Tales of Virusgeddon: Charles Abigail Romanov Part I

Name: Charles Abigail Romanov
Age: 34
Location: Akron, Ohio
Date: 2 months after initial breakout
Part of the Virusgeddon series of stories

Irony. Pretty much sums up my life by now. Pure. Fucking. Irony. Before “Virusgeddon” as the news media calls it happened I was a loser, a punk, a loner, and not exactly sought after by the ladies. I initially went to college for Pre-med, dropped out, and progressively worked crap job after crap job until I pulled a gun on a customer in front of a camera and made the news. . Even became a minor celebrity for a while when the video went viral. Not being able to find a job, of course, I grew a beard and started begging by street corners.

These days i’m living in a penthouse suite in the nicest apartment building in this town and all the ladies want me...and most of the men too. The fact that most of them want to rip my head off and eat my insides is kind of a turnoff though, I will admit. Life ain’t all roses and sunshine though. This virus can strike you at any time. Living with someone is almost completely out of the question unless you have two people on watch at all times, otherwise you might wake up to an insane manimal (made that up myself) tearing out your insides or worse, eating your ugly mug...but I digress.

It’s a beautiful morning, looking out into the city proper you wouldn’t even know what it was devastated by. Viruses leave no craters (got that one from a video game). If you were loony like my buddy Ryan (rest in peace you heroine addicted prick) you would probably think that all the cars were just stuck in traffic with invisible people at the wheel. I grab my rifle, load it up, and pick off a couple manimals for funsies. The pack ain’t too happy about that, but thankfully they’re too stupid to know that i’m all the way up in my penthouse, so they decide to feast on their buddies’ bodies for breakfast. I look away. The virus doesn’t pay attention to age and there are quite a few children in the pack. A few hours later, I hear a frantic knock on the door.

“Chuck, it’s me, open the door Devon’s gone manimal” Jack, one of my fellow bums back on the streets.

“What’s the password” I grumble

“I have my freaking kids out here and they just watched their mom eat their little sister” he yells

When the heck did this guy have kids? I open the door as a (surprisingly clean) Jack and two children run through the door. Half a minute later, I hear the primitive grunts of the manimal trying to tear down my door. This, of course, wasn’t the first time they have tried to get in here, so I went up to the door, slid out the eye-level slot, and emptied the clip of the pistol I keep right by the door. Great, now I am stuck with a former bum, his two traumatized, sniveling brats, and to top it all off I shot their mother 8 times in the head. Not to mention the fact that I would only have a few hours warning if any of them decided to go feral on me. Ain’t life magical?