I woke up feeling like I was drowning. I felt panic surging as I opened my eyes, realising quickly that I was actually deep underwater. Instinctually, I pinched my nose shut and held my breath. It was only then that I looked around for light. After a few seconds of searching I saw the light in the distance and immediately began to swim towards it. Numerous thoughts went through my head: Why was I in the water? How had I got here? Why had I woke up so deep underwater rather than when I first entered it?

  I swam towards the surface, but no matter how hard I kicked, it never seemed to get any closer. My lungs were burning at this point as the feeling of suffocation deepened. Soon I was kicking off my shoes in a desperate ploy to help me swim upwards. I needed to reach the surface but despite all my swimming it never seemed to get any closer.

  Soon I felt my vision slowly darkening, causing a rush of adrenaline to surge through me as I swam as hard as I could. For some reason my muscles didn't feel fatigued at all, so I put even more effort into it, swimming even faster than before, this time I felt as though some progress had been made at getting towards the surface. Weirdly enough, I felt the suffocation lessening even without reaching the surface. Nonetheless, I kept swimming furiously. Eventually, I pierced the surface of the water.

  I felt the sweet touch of air for a brief moment - then I bolted upright gasping for breath in the bed I was resting in, my chest heaved as I realised I was hyperventiting. My throat and my chest ached a bit and I felt nauseous. I looked around the unfamiliar room and realised I must have fell asleep in the house I was scavenging. I panicked slightly at that realisation because I was on a time limit and should have left and gone home a long time ago. I urgently checked my watch, quietly cussing under my breath while I did so. My watch said that the time was about 6am, I carefully looked past the window blinds and sighed in relief as I saw the sun was still down. Given the time of year, I estimated that the sun would likely be rising in about an hour. I did some quick mental maths and realised that I'd slept for about 5-6 hours; far longer than I had pnned on staying out.

  I rushed to move all my stuff into the new bag but I soon saw the Jaffa cakes I'd packed earlier. For some reason, I was extremely hungry and I couldn't help myself from indulging in them, soon I was opening them from their wrapper and beginning to shovel them into my mouth one at a time. Whilst the cakes were tasty, they went down quite hard as my throat was dry and sore.

  The question though; is why would my throat be sore? Almost as soon as the question came to mind I cursed under my breath as I remembered what had happened st night.

  What was that thing?

  What did it do?

  Was it just a nightmare?

  I remembered the feeling of it putting that thing down my throat and began to shiver. As if on instinct, my hands came up to my throat as I thought about it. Could it have just been a realistic nightmare? I wasn't sure, my gut told me it was real but I had never seen a creature like that and knew that nobody would believe me if I told them what happened. Alternatively, they could believe me and would probably conclude it was a zombie of some kind. I shook my head, realising that ultimately, there was nothing I could do about it for now and I'd have to think about this ter.

  With that settled I began moving everything into my new bag and then re-attaching my knife to it's sheathe. After attaching the knife, I slung my now filled bag onto my back and I rushed down the stairs whilst being careful not to make too much noise, once I had got to the bottom I made my way to the door I originally entered through.

  I slowly opened the door, cautiously looking out for any signs of undead before moving through it, closing the door behind me as I began to move away from the house as quickly as possible. I crouched slightly as I walked up to the wooden fence, getting as close to the gate as possible before kneeling down underneath it.

  With my body hidden behind the fence, I peeked over it towards the street, careful to expose as little of myself as possible. It was here that I was able to see a couple of zombies on my right at the far end of the street. Luckily, none of them were looking towards the alleyway that I needed to sneak through. The left side of the street seemed to be completely clear of the undead.

  As such, seeing that I had the perfect opportunity, I then walked through the gate, I double checked to see if anything had changed and I was silently thankful I did as I realised one of the zombies on my right had turned to look in my direction.

  I held as still as a statue, hoping that the zombie hadn't managed to see me in the darkness. The undead was definitely looking in my direction but with the darkness, I couldn't quite tell if it was looking directly at myself. I held my breath as it shambled forwards a few steps before twitching its head.

  My heart lurched in my chest as I began to prepare myself for the worst. Just as I was sure it had seen me, it completely stopped in its tracks and turned around as both it and the other zombies in its group began running in another direction.

  I was slightly confused for a moment, even if I was relieved it had stopped looking at me. It was only then that I saw what had attracted its attention: There was a dog that was running along the road and being followed by quite the swarm of the undead. I couldn't quite tell what breed it was from here; I could, however, see that it was rather big and covered in grey fur. The zombies were chasing it whilst it ran away from them. The undead were too slow catch up with the four legged creature as it ran away from them; as such, fortunately for it, the dog wasn't likely to be caught by them. However, I conceded to myself that it wasn't usually their speed that made them dangerous. It was their tenacity.

  Nonetheless, my thoughts went out for the dog as I was silently hoping it got away, even though I knew it most likely would, I couldn't help but worry about the poor animal. I was thankful though for it's opportune distraction of the zombies because I was able to take advantage of the distraction it provided and rapidly cross the street into the tight alleyway.

  As I walked down the alleyway, I felt a stinging pain in my leg. Kneeling down, I realised I had been stung by one of the nettles on the side of the path. The alley was covered in weeds and stinging nettles. They were thick and interced with one another, having grown up to about my knee height which was how high you would want them to be. After all, people, including myself wouldn't use this alleyway if there was a risk of stumbling upon some zombies hidden within the weeds. On the other hand, they were high enough that if push came to shove, you could go prone and be hidden from the ckluster sight of a faraway zombie.

  I pulled my socks up to cover where I had been stung and took advantage of this small moment of peace before I resumed walking, in the silence that surrounded me I contempted what I would say when I got back home. I had to sneak out of the haven as going out at such a te time, alone no less, would be considered stupid to say the least. Stupid enough to where people would try to stop me. Especially considering the fact I hadn't consulted anyone within my family before doing so. Whilst I was an adult and capable of making my own decisions on this matter, it wasn't exactly a responsible decision, especially when I knew how worried I would make everyone.

  With that thought and quasi-regret I resumed walking, with me soon I reaching the end of the alley. It was here that I checked both ways and as I did so, I saw a small group of undead far to my left and another far to the right. Thankfully though, the mpposts nearby this alley had already been sabotaged by previous survivors who were likely trying to ensure the safety of these pathways at night. As such I was able to quickly but carefully, cross the street and successfully not attract any undue attention from the undead.

  It was for this reason amongst others that I was gd I'd woke up whilst it was still dark. Otherwise, I would've had to risk the eyes of the undead spotting along the entire way which would have massively increased the risks involved with returning home.

  Regardless, having managed to cross the street, I crept along it's sides until I arrived at the next alleyway and began to move down it. This gave me some time to think about what I'd do when I returned to home. Telling the group about that creature, nightmare or not, would undoubtably cause problems. They weren't there and didn't see it so the first assumption anyone would make is that it was a new type of undead. In fact, that very thought y there, festering in the back of my mind too.

  It wasn't unusual to encounter slight variants of the undead. Some were slightly faster; in fact, you might rarely find one that was capable of running. Others could hear better and would be able to hear you walking whilst trying to be stealthy. Some had better vision than the rest, to the point where they might be able to see you in the night and through a bush at the same time.

  The issue was that none of the undead had ever looked anything like that creature had. A scorpion like creature with multiple dexterous fingers and a strong grip, as well as attaching to your face like that. It also didn't look anything even remotely like a humanoid, not to mention it never bit me. However, even in spite of these things, if I told the majority of the group about this, they would inevitably think I was a disaster waiting to happen.

  I shook my head as I knew what would happen if they thought I was bitten. Policy was execution on confirmation or being locked up and restrained for a few days on suspicion. With the fact the creature shoved it's- I ruminated on the right word for a second as it was stuck on the tip of my tongue, standing still in the alley as I thought I eventually remembered it: Proboscis. It was called a proboscis. So, with its proboscis having been shoved down my throat there was no way of knowing if it hadn't bit me inside and they likely wouldn't take the risk.

  So, I didn't want to tell the main group what had happened that was for certain. What of my family though? I thought about that for barely even a second before making a simple conclusion. I'd tell my family everything about it and what happened, if I couldn't trust them then I couldn't trust anyone.

  As I came to that decision, I arrived at the end of the second alleyway. Checking to my left I saw the same pile of dead zombies I had originally seen on my way towards the house I'd just scavenged. Seeing this I felt relief at the fact that I was nearly back to the base.

  Popur pathways such as these alleyways and jitties were semi-regurly cleared out of zombies, this made it much safer to scavenge the nearby houses as well as to travel back and forth along them. This resulted in a rge amount of zombie corpses which were usually piled up and either burnt or left alone. It depended on the strategy and the scavengers themselves.

  The stench of rotting corpses was known to attract any undead that still retained their sense of smell and since zombies usually stayed in small groups, they'd bring the rest of their group along with them. Thus, it worked quite well as zombie bait for us to clear out as a group. The issue was that I was alone right now and couldn’t take on a group. Meanwhile the bait had done its job and attracted a group of zombies that hadn't been there when I left.

  The zombies were too close for me to want to risk them noticing me and one of them being a sprinter. Whilst I could probably kill a sprinter one on one, I couldn't fight one with the other three zombies clustered around the bait inevitably coming to its aid. As such, I had to come up with a pn to either distract them or avoid them. I began to look around, trying to come up with a pn.

  A very basic pn soon came to my mind but I first wanted to check my surroundings for any zombies I hadn't spotted yet. Checking the area I saw that there was no other zombies nearby other than these. With that confirmed, I looked on the ground in the alleyway I was in and began scrounging up some of the pebbles and sticks. This was all I needed to make a pretty basic distraction.

  Having gathered up a bunch of pebbles, I returned to the alley's exit. I then simply threw the pebbles as far as I could on the other side of the undead, watching with mild amusement as the zombies suddenly all turned in the direction of where the pebbles had nded. I smiled wide at their stupidity before silently but swiftly crossing the street to what would be the final alleyway before reaching the base and my home.

  Whilst walking the final stretch home along this alley, I finalised my thoughts on what I would say when I arrived, I wouldn’t tell the wider group about the creature but I would tell my family. As for why I’d left; I’d simply tell them the truth. We were desperate for painkillers for my Dad.

  After progressing down the alley and reaching the end I saw the settlement and the makeshift sheet metal and wooden walls that made up its exterior. Whilst it wasn't the most elegant of constructions, it had to cover the entire southern direction of the Cul de sac it was built around and thus was quite impressive to have been built in only the first few weeks after the outbreak had spread to us here in Engnd. Whilst the front walls were rather impressive, if ugly and makeshift, the sides and back were made of only a chain-link fence which was much less secure. Still though, it was secure enough to dey any rge hordes of undead.

  Efforts had been made to upgrade the walls over the past few months but other priorities and a ck of manpower had resulted in them being deyed. There wasn't much momentum behind the need to upgrade them anyway, the walls weren't in the best shape but they did their job just fine. It turned out the old motto of 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it' applied even in the apocalypse.

  As I closed in on home, on Lichenbury, I saw that the guards were paying more attention than usual and seemed on edge. Their floodlights were on and the couple of guards were dutifully looking out the walls. Something had clearly happened to set them on edge and I knew perfectly well what, or specifically who, was the reason for that. As I approached, I saw one of them point at me and then say something to one of their fellow guards before walking away and out of sight.

  AnnouncementHello! If you're reading this, thanks for picking up this story and giving it a shot. I hope you've liked what you've read so far. I've got a few more finished chapters I'll be releasing over the next few days before I've finished with what I've got completed.

  As I said in the story description, this is my first attempt at writing something serious so any feedback is appreciated.