The Reporter

"Okay, okay get that shot!" the reporter said to his cameraman.  He was pointing up the street to a gathered mass of infected people in front of the neighborhood grocery store, pressing up against the front doors.  On the roof looking down at them was what appeared to be a small group of survivors, one of whom was armed with some sort of rifle.

The cameraman zoomed in just in time to record the sound of a single gunshot, and an explosion of blood and brain among the crowd.  He panned up to see the armed man, who was reloading his gun.  The group then disappeared from sight.

The reporter crouched down behind a parked car and motioned for the cameraman to do the same.  "Are you still rolling?" he asked.

"Yeah, keep talking," the cameraman said, pointing his camera at his partner.  The reporter nodded and lifted his microphone up to his mouth.

"It has been one week since the infection that has swept across the Southeastern United States was first seen, and as you can see to my right," he motioned to the mass of infected behind him, "the results have been disastrous.  With little experience in the field of medicine, it is this reporter's opinion that these people have become seriously disturbed due to their illness, and have been driven into a mad frenzy at this local storefront."

The reporter motioned to the cameraman to cut the camera.  "I wanna move in closer."

"I don't know, man," the cameraman said as he shifted on his feet.  "Those guys look pretty pissed."  He motioned toward one of the infected, who had broken a glass pane on the front of the store, and now they were all funneling in.

"I want to get this on camera!  And see if we can't catch the people on the roof again."

The cameraman began filming again.  By now, the street was mostly empty, but loud shouting and automatic gunfire could be heard from inside the store.  It sounded like someone was giving orders.  The voice was stern, even toned, and authoritative.  The two journalists ran, still low to the ground, closer to another parked car just across from the store.

"Move to the back!  Get into the butchery, I'll hold them off!" a voice shouted.  More gunfire.  Then, quiet.  The cameraman lowered his heavy camera, and the reporter stared into the store intently.  Finally, the sound of a moving vehicle filled the air, and skidding around the back of the store came a box truck, barreling toward the two crouched men with no signs of slowing.  The reporter stood up and flagged the truck down.  The truck slowed, and the passenger window was rolled down.

"Are either of you infected?" the passenger asked briskly.  The reporter and his cameraman shook their heads.  "Okay," he said.  "If you're lying, you're dead.  Get in the back of the truck.  And hurry up!" the passenger ordered, rolling his window back up.

The two men quickly boarded the truck, door closed behind them as they saw a crowd of infected running from the back and front of the store at the truck.

The Child

Footsteps pounded the ground.  The park was abandoned, as empty as the boy had ever seen it.  It was just last week that he had been brought here by his parents to play in the playground.  Now he was running to get away from them.

It had been three days since he first realized his parents were gone.  He was in his bedroom reading a book.  His mother was downstairs, watching television, and his father was working late.  All was peaceful in the home.  Suddenly, he heard a loud crash downstairs and got worried that his mom got hurt.  Rushing out of his room and down the stairs, he stopped outside of the kitchen and noticed refrigerator trays and food scattered on the floor.

"Mommy?" he called out to her.  "Are you okay?"  There was no answer from her.  She was hunched over in the refrigerator, digging more things out.  He carefully inched closer to her, and that's when he heard the low moaning.  It was muffled, as if she was trying to breathe but couldn't.  He tugged on her nightgown and called again, this time louder.  "Mommy!"

She stopped digging in the fridge.  Slowly she turned around and looked down at him.  He screamed.  His mother was pale, with a swollen tongue, deep, sunken eyes, and her hair was falling out.  She had a piece of raw meat dangling from her mouth, but when she noticed him, she let it drop out.

She leaned over and grabbed him.  Before she could fasten her grip, he broke away and ran outside to the front yard.  He saw his father sitting in the car.  "Dad!" he screamed.  "Something's wrong with Mommy!"  He ran up to his father's car and opened the driver door.  His dad fell out headfirst and hit the ground hard.  He let out a loud groan and slowly pushed himself up to his knees.  The boy screamed yet again.  His father looked up at him with the same look as his mother.  Again, a pale complexion, sunken eyes, but his dad was bleeding from a gash in his forehead.

The boy took off down his street screaming for help.  "Something's wrong with my parents!" he yelled as he ran.  He stopped when he saw one of his neighbors outside on their front lawn, just standing motionless.  He started running toward the neighbor but saw that this man was just the same.  Before wasting any more time, he continued sprinting into the night.

It's been three days.  The boy had been surviving on snacks and drinks that he took from stores that had been abandoned since the outbreak.  He had not yet come into contact with a single human who didn't look like his parents.

The boy continued sprinting through the park until he reached the other end.  He noticed a pillar of smoke above the woods across the street.  He looked both ways and then darted across the street into the woods.  As he got closer to the plume of smoke, he was able to smell burning wood and...bacon?

He ran even faster toward the source of the smell, and found a clearing that was occupied by an older couple.  A woman was cooking breakfast on a grill, while a man stood behind her, looking around and carrying a rifle.  He saw the boy first and leveled his weapon at him.  "Stop right there!" the man said.  His wife stopped and looked at the boy.

The boy stopped.  "Are you normal?" he asked.  

The man's wife came up to the boy and crouched down.  "Look at you!  You're all dirty!  How long have you been away from home?"  She inspected the state of the boy's clothes.  He was covered in dirt and grime.

The boy looked down sheepishly.  "A few days.  There's something wrong with my mom and dad.  I ran away."

The man lowered his rifle.  "Well," he huffed, "come here and sit down."  He motioned toward a picnic table for the boy to sit.

The boy walked over, disheveled, tired and hungry, and joined the old couple for the first real breakfast he had in days.

[To Be Continued...]

The Scientist

Atlanta was buzzing with government activity.  Federal agents, government scientists, and Secret Service were swarming around the Center for Disease Control like ants on roadkill.  The building had been completely quarantined, as well as the surrounding area.  Half the city had been evacuated west to nearby Douglasville, and no one was allowed in or out of the city without top secret government clearance, and even then, not without proof of decontamination.  The half that HAD been evacuated was the furthest parts from the Center, and everyone else was forced out of their homes and to the Center to be evaluated for infection.

Scientists had been working on a new, highly restricted-access project for the US government to speed up the evolutionary process of a mind-controlling bacteria found in rats, known as toxoplasmosa gondii for the benefit of the military.  The experiments were a blazing success, and the CIA was ready to use it to gain political and militaristic advantages around the world. 

Unfortunately, this made the scientists nervous about its usage, and how many hands were reaching for it.  In the anxiety, one scientist grew careless and did not properly seal the evolved bacteria.  As he was exiting the clean room, he swiped his card on the door scanpad and let it snap back, but he did not move his finger in time to avoid being nicked by the retracting cord attaching the card to his belt.  He then realized he left something in the room and exposed his small cut to the virus.

Within the next hour, the building was in its present state.  The scientist had been segregated from the rest of the CDC staff.  Only a few CIA operatives and a doctor remained with him for monitoring.  It was here that the infection began to spread.  It only started with the scientist scrambling to find a nullifying drug that would kill the bacteria on impact.  When his attempts were unsuccessful, panic began to set in. 

The agents grew concerned and ordered the doctor to sedate him.  The doctor pulled a syringe with a needle out of his first aid bag, and filled it with a vial of propofol.  He moved over to the scientist, who was pacing the floor and muttering to himself.  He noticed the doctor's advance and stopped.  The scientist watched as the doctor raised the needle to inject the powerful anesthetic into his arm.  The doctor pierced his skin with the needletip, but before he could inject, the scientist suddenly began to flail his arms, knocking the doctor into a glass wall, shattering it.  He took the needle out of his arm and lunged at the closest agent.  He jammed the needle in his hand and pressed the plunger down to rush the propofol into the agent's system.

During this attack, the scientist noticed the gun on the agent's belt and grabbed it.  In the confusion, the agent couldn't stop him but meanwhile, the other agent rushed to the first one's aid and tried to subdue the scientist.  To keep control of the situation, the scientist didn't even think twice and shot the agent three times in the chest, effectively stopping the agent's advance.  The doctor got up, and noticed that his hands were lacerated by the shards of glass around him. 

He looked at what had happened.  He saw both agents on the floor and the scientist was trying to get out of the room.  The doctor picked up a shard of glass, and while the scientist was distracted, he jammed the glass into the scientist's leg to disable him.  After he did that, he exited the room by swiping his access card and ran out to the front of the building.  Other agents, who thought he was the quarantined scientist at first glance, opened fire as soon as he came out and started screaming.  He couldn't shout what had happened fast enough, and his body was riddled with rifle and pistol rounds in a matter of seconds, dropping him quickly to the ground.

The Marine

Ka-CRACK!  A single shot rang out through the air, and the Undead's head exploded with a plume of blood, bone, and brain.  The source was a Springfield M1903 sniper rifle atop a neighborhood grocery store in town.  The gunman -- a clean-cut retired Marine -- discharged the empty case in the weapon's chamber, and replaced it with a fresh 7.62mm bullet.  He lit up a cigarette, and turned around to face the group of people with him.

"That shot will probably attract others.  Remember our exit route," he instructed the group.  It was simple.  If the storefront suddenly was overrun by masses of Undead, they were to make their way down the stairs, through the back of the butchery, and into a box truck that was waiting in the market's loading zone.

The veteran turned back to watch over the street.  Another man walked up behind him.  "Rob, how long do you think this will last?" he asked.

"Dunno," Rob grunted.  "Days, weeks, months...maybe the rest of our lives."

A woman, overhearing his prediction, rushed up to add her comment.  "We've been here for six days!  The food in the store is going bad, and we haven't seen or heard anything from the government since we got here.  We need to move soon, or we're going to die here!"

Rob sighed.  It had been a week already.  It felt like just last night that he was sitting on his recliner, watching his small-screen television while drinking his favorite beer.  "Z-Day," as it had come to be called by the wittier members of the group, came almost too quickly.  It had started with a simple science experiment involving lab rats and a parasitic bacteria called "toxoplasmosa gondii."  The toxoplasmosa is a bug that takes over a rat's brain and forces it to run to cats to be eaten, because toxoplasmosa can only breed in the intestines of felines.  American military scientists saw the potential in this as a secret biological weapon, and tried to evolve it to make it adaptable to the human brain for a basic form of mind control.  Unfortunately, one not-completely-sealed container of a sample of this evolved bacteria managed to create a nationwide alert, and paralyzed the country with both fear and infection.

Now, six and a half days later, this infection has spread across over half the United States, forcing the other half to seek refuge in underground facilities, CDC buildings, or anywhere else that might have a chance of protecting them from infection.  All it takes to get infected is to have an open wound exposed to the bacteria, and within hours it poisons the brain, slowly erasing everything that ever made someone human.

Rob could really use a beer right about now.

[To Be Continued...]

The Infected

I woke up suddenly, a cold sweat upon my brow.  I was in my bed, my wife sleeping peacefully next to me.  I rolled out of bed and shuffled into the bathroom.  I felt very groggy and hazy as I flicked on the switch and looked in the mirror.  My skin was of pale gray complexion, and my hair appeared to be falling out.  I touched a patch of my scalp, and, to my horror,  it wasn't just my hair that fell out.  A huge patch of skin and hair came off in my hand. 

I screamed, but only a low groan came out.  When I opened my mouth, I wished I could scream again.  My tongue was swollen to a dark purple, almost black color.  Some of my teeth were missing.  But that wasn't the worst part.  The thing that horrified me the most...was that my entire face and neck was covered in blood.  It wasn't fresh.  It had dried on my skin, a rusty brown color.

I stumbled back into my bedroom toward the bed where my wife was sleeping. so my walk back to the bed felt like a trek up Mount Everest.  As I made my way back to the bed, I flicked the light switch on the wall to wake up my wife.  Again, I tried to scream but instead moaned.  My wife wasn't sleeping.  She had been murdered!  No, not murdered.  Upon closer inspection, it looked like she had been torn apart, her rib cage open as if someone had snapped a wishbone.  Blood was everywhere, and her face was frozen in a horrified expression.  Intestines, lungs, and all of her other organs had been ripped to shreds as if a dog had used them as chew toys.

I backed against the wall and fell to the floor.  What had happened to my wife?  Who would do such a thing, and why?  Was I next?  Were they still in the house?  I slowly got up and scrambled over to the phone on the nightstand.  I picked up the phone to call someone, but I suddenly couldn't remember who it was that I wanted to call.  My mother-in-law?  My brother?  Then, for some strange reason, an overwhelming hunger completely changed my thinking. 

I totally forgot about my wife, dead and gutted like a deer on my bed.  I turned around toward the door and opened it up.  I stumbled down the hallway to the stairs.  After making my way down the stairs I went to the refrigerator in the kitchen.  I opened it up, and saw fruits, vegetables, juice, milk, all the normal things you see in a refrigerator.  I had the strangest craving for meat.  I started pulling food out and found a plate of uncooked ground beef.   Without even taking the seran wrap off the plate, I shoved the raw meat into my mouth. 

The cold sensation didn't even faze me, and I continued wolfing down the soft, chewy, DELICIOUS meat.  Before I knew it, the meat was gone.  I couldn't see any more meat in the fridge, so I walked out of the kitchen.  Even after eating at least three pounds of raw meat, I was still insatiably hungry.  I had to go to the store to get more.

I staggered across the room to the front door, and walked out.  The grocery store was right up the street, and I didn't want to wake up my wife by starting the car -- she's so beautiful when she sleeps, I hope she doesn't wake up and notice I'm gone and get mad -- so I decided to walk.  It was dark out, had to be around 2am.  Strange time for a meat craving.  But I slowly made my way down the street.  For some reason, I felt groggy and hazy, like the world was pushing against me, making it extremely difficult to walk quickly.  I hadn't eaten anything at all today, and I was terribly hungry.

Wait...I stopped, looking around me.  Where was I?  How did I get outside?  And why was I so hungry?  A low growl escaped my throat.  So...hungry...