C19 State authority

Markus left the monsters behind him and soon he could not see them anymore in the rearview mirror. Once again luck had been on his side.

The autobahn was running straight through a desolate, snow covered winter countryside, above which stretched a grey heavy sky filled with rain clouds. Blurred into long streaks, snow covered fields were passing by the bus’s dirty windows endlessly.

Due to his former occupation, Markus was used to driving around a lot in a car and he had used the monotone hours to be deep in thought. Or to listen to music that had transported him into other worlds. And now, well, now he was actually really moving in another world in which his games had become the harsh reality.

Things were happening because they had been evoked and maybe he himself carried some of the blame upon his shoulders as well. It was just depressing to still see all the jammed cars passing by on the other side.

In this moment he was even grateful for the soldiers who had locked him and Sabine up in Platkow during the first days because otherwise his Defender would only be one of those lost vehicles in which hopeless souls were waiting for their salvation.

His beloved Defender, which was still standing at the shipyard in this damned hicksville, the name of which he had forgotten. Sometimes he saw a few zombies wandering around on the roadway in search of food and hardly noticing him. They looked up lethargically, but by the time they registered what was happening, Markus had already passed them.

His lane was still covered with the last day‘s muddy snow. Markus enjoyed the feeling of driving, even on roads like this. Time and time again he looked at the dashboard because he had again pinned Annette’s picture there so that he could see her all the time.

When he passed exits they were blocked by army vehicles most of the time, but he did not see any humans. Everything was fleeting by him like a movie, staying behind only to finally vanish inside the winter air’s haze. Behind the roadblocks at the exits endless rows of broken down cars were piled up and absolutely nothing was moving aside from some zombies. The roadblocks had become death traps from which there was no escape.

He reached the first exit to Halle two hours later, here Markus stopped the car because he had noticed something strange behind one of the military vehicles and besides that he desperately needed to use the bathroom, not that there was one out here.

Heavy military vehicles were standing askew everywhere on the exits and behind them the jammed cars. Some creatures were staggering around a little further in the back, but they were too far away to pose a serious threat. But he planned on keeping an eye on them regardless.

He was most afraid of the newly infected because he did not stand a chance against them. They were damned fast and knew exactly what they were doing. But apparently that was not the case here because the transition from life to death had taken place already. If this circumstance had not changed, he would surely have been part of this horrible army by now and would be staggering around with milky eyes.

Markus got out of the car looking around, safeguarding in all directions as he walked around the parked vehicles. At each one, he crouched down with the loaded cross bow in hand. However, he kept the engine running this time because he was not sure if the car would start up again. His breath steamed in the cold winter air and his legs were hurting from sitting on the uncomfortable driver’s seat for so long which he still had not adjusted to his height. God but it felt good to move around.

His destination was the edge of the autobahn behind the huge Bundeswehr MAN-Transporters because from there he could get a good overview of the whole area.

Different from the last exits, a paramedic’s container was set up between the lanes here. Maybe because a larger city was located close by. Perhaps, but Markus was not interested in this container.

Croaking, some crows settled down on the parked vehicles, curiously eyeing him. It would have certainly be interesting to read their minds. Most likely, they were trying to figure out if he was alive or dead. He understood their concern.

Markus felt himself reminded of the Berliner Ring where he had found Nadja in similar circumstances. But there was a significant difference here. A huge pile formed by countless suitcases and bags was stacked up in front of the container. In parts they had been broken open and their contents were scattered on the ground and the surrounding area.

The wind had spread colored pieces of clothes onto the clear area and some even had gotten caught in the surrounding trees and were now flapping in the ice-cold wind like Tibetan prayer flags. Many pieces of clothes had gotten caught on another pile as well but this pile was different.

Burned legs were standing out of the pile instead of shoes and pants. Instead of jackets and coats Markus saw arms and burned hands within a grotesque chaos of burned bodies – glued together by the fire into a huge, disgusting chunk that made up most of this hill.

Men, women, children – it was impossible for him to look away from this horrible hill of corpses. At once he had the bitter taste of bile in his mouth. Gooey and tenacious. Because of the acid his tongue slowly became numb and started to tingle. Layer after layer, carelessly thrown on this mountain, and the bodies were stacking up high.

Some zombies were sitting on the hill eating their fill off of the decaying bodies. The charred shreds of clothes revealed that there were civilians lying here on the heap.

Disgusted, he spat bile out on the ground in front of him. He discovered more dead bodies at the edge of the area however this time neatly in a row and covered with black plastic bags which were now loosely flapping in the wind enabling a glance at the corpses hidden underneath.

Unconsciously he moved a few steps closer towards the scenery, bending down while walking in order to see more clearly. His eyes had taken all of this in but his brain accepted only really slowly what had taken place here. The hands of the dead were bound together on their backs with cable ties.

All of them had been killed by well aimed shots in the back of their heads. The black entry wounds were clearly visible as well as the considerably bigger exit wounds at the front, where the forehead used to be. A lot of them had no faces at all anymore. Apparently, someone had wanted to be absolutely certain and therefore had severed some of the heads which were now lying on the ground beside a bare tree in a little heap, staring to the sky with dead eyes.

A crow was sitting on one of the heads and pulled something long and white out of one of the eye sockets, swallowing it down greedily. How desperate must these soldiers have been to use such drastic measures? Had they gone crazy and were perhaps only acting in sheer mortal fear or was this the work of sadists who cruelly had exploited the temporary power over the civilians in order to promote themselves to masters over life and death?

Markus had no answer to that. The cold wind carried the heavy sweet smell of death with it. Markus’s stomach contracted completely now, more bile coming up in an unstoppable gush until he was puking the contents of his stomach in front of his feet.

He stayed down for a long time, long enough that not even stomach fluid was coming out of his mouth anymore and he was only convulsing painfully. Dazed, he staggered away from this horror, got in the car and drove off without turning back.

Just get away from this horror fast.

He could always piss later on. More gruesome images were lining up inside the scrapbook of damnation inside his head, saved for eternity to haunt him in his dreams. He had often seen pictures in magazines of executions in China, in which soldiers shot blindfolded people in the head and afterwards were dumping them like puppets in huge mass graves filled with white chalk.

That was where they remained until bulldozers came pushing everything together. Then he thought of images of concentration camps in the Second World War showing naked dead people piled up high in heaps. Parchment-like skin stretching over their emaciated bodies as if nothing else but bones existed anymore underneath it.

Back then the delusional soldiers had acted on the command of a brainless and degenerate government which had risen above everything and everybody in order to hide its own shortcomings. His generation had sworn that nothing like that could ever happen again on German soil and the world community had taken notice of this benevolently, but also with a permanently raised finger.

Now, there was a new era of horrors now and apparently there was no other cure than to distinguish between healthy and sick, good and bad and alive and dead. But who was authorized to set the criteria defining who was allowed to keep on living and who had to die in such a horrible manner only to be thrown onto the dump of humanity?

Were they perhaps building concentrating camps behind a borderline already in which infected or people with the mere suspicion of being infected were cramped together and abused for experiments, or maybe even been mass destructed?

Or were the sick being marked based on pure suspicion in order to protect the healthy rest? Was there a full grown witch-hunt going on already? The difference between the zombies and the living seemed to blur all of a sudden, became more fluid with each new thought.

This massacre was a sign of helplessness against an enemy which could only to be faced with brutal force. The border from tolerable to chaos had been crossed already and one had given up on finding a solution. Mankind was obviously in a war where mass destruction had become a real option.

He did not dare imagine what had been going on inside the soldiers’ heads as the order had been given for this measure. Had some of them laid down their weapons and ran or had the despair progressed so far already that the only thing left was blind cadaver obedience? Markus forced his thoughts back into pragmatic patterns and was trying to concentrate on the road again. Soon the execution area had vanished in the fog like everything else before already and he left Halle behind driving South in the direction of the Schkeuditzer Kreuz. That was where the autobahn A14 met the A9. The closer he got to the interchange the more his lane got jammed by broken down vehicles as well.

It worsened with each passing meter. Some drivers apparently had tried to move forward using blunt force and had wedged themselves into other vehicles in the well-known fashion. Others had tried making a u turn on the lane and were now standing in the way sideways.

Who had been driving in which direction was completely indistinguishable at this point. Markus was driving around the vehicles in walking speed but he had to stop from time to time to find a new route through this chaos. Clothes, suitcases and an incredible amount of shoes were lying everywhere on the lane once again, mute witnesses of the all encompassing panic.

Why were people always losing their shoes while on the run? Before, when everything still had been normal Markus had often wondered about single shoes which had been lying at the side of the road mostly with the opening turned up as if someone had put them there on purpose.

Those shoes had become the grotesque symbol, at least to him, of a hopeless escape. Markus’s progress became increasingly slower, and the sudden tightness between the vehicles caused an oppressing feeling. Horrible dramas had taken place in a lot of the vehicles which were now wafting above the scene in the form of a sweetly stench of decay.

Father eats mother, child eats father, a stranger eats the child. Everyone eats everybody until nobody is left to eat anybody. The human race stays dead.

More frequently now, Markus had to stop in order to drive backwards out of a dead end in search of another way which might be more promising for his advance. It was finally over just shortly before the interchange, the entangled metal made it impossible to advance any further with the transporter. Some off-road vehicles were standing in front of Markus hopelessly entwined and blocking the entire width of the roadway.

Markus had no other option than to get out of the car and try to make it on foot. He climbed onto the roof of his vehicle, binoculars in his hand. He needed to get an overview if he wanted to find a way out of this metal heap. Besides that he needed to find a refuge as long as it was still light outside.

Outside of his vehicle he perceived the extreme stench more intensely. The clear winter air made way for a mixed smell of decay, feces and gasoline, the reeking fumes travelling a long way, even in this cold.

He noticed at once the amount of crows which had settled onto the vehicles and traffic signs. By now he slowly felt stalked by these birds and he got the feeling that they were only waiting for him to breakdown. He simply decided to not make it too easy for them. A little further up the road the A9 went underneath the A14. The interchange was completely blocked as well. Someone had placed heavy concrete blocks there in a way that only allowed the vehicles to pass through the head-high barricades one by one and by driving in wiggly lines.

Among the defenses, huge metal constructs with thick snowcovered hoses, comparable to car washes, were standing in between. Disinfecting facilities, like back when the mad cow disease had broken out and thousands of animals had to die. At that time he had to drive to France on business frequently and had seen an almost identical system at the border through which all vehicles had to drive in order to get sprayed with disinfection liquid.

He still quite clearly remembered this fat sales rep with his large Audi who got into a fight with the border patrol agent because he had been worried about the paint of his expensive car.

Put your thoughts in order and concentrate on the here and now if you want to survive, he urged himself.

He was tired, so bone weary, and as such, he got careless. There must have been a fire in the centre of the bridge because he could see the skeletons of some of the burned out trucks as well as some bent tent poles.

Everything was covered in thick, greasy soot. Sand bags were piled up at the bridge’s railing, serving as combat positions. Behind them, in fetal positions, burned soldiers were sitting at machine guns, their barrels curved upwards grotesquely by the heat. The fire must have spread so rapidly that the soldiers had no chance to escape to safety. Even the guide rails between the two lanes had been twisted by the heat and were now black.

Markus asked himself what kind of stuff had caused this extreme heat. Napalm, perhaps? In any case there was an unbelievable chaos. Markus saw more barricades on the other lane on the opposite side of the bridge. The metal flood continued behind it.

The path did not look much better below on the crossing A9. A big bus was lying on its side like a stranded whale. The bodies of the passengers who had tried to escape the bus through the windows were still hanging out of the smashed windows. If he had been able to continue his journey the first day already it would have ended here abruptly and shortly after he would have died in this huge collective.

Like oversized funnels the escape routes narrowed at the junctions to finally jam everything hopelessly in the end. Even small children knew what would happen if they kept filling water in such a funnel. Markus had simply been lucky, nothing else. He in no way wanted to stay here because some of the dead were certainly wandering around in this area.

Nothing was fitting enough to at least spend a halfway secure night in it and the remaining time until dusk was running through his fingers like sand. But then he saw something interesting.

A spacious area surrounded by a high fence was visible through the mist behind the road block. He was thinking intensely and was trying to remember the road map he had looked at a while ago. That thing over there behind the fence looked like a runway.

Yes, of course, this had to be the airport Halle-Leipzig, for sure. He hastily focused the binoculars more. Now he was able to see the elongated buildings through the mist, as well as numerous planes sitting on the runway. Further down two bridges were leading over the autobahn so that the planes would be able to reach the different start and landing runways.

Surprised, Markus observed a grey-black dog trotting towards one of the buildings. Nothing else was moving on the grounds. The whole area was surrounded by a high fence which looked solid enough and which was at least still intact on the side which was facing Markus. If there was a halfway secure place for the night he would find it behind the fence.

Markus had seen enough and jumped down from the roof. He hastily stuffed a chocolate bar in his mouth to quench his nagging hunger because after all he had not eaten anything since he had left the farm.

Meanwhile, he shouldered his heavy backpack. He flushed the dry chocolate down with some sips from his water bottle. Noises between the abandoned vehicles made him hurry up. It could be only a matter of time until the lost souls would have detected him. Once again Markus wrapped his Shemagh scarf around his neck and head as protection from the ice-cold wind.

He locked the transporter’s door as noiselessly as possible. He wanted to secure the vehicle as his last refuge in case he would be forced to abandon his walk to the airport and to come back here. His crossbow cocked he walked towards the road block quickly. He was certain that he could make it or at least could reach the area before dusk. Rapidly he reached the heavy concrete blocks on the bridge. A massacre must have taken place within the road block. The ground was literally covered with bullet casings. Distorted bodies were lying around everywhere, stiffened in these icy temperatures and fallen in the hail of bullets. He tried to ignore the horrid wounds as best as possible.

Nearly all of the fallen were civilians, there were only a few soldiers stuck between, whose heads had been smashed in or who had been killed by bullets from behind. It was a strange feeling walking through this field of dead. He stayed well clear of the corpses and did his best to keep his distance from their roptting bodies out of fear that they would wake up at the slightest touch and would get up to attack him.

But they were most certainly simply just dead. Thrown away rifles with empty magazines or bent barrels were scattered here and there. His steps were fast because one look at the sky was enough to know that the night was just around the corner. So he decided to leave the autobahn directly behind the barricade to walk cross country straight to the fence.

It was simply too dangerous to climb around between the wedged vehicles not knowing what was lurking behind the next obstacle. And to be honest he was simply not hero enough to do this. Only in movies does the hero live to see the end of it. In real life it’s rather the cowards that make it, he thought.

They simply run the fastest and don’t do things like for example go back to drag fallen down or injured people with them just to be eaten themselves in the end.

No, he was certainly no hero and did not plan to become one. Survival was the most important thing now. This in connection with his will to reach Speyer and his wife pushed him into moving faster in order to leave this thing behind him.

Shortly after, Markus was standing in front of the airfield fence eyeing the wire netting. As if it was not high enough already, it had to be reinforced with barbwire at the top.

Of course it did.

Apparently, the area refused him entry. The damned fence was too high to simply climb over it so he had to find something - a ladder or a big box – he could climb on to reach the crown of the fence. The only location where he might find something like that lay behind him. So he had to go back to the chaos made of demolished vehicles to approach the metal caskets once again even if he was extremely adverse to it.

On the bed of a roofing contractor’s truck he got lucky faster than he had thought and pulled a foldable aluminum ladder from the loading area. In nearly all of the vehicles there were body bags. They were literally filled up with them. Some were even shaking violently on their springs when the zombies became crazy seeing him. As far as possible he kept his distance to those vehicles. The gazes alone which were following him with cold eyes behind the smeared windows were bad enough already so he took to his heels running back to the fence as fast as possible.

The possibility of being detected and attacked was growing with each minute. If only one of these assholes managed to escape its car it could lead to a chain reaction and in no time he would be surrounded by dead bodies. Not a nice thing with a ladder on his back. Frenetic, he set to work, forcing himself to not turn back to the autobahn again and again. He unfolded the ladder hastily and pulled his blanket from his backpack. He had to sacrifice it if he wanted to get over the damned barbwire.

Screw it, the fence would keep his back clear, and besides that he would certainly find some kind of hideout on the airport grounds. He did not dare to hope that he might even find some other survivors. There would be no return once he had overcome the fence. He definitely would not go back to the autobahn. He carefully climbed over the fence crown and jumped down on the other side. He landed elastically and looked around.

“Okay, forward then,” he murmured to himself and he started walking with purpose over the snow-covered grass towards the runway.

The cold wind was even more cutting on the open ground. The haze turned into real fog slowly announcing the end of the day. What had been shapes just seconds ago were now vanishing behind white wafts that were playing tricks on the senses. Mirages and shapes staggering through the foggy soup similar to monsters were increasingly forming in front of his eyes.

Markus found it increasingly difficult to concentrate and to stay focused because the denser the fog got the more he felt like he was being chased. He needed to find a hideout and some peace and quiet soon. Otherwise he was going to lose his mind right here on the runway.

In order to reach the buildings fast he lapsed into a light speedy jog. He even forgot the straps of his heavy backpack which were cutting into his shoulders painfully. The area was open and it would be certainly possible to make out his shape behind the fence even through the fog. Some shadows were staggering around aimlessly on the parallel running autobahn apparently in search of new victims. Or were they only mirages after all?

There were roads which were stretching like rubber bands and this one was one of them. Were those damned buildings really that far away? At least his lungs were not causing him any problems at the moment. With the last rays of daylight he finally reached the runway in front of the building complex which was reaching to the sky with its gigantic dimensions.

He frequently had to blink because the fog had created little drops on his eyelashes. There were three big planes with the Bundeswehr’s crest standing neatly in a row in front of the building. They were standing there still and motionless like grey whales with white bellies.

Were there movements behind the tiny round windows or even shadows in the front in the cockpit? It was probably once again his fatigue which let him see things which were not there.

The gangways were placed on the runway with enough distance to the planes in order for them to take off easily. The planes’ doors were locked and at the moment Markus was not feeling the slightest urge to check out how the interior of the planes looked like.

He counted a total of six gates at the terminal building to his left whose folded tunnels were hanging out of the building to some extent like big sleeping maggots. Only the last three were occupied by planes from the Lufthansa, their bodies and wings covered by a thin layer of snow. The snow had covered the machines like a shroud blocking any glimpse into their interiors.

All the other gates were vacant and were showing off the tunnels‘ dark openings in which high snowdrifts had built up. Pandemonium was on the ground. Vehicles loaded with pieces of luggage and boxes were standing around everywhere. Some were even turned over and had generously scattered their freight over the runway.

Underneath the gates were closed doors with safety glass which were secured with heavy chains and padlocks to prevent something or someone from leaving the building. Best case scenario was that it had been humans who had been on the run trying to leave one of the planes in a panic.

It was however disconcerting that some of the vehicles were parked in front of the doors in a way that blocked the passages completely. The terminal was added to Markus’s list of dangerous places. Behind the glass windows was nothing but impenetrable darkness. The same darkness which was by now slowly covering the runway like a huge bag.

Additionally, the dense fog was lowering down on the environment like a shroud, covering everything with its icy dampness. Not much longer and everything would be withdrawing itself from his view. Once the sack had tightened he would be trapped like a mouse surrounded by thousands of sneaking monsters which were only waiting for him to blindly stumble into their outstretched arms. There he was now, standing between all this stuff pumping air into his lungs. It was important for him to think clearly now and to be looking around systematically if he did not want to spent the night on the runway.

He was looking around hectically and spotted a considerably smaller building on which the gigantic letters spelling a car rental’s name had been fixed. It looked just as abandoned as the other buildings. But still it was more interesting for him. Quickly he had covered the short distance and was now standing in front of the building whose twin entrance door was rising into nothingness in front of him.

As he kicked the door carefully with his foot it swung inwards, squeaking but causing no apparent reaction. So, the way in was clear. Markus turned his flashlight on illuminating the long hallway which extended behind the entrance door.

An increasingly oppressive feeling was taking hold off him and he expected any moment now that zombies would be staggering out of the rooms to corner him with wide opened mouths or that a dead hand would touch his shoulder utterly unexpected in order to snatch him. He looked behind him for one last time and then entered the building, flashlight in his right hand and crossbow ready to fire in his left.

He soundlessly penetrated further, feeling the soft grey carpet underneath his soles which covered the wide floor and cushioned his steps. He noticed the dried dark brown stains on it. He followed their trace with his light beam until they vanished underneath the door with a little silver toilet symbol on it at the end of the hallway.

To his left he recognized a stairway which let upstairs and the spacious area for the clients with its waiting zone opened up to his right. It smelled overwhelmingly of air fresheners and rubber comparable to a car dealership and the walls were covered with commercial posters which were promoting the Christmas specials.

He had not detected any smell of decay or feces yet. The client area was ransacked but empty. No monsters were lurking in the corners even though he still suspected them in every long shadow. Plastic plants were standing around everywhere, one of them had fallen over and was now hanging sideways over a light colored faux leather armchair. Somebody had apparently been searching for some kind of documents behind the counter because papers were lying on the floor everywhere and the cabinet with the keys for the rental cars was standing open.

Relieved Markus noticed that most of the keys were still hanging in their intended spots. It was too late today but first thing in the morning he would search for a suitable vehicle and continue his journey to Speyer. It was almost like hitting the jackpot. He would keep going without a longer stay.

An overturned cup was lying on the floor, its content had left a dark-brown stain on the carpet. The thought of freshly brewed coffee made his mouth water. Lying beside it was a small plastic Christmas tree with colorful ornaments and lighting which had probably been standing on the counter right next to the cup before.

Again and again he pointed his light beam towards the toilet door underneath which the dried blood had vanished. Somehow he was just certain that it was blood and not coffee. If he wanted to spend the night here, he had to have some clarity beforehand as to what was hiding behind this damned door. The problem was just that literally everything could be hiding behind it, from a whimpering human being to a horde of zombies and that was exactly what scared him.

The carpet cushioned his steps as he was sneaking towards the door. So far he had managed to avoid noise and was confident that the element of surprise would still be on his side. The grip of his loaded crossbow provided him a weak but still present sense of safety. Whatever was lurking behind this door, he would welcome it with a fifteen millimeter thick crossbow arrow with a hand-forged iron tip.

After that there would still be enough time left to draw his battle mace. At least he hoped it would. So he pushed down the door handle with shaking damp fingers and kicked the door in with his feet so vehemently that it cracked against the wall and bounced back. Something metallic broke.

As a saw the grimace with wide open eyes in front of him he pulled the trigger and the arrow was hissing through the little room with a hum. The iron tip hit glass above the sink and Markus realized that he had shot at his own image in a mirror. The shards fell into the sink clanking, causing such a noise that it must have been audible throughout the whole airport. He might as well have fired a canon.

Hectically the strong light beam was jerking through the room, searching every corner and shadow. Markus’s gaze moved into the sink into which someone had vomited an incredible amount of blood and stomach content. Those were meat balls, damned half digested meat balls. And noodles. Colored noodles.

The sink was completely filled up with them and overflowed at the rim. In the process the stuff had formed long threads. The once white towel with the rental car’s logo was lying in the corner, dirty and crumbled. The only toilet stall door was hanging crooked but open in its hinges. The dividing walls were smeared with dried blood and feces, creating a slippery surface.

The room stank horribly and Markus had to fight his surging nausea. There was no way in hell that he would set foot into this room, so he bent forward really far, ripped the arrow out of the wall and closed the door behind him completely disgusted. He would most certainly not be using this restroom.

He spent the next five minutes with calming down his pulse and keeping down his last meagre meal. When he had calmed down again he finally turned towards the stairs to check out the upper floor. Silently he placed the backpack on the ground, cocked the crossbow with a cracking sound and placed the arrow in it. A quick glance to the entrance door was enough to make sure that nobody was drawing closer from there.

Slowly he went up the first steps. His steps were cushioned by the same grey carpet which apparently had been laid in the entire building. There were no brownish stains on the carpet this time. The darkness of night had spread behind the windows. Since there was no artificial light anywhere on the entire grounds besides his flashlight it seemed to him that the windows had been colored with thick black paint.

What was left was this building’s interior like ancient ruins in a sunken world. Actually, Markus had his concerns that the light beam of his flashlight would shine outside attracting the body bags but his fear of walking around in this unknown building in the dark was greater.

The trembling light of the lamp was creating more illusions. Strange shadows were forming in the dark corners making his mind belief to see crouched figures ready to jump, waiting for him to come closer.

Markus was sneaking on nonetheless and finally reached the upper floor. A knocked over green brochure stand was lying in his way, brochures and pricelists scattered everywhere. His last encounters with those things had shown him that they not even to some extent had the ability to sneak up on him treacherously or even silently. Their style was more to brainlessly sit around waiting or to simply march on, driven by a hunger still inexplicable to him.

Markus crouched down behind the stand, listening, ready to pull the trigger at the slightest movement. But it stayed silent, no groaning and no shuffling feet were audible, it was silent as a grave inside the building. It was so silent that his suppressed breathing sounded like a huge air pump and his wildly beating heart like thunder.

Just to be certain he grabbed a handful of brochures and threw them against the opposite wall. But it stayed silent. After a few more minutes of agonizing waiting he finally stood up and started to inspect the whole floor. There was a small kitchen where dirty cups and moldy cakes on paper plates were standing around everywhere.

The fridge was standing wide open, filled with green stuff whose original forms could only hardly be guessed at this stage. How ironic was the text on the note which had been placed over the coffee machine reminding the personnel to always turn off the light and the coffee machine before leaving the building?

The switch of the machine was of course turned on. It would never be turned off again. Take that, Corporate tyranny.

There was an office a little further in the back where a lot of incredible messy stacks of papers were piling up on the desks and cupboards. It smelt of old tobacco smoke and dusty paper. An expensive looking handbag made of brown leather was lying on the desk, its contents had been emptied over the entire table top.

Hastily he searched the bag hoping to find a mobile phone which was still functioning. But it was in vain. He did not find anything else but women stuff. Disappointed he let it fall to the ground carelessly. And once again there was a shoe lying there, this time a black varnish stiletto. It was in the middle of the room with a broken heel. All the pictures on the desk showed the same tall, blonde, middle-aged women striking different poses. Self-absorbed she looked at the camera, always by herself and effectively playing to the gallery each time. One time in a little black dress leaning against a tree, the next time on an old wooden bridge wearing a fur coat. Markus did not like these people who thought themselves to be the navel of the world and who had to be the center of attention all the time.

Nonetheless, Markus felt sorry for this woman who maybe had nothing except herself and some money and he contemplated if the woman was now staggering around amongst the monsters or if she had ended her life being food.

Finally, there was a storage room where in addition to some beverage crates different kinds of car cleaning supplies, seat covers and a lot of paper were stored. All together the rooms upstairs made an untidy impression but were not as ransacked as the clients’ area on the ground floor.

And that was more than he had expected. Markus decided to build a camp for the night out of the seat covers and went downstairs to lock the entrance door from the inside. He found a sturdy broom in the corner of the stairs which he wanted to slide through the door handles. That was not a complete secure solution but it would at least cause enough noise if somebody would try to enter the building by force.

Outside there was still dense fog wafting restricting his view to a few meters. Just as he was about to carry on with his work he noticed a movement from the corner of his eye. It was not much more than a weak shadowy scamper which vanished into the fog right away again. Once again, he considered that the motion could just be a visual illusion caused by his overtired brain and the exhausted eyes. However, he stopped in the middle of the movement waiting, magnetized for the scurrying shadow to show itself again. Blinded by the fog’s glistening white his eyes started hurting already after a few seconds. Illusion or not he had to find out what it was otherwise he would not get a wink of sleep that night. And he really needed the sleep more than ever so he pulled the broomstick out of the handles again and opened the door.

His in-most-cases commonsense rang the alarm bell right away reminding him of all the dangers which could be lurking everywhere. But the windows were simply smeared too much. There was no other way, he had to go outside. Who ever knew anything about horror movies knew of course that this would normally have fatal consequences and that such people normally would get killed directly, but Markus could not help it.

Immediately his lungs were constricting due to the air’s humidity paired with the icy cold making it difficult for him to breath reasonably. The difference in temperature and the fog’s dampness were a problem which could cost him his life sooner or later.

He knew this for a fact. At least if life’s circumstances would not improve soon and if he ran out of medication, the end would come quickly.

Standing in front of the door with his crossbow ready he was searching the area expecting any second that the fog would spit out some ugly things. In that case he would be standing with his back to the wall. Even if he managed to save himself back into the building, it would turn into a death trap rather rapidly.

His clear vision was ten meters at most, if at all. Markus was about to retreat back into the building again when the shadow reappeared again. This time at the right corner of the building. Immediately, Markus turned around with his weapon bending his knees slightly. He suppressed the urge to simply flee back inside the building and lock the door. No, he needed to have certainty if he wanted to spent the night half-way secure. Whatever it was it moved too fast and always kept the same distance from him, but it was too small for a grown person. A child, perhaps?

Images of decaying crawling children were created by his brain already. Or of adults which had lost their legs and were pulling themselves forward with their hands. But neither the one thing nor the other could have reached this limber speed, let alone the soundlessness and the flowing movements.

Besides that some of those things would have always advanced towards him in a straight line. He was completely certain of that. He inhaled the air deeply expecting the smell of decay but instead there was only the wet cold winter air and the slight odor of kerosene.

Markus was prepared for everything because if nature was capable of breeding such absurdities as those dead things, everything was possible. His skin crawled thinking of the infected. About those still alive and capable of thinking. Maybe they were able to act in this manner.

With those thoughts fear awakened. The fear of death which laid down in his neck like an icy claw and simply squeezed. He would not stand the slightest chance against them.

Game over, my friend.

The shadow had reached the left corner of the building fast and remained there. Markus squinted intensely hoping to see more in this damned fog. He had a feeling that the grey shadow was slowly coming closer, but he could be wrong about it.

Seconds later he knew for sure that this thing was really coming closer and the shadow turned into a shape. The shape slowly merged into a solid form. Markus thought briefly about simply shooting at it but decided against it and was certain to recognize not before long what was hiding behind it.

However, Markus was still indecisive on how to react and it was hard to estimate the threat which was coming from this unknown something. So he kept his crossbow ready and continued waiting in front of the door not leaving his target out of his sight.

Finally, in a distance of about five meters a knee-high grey mottled dog with a bulky head stopped and scrutinized Markus. The same thoughts were probably running through the dog’s mind like they were through the human‘s. What followed was a mutual assessment.

The dog had a black mask over his eyes which made him look extremely like a raccoon and he seemed healthy. But it was still always possible that the dog was carrying the deadly virus inside him.

If he bit Markus the virus could enter his blood. Did animals transform into the same soulless beasts like the humans were? Markus did not know and simply decided that the dog was healthy and did not pose a threat. It was as simple as that. Markus really liked these animals, had owned one himself for a long time and had always appreciated its honesty.

By all means he could not think of a more loyal companion and at the moment he was longing for some company, for something to count on and someone who would stand by his side on this never ending path. That was why he lowered the crossbow and went to down to his knees.

The dog sat down on his butt, smiled at him with his tongue hanging out of his muzzle and waited.