When David woke up, it was already somewhat bright. He checked his phone. No connection, and no internet. As expected.

  ‘Alright, I suppose it’s no use to try an return now.’

  David lacked food, and the water in a city of undead was iffy to say the least. He needed to get the heck out of here within two days, and find people within three. Four tops, if they had water ready.

  Hopefully, skeletons, zombies and the like would be less active during the day. If they weren’t, David would most likely die anyway, so he decided to make such happy assumptions.

  He didn’t have enough optimism in him to think they would burn in sunlight.

  David picked random direction and went over near the next bridge. He saw some skeletons, but they didn’t attack him.

  He decided to leave marks behind himself so that he could find his way to the doors to his world once he acquired help.

  He wanted to leave them under bridges, but decided not to.

  ‘I know it’s unlikely, but if there would be an adult coming to rescue me, then they’ll be too big to fit and check under bridges.’

  And so, the first mark went near doors of a house. David didn’t enter it. The rattling noise he heard from the inside was much too loud, and sounded a bit too metallic for his liking.

  ‘It’s either a lot of skeletons, or a skeleton of something big. Nope.’

  Once he passed dozens of houses and marked a few, David started to gain confidence. Around dinnertime, (Though without dinner) he was practically running, marking buildings whenever he felt like it.

  Obviously, he was hungry and thirsty, but not as much as he thought he would be. It seemed the excitement and fear made him forget about the bodily needs.

  For the night, he holed up under a bridge again. This time, his sleep was worse than the previous night, most likely because of a foul stench he felt when he was falling asleep, and because he was thirsty as a hoe before fieldwork.

  Nevertheless, he did get enough sleep to keep going. He woke up, and continued in the same manner as previously. After a while, he got to a square.

  Just like so many times already, David took out his swiss army knife, and began marking down the building. Suddenly, it got darker, and stinkier. He looked up, and saw something he would rather stay a delusion.

  Two leathery wings, strong reptilian legs, and a long tail with a stinger. The head resembled that of a lizard, with the exception of two horns adorning it. The entire creature gave off a stench of rot on par with zombies, and looked in David’s general direction with a pair of eyes burning with dull, lifeless glow.

  David froze in fear, understandably. He realized he was looking at a damn wyvern, probably an undead one. When you can only run from a few zombies, meeting something this close to an actual dragon is obviously a death sentence.

  Fight, flight, freeze. Those three reactions are a foundation of instinctual responses to threats.

  ‘Fighting’ wasn’t an option, that was as obvious as the fact that he was no longer in his world. ‘Flight’ would be difficult against an opponent capable of actual flight, leathery wings and all.

  The wyvern seemingly worked just like some animals on earth, those that ‘can’t see’ anything that doesn’t move. Normally, freezing is the worst decision your body can make, but this time, it saved David’s life.

  It turns out it’s one of the natural responses for a reason. Huh. Who would’ve known.

  The wyvern was visibly looking for a trespasser, and when it flew a building away, David quickly ran over to the nearest shadow.

  His impatience almost killed him. The wyvern may have been unable to see its prey when David was in its blind spot, but it sure did have good hearing.

  It vomited a cloud of dirty purple smoke, that enveloped David and his surroundings.

  The boy thought he was dead for a second, but when the cloud turned out not to be melting him or anything, he picked up his pace taking advantage of the smoke-screen.

  He managed to travel three houses’ distance before the wyvern caught up. David froze again, this time deliberately. Very slowly, he picked up a stone and flicked it away from himself, movement of his hand concealed by his body. The wyvern jumped at this distraction, and landed in a piece of a collapsed wall, making noise with the rubble, and letting David run around the building without being heard or spotted.

  Unfortunately, he encountered a humanoid figure of a skeleton dressed in sorry remains of some kind of clothing, a long kitchen knife in its hands.

  Its hip bones were wider than clavicles, and the skeleton was even smaller than David, so he concluded it must’ve been a woman back when she was alive.

  No matter what kind of person she was back then however, right now, she was just an undead. The bones rattled, and David barely dodged a swing.

  Frankly, it was slow, and its movements were obvious enough for David not to be worried about being killed by a weakest monster ever.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  What he was worried about, however, was the noise of rattling bones. Before the attention of the wyvern could be gained by their fight, David decided to win and use the skeleton to his advantage.

  It swung again, pausing for a second.

  ‘A pattern!’

  David knew how to win. Every time it tried to strike him, the skeleton made a pause, remaining motionless for about a second.

  It was enough for David. He grabbed its hand, and ripped the knife out of its hand, breaking finger bones. He heard fluttering of gigantic wings getting close.

  The skeleton continued its assault even without its weapon. David kicked it right in the sternum utilizing the same movement he used on the zombie the night he arrived in this shithole.

  He then dropped to the ground and went still. The skeleton, as expected, was light. It flew several meters, and landed on its back. It tried to get up, but right when it was about to continue towards David, the wyvern crushed it mercilessly, no doubt attracted by the noise and movement.

  For good measure, the almost-dragon vomited its smoke again, only making it easier for David to run away.

  This time, he managed to reach another bridge, hoping the wyvern would fly somewhere else once it realized it can’t find him.

  It was still early, so David decided to catch a breather, and continue moving.

  He got himself a knife, but it was to rusty to be particularly useful, so once he crawled out of his hiding, David simply started to use it for marking down his path.

  Around the evening, he reached a wall. It was tall, but collapsed in many places. He marked a passage he used to cross it, and looked around.

  The houses were smaller, but gardens and backyards appeared, even if they still lacked vegetation apart from some weird looking fungi and thorny, dried bushes.

  ‘Alright, suburbs! I’m practically in my own element now. Let’s continue past the sunset!’

  He couldn’t run too quickly thanks to dehydration, but the presence of those thorny bushes that didn’t grow in the city centre, proved there would definitely be more and more life as he travelled. And with it, there should be safe water, and food.

  That being said, David was less affected by exhaustion, dehydration and the like than he thought he would be. He had a headache, but it wasn’t anything worse than what he’d experience every autumn with his shitty immune system.

  He traveled through suburbs, masterfully avoiding any and all undead. Sure, he wasn’t familiar with local topography, but vast majority of monsters consisted of various types of skeletons, and those are literally brainless.

  Once it started raining, his journey complicated a bit, but it wasn’t all bad.

  The rain hid any noises, both the rattling of skeletons, and David’s own footsteps. This made it harder to preplan his movements, but easier to escape once he screwed up, rewarding quick thinking more than preparing and choosing correct routes.

  His shirt was soaked, so he wrenched it out, and when it soaked again, David decided he can drink the water gathered in such a manner.

  It was good. Sure, you shouldn’t drink sweat nor rainwater directly, but it sure beats any water flowing through this land of corpses or going for more than three days without drinking, unless you wanted to join the undead hordes. David didn’t, as cool as that could be. Then again, at least he wouldn’t be so hungry.

  Once he satiated his thirst, David decided to enter one of the houses. The most convenient one, that is, the rich looking building surrounded by a tall fence, but with almost no thorns, was unfortunately guarded by a dog.

  David tried to get its attention with a stone, but it turned out that skeleton dogs have as good of a nose as normal canines, and although they don’t bark, they can still make loud noises with their jaws. After he was forced to run away from undead attracted by the bone doggo’s noises, David had to try entering a different, poor looking house without a fence.

  He slowly opened the door and entered, making conscious effort to be as quiet as possible. In the hallway, there stood a dusty coat hanger with several cloaks of three different sizes, and a mouldy, rotten, round shield.

  David continued inside, and peeked into what he assumed was a living room. He saw two skeletons sitting on a bench. One wore feminine garments in fairly good condition, while the other was clad in rusty remains of a chainmail, and tattered cloth that once upon a time may have been some kind of uniform. On the table, there laid an unbelievably rusty helmet of unclear shape, and a sword laying in its sheath.

  David retreated to the hallway, and moved in another direction. He arrived at what surely was a kitchen, and begun quietly searching the room.

  He found a pair of kitchen knives, a pot, and a meat mallet. When he opened another cabinet, his blood was frozen by the noise of a mountain of plates, bowls, spoons and forks falling to the ground.

  ‘Fuck’

  Once the symphony of kitchen utensils stopped, David heard the rattling of bones and rusty metal. He tightened his grip on the meat mallet and a pot, and turned to face the threat.

  -Thwack!

  -Dang!

  He almost failed to deflect the sword of now fully armed skeleton warrior. There was no way he could smack it with his mallet without getting skewered… Unless the skeleton would be kind enough to trip.

  He glanced at the floor, and noticed that plates and bowls he scattered like an idiot weren’t shattered.

  ‘Perfect’

  He never thought games of pseudo soccer with lunchboxes played in hallways of 140th elementary could help him battle undead warriors, but right now, he was happy those geezers banned real balls.

  First plate missed by an inch, second was avoided, but the bony leg raised in an attempt to thwart David’s plan landed square in a wooden bowl.

  -slip, Thwack!

  The bony warrior lost its balance, and never regained it, as David put his every remaining effort in pummeling it with a meat mallet.

  Rusty chainmail isn’t something that protects from blunt force trauma. A helmet could, but that particular one worn by the skeleton warrior mostly consisted of rust and a giant hole.

  The other skeleton closed in and tried to pick up a kitchen knife. David tried to continue his violent onslaught to the best of his abilities, but was already at the brink of collapsing.

  Fortunately, the skeleton in feminine garments was more fragile than the one wearing armor.

  David sat on the ground, panting heavily.

  ‘Shit, I did it. By why did it feel immoral somehow?’

  He felt pain in his shoulder, and jerked away from its source.

  Before his, there stood a skeleton in pajamas.

  David stood up as quickly as he could, and prepared to resume his violent efforts, but…

  The skeleton barely reached his waist.

  ‘Is that a kid?’

  Yup. It was definitely a skeleton of a child. David now knew why he felt bad striking down his foes. They were probably a family living in this house back when they were alive.

  He stepped away from the skeleton in a clumsy attempt to spare at least the child, but it didn’t let him hesitate for long, as it jumped towards the same kitchen knife the bigger skeleton just failed to reach.

  Even a five year old child with a sharp knife can be a threat as long as it truly tries to kill you.

  Before the little skeleton could straighten its posture, David jumped on top of it with both of his feet, crushing its thorax in the process.

  He hit its head with a mallet for good measure, and sat down again, this time facing the door. But no avenger came to kill him.

  ‘Did I just commit a burglary and murder?’

  No, wait. Skeletons are already dead. Come to think of it, in one of the very few sessions of dungeons and dragons he participated in, it was mentioned that some undead would repeat the habitual actions from when they were still alive.

  ‘Those were probably like that, no need to feel guilty.’

  But there was something David needed.

  ‘Let’s raid the pantry, maybe there’ll be some preserved food I could eat?’