This is just a beginning to a post-apocalyptic story I'm thinking about writing. Let me know what you think, and if you'd be interested in hearing more if I ever get around to it.



42 winced in pain as she pulled herself slowly out of the pile of snow. She looked down, and almost threw up, as she saw the bone jutting out of the side of her calf, several smaller, bloody fragments lay in the snow next to her. All of the sudden she felt lightheaded. I must have lost a lot of blood she thought, So is that my fate then? To bleed to death, alone, here in the middle of nowhere?

“That’s a nasty break” said an unusually casual voice, “You’re lucky it wasn’t higher.”

She looked up to see a dark haired man standing over her, wearing the same prisoner garb she wore. “Excuse… me?” she grunted, warm tears streaming down her face. He looked familiar but the pain in her leg wouldn’t let her think straight.

“If your leg would have broken like that up by the thigh, you would likely have bled out by now” the man explained, “as it is this wound itself shouldn’t be fatal”

That comforted 42 a bit, despite the pain; she didn’t want to die just yet. She looked back up at the man still trying to puzzle out how she knew him, besides them both being experiments. “Who… are you?” she growled through the pain.

The man shook his head, “Not important right now.” He leaned close to her looking into her eyes.

“Wha...” she started, but suddenly the man collapsed on her, the hilt of a dagger protruding from his neck. Above her now stood a tall man, he wore the all too familiar uniform of the prison guards of the Laboratory. Adrenaline rushed through her, making her forget about the broken leg. After three months at the Laboratory she had learned to fear the guards.

Somehow she pulled her arm out from under the corpse, and brought it up to block as the guard thrust a dagger for her face. It bit deep into her palm, and she winced with pain. The guard grunted in frustration, pinning her arm to the ground with his foot, and stabbing again.

Time seemed to stop as the dagger plummeted for her. So this is it then. She thought I will die here alone and cold. She sighed in resigned acceptance to her fate. Then she realized that it wasn’t time that had stopped but the dagger, there was a hand, the dead man’s hand grabbing the Guard by the wrist. The guard struggled desperately to pull away but couldn’t break the grip.

42 stared on in horror as the corpse rose, pulled the dagger out of its throat and said in a raspy, almost relaxed, voice, “I promised to kill you didn’t I?”. He twisted the man’s wrist and 42 heard a loud crunch as the bone shattered. The guard barely had time to yelp in pain before the bloody dagger was slammed through his skull.