Eyes of Blue

By Scott Sykes

In a world ravaged by an inexplicable plague, society lies in ruins. Amidst the desolation, a lone survivor perseveres in a secluded state park along the Delaware Coast. Over a year has passed since she lost everything, yet as the sanctuary she's carved for herself begins to crumble, she must summon the strength to endure onc

• Language: English
• Publisher: S.M. Sykes
• Release date: Apr 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9798869297099

Book preview

Eyes_of_Blue_6x9Sykes, ScottScott Sykes2162022-05-15T04:06:00Z2024-03-29T18:54:58Z23791966376748NVR Inc.4441254690230.0000NVR - Business Use Only1033-5.7.1.8092WasNVR - Business Use OnlyWasTopRight943c610a-3495-418f-897b-6a6dbfdc0945TopRight

Eyes_of_Blue_6x9Sykes, ScottScott Sykes2162022-05-15T04:06:00Z2024-03-29T18:54:58Z23791966376748NVR Inc.4441254690230.0000NVR - Business Use Only1033-5.7.1.8092WasNVR - Business Use OnlyWasTopRight943c610a-3495-418f-897b-6a6dbfdc0945TopRight

Eyes_of_Blue_6x9Sykes, ScottScott Sykes2162022-05-15T04:06:00Z2024-03-29T18:54:58Z23791966376748NVR Inc.4441254690230.0000NVR - Business Use Only1033-5.7.1.8092WasNVR - Business Use OnlyWasTopRight943c610a-3495-418f-897b-6a6dbfdc0945TopRight

Running

Running...Again with the running. Always with the running. Running for food or running because of fear. I could  remember a time when I actually enjoyed running. I enjoyed the rush, the wind and the feeling of my legs propelling me towards the finish. Back then it was fun when I ran with my brother, with my team and for my school. I loved the competition and the feeling of getting stronger and faster every day. I could feel myself getting better and having more endurance. Reveling in the competition wanting to be better than the previous race. Looking for a way to shave precious seconds off my time, to keep that faster pace for just a few more steps. Saving enough to have that last burst of energy for the sprint to the finish.

But, that was then. Nowadays it’s not fun. There was no getting stronger, no feeling of being better or of competition. Just fear, it’s always the fear that drives me to run faster than before. The only competition here was life and death. If I don’t run fast enough or far enough, if that one step falters when it shouldn't. If I didn’t get to that next hill, or that next door to get to a safe place, then I was dead.

As if that wasn’t enough, there was also the running that was surrounded by food. It was either to find food, or because I had food and others wanted it.There was no getting stronger because I was always weak from the fear and the hunger.

Before this endeavour, it had been a while since I had to run in fear. Most of the people had left, my refuge in this dark world. I used to love being around people. Now being on my own was the only way to be safe. Everyone had their own agenda, which didn’t always align with you staying alive. I have not seen another human being in months. The winter generally kept people cooped up inside and away from the elements, but it also used to mean gatherings and parties. Now it just meant cold and making sure you found a heat source to stay alive.

Food was always on my mind. Not just how I was going to get food or what kind of food I would find, but remembering what food used to be like. There was never enough food now, hadn’t been for years. I always liked to pretend that I was eating a big, juicy, dripping burger with pickles and mayonnaise, or a large McDonald's french fry with a Wendy's frosty to dip them in. It was always pretty much anything other than what I was actually forced to eat. That usually consisted of scavenged cans of beans and corn, or something that I could catch and cook.

But OOOH how food used to taste. Great, NOW I am Hungry and RUNNING!!

Okay, let me take a break from my revelry here and fill you in on a few things. I am guessing that there are two questions (at least) you are probably asking right now.

1)                  Why are you running?

2)                  Who are you?

Well, the first question is probably a two-parter.

Why am I running off at the mouth? 

What is the reason that I am physically running?

For the first part of this question I never have been able to answer that. I am a talker. I would say I was born to talk, but I actually started speaking real words a little later in life than most kids. Don't get me wrong I was talking, but only my brother could understand me and had to translate it into English for those around me. Once I used my first real words though, I haven't stopped. People, like my Dad, used to say that I would eventually run out of words and I would no longer be able to speak. If that were true I am probably running on empty as I speak.

For the second part of the question, I was running from a pair of Deaders.

That answer your question clear enough? No?

Well, if you have lived in this world, the world after The Fall, that would have been all I had to say. For sake of argument I am going to assume that you have either lived under a rock or your reading this after they have all been killed and this is all just for entertainment. I will answer the question, what are Deaders? I was not sure about all the scientific terms and such, they used to be humans, but they aren’t any longer. They are humanoid and still have the very essential features of being human. They have lost all of their humanity and have reverted to a more animalistic state of mind. As we know all humans die. Since the fall humans have died at an accelerated rate. It doesn’t matter if they die by knife, gunshot, sickness, or a heart attack, once they were dead, they wouldn’t stay that way long. A few minutes later their eyes would  open and they would get back up. They would become a mindless animal-like predator. Every living thing and everything with an electrical energy source was their prey.

I guess one term you could’ve used was undead. Although these aren’t the undead or zombies you are used to seeing on the television screen or that you read about in graphic novels. These undead didn’t respond to sights and sounds. They responded to electrical currents, or something like that,  I said before that I didn’t know all of the science behind them. I did know that they could see lights and animals, including humans. All animals run on an electrical current of sorts. The brain sends electrical impulses throughout the body to your nerves to move your muscles.Our bodies are full of signal carriers that run up, down and all over. This was what Deaders could see. Now, I use the term see lightly because their eyes are completely blank, it must be like some kind of radar, or thermal vision. 

Either way, I was pumped up with adrenaline and other endorphins so I was probably lit up like a Christmas tree to them.

I hate thinking about things from before. Now I’m missing Christmas. See what I mean, hateful world.

The biggest difference between the Deaders and a human, is their eyes. I told you that they are blank and dead looking. To explain that a little better it is kind of like how movies used to show seers, they are blank, no iris, and no pupil. Now their eyes aren’t white , they are blue. They glow too, they glow a dim blue. I am not sure why or how, I just know that when I see that in the dark you run for your life as fast and as far as you can.

Another reason that I don’t refer to them as undead is that all of you that were fans of The Walking Dead and Night of the Living Dead would probably assume that I am running from slow-moving reanimated corpses. That is not the case. These deaders can run as fast as they could prior to death. So an obese deader would still be slow, but if they were in any kind of shape in life they could be something terrifying to contend with. From what I understand, they absorb electrical energy from their surroundings and use that to feed. This keeps their muscles and skin from deteriorating and slowing them down. This works very similarly to what I was explaining in the beginning, if I don’t eat, I can't run because I have no energy. It was the same with these things. They use the energy of others to feed themselves so they could run for more energy.

Did you keep up with that?

It seems that if they don’t eat then they slow down and the natural order of body decay starts to take back over. I didn’t know if these things could die from starvation or they just lose the use of their muscles. That would have been a question for a scientist. I was good at math and English. Science was never my cup of tea.

I know there are people out there that would say Why not just stab or shoot them in the head? One reason was that I didn’t have a gun.  Another reason was that it didn’t seem to work that way. I think I stated before that these aren’t like the zombies you are used to. That type of thinking got a lot of people killed in the beginning. Real life is never like the movies, is it?

So these bastards are fast and their skull wasn't deteriorated and soft like in the movies. It was hard as mine and yours. This wasn’t easy to pierce by hand. Even if you do, you are not too likely to get deep enough to do real damage. They didn’t seem to use the same sections of the brain as we do. There was no love, compassion or empathy. I doubt they were pining for their lost high school love or remembering the dance moves for the Macarena or the Whip. Decapitation has seemed to keep the dead from rising, but anything less than that hasn't seemed to stop their need for energy.

Now if that wasn’t scary enough, another difference was that these guys could communicate too. They aren’t shouting German or using walkie-talkies, but they could coordinate their movements. If you aren’t careful, they could box you in and then slowly come in for the kill. I had seen it, it was similar to a pack of wolves. It gave me the shivers just thinking about it.

Once they have you in their grasp they draw the energy from you. Some call it your soul, others your Chi. Either way, no matter what you want to call it, when they are done, so are you. A few I had seen didn’t claw and tear, just drained you to the core.

Once you were kill by a deader, you don’t rise again. Your energy is now theirs, there was nothing left to reanimate your corpse. Lights out forever. No glowy eyes and walking dead for you. I guess since they are draining all of your energy, there was nothing left. It would have been like trying to recharge a dead battery. No amount of juice in the world would keep it running right.

Now that we have gone over what the deaders are and why you should be afraid of them, let’s get back to the story.

I was running because I had seen two Deaders. Typically, that meant there was more around. Luckily I didn’t think they really saw me before I saw them. It definitely didn’t seem like they were looking for me.

I was up on a dune, enjoying looking at the ocean and some of the first nice weather of spring, when I saw them come from behind another dune. Since I was laying on the sand I just rolled off the dune on the far side and stayed as low as possible. I think I got away clean.

I usually tried to make it as simple as possible when it comes to these jerks. AVOID AT ALL COSTS! That way I didn’t have to find out any more nasty gruesome information about them. What I just shared with you was about all I know. While the curiosity of what they are and how they became a real thing was always gnawing at me, I really didn't want to try the scientific method out on these things and die in the process. Remember I really didn’t like science anyway.

I remember when I wanted to know everything. Not just about the dead, but about everything. That was before all of this though. I always remember what curiosity did to the cat. And I was all out of satisfaction to bring me back. Now, I just wanted to know where my friend (singular) was and where my next meal was coming from.

So I guess that leads us to your second major question.

Finally, right?

Who am I?

Well, do any of us really know who they are? Do we really want to know? Philosophers have been researching and prophesizing this exact question for millennia. But you’re not looking for the philosophical answer are you?

You want to know the, hello what’s your name, kind of way.

Well, I am Ava Caroline Washington. Born and raised on the Eastern shore of Delaware.

Let me answer a few quick questions about that too real quick.

Yes, it was a state, the first one. You would know this if you paid attention in history class. No, it was not part of Maryland or Pennsylvania. There was a Delaware River, a Delaware Bay and a city of Delaware in Ohio. None of these explain where I was from. If you had ever traveled to the beach, not the shore in Jersey, but the beach on the eastern shore. You had probably heard of Delaware. This was the small unknown state that I grew up in. More specifically I grew up south of the Missipillion River, in good old Slower Lower Sussex County, Delaware.

I grew up in a normal family. Mom, Dad, older brother and me. We went on family outings, ate dinner together and watched movies, not at the same time. We had a great understanding of each other and looked out for one another. My parents always asked about my day and truly loved my friends. There was always someone to talk to, even if they didn't seem to be able to keep up with my conversation all the time. I was not sure why, but they would get lost and eventually just let me talk.

I had just started high school when this all started, so I was about 15 years old, hard to remember anymore. I loved my phone and my friends. I was on every app possible if it interacted with other people. I would send thousands of texts a day to keep up with all of my friends and stay up with all of the new stuff on social media sites. My life was wrapped up in electronics, family and sports. I would stay awake worried about that pimple or if that boy in English class was going to ask me to homecoming. My brother, though we loved each other, would annoy me to no end. He was older, so he thought he knew everything and could boss me around. Little did he know, I knew everything, so I needed to tell him that every day to make sure he kept himself in check. 

It was a pretty typical teenage girl’s life.

That doesn’t really answer your question properly though. That was who I was. I was not that person anymore. When the power grids went down there was no social media, texts or internet. Then there was no annoying older brother, no Mom, no Dad. All of my friends are probably dead or so far underground I will never see them again. There will not be any more homecomings or proms to worry about. Nothing from before.

There was no social anything anymore, let alone social media. I actually found it hard to believe that we used to get anything done with all those sites notifying us of the smallest detail in someone else’s life. But taking the time to look back, we really didn’t get anything done. We felt that we had accomplished things and worked hard, but it was usually nothing of note. We were all on these sites to stay relevant, to be in the spotlight and be remembered. But when it all went away, when it all came crashing down around our feet. None of it meant anything. They used to say the internet never forgets, That may have been true but even it was forgotten now.

I still carried my phone in my backpack to remember the days when that seemed to have been the most important thing in my life. Maybe one day the grid would come back up and life would regain some of the old normalcy. Something of the time before all of this, before mankind became the hunted. Before The Fall.

It’s stupid, really, the fact that I thought it was important and the fact that I still carried it. I just thought about what i would do if I could have charged this thing one more time. If I could see the pictures of my friends and my family. Pictures and videos of all those that I have lost and would never see again. That was another downfall of our old all-digital society, when the grid went down we didn't even have pictures to remember our loved ones by.

Losing my family was the saddest part of all. We were all together in the beginning. As everything got worse my family started falling apart. Not that we turned on each other, just that we lost members, Dad, Matthew and then even Mom. I tried not to think about who I used to be and how things were. It just made the days harder than they already were. I just focused on the here and now.

You wanted to know who I am, not who I was, right?

Now, I am 17 years old… would have been driving if there were still cars. Well, there were still cars, just not working cars. There were cars blocking the highways, dead in the streets and cars used to block communities off when people thought that would keep them safe. None of them ran. None had the juice. That was one way Deaders kept themselves alive when they ran out of people. They would just rip into a car and take the juice straight from the battery. It would almost have been funny to watch if it weren't so damn scary. They were like tweekers looking for their next fix. Remember those memes with Dave Chappelle looking like a bum asking, You all got any more of them Girl Scout cookies? For these things, it would have been car batteries.

I had been on my own with just Andromeda for almost a year. I found a shelter in the old army bases at Cape Henlopen State Park not long after I lost Mom. I have been living there ever since. It kept out most of the weather and has huge heavy doors that block any electrical signal that I put off. It also stopped any noise or light from carrying outside of the shelter.  This wasn't a worry for the Deaders, it was for the other humans that liked to live off of others and take what they had. I could light a fire to keep warm or to cook the nasty stuff I call food. It had been pretty safe for a while, but nothing ever lasts for long in this new world.

Cape Henlopen State Park is in the town of Lewes, it was a pretty big town before this all started.  A larger town, of course, caused more Deaders to be created. Once everyone was out of work and the area went into lockdown people resorted to looting and rioting in the streets. This led to a lot of deaths, which led to a lot of deaders. The population of Lewes was mostly retired people. People that retired and moved to the beach were not all that handy. They really never had to do for themselves, the world from before made people think sending emails and answering phones was important. It was at the time, for some reason, but that didn’t give them the skills to survive after The Fall.  They were at a loss when everything came crashing down around their ears. They made very easy targets for the looters and the Deaders.

Since this happened so fast and not many people left town with items in their cars I have been able to scavenge quite a bit to cover my needs. When that didn't work or it got too dangerous I would fish out at the pier in the park. I remember days before this all started that it didn't matter if we caught anything, it was just fun to be out there. Now, it was survival to catch something. I set traps and hunted in the woods along the park too. Between the food in town and the others I kept Andromeda and I fed  pretty well. So in a nutshell I was pretty much just a forager now. Not much else for life to consist of.

Did this answer your question?

During this winter the Deaders seemed to have completely disappeared. I hadn’t seen one for almost two months, up until two weeks ago I thought that maybe the cold killed them all off or that they starved to death with nothing to feed them. I had hoped that they could starve.

I guess I still didn’t have the answer to that question.

I was able to take down a deer about 8 days ago with my bow. My dad taught me to hunt at a very young age. That was something else that used to be enjoyable but was now a life and death scenario. Come to think of it, animals may have been what was drawing the deaders here. The town was a ghost town, no life or energy forces to draw them there. They must have been spreading to the surrounding areas where there was still wildlife. Nothing like a state park to house the most wildlife, even during an apocalypse.

Andromeda and I were just trying to survive. We had a safe place to shelter and an ok food source for the most part, definitely better than most I was certain. I  questioned sometimes if being alive was really all we should be looking for or was living what we should have strived for? In this new world, I think we had to settle for the former and hope the latter happened sometime soon. But hope was all that we had at this point. As I said before, nothing lasts long in this new world. Now here I was trying to get away from these creatures and get back to Andromeda and safety.

Stupid, I should have thought of this before and packed up weeks ago. These are not the only two I have seen. I saw a pack of them and heard them calling through the night a week ago. I thought they had moved through, guess I was wrong. The activity increase had me thinking I may have extended my stay too long.

In the back of my head, I knew this may come to an end, but comfortability and complacency made it hard to make any other move. I just tried to stay safe and stay alive. In all reality, I was lost on where to go, to be honest. I really didn’t know enough about the country and the state it was in, or enough about these creatures to make more than a guess on what direction would have been safe. 

Now, Andromeda and I were sitting ducks if these two bring more and we didn’t move on. I had the freedom to go, to head out of the area. I had my bag and a lot of my belongings, though no real food or water, but I should have been able to find that on the road. But that would have meant leaving her, and that was not going to happen ever! I left Andromeda in the bunker while I went on the foray today. She hadn't been feeling 100% so I figured it would have been safe to go out by myself for one day. If I left she would die. She couldn't get out of the bunker on her own and she had no real way to find food for herself.

I had to get away from these two. I couldn't lead them back to Andromeda and the bunker, they were smart and could remember where they lost their prey.They would stay outside and we would be trapped.  The only place that I could think of that may have been safe enough to wait these things out was the observation tower. The downside was there was no door and only one way in or out. There used to be an outer door and an inner door to the steps, but those had long been broken off. Maybe someone else tried this same thing and lost their bet? Maybe the weather just got to them and the hinges rotted away, or they were taken to be used as protection somewhere else. Too many different things could have happened to know for sure.

If I got stuck there it might be bad though.  The only hope I would have was that the inner area was fenced off from the outer loop stairs. If I got inside there I may have been able to get to the bottom before they could. If I didn’t break my neck in the process. Then I would have to hope that there were only the two of them that I had seen and not others waiting in the wind, out of sight. Since I couldn’t think this all through any more while I was running for my life, that was the plan. Nothing like a long 3-4 mile run through the sand and then a thousand flights of steps to kill you.

Well maybe not a literal thousand, but tell that to my aching legs.

Eyes_of_Blue_6x9Sykes, ScottScott Sykes2162022-05-15T04:06:00Z2024-03-29T18:54:58Z23791966376748NVR Inc.4441254690230.0000NVR - Business Use Only1033-5.7.1.8092WasNVR - Business Use OnlyWasTopRight943c610a-3495-418f-897b-6a6dbfdc0945TopRight

Stairs

Lots and lots of stairs.

My legs burned and complained greatly about running that far then having to do stairs. Even with the deer meat I didn’t think I had gotten enough protein or vitamins to keep my body healthy. I stumbled up the steps and tried to stay away from the small windows. I had not heard the Deaders communicating around me, but that didn't mean they weren't. Sometimes you could hear them easily, sometimes they came out of nowhere. I couldn't find a rhyme or reason to their methods.

I wanted to believe that I was safe and that they were never anywhere near me, but I had to be sure and not rely on faith and belief. The observation tower, which was to be my safe zone, was 60 feet of pure metal and concrete. It was built during World War II to could keep an eye out on the coast and protect the bay and Fort Miles. It was built to withstand, a testament to the construction of that era. While there has been some reconstruction since then, of course, the bulk of the structure remained untouched. Metal only lasts so long in the salt air, but it was still in good shape. About six months ago I had come up here to see if there was anything left in the area to look at. It offered a great view of all of the surrounding area, even up to Lewes. But when standing there, you are too