Henry ran.
Wiping tears from his eyes, he continued to run away from his life, house and memories into an unknown world full of violence and death.
He could not help but imagine how this is the life that a person living in the middle east might feel every single day when they walk out of their homes. There were unknown threats all around him. He did not know where they were, but he knew they were somewhere out there.
He slowed down as the woods began to thin out.
To his left, Henry could hear a buzzing noise, almost constant. The loudness of the sound would fade in and out as if whatever was making the noise was moving.
"Someone is alive." Henry thought.
Henry turned in the direction of the noise and tried to locate the exact location where the sound was originating. He turned his head to the left to where he thought it might be.
"It seems like it's coming from over there." Henry thought to himself and took a step forward when the noise suddenly sputtered to a stop.
Henry looked towards the direction he was going to head and listened for a while longer. Not wanting to waste any more time standing around, he turned and headed back in the direction he was going a few minutes before.
Henry knew the woods like his house; he had spent many Saturday mornings running through these woods to escape his life and return to the happy memories of his childhood. Being in the woods on those mornings had given him another purpose to his life. It was after his first walk through the forest, while he was looking for a good place to end his life, which he decided that enough was enough. He was going to leave the sadness behind and try to make something new from his life.
He was lost in his thoughts and did not realise that he had almost left the safe cover of the woods and walked directly onto Water Street.
Henry froze. Unable to move or comprehend what he was seeing.
Water Street was the main thoroughfare in which most traffic drove through on the way to work, school or shopping. The town was initially planned by the city officials to try to divide the city into distinct regions designated to host-specific property types. Much has changed in the years since the city then, but much of that structure is still in existence.
The streets on the west side of Water Street were originally intended to house the businesses of the town, while the east side is where all of the employees would have lived.
Crossing the middle of Water Street was the Henderson River, named after an unheard of English explorer who got lost on one of John Cabot's initial voyages to North America. It was on this side of the river that most of the town's first industry remained constructed. The original pulp and paper mill stood located on the banks of the river, along with a small dock for shipments of the world famous maple syrup created here.
What Henry saw before him was complete and chaos. The usually serene and peaceful town was full of blood-curdling screams, smoke and ash.
On the road in front of him was the still smouldering wreckage of a telephone company fleet vehicle. The car sat in the corner of the street with the traffic pole embedded in its hood. He could still partially see the blue logo etched into the white panel van. Surrounding the van were the corpses of half a dozen bodies, all of whom charred beyond recognition. The driver of the van was lodged in the windshield of the vehicle with the upper half of his body simply gone.
A single scream took his attention from the wreckage.
Henry turned to his right just in time to see a woman jump from the roof of a four-story building. Two or three other men accompanied her falling body grabbed her just as the intruders did in Henry's house not that long ago.
As soon as he had heard her scream, there was a quiet but distinctive series of thuds. Her struggle in this world was over.
Henry looked to the roof of the building to see four more men in suits standing on the ceiling unable to decide if they should follow the woman or find someone else to hurt. Something must have caught their attention as they all turned in unison and began to shuffle away from the roof and towards something more interesting.
All over the street were the tell-tale signs of violence and death. Never before had Henry been a witness to such a large scale scene of senseless destruction. Not even the riots Henry had seen on television the last few years had this kind of an impact.
A short distance down the road was a car with the car alarm going off. The car alarm did not have the initial volume it would have when it first started, it was clear that the battery was starting to die. A group of men and women surrounded the car pounding on the windows and door in an attempt to get it open.
Henry could faintly hear the muffled scream of a woman in between the pulsing sound from the dying car alarm.
The banging on the car continued as Henry began to survey the carnage. Dead bodies littered the street.
Bodies that should not be moving were shuffling down the street towards the car and other things that had caught their attention.
Henry could see bones poking out of shoulders, slashes across faces and chunks missing from the flesh of everyone walking around.
Down the other end of the street, Henry saw another group of people huddled on the ground surrounding something.
"They must be resuscitating someone." Henry thought.
Just then, one of the men stood up from the group and began to pull at something. With one final tug, the man walked away from the group holding a severed arm. The man brought the arm up to his mouth and proceeded to take a bite out of the bicep.
"Oh my god!" Henry said out loud.
As soon as those words escaped his lips, Henry brought his hand to his mouth and gasped.
Hearing the noise, the dull eyes of the man began to scan the surrounding area looking for its source.
"Holy shit! What is that thing?" Henry thought to himself.
He fought the urge to run. He was too close to the road and knew that he would get noticed if he moved.
The man pulled another bite off the arm and threw it back into the crowd, where it promptly disappeared into the clutches of another. Henry could make out the resemblance of a mechanic's uniform on the man as he began to shuffle towards him, still looking around for something.
A sudden smash had caught his attention as well as the attention of the mechanic. Henry's attention returned to down the street where one of the men managed to break the back window of the car. Now there were three sets of arms reaching into the car for the screaming woman.
Another smash came from down the street as another window came crashing in as a result of the pressure on them.
In a desperate attempt to be further away from the attackers on the side of the car with the broken window, the woman had slid all the way across the car and pressed herself against the other door. The sight of the woman this close had excited the people on the other side of the car and they had immediately begun to work on getting into the car.
As soon as the window shattered, Henry could see some hands reach into the car and, grab the woman by the hair and began pulling her out of the car.
Even before her head was fully out of the car, one of the bystanders to the whole event had managed to walk up to the car and took a huge bite from the cheek of the woman before removing her from the car.
The top half of the woman was barely out of the car before some people swarmed her body. Henry could no longer see the lady, but he could hear the screams she made as her attackers began to rip pieces off of her flesh and eat.
Just then, another man came running around a corner from a side street near where the woman had just fallen to her death. The man, who appeared to be in his 20s, was apparently terrified as he came speeding around the corner.
Henry wanted to get the attention of the young man but did not want to chance to give away his location in the process. The young man stopped. He hid behind a dumpster in front of a door to the four-story building.
The young man was panting, trying to catch his breath when he looked around at his surro
undings and noticed the dead body of the woman and her attackers on the ground next to him. The young man turned around and began to retch into the side of the dumpster.
The sudden noise caught the attention of the mechanic, and he started walking towards the terrified young man.
Sweat began to form on Henry's brow; he had to do something to help this poor fellow out.
"What can I do?" he murmured to himself.
As if to answer the question all hope of saving the young man vanished as one of the attackers that had fallen off of the roof began to stir. The attacker that Henry had previously thought had died when he fell from the building had started to pull itself towards the still heaving young man. The corpse began to crawl forward using only its arms. There was a satchel bag draped over his shoulder and, it appeared as though he might have been a paper delivery boy.
The delivery boy was only a foot from the young man as it continued its slow, methodical pursuit of him.
Henry was just about to scream for the man to turn around when his head snapped around just in time to feel a hand wrap around his back pocket and pull him to the ground. The young man began to violently kick and fight to get the crippled corpse off of him, but its grip had been too powerful, and its hands were already wrapped around his head as it sunk its teeth into the soft meaty flesh of his neck.
The young man let out a soft gargled scream as his attacker took another bite from him.
By this time the mechanic has made his way over to the bleeding body and fell on him and began to rip and tear into his shoulder. The feet of the young man gave one final kick and then he stopped moving.
The mechanic lifted his head tearing another meaty chunk off of his shoulder and turned his head and looked directly at Henry over his shoulder and continue to chew his meal.