The Fall of Society (The Fall of Society Series, Book 1) by Thonas Rand

decimated and empty of life. There
were many military checkpoints at major street intersections, but there were no
soldiers posted, only abandoned vehicles covered in ash and old brown bloodstains.
The buildings and stores were all riddled with bullet holes and shattered glass
was everywhere, along with trash and all sorts of paper debris that swayed with
the wind of death.
                In
an alley behind a five-star hotel, a huge mural was painted on the hotel’s wall,
done by a talented tagger. The mural was over forty-feet long and stood almost seven
feet tall, and it consisted of every color of the rainbow. The letters were
bigger than life and had precise angles and soft edges. Classic street art that
said: “THE DEAD LOVE L.A.!”
                  But it wasn’t finished; the tail end of
it was still just the black outline and not too far from that, was the reason—what
was left of the tagger’s body was lying in the middle of the alley, the dead
had their way with him. They tore him completely open and consumed all of his
vital organs; his ribs were the broken bars of an empty cage. His lifeless,
glazed-over eyes were just visible under the blood-soaked hoodie and his stiff hand
held a can of spray-paint.
                He
wasn’t alone.
                Hundreds
of dead bodies were everywhere. Most were just hollow carcasses that had been
eaten to the bone.
                A
few helicopters were in the air, but they weren’t in a search or rescue pattern;
they were leaving the area.
                Random
gunshots rang out from all directions and echoed thinly until new ones replaced
them, single shots and the occasional fully automatic fire, tat, tat, tat, tat that stitched the horizon.
And then there was them —the long
screeches of the dead slithered along the walls and alleyways, marking this
land as theirs. A few of them ran across streets, in and out of buildings, parking
garages, over some of the many abandoned and burned out cars that were
everywhere. Some just lurched along or crawled if they were missing limbs. A
distance away, an Army personnel carrier truck, sped by an intersection in a
hurry. The five soldiers in the back were firing their automatic weapons at
something chasing them. The truck was gone and a moment later, what was after
them arrived…
                A
horde of the dead.
                About
300 strong tore through the intersection, running as fast as they could to
catch the truck. They were gone and the eeriness returned as it goose bumped
the streets. Los Angeles was a graveyard that still had plenty of room for
people to hide as they tried to get away. An old newspaper flew in the breeze
and smacked against a car grill, the headline read: “BY PRESIDENTIAL ORDER, GOVERNOR
CALLS FOR EVACUATION OF ALL MAJOR CALIFORNIA CITIES!”
                Another
newspaper, still in a badly damaged dispenser, had a newer headline: “GOVERNOR
AND ACCOMPANYING STAFF KILLED IN MOTORCADE BY ATTACK OF THE DEAD!”
                That
newspaper didn’t even have full stories on the front page; it was slapped
together in a hurry and had empty sections, a last attempt to report the news
to the very end.

 
                The
Los Angeles suburbs were no different—the streets were empty of anything
living, school playgrounds were desolate—trash gently danced at the foot
of a tetherball pole from the wind’s touch and the ball slowly circled the
pole, mimicking the sway of the children that once thrived here but were now
ghostly echoes of a time gone, now a time all wrong. Nothing remained, except
for abandoned vehicles and bodies.
                And
the dead …
                They
wandered the streets aimlessly, some walked, some ran if they heard or saw
something that could be a meal. People who were sick or elderly in life
emulated their physical condition in death. If a