filled the trolley up with the bottles, and strategically placed a small towel on top so as to have some of the bottles peeking through.
More effort was exhausted as I dragged both the man I had just drained of blood, and the young boy who was already dead when I arrived. I lugged them to a nearby alley that I could see from the living room, and I knew that it could be easily accessed through the main bedroom’s window.
I then went and woke up the girl and explained to her my plan. Once she was stationed at the living room window, I quickly but quietly wheeled the trolley next to the men. I tried to make it look as natural as possible, as if they were trying to hide and sleep in a safe place, but I made the trolley stick out a bit so that it could be seen.
I went back to the house, and checked in on the girl.
“What do we do now?” She asked. I handed her the binoculars, and grabbed the shotgun from off the table. I started heading to the main bedroom next door.
“Now, we wait.”
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