Ozias laid on his back in silence, staring at the ceiling far away. His droopy eyes were mere moments away from closing, but he tried his best to stay awake.
The day had been really stressfull—he had been working nonstop for hours. Luckily, during his short break, there had been a power outage, giving him the chance to finally rest a little.
However, his rest was short lived by a sudden loud bang ripping through the atmosphere, snapping him awake and expelling every fatigue clouding his mind.
"What was that?!" Ozias asked himself, looking around frantically and trying to pinpoint the sound's location.
Another sound—similar to the first, but louder and more blood-cuddling—suddenly resounded, causing the world to shake.
Ozias stood up immediately, dusted his body and rushed in a direction. He needed to report the weird occurrence to his superiors.
The third time the sound came, and Ozias fell, again, but he didn't linger, popping back up to his feet and sprinting ahead.
A minute later, he burst through a door, panting heavily and opening his mouth to speak.
Alas, what he saw made his mind almost go blank… Almost.
"S.. sir?" Ozias stuttered, gawking in shock at the sight before him.
The fat man who seemed to take joy in ordering the workers around all day lay wasted on his office chair, his body sliced into ribbons, and each piece of flesh hanging off his body like bloody pom-poms on display.
His eyes were gorged out and staked on his pinky fingers, and his stomach was split open, resulting in his innards spilling out akin to garbage in a full garbage can.
Ozias stumbled back, his head spinning as he tried to understand what had happened—whatever it was that had caused him to end in such a cruel, traumatic way—but he couldn't seem to think of anything that could have caused such… except the loud bangs he heard seconds ago!
Before he could make head or tails of the situation, he shrank back in horror at the sudden movement of Mr Claire Hoeman, the company's supervisor.
"Grrr!" A guttural sound came from Mr Claire, making Ozias shudder, taking a cautious step backwards.
"Mr... Claire?" Ozias managed to ask in a barely audible voice.
What stood before him was no longer Mr Claire—he knew that deep down inside of him—but his confusion caused a whirlwind of chaotic thoughts that refused to calm.
"GRRRR!!"
"What the hell!" Ozias panicked as he jumped back, retreating from the sudden swift lunge of the corpse.
Calling it a corpse felt wrong at the moment, he didn't even know what to make of it. His flight or flight mode kicked in, and he turned around and fled, not daring to look back.
He ran as fast as his legs could carry him. Only the ruckus of the dead supervisor's movements seemed to give him a faint idea of where he was, and judging by what he was hearing... He was too close for comfort!
"Shit! Shit! SHIT!!" Ozias cursed silently, dreading the day he got this job.
The supervisor was a real pain in the ass. He never liked to see any worker 'slacking'. It was either they were working… or they were working. They only got rests when there was a power outage.
He really missed his jobless life, but… everything with a beginning, had an end.
His job had begun on not-so-good terms, and it was ending in the worst way possible—that is, if what he was seeing was real.
Ozias rounded a corner and cursed his terrible luck; the door ahead was locked! It wasn't a dead end per se, but since the key was secured tightly around the supervisor's waist, it could be considered one.
"Oh my fucking God!!" Ozias cursed again, spinning on the balls of his feet while simultaneously dodging under a grappling attack from the dead supervisor.
His athleticism helped him in the situation, and he succeeded in gaining a stable footing in no time flat.
His eyes darted around, and he spotted a barbell a few feet away. He sent a glance towards the dead supervisor, and seeing him trying to get up, he took the chance to sprint towards the barbell and start unhooking it.
His hands moved quickly, the adrenaline pumping through him making his body ignore the scratch on his back. Blood was dripping out of it, but he didn't seem to notice.
The barbell's weights came off with some effort, and he hurriedly picked it up and kicked its bottom, swinging it upwards to meet another lunge from the… Walking dead?
The power behind the swing was more than he predicted, and he found himself wiping the walking dead to the side and crashing it into a door.
Ozias' eyes widened, and he stared down at his arms.
He wasted no time and spirited towards the exit, using his momentum to drive himself through it.
Again, he found his strength ridiculous. 'Or was it the adrenaline?' He thought to himself.
However, before he could finish his thoughts, he was welcomed to the sight of chaos.
People were running heater skelter, weird looking apparitions chasing after them and killing them en masse.
This was exactly like those novels he read. An apocalypse descended on the world.
A crooked smile stretched across his face, an odd swelling feeling within him making his blood boil.
Whatever it was that was happening… he seemed to like it.
He wasn't an adrenaline junkie, but what he was seeing made him feel like one.
In one moment Ozias was taking in the chaos, but in the next moment, he was moving, his body bending at an uncomfortable angle and his makeshift spear shooting forward.
Even with its blunt end, the tip of the pole tore right through the skull of a walking dead. And although that wasn't enough to finish it off, Ozias didn't panic.
'Just like grandpa explained,' Ozias' mind wandered to his old man's father, remembering how he had told him stories of him in his prime.
He claimed that he came from a lineage of traditional worshipers—whatever that meant—and he was one of a special set of people.
He had shown him his machete one time. The blade had rusted and accumulated dust, but with one swing—even with Ozias not being a swordsman—he knew that that blade in the hands of his grandfather… was a dangerous relic.