was thinking, “Well, it’s about time. People were hungry.” I was being paid in food. Which didn’t bother me because I was so damn hungry. The Pierce family are one of the richest people in the United States. They had all the food they needed. I got a free lunch while I worked. At the end of the week, they basically let me fill up a sack of groceries from their personal storage area. My apartment in Mt. Vernon didn’t have working electricity or running water. I would take the sack of food and barter for clean water, batteries and weed. Anyway, I started listening to the radio while I was working in the basement. The family comes down there and tells me to go upstairs. The head security guy hands me a shotgun and tells me to patrol the outside of the estate. Now, I am a 43 year old black man. I don’t exactly feel comfortable walking around Darien, Connecticut with a shotgun in my hands. He told me not to worry. Well, these people are putting food in my mouth so I don’t argue. I join the dozen or so housekeepers, landscapers and servants with weapons. We all started talking. One of the young people was on the internet and let us all in on what was happening. Fuck! We’re supposed hundreds of thousands of man eating people with a couple of guns. We all thought about leaving. But most of us live in New York. We thought it would be better to stay put in Darien.
I lived in Liberty Town for about four months. We had run out of food for three days when the uprising happened in New York. We heard about the starving people in Central Park resorting to cannibalism. Some of the people who had already lost their mind started running around like mad men. I heard screaming. They started eating some of the sick people. The tent city deteriorated fast. It was as though the desperation turned into madness. I knew then that whatever happened in Central Park would happen here.
I made it to New Jersey just after sunset. From there, I knew I had to get out of the area quick. I knew my way around the area and knew that the only real reliable mode of transportation are the commercial and military rails. The military railways are heavily guarded. But I was hoping to ride a commercial rail in Greenville. I got lucky and found a ride. I climbed up to the top of a car carrying machine parts south. I checked my smart phone for the latest news on Twitter. That’s when I started reading about flesh eating incidents in Phily, Baltimore, Boston, Upstate New York. A horrible shiver went through me. This is spreading. There will be no place to run. That night I considered suicide. The only thing that stopped me was that I was so tired, I feel asleep right on top of the rail car.
At 23:30 hours of Day Zero, we got our “Code Black.” The President and his family were immediately evacuated via Marine One and sent to Air Force One. I was in one of the chase cars inroute to Joint Base Andrews. I did not know if I would be assigned to join the POTUS on Air Force One. And frankly I didn’t know if I wanted to go with him. I knew I would personally be safe. However, my mother lives in Baltimore and I knew that all major cities were under siege from the flesh eaters. When I got to Joint Base Andrews, I was assigned to protect the President as he boarded Air Force One. Then I was ordered to secure the White House. I really wanted to abandon my post and help my mother. I called her and found out that her neighbor had taken her into his own house.
I was out on the Third Street Promenade when I heard this huge rumbling in the sky. I looked up and saw the biggest military copters ever flying up the coastline. They turned right up over Santa Monica. I had no idea what was going on. Suddenly, they open fire. They were shooting into the street. I had know idea what the fuck was going on. I thought that it was a terrorist attack. I ran into the Apple store. People were on Twitter trying to find out what was happening.. None of it made sense to me. I just wanted to live through the night. We stayed in that store for 30 long minutes. Then I heard a massive stampede of people running past the promenade. Everyone in the Apple store started running. We all ran towards the beach, towards the water. The flesh eaters where coming for all of us. I saw a women run past me with half her face ripped off. I ran down the Santa Monica pier. Then we all jumped into the water. We saw the copters open up and kill the flesh eaters and some of the civilians on the beach. I lived that day. But I have nightmares about that moment almost everyone. If I keep having those nightmares, I may kill myself. Honestly, live just wouldn’t be worth it having to live with those images in my head.
That night we started getting reports of mass desertions across all of the military branches as well as law enforcement. The threat of field executions, the enticement of food and water was no longer enough. These service people and law enforcement officers went to take care of their families. Others just felt that it wasn’t worth it anymore. The President was inroute to a secure location. We had to report to the Commander-In-Chief that the United States, on a Federal level, was no longer functional.
That night in Manhattan was eerie. You heard the sounds of Blackhawks patrolling the sky and not much else. There were no sirens. You didn’t seen any National Guard nor law enforcement vehicles on the road. I think I saw one car go by. A Rolls Royce. It was speeding out of the city. Some billionaire was making his way out. The streets were carpeted in blood, guts and bones. You could see people dying, begging for us to kill them. I thought about biting into their flesh. I was that hungry. But I knew that once I got a taste for it, there would be no turning back.
About a dozen of us met up somewhere on the Upper East Side. None of us knew each other. But we all knew we were in the same situation. We were trapped on Manhattan Island. We were rich and we were flesh eaters. We were caught in the middle. The first thing we knew was that staying on the street wasn’t safe. There could be more flesh eaters in the city. And the Blackhawks were shooting at anything that moved. We looks at the town homes and knew we had to squat into one of those place. Some of the town homes were abandoned. Some of them were still occupied by the ultra wealthy. “Fuck it. Let’s take over one of the occupied town homes.” Someone yells. He was saying what we were all thinking.
But most of us, as hungry as we were, didn’t want to just do a home invasion. We wanted to try to work a trade. Get some food in return for helping to secure the block. However, this guy was rapid. He mentioned that, “Those wealthy fucks caused this. You know what, we should feed them to the flesh eaters.” At that point, all of us began to feel the same way.
My military escort abandoned me in the city. I was scared to death. I just wanted to get off of the island. As I walked the streets, I began to make peace with the fact that I would die tonight. I decided that I would make one last walk to the Upper East Side. I wanted to lay my eyes on those beautiful, opulent town homes before some horrible fate took me. After seeing all the starvation, death, anger and madness, I just wanted to lay my eyes on some form of beauty.
I get up there and I begin to hear screaming. It wasn’t the screaming of flesh eaters. These were people! I began to feel a little bit of hope. If I could meet up with these people, we could work together to get off of the island.
Well, I get up to this beautiful town home. One of the few town homes still occupied by the members of the ultra-rich. I see the door open. I smell food. I smell beef, vegetables. My God, I hadn’t smelled food like that in years. I just stand in front of the town home for a moment. Then I see about a group of skinny, angry people pull out this family of well-fed rich people.
The group took the family out of their homes. As a member of the press, I was all too familiar with this situation. A group of starving people taking over a home of the rich to rob them of their food. I’ve covered stories like this before.
However, it wasn’t long until I realized that this situation was different. I saw the bodies of four body guard taken out of the townhouse. I walked up to one of the members of the mob and asked what was going on. The group invaded the house. Six members of the group were killed by the bodyguards before they took over the townhouse.
They take the entire family —a mother, a father and two young boys. They tied the family in the middle of the street and left them there. The rest of the mob walked back into the townhouse. I looked at the well-fed family screaming and crying. The mob was leaving the family in the street for the flesh eaters.
When the group disappeared into the town home, I ran to the family and untied them. They thanked me. The father took his family and darted off towards the park. They didn’t even think about trying to take back their home and their food. I knew then that this situation had taken a horrific new turn.
