Foreword

Not to be confused with the three other movies with the same name, they all have nothing to do with this. This is an original take on the Zombie horror genre, I kinda did something like this earlier this year with Siege of the Flesh Eaters—which this story is loosely based—but I didn’t let that one go very far. It’s not fully a zombie story, but it also tells something like a slasher story which shrouds its true plot in mystery. One quick thing—I have not read Max Brook’s Zombie Survival Guide and I probably ever will; it’s really hard to find. My inspiration and use for zombies come from watching the old fashioned zombie movies (I kind of figured I could learn a lot from Romero who happened to have invented the zombie horror genre without even using the word zombie) and from doing heavy research on viruses such as Ebola, Necrotizing fasciitis, and such. I came back to the horror section because I’m about to leave FP soon and I’m really gonna miss doing horror like this. It’s time for my shot at the mainstream because I’m getting published. And with this story I hope to take a break from manga and what not to do something horrifying. So I hope you all find this chilling, and mostly, I hope you enjoy!

The Cellar

Chapter 1

“Meet Charlie”

Angelina was still sitting in the basement of the house with very miniscule amounts of food to eat. It wasn’t food that was given to her, she just happened to find it amongst all of the junk. For the two days she spent locked inside here she grew even worse with her sickly condition. This morning she had broken out in a fever while her skin felt like it was burning at points. The whole right side of her body was peach colored after sleeping on that side of the body last night. Her clothes had been robbed by the group of hunters that threw in the basement yesterday. Tears filled her eyes as the anxiety of being down here started to get to her. The inside of the basement contained a hay covered floor where feces and blood remained from whatever was in here before her. Hardly any light shined onto the place from where she was sitting. I’ve gotta get out of here, she proclaimed.

Once she got up and stepped forwards a few feet, a searing pain struck her heel. Beneath the hay was a few yards worth of razor wire that had already been drenched in blood before hand. Still, with all of the pain she only bit her cheek before trying to walk slowly on ahead. After getting through the razor wire, she heard a door open up in the distance where she couldn’t see. The basement had stretched on further towards the cellar in which she first heard the door open up. The door swayed open before hitting the wall behind it. A rattle came from when the door hit the wall, so it was obvious now that she had just heard a cage door open. Every thought passed through her mind wondering what was down here that remained caged in which she hadn’t heard or seen yet? The sound of hay rustling across the floor somewhat gave her the chills, but she was safe from being seen since the only source of light was coming from a gap in the ceiling.

It shined onto the floor and left a small meadow of light to show a clear setting. Angelina heard the rustling in the hay getting louder, so the first thing she did was hiding behind a wooden wheel barrow where the smell of blood and rotten flesh was emanating. Though the smell was sickening to her stomach, it made her forget about the pain that she was experiencing. It was hard to see what was in the wheel barrow since barely any light was on it, but she dabbed it before hearing the faint meow from a cat. The rustling in the hay stopped momentarily as she fixed her eyes onto the light in the center of the room. A rather large cat walked into the light with missing bits of its face and saggy skin around its neck and eyes. The horrid look made Angelina cringe as it glared up at her with the eye in its left socket now turning rotten.

All of the skin building up around its lower jaw had started to drip off its face in a goop fashion. Angelina pulled her fingers up out of the substance in the wheel barrow after being frozen by the grizzly image of the cat. Once the cat finally left view she looked down at her two fingers to see that they were covered in a black liquid, it had a reddish tint, but she couldn’t really see it well in the dark. Another bit of rustling came out of the hay in the darkness which was followed by a loud growl from the cat. Its body was next seen being thrown in the center of the light where its neck snapped in two. Angelina’s heart jumped, so she quickly hid beneath the wheel barrow before seeing the legs of a rather scrawny male walking around in the light. Most of the bits of the man’s pants and legs were shaded from the light shining over head.

Her lips remained shut as the man walked by. Though she could only see his legs, she didn’t want to even get close to him in fear of it being a hunter. Suddenly when she took note of him being one of them, she decided to crawl out from under the wheel barrow and attack the man. He could have been the only way out in her eyes, so she quickly executed her plan before going on and pulling out a two by four sitting inside the wheel barrow. Once she rose to her feet she slowly stepped over to the man who was standing still while looking up at the light. The man wasn’t so easily tricked—he already turned to her as she stepped forwards with the board. Angelina couldn’t see his face due to the light creating shade over it. With a simple grunt the man rushed at her with an arch in his back while his hands stuck up towards her.

Instantly fearing her attacker, Angelina swung the board as hard as she could up through the air the very second the man got close. A quick sudden impact of the blunt two by four smacked the man’s head aside. As his head slumped the rest of his body followed it in a clumsy way before all at once falling to the ground. There was no holding back, so Angelina was hasty at delivering a second yet more powerful blow to the man’s ribs. The wooden board smashed straight through his ribs with relative ease, but before anymore was done, the man turned his head to Angelina only to reveal his tattered face through the light.

All of the man’s face had practically rotten off while what remained as skin just hung under his eyelids. Angelina gasped in fear before instinctively swinging the board into his face multiple times to just put him out of his misery. After three swings, much of the man’s face had caved in, but she wasn’t too sure if he were dead or not. As globs of blood from the man’s skull dripped down her body, she tried to wipe some off because it only made the pain in her skin much worse than it did before. Once she started rubbing the rosy red skin patches, it all peeled off before being followed by a loud scream of fear erupting from Angelina’s lungs.

With a ball of her own flesh still stuck to her hands, she quickly swiped her hand through the air in order to get all of the chunks off. Angelina screamed once more in terror before going silent at the roar of a chainsaw in the darkness behind her. The sound tore through her, so it immediately made her take off running towards the area where the man had come from. Upon going further she stumbled over a few bloody stubs on the ground which was once part of a whole. More recognizably amongst the hay on the ground were bloody hands, and severed genitalia. Obviously she was in some sort of torture house or something, but all she could think about was running away.

The chainsaw was getting closer, but by the time she could hear it clearly she had already been able to get up on top of a cage which led out towards one of the windows. The board was still safely in her possession. At this point he smashed as much out of the window as she could before hearing the chainsaw behind her grinding into the cage. Tears flew out of her eyes as she screamed. The board cleared a big opening, but many jagged pieces of glass remained, and since she was naked, she had no clothing to protect her skin from it. The board was chucked from here. As she climbed up onto the window, the grinding from the chainsaw was much louder, and at the moment she didn’t want to look back.

The jagged pieces of glass cut through her skin while the pieces of flesh that were rosy read and deteriorating began to easily slide through the broken edges on the side of the window. Blood was coming out of her in pints now. As she was getting dizzy, she managed to slide on through onto the grassy plains of the outside. The skies over her were cloudy while the ground was partially dead in most areas. Once she moved her bloody to help elevate, the skin on her right arm already began to slide off in a clean fashion.

“Somebody help me!” Angelina cried as the buzzing chain saw stopped running. It was useless though, nobody could hear her. At the moment things seemed lost, but she heard a cage door open up nearby. Out of the cage door walked a large pit-bull that was just like the man and the cat—most of its skin was already rotting off while its eyes showed a blood red look which was from where the eyes had been over strained. The animal was in pain, but it released it in rage before anything else. On all fours it took off running towards her with the ‘half jaw’ it had left.

Angelina turned away before running on towards the woods which would have been her best bet at the moment. The pit bull ran much faster than her, so by the time she got towards the first tree it pounced on her from behind. Both went clashing into the ground. Angelina felt its teeth sinking into her neck, but since she didn’t have a weapon, she’d have to improvise. The first thing near her was a large rock that resembled the shape of an arrowhead. It wasn’t much, but she flipped over and jammed it into the dog’s left eye as soon as it let her loose. The little stressed eye exploded into a puddle of goop on impact. The dog let out a yelp before running off whimpering with its mutilated tail between its legs.

Whatever was getting the dog was definitely affecting Angelina at the same time, and it wasn’t something she could cope with. In a matter of hours she could be dead or else she’d probably wind up like the cat and the man in the basement. The man. She shrugged as the sight of the man got into her head. As she stood up to go run, the sound of the chainsaw roaring was heard yet again, but this time right behind her. In just a second the blade was sent bludgeoning into her back in which it tore into her spine on impact. The blood from inside her splattered all over the ground as she was pressed into it by the chainsaw blade.

Her vision went blurry on account of the massive amounts of blood loss caused by the chainsaw. As soon as it cut through her she felt it leave her body. Just then two powerful hands lifted her up to the tree next to her. From here she was pressed into it as the one holding her quickly began to grind her tender flesh across the tree’s pointy bark. Angelina let out a few cries of pain as a good amount of skin stuck onto the tree. She could not see her attacker, but nonetheless all of the pain of losing her face began to make her cry. Her right eyelid had been ripped off as with most of her face. The eye ball remained exposed, but there was nothing she could do about it.

“I forgot to properly introduce you,” the deep voiced male said as he held her close, “meet Charlie!”

Angelina was drug over to the window where she was stuffed back in to sit alone with the mutilated man who she now knew as none other than Charlie.