Chest burning, lungs bursting, arms flailing, the rich coppery taste of blood in my mouth.

Run. Hide. Rest. Watch.

This was the pattern of my life for the next month. Never able to stay in one spot for very long. Always fearful of the snarling rabid dogs at my heels. Scavenging food wherever I could, Watching as the whole world seemed to crumble inwards as the 'others' over-ran the land like an unstoppable bushfire creating a swathe of death, destruction and chaos within its terrifying wake. On the night of my flight from hell I remained hidden, silently weeping in a sewer pipe, sharing my space with three curious rats, a half-eaten racoon carcass and a varied collection of used condoms, discoloured sanitary towels and a small mountain of festering turds. With the foulest stench imaginable clogging the tiny amount of air available to me, I spent that night nervously listening for sounds above my head, stealing furtive glances onto the road from a nearby grating, and shaking uncontrollably as ... Read more ...

I spent what seemed to be hours tied to that chair. During that time I lost all sense of reality and felt myself teetering on the edge of an abyss just lingering, almost welcoming, the final push that would send me spiralling down into its murky depths. I suffered tauntings, slaps, kicks and pokes, yet none of this mattered. After what I had witnessed earlier that night I fully believed that nothing those two creatures could inflict upon me could make me feel any worse. The pain seemed distant, a minor inconvenience even. With the cold cruel murders of my family I had been visciously hollowed out and left to the wayside like a discarded, withered husk.

My mind had shut down and I sat there taking everything that they could concoct for their own warped sense of demonic amusement. After a while they both gradually stopped, seemingly frustrated at my lack of response to their tortuous ministrations. I slowly lifted my heavy head and stared balefully through streaming rivulets of blood at the p ... Read more ...

There can be nothing in this now ruined world more terrifyingly imaginable than scanning a room whilst you are tied up and gagged, seeing your three children and your wife being held, vainly struggling, in the clutches of the undead, and being completely powerless in preventing the pure evil about to be visited upon them.

Nothing.

I struggled ineffectually against the bonds holding me fast to the chair that night. My muffled cries for mercy, my pleading eyes brimmed with tears, my twistings, turnings, fit-like thrustings were met with cold, dead stares. Each corner of the room held a part of my life, each part straining, willing me to rise from my bonds and to make the horror disappear. Frantic arms clawing outwards reaching for me. Unbelieving, almost alien, screams assault my ears from every direction. Small, wild eyes holding mine, straining, questioning, imploring. Then suddenly.....

                                                                            Snap...!

I momentarily froze...

As that smile broke out across that bastard's face everything came rushing back. I had spent the last three long years trying to put the images and sounds of what had happened that terrible night out of my head, tried to forget about getting any semblance of revenge for what had happened to my wife and my children. I had, almost shamefully, pushed away the memories of the acts that I had endured and attempted to eke out some meaning to what was left of my now empty existence. My hermitic lifestle for the past year at the cottage had healed my waking nightmare somewhat. I had almost come to terms with the fact that I could never have taken them on by myself, that their strength was too great, that their numbers too many. But now, tired of running, and painfully reminded of the atrocities that had befell myself and my innocent family, an imaginary switch had been turned on, both in my head, and in my heart, and I was now resolute in killing every last one of these rotten fucks o ... Read more ...

I stare emotionlessly at the bloody stumps that were the first two fingers of my right hand. The smell of burnt flesh, excrement and death still manages to assault my ruined and now unrecognisable nose. I cough and painfully spit out a wad of phlegm mixed with blood. Falling to my torn knees I look back up the path at the burning cottage and let out a guttural cry of naked aggression and triumph. Flames lick at the window sills. The thatched roof erupts then crumples inwards. Windows explode outwards in the heat of the hellish furnace burning within. Shards tinkle and stab the earth around me. I do not notice. My whole being aches. I hear the crunch of a footstep behind me. I am past caring..

..in a type of mist shrouded cine-reel, I slowly replay the events of the past few hours in my head.

  I had watched the first few revenants clumsily shamble their way up the path towards me as soon as the last rays of sun had treacherously winked out behind the hills. Their meaningless groans r ... Read more ...