The Last Hill of Hope

Crackle, pat pat pat, SPLASH… a small bronze skinned girl is covered from head to toe in a thick soup of mud.

“Get up Ashley!” an older man with a short silver shaved head screamed in terror. He quickly turned around and ran back to this young girl trying to push herself up from the quagmire this mud puddle made for the nine year old girl. 

He ran as quickly as he could, trying his best before… before… 

GOD DAMN IT!!! He screamed in his head. 

“AHHHHHHH!!!!!” Ashley screams in horror as this corpse, that came rushing in behind her, has now fallen on her leg. It sunk it’s ragged broken teeth into her leg letting out a foul rotten meat smell, and started to pull up while holding her leg down. Blood started to cover the mud soaked sock. She swung her other leg as hard as she could and with a single blow to the ghoul's head it broke loose, leaving a few teeth behind. The repugnant smell still filling up the area around the girl and this monster. 

Smack, a mental knuckle blow shatters the creature's temple, same spot where the girl managed to hit. It caused a black goo to expel from its head. “Dad...kill it, PLEASE kill it….” the girl said while whimpering and still struggling in the mud. The father had no time to keep hitting the decaying hominoid. He grabs Ashley by the arm and pulls her up and over his shoulder, like he had to perform many times saving people from fires before the hell was let loose on the world years ago. 

He ran as fast as he could. Hearing the sounds of several bodies drunkenly running and stumbling like they had no direction, but he knew, he knew they were coming for them. 

He got on the rubble of an old asphalt road. It was lined on one side with trees. The other side is a field. It was all leading to a hill with an old faded blue wood siding house that had a raised foundation sitting on top. Every window was covered in layers of chicken wire, as well as the porch. The man, with the child still on his back. His entire left side now covered in her blood from her wound. He darted to the back of the house. Laid her down and opened the cellar doors. It was the only access point that was accessible from the ground now. He scooped her up and rushed in, threw her to the ground and grabbed the doors and slammed them shut…

BANG…. SCREEEEECH. Bang… bang… 

The mob was there, but the man looked relieved. The girl is softly crying on the floor, battered, still bleeding, but for the time okay. 

Dan spoke up, “Let’s get you upstairs so I can take a look at that Ashley.” 

“But it hurts Dad!” Ashley was still in shock with all of what happened…

The house creaked as the wind blew. The sound of dripping water coming from right outside the windows, and a few spots inside the house. Sounds from the mob still roaming outside the house can still be heard. They mush through the wet ground and give no fucks that it was raining on them. All they wanted was to get in, but their eagerness could end fatally for them. 

“Oww..” Ashley spoke softly while trying to not look at her leg as her dad examined it. He had her sit on their couch, with her leg propped up on the coffee table. The couch has seen better years. A deep maroon leather couch. Now cracking in all the spots that would have pressure put on it. Pieces of its hide peeling up. The cushions are mismatched. Dan figured it was easier to haul cushions that he found than entire couches he found, also his wife loved the couch. It would take a lot to give it up.

“Ashley, look at me.” Dan said sternly with authority in his voice. 

“Yes..” she turned her head, making sure her eyes stayed straight ahead until her eyes met his. 

“It looks like there are a couple of pieces of bone, maybe, but they are in your skin. Maybe right under the surface. I am going to have to remove them. You are going to have to stay brave, just for a little while longer, okay?”

“Okay…” Ashley said as a tear rolled down her face. 

Dan went to the wall where the medkit was hanging. Grabbed it, and went to the kitchen. He pulled out a box knife that was dedicated to medical use. He sterilized it, put a pot of water on the portable electric stove that now sat on top of his old gas stove. He boiled a sponge, so he could use it to clean Ashley’s wound. He threw the sponge into a bucket he washed along with the box knife. He grabbed a handful of rags that they kept in a box in the corner of their kitchen.

He came back into the living room. Ashley was nearly passing out from the exhaustion of the day’s events. 

“What took you so long!” Ashley said disgruntledly, grinding her teeth to try to ease the pain. 

“Stop that, that isn’t good for your teeth.”  Dan pulled up a chair next to the coffee table, sat down, and put the bucket next to her. He cleaned her leg the best he could, and then put rags underneath her leg to try to catch the blood that would soon run down her leg. 

“Fuck, forgot to grab the damn needlenose…” Dan got up and hit the corner of the coffee table. Both of them made a kind of irritating noise of discomfort. He came back with the pliers, and sat back back down. He grabbed the knife and started to cut. It took a little while, but Dan pulled out three shards and one full tooth out of Ashley’s leg. He cleaned the work he had done and wrapped her leg in goze. 

“Take this.” Dan hands Ashley a pill, “It will help with the pain and might let you rest. I got some work to do, I need you to sleep.”

Ashley took the pill from his hand, mustered up enough spit, and threw the pill in her mouth. She swallowed, turned her small body and curled up on the couch the best she could, keeping the one leg straight.

Sunlight started to beam into Dan’s bedroom, and on to Dan. He felt the warmth of the sun on his side of his arm. He turned and looked at the window.

“Dammmmn… It is going to be muggy as hell.”

Dan with an annoyed face, puts on his old Firefighter suit and helmet on. He leaves and heads to the porch. He looks over and sees Ashley passed out on the couch. His face relaxes for a bit, and stares just a bit at his daughter. 

They have been through so much, the end of days, trying to survive, and their loss of her loving mother and his strong willed wife, Lauran. Lauran was the matriarch of their small family. Dan was away a lot, at the fire station, and when he wasn’t he worked a second job out at a large farm up north. When he came back, he didn’t have the mental capacity to make the most sound choices for the family. After many long winded debates, some would call them fights but Lauran never did, during Lauran’s pregnancy with Ashley, Dan conceded and accepted that it was going to be best if Lauran made more of the important decisions for the family. She was such a wonderful and very thoughtful person. She showed that to Dan, and Dan loved it, but sometimes was bothered by it. He knew he had some unconscious biases towards women, and he tried his best to realize when they popped up so he could address them, or Lauran and him could address them together. It worries him now, that he doesn’t have Lauran to help him see and rethink his ways that were ingrained into him growing up in the South. He hopes he has the power to create an environment that Ashley can grow up and be strong in, and not doubt herself because of him. 

Dan snapped out of the daze and went towards the porch. He had to remove the board from the barricade brackets that were bolted on either side of the door, unlocked several of the locks, and opened it up. Dan stepped out to an enclosed porch. A bit of self generated steam came up from his suit from the sweat that was being generated and fogged up his helmet. The porch had large window-like openings with thin screens on them to keep out the bugs, now all covered in layers of chicken wire. There was no longer furniture to lounge around on after a long day's work. Now there is this tunnel made of chicken wire, boards, steel piping, etc. It was as tall as Dan, standing at six foot four inches, and only the width of a small child. There were also two slits with a metal sliding door already pushed into them and locked into place. One was next to the wall as the tunnel came into the porch and the other at the end of it. 

Dan picked up a long rod that had a point on it. It was leaning on the tunnel. 

“HEY!!! MOTHERFUCKERS!!!”

Sounds from the otherside of the house grew louder. There were five of them. Hardly any hair, a grey tint to their skin, eyes sunken into their skull, their lips had cracks along them. They have been battered quite a bit from the weather. The clothes they had on were almost worn away. Holes throughout, faded colors, or screen printings almost peeled off. Not every one of them had old blood soaked clothes though. Some just looked like senior citizens, but that was normal. 

What took over the world was a form of Ophiocordyceps unilateralis. A fungus that zombifies ants in the rainforest. As the planet grew warmer, and logging took out most of the rainforest, that pesky mold evolved. Typically most fungus doesn’t feel safe inside the likes of mammals. The reason is due to our natural ability of being warm blooded. Fungus was the reason there wasn’t a second coming of lizards after the fall of the dinosaurs, and allowed mammals to dominate the new world. One truth in the world, everything keeps evolving or it is dead. This fungus learned how to survive in a body up to a sustained internal temperature of 100 degrees Farenhiet. An older person, or someone near death didn’t have that ability to kill it off. If you inhale the spores, it will embed into your lungs, and those things can survive up to 110 degrees Farenhiet. Way past the point any person could handle without any sustained damage. The spores won't germinate until it somehow knew it could take over the body. Then it will go up to the brain and turn off all that it didn’t need to take over the rest. 

The ghouls got closer. Dan spotted the one that was in the lead. He knew it was the one that got Ashley. With its mouth open breathing out what looked like ash, it had missing teeth and blood, that is dried now, but it had a trail down the creature's chin. 

“Alright motherfuckers, come on over. That’s right, you want me dead! hahaha. Well we have that in common.” 

Both of the slit doors in the tunnel were closed. Dan grabs the one closest to the wall and he opens it. Because the opening is so small, it is hard for multiple of them to get in. The ragged tooth ghoul was the first to squeeze into the tunnel. As soon as its middle part of the body was in the tunnel, Dan started to push the sliding metal door in. This prevents dealing with more than one at a time. He pushed it shut right on another ghoul’s hand, smashing and cutting it into almost half. It yelled and pulled away. Black goo poured from it’s hand, and it ripped its finger inorder to get free. 

Ragged Tooth tried to get into a position to break free, but it was just too much in an awkward spot. It is side stepping, with the tunnel touching its back and front. Dan with the rod in hand stared at Ragged Tooth. Hatred filled his eyes, and lifted the rod up and shoved it through the tunnel into Ragged Tooth’s caved in head. It seemed forever for it to stop moving, as Dan just watched it, tears running down his face. 

Dan opened the other door of the tunnel that was inside the porch and dragged out the finally lifeless body. Slam the door after he did this, which made the other being start beating at the chicken wire. Then he began to pat down it’s clothes. He found a wallet, a set of keys, and that was basically it. Ragged Tooth’s actual name was Dominic Raleigh. He would have been 38 this year. This was a photo in his wallet. It was Dominic, a woman (probably his wife), and two boys (more than likely his sons). This man had a life before this, he had a story. Dan set the life of this person to the side, this is what Dan thought about the things he found on these people, this is who they were before everything. 

Dan dragged the body to the other side of the door that allowed entry into the house. Dan repeated on what he did with Dominic. Their names were: Melony, would have been 67 years old; Bruce, 58; Lela, Dominic’s wife, age 37; and Bing, he would have just turned 70. 

Dan layed Lela next to Dominic. He stared at their disfigured faces. A husband and wife that stayed together as they went into their own hell. 

What happened to their boys. Dan thought. What would have happened to Ashely if I died that day…

Dan took their bodies in, the door to the basement was next to the door that led to the porch. Down in the basement, he prepared the bodies to be burned. Dan figured that it was the best way to handle the bodies, instead of burying them. Fire seems to not draw them in. It is like they know it could hurt them, so they stay clear.