by Thomas David
~-~-~-~-~ guest ~-~-~-~-~
Kabul, Afghanistan (Sept. 20)
My Dearest Rinni—It’s so quiet over here. A normally buzzing city with horse carts plodding along between cars, vendors hawking their wares from the side of the road, the kids darting between traffic and their mothers and sisters moving from stall to stall covered head to toe in their indigo burkas; it’s eerily silent by day. Our daily patrols are fewer and fewer as they carefully and methodically search the sewers and basements for the nests. At night we lock ourselves inside the bunkers and pray. Is it our own last rights we’re chanting silently to ourselves?
I always thought I’d make it home to you and the boys but now I’m not so sure I will, and from what we’re hearing through the sporadic radio chatter on the shortwave is that most of what was home is either completely engulfed in chaos or has become a massive graveyard. The pockets of defenders are growing fewer and fewer, smaller and smaller. It seems like it only took moments for these monsters to consume everything, poison everyone. The news reports hit a fever-pitch within days of the first cases of this ‘sickness’ when apparently all hell broke loose and then darkness and silence.
Just know that no matter where you are I love you. I think for the first time in my life I am losing hope that we’ll survive this. Maybe it’s being stuck in this bunker, which seems more and more a crypt every day. It’s the tendrils of smoke seeping through the cracks, a foulness worse than anything I’ve smelled before and maybe that’s just knowing that smoke really is burnt human flesh. It wasn’t so bad when things first started to go wrong here but then we saw the burn pits filling with bodies; horrific enough on its own but when we saw what was really happening, how people were getting infected and turning within hours…then we started piling our own dead into the pits to burn. Since then I’ve barely been able to eat a bite or even sleep more than a few minutes here and there.
I was never so scared as I was the night the first wave of our own tried to breach the walls. Just the shock of seeing all those U.S. soldiers running at us with complete abandon…we were frozen in quicksand in those opening moments until you could actually see their eyes, a primal madness consuming every bit of soul and consciousness that once made them human. These used to be our brothers in arms but there is nothing human left in them other than dead flesh and bone.
So we fired, and fired and fired until none were left. Every night since we fight them off and every day we try in vain to repair our defenses and burn the remains before the next wave comes out of the darkness and each night there are just as many if not more of these things.
The few leaders we have left are talking about tactical nukes, maybe even a full strike in some crazy attempt to incinerate the whole lot of these monsters. We’re probably only days, if not hours, from trying. There wasn’t much to Kabul before all this, what with 30 years of war here, but there really isn’t much left standing as our teams continue to destroy any building that might serve as a nest. The few enclaves they have found during the patrols are burned out with homemade napalm, a concoction that saturates your skin and uniforms but honestly, I’d rather smell the plastic-fuel instead of the burning bodies.
All this effort seems ridiculous because as we destroy them wave after wave, more keep coming from the mountains and valleys. It’s crazy to think that these walking dead are using the same ratlines the Taliban have used against us for years. The only thing is now dead Taliban and dead Americans are coming out of the wilds hunting what’s left of us and wiping out our units one at a time. We haven’t heard from any of the outposts in days though a few of the more fortified bases are holding out for now. Still, it’s only a matter of time before they have to fall back and consolidate just as these things will follow the scent of our living flesh and attack us in mass.
Maybe dropping the bomb is really the best thing. Maybe picking the death of our choosing is better than taking a chance of being infected and becoming one of those things, those zombies. I can only hope that you found a safe place but they tell us there are no more safe places, can’t be because it seems like the whole world has died. There is no television or internet, no tweets or posts…just silence and darkness. So I’ll write this last letter and hope that if it ever finds you, you’ll know that what we are about to do comes from some desperate attempt to find a true death so that others may survive this plague. I’m sorry that I couldn’t be there to protect you. I hope more than anything that you know how sorry I am that I couldn’t hold you one last time and tell you how much I love you.
Your Thomas David
~end
Guest post created for September Zombies event by Thomas David, hubby of Rinni of Rinni's Playground
© 2011. All rights reserved.
A trio update:
READ Tom's post - here.
READ Rinni's post
READ Pabkin's post.
by Thomas David
~-~-~-~-~ guest ~-~-~-~-~
NOW, head over to Rinni's Playground for a zombie treat...
created by the sister duo
Rinni of Rinni's Playground
(Tom's wife)
and
Pabkins of MissionToRead!
(Tom's sister-in-law)
* header image source, Duralaman Palace in Kabul, Afghanistan
