Title: Dead Port
Author: Kassfinol
All rights reserved
Published in 2018
Genre: Zombie horror
“Run! Flee, I beg you, go; I’ll try to hold them off as much as I can, but please, just go” —I told her, but she immediately answered:
“No… I won’t go; I’ll stay here with you! You can’t handle all of them alone.”
Jazmín was a survivor my rescue squad had managed to save. Our mission was to come and rescue all the living who were not yet infected, to take them to Oceania, which was the only continent on Earth that wasn’t devastated by that plague. My comrades were at this moment already at the port, waiting along with the other survivors.
“Get down!” —Jazmín shouted.
I ended up lying face down on the floor to hear when she fired a shot. I looked back, and one of those dead was lying on the street.
The island was completely dark, without electricity; it was six in the evening, and at eight o’clock sharp the ship would arrive. The captain had already communicated with me; they were near the port. We had to run to the place; the cars were all out of gasoline. Walking was dangerous, but we had no other choice.
“Let’s get out of here” —Jazmín said as she started running. I followed her, looking carefully to the sides in case any of those bastards showed up. Jazmín ran at full speed; she looked like a gazelle.
At 24 years old, she had to live in such a horrible epidemic. What seemed like a simple flu spread to worldwide levels, killing hundreds of humans, but that was the initial problem; when the disease mutated, the infected humans simply started attacking each other, killing some in instants and contaminating others, so that in six months the world was totally dead… only a few humans had managed to survive.
Oceania, seeing the initial problem, closed its ports and airports; nobody managed to leave or enter. The measures were drastic at the time, even cruel, according to many, but later they were appreciated. Once it was decided to look for survivors with strict health and safety rules, squads began to be sent to look for them all over the world. Some succeeded, but others never returned. The situation was critical. Food and supplies were also sent by plane to nearby countries.
It was a nightmare, because those walking dead weren’t like the ones in horror movies; these were faster and more cunning… they were simply human predators that bit everything that moved, and not just to satisfy hunger; they enjoyed what they did.
The streets were desolate, bathed in dried blood, all the establishments looted, with their windows and doors open; the island was deserted… it was a dead area.
Jazmín looked back, smiled at me, winked, and said:
“Run faster, Gustavo, you have three elegant and bloody dead running behind you.”
I stopped dead and turned around. One attacked me, but first I hit him in the face, and because his flesh was rotten, without much difficulty, his head came off his neck, to roll along the pavement.
“One less” —I shouted—. “These damn bugs sure smell bad” —I thought.
The second threw himself at me, but before even touching me, he fell to his knees on the ground. Because Jazmín, from behind me, had put a bullet right between his eyes.
She stood next to me and told me:
“Stop playing around, my love; we have to hurry; the ship arrives in half an hour.” —Jazmín pulled the trigger and killed the third living dead, leaving us alone in the middle of the road.
She came a little closer to me and, smiling, whispered:
“Hey, cowboy! Dead, you’re no good to me; let’s get out of this. I plan to have three children with you to glorify humanity, so I need you to be faster.”
She gave me a short kiss and ran off toward the port called Punta Piedra. We ran at full speed, shooting and killing; we were about to run out of ammunition; we were about three kilometers from the port. At this rate, if those dead kept appearing, we’d surely arrive there unarmed.
Suddenly, a dead man lunged out of nowhere at Jazmín. She screamed in a heartbreaking way. But then I heard two shots. Immediately, she pushed him off her body, and I didn’t hesitate to shoot the damn monster in the head.
“Did he hurt you?” —I asked, inspecting her, but she pushed me away abruptly.
I didn’t give the action importance, because Jazmín was pale and disconcerted; she had that dead man’s blood all over her clothes.
“No, my love, I’m fine; it was just a scare; I didn’t expect it. Damn monster from hell!” —She kicked him, and I frowned at her action; I suppose she was euphoric. She wasn’t used to being so insensitive. She seemed to have taken a particular rage at that dead man.
“I love you, Jazmín; if something happened to you, I’d be very unhappy; thank God he didn’t do anything to you.”
“Relax, my love; having practiced the sport of hunting for almost ten years behind my parents’ backs makes me a dangerous woman with a weapon; that’s what helped me survive until you arrived.”
She was totally right; she never missed and never hesitated when shooting. She was fantastic. I approached her, gave her a short kiss, and we continued on our way. We arrived at the port. In the distance, the ship’s lights could already be seen… It was quite close… That relaxed me; we were only a few minutes from leaving this hell.
“And the others?” —Jazmín said, frowning and looking around.
The place was completely dark; what we didn’t need to see was the intense smell of blood and rotten corpses that hit our faces as the wind blew.
“Everything is very quiet… something’s wrong” —I told her, deadly serious—. “Let’s hope the lighthouse lights up this area so we have a better perception of what’s going on.”
I hadn’t quite finished saying the sentence when the lighthouse lit up around us, and I felt the most horrible fear, tied to disappointment, that I’d experienced in months.
The bled-out bodies of all my platoon friends and the survivors we’d protected with so much sweat for a whole month were lying, dismembered, in a large pool of blood. Their weapons were at their sides; there were also decomposed bodies of those monsters. Those bastards had caused a massacre. With the worst pain in my chest, I told my future wife:
“Hold these three machine guns, and whatever happens, don’t let them kill you.” —The lighthouse lit up the area again, and we realized more than fifty dead were walking toward us.
“Don’t let them catch you, Jazmín.” —She nodded and, as always, started shooting first.
She was sobbing, but we’d talk about that later. Jazmín had been very strange for a few hours. At the gunshots, all those damn beings fell like feathers to the ground. They had no chance against so many bullets. They started coming out to our right, and I concentrated on that point while Jazmín shot to the other side.
“Hey, guys, we’re here!” —I turned toward Carl’s shout; he was with a machine gun firing from the ship—. “I’ll throw you the ladder… you know the rules: five minutes and we leave.”
“Come, my love” —I told her, running to the ladder.
Jazmín caught up with me and stood in front of me, telling me:
“I’ll always love you; thank you for protecting me all this time; I never met a man so determined and sweet at the same time” —I couldn’t understand why she was telling me that; frowning, I told her:
“What do you mean? Walk, for once! We’ll be fine soon. I promise I’ll make you happy; this isn’t the time for you to get romantic.”
Carl fired shots and shouted from afar:
“Lovebirds, hurry up or they’ll eat you alive.”
Jazmín shook her head, and her tears came even faster. She kissed me for a few seconds and pushed me, making space between us. She lifted her shirt to expose the horrible bite she had near her ribs. My tears started running down my cheeks; I pulled her to me… I hugged her, and kissing her, I told her:
“I’ll stay; I won’t go without you.”
“No… No… You will leave! And you’ll get out of this dead port. Today I killed hundreds of those beings to see you live; alone, you couldn’t have done it; the change has already happened; I have a fever and feel like killing you; in a few hours, I’d be doing it. Get out of here! Go, I beg you… I love you, and despite seeing so many deaths this month with you, it was beautiful to have met you.”
I ran my hands over my head… desperate.
I looked toward the ship; I observed all that blood and Jazmín’s beautiful gray eyes, bloodshot from all she’d cried; in the background, screams and laments of those dead could be heard as they died or hit each other, tied to all the shots coming from the ship… It was the scene, the moment of my life I never would have wanted to live.
“Get on, for God’s sake; hundreds of those damn dead are coming your way; if you don’t get on right now, we’ll leave and abandon you here. I won’t risk hundreds of survivors just for the two of you” —Carl shouted in an annoyed tone.
“Jazmín, please” —I begged her.
But she gave me a kiss on the forehead and ran in the opposite direction. Leaving me standing, watching how she moved farther and farther away from me. Suddenly she stopped, looked back, and with determination in her eyes, she turned around and started shooting at the dead approaching her.
I got on the ship and fell to my knees, watching the scene of how, for the second time, my world was ending again. The first, when I saw how humanity almost went extinct. The second, when I saw my humanity leaving with that woman… with Jazmín. I saw how, in that damn port, my life ended, to finally accept that in this world I was one more dead man, living in this abominable reality.
“All those beings who walk the earth, dead, because they knew love and for some reason it ended”
THE END