A sample of my writing and an introduction to the character.

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I was there when the end came. I saw it with my own eyes as friend fell upon friend and kin killed kin. The savagery and bloodlust was beyond anything I had ever seen before. To see family members......close friends tear strips of flesh from their bodies.....pluck their own eyes out. That was just the start.

[b][i]Tired eyes echo tired lives
we've worked ourselves to the bone each night,
just to keep ourselves
crawling back inside.
Fingernails are broken down,
our limbs are torn out,
hearts are crowned
with the sorrow of a decade of decay.

Our waxen wings have let us down again,
like Icarus we flew into the sun.
The pride in our eyes
was our only disguise,
and now we lie here
broken and alone[/i][/b].

It is the year 2018. Seattle, in the year 2018. Everything we once knew has turned to dust. The city has fallen into dilapidated ruin. Outside, in the blood-stained streets, the feral dead roam. They look for anything and anyone that is not like them. And when they catch them, they feast. They skin their victims alive. Hack them to pieces. Feast on their blood. 

As they do, whispered shadows echo in their rotted minds. They have come to inherit the earth and we......we remaining people, we fight a losing battle. Each and every day we try to delay the inevitable.

Our extinction.

Those who survive an encounter with these rotting, primal creatures -- these walking husks of dead flesh, may face an even worse fate than if they had been destroyed. A single bite, a single scratch carries with it the risk of infection. That, over the course of hours, days or weeks, these "survivors" rot away from the inside. And as their vital organs turn into nothing more than decaying, useless slabs of dead meat, as their brains turn black from infection, they too turn into something far, far worse. And as they eventually, inevitably die in writhing, painful agony, they come back again. They rise as one of these desiccated, shambling corpses and they turn on their fellows. Thus the end of the world propagates itself, and the survivors wage a battle that they have no real chance of winning.

We have lost the streets. Yet here, trapped inside this concrete ruin, some of us remain, caged like mice.

My name is Cain. I am trapped within a high-rise apartment and forced to witness firsthand the death of Seattle. Every day is an uphill struggle to survive.

The dead haven't found me yet, and indeed they cannot get to me. The door to the apartment is barricaded by all the loose furniture, cabinets and units that we could use to block the door off. I spend my days trapped here, looking outside down on the shattered streets below. There, I see these broken, empty husks roaming around the world beneath us. They are not shambling, clumsy creatures that you would expect the living, decaying dead to be. They are fast. They are relentless. They are without fear. They will sacrifice themselves, destroy their bodies if need be to take down another victim. Their pack mentality makes them truly deadly. I have seen other foolish people brave the streets in the daytime. They were torn apart within seconds. Being out there....alone, is suicide.

They are worse at night. Faster. Stronger. Unstoppable. One of them alone could take down a well-armed group. A group of them......nothing can stop them. 

Nothing.

Sometimes I go out onto the balcony. And I watch the doom continue to unfold below us.

My food and water supplies continue to dwindle. They are running dangerously low. Soon, I will have to venture outside once more in a desperate attempt to forage more. 

Up here, hope is fading. Yet, as bad as things are, they are far worse out there.