Chapter 1: The beginning of what might be the end.
There I was, a college student just minding my own business when everything went “odd”. I was in my dorm room, just trying to do some homework when I suddenly heard a scream outside my window. Now, I live on the third floor and the place outside my window gets a lot of traffic often so I didn’t think much of it. What I did find strange was the fact that the screaming didn’t stop, it just went on and on. Eventually my sleeping roommate woke up and asked me what the hell was going on. I still had not moved from my computer since I thought that it would stop soon, but it didn’t. Finally I got up and went to the window and looked outside, to see the women, covered in what looked like a combination of red and black, just writhing on the ground outside. Around this time, other people in the dorm were finally at their wits end and wanted the lady to shut the hell up. One of the more “bro” type guys went outside to tell her to essentially get the fuck out of there. The guy got outside and walked over to the lady, who suddenly, as if right when the guy walked out, went silent. Instead, she was now just staring at the guy. The way she was looking at him… just didn’t seem right. It looked as if… she was eyeing her prey…
Right when things couldn’t have possibly gotten more “weird”, they did very much so get “weird”. A girl who lives in our dorm let out scream, which distracted the guy who was having a faceoff with the lady outside. At this point the people here in the dorms realized that something was not right about this lady, and the girl who screamed realized what it was. It was around this time I also noticed what was so strange about the lady, and it had to do with the red and black liquid she was covered in. Even from the third floor I could see that this woman had multiple cuts and punctures all over her body and that the “red and black liquid” was actually her blood. At the realization of this, someone tried to call the police, but couldn’t get through which was really strange since the police department was only down the street a bit.
While everyone was trying to call “somebody”, the women started to try to get up. It was pretty clear that she had some broken bones, including her legs. We could tell from the way her leg was bending in a way that no leg should be able to bend. She finally got onto her two legs, one bending in a way that was just sickening to look at, and started to make her way to the guy that was still outside. Instead of retreating like any sane person would at this point, the idiot held his ground. I guess he didn’t want to look like a coward in front of all the coeds now watching the situation outside. That would be his last mistake he would ever make.
The women suddenly let out a shrill scream and rushed at the guy still standing there like an idiot. Before he even realized it, she was on top of him. Scratching, biting, grabbing, pulling, and spiting… everything. Some of the idiot’s friends realized they should probably help their friend and ran out and pulled the bloody women off him. They threw her off to the side while they dealt with their friend, who was now also bleeding from many wounds just now inflicted on him. He did not look good at all, like the second the lady bit into him, all the color in his face just disappeared and he went pale as a ghost. They got him inside and closed the door behind them and locked it. The women was still screaming her lungs out, along with vomiting blood and this other black liquid which did not look natural at all. She rushed at the doors that were now locked and just started banging on them with all of her strength to no avail. Of course everyone else was paying attention to the guy they just brought in instead of the insane lady still banging on the doors. The guy got even worse when he got inside, still losing more color and blood. The cuts and bites didn’t even look that deep, but they were not healing like they should have been. One of the RA’s got the first-aid out while another tried to contact the campus PD again. This time they got a response, but not over the phone, but over the PA system installed in all the buildings. “Attention students and residents, this is not a drill, please stay inside and lock all doors and windows that lead to the outside. If someone has been bit, isolate them immediately. There is a virus that has been infecting people since last night and is transmitted by saliva and scratches from the infected to non-infected. We are still unsure what the virus is, but we do know what it does. Depending on the severity of the bite, the person infected has at most 2 hours till a full-on coma is induced. From there… they… wha-… what the hell? “They get up and attack non-infected?” what the hell is that supposed to mean?”.
While the announcement was going on, we all quietly listened to it, and realized we have an “infected” right here with us. Though many of us didn’t want to believe what was going on, we knew that we had to get the guy isolated as soon as possible. He didn’t look like he was going to last much longer and based on the announcement we decided to “secure” him to a table on the first floor in the lounge area. Though he still tried to treat his wounds, it was clearly too late for him. At this point what seemed like a fever set in since he was talking to himself and seemed very delirious, and then started crying saying that he didn’t want to die and was yelling out for his mother the entire time. The only thing we all could do is just watch him, nothing else. Once we had heard about how it’s an infection we decided to try not to touch him at all and moved him to the lounge with gloves and other things that would allow us to touch him, but not let him touch us.
After about thirty minutes on the table, crying and screaming his last words, he finally fell silent. We took this chance to make sure he was really tied down to the table and wouldn’t be able to get out of his restraints. The announcement cut off before it said how long they would be out before they would wake up, so we got at it quickly. As we were tightening the ropes around this poor guy, people were crying, getting mad, trying to contact their parents, trying the police department again, anything to try to get their minds off of what was happening around them. I took this chance to take another look outside from my room. I could see unmistakable towers of smoke off in the distance towards the city, and I could also see cars speeding by, honking their horns. The sound of gun fire was also prevalent, coming in irregularly, but often. I could also see people run in various directions; one unlucky soul ran too close to our building and drew the infected women away with them. Though the women had really only one “good” leg, she still was able to catch up to the person after sometime. Now without anyone to stop her, she “dug” in, literally. I almost couldn’t watch, it was just too disturbing and disgusting with all the blood and guts flying everywhere. The worst part though, was the screaming, the death scream of the poor soul that was now being torn apart for this sick woman’s meal.
Eventually the woman finished her “meal” and wandered off, now with her leg very noticeably just hanging on. The mess she left was something that still haunts me, but what really gives me the nightmares that last till today was when the person who was essentially just eaten, got up and started walking away. It was too much for me and my stomach so I retreated to the bathroom to puke up the little breakfast I had. Once done with regurgitating, I jumped on my computer to see if there was anything about this whole incident on the internet. Sure enough, the whole of the internet was alive with talk about the infected or “zombies” that had started to ravage the land. Some people were calling it “judgment day” and that this is our punishment for a variety of reasons and others were calling this an act of war by some foreign country (though this was happening everywhere, people still tried to blame other countries). On CNN.com they had a guide to what to do with the infected, and generally how to stay safe. It basically repeated everything from the announcement, but then continued on to more specific things like how to deal with the infected and how you should go to a treatment center.
Information like that was all over the internet, so much so it seemed like the just copy and pasted it everywhere. Not to say that it wasn’t good information to have, it’s just that that was all that we were given. Not satisfied with this amount of information, I started to read through a website I usually just hang out on. Sure enough, that information was there, but there was a lot more information there too. It talked about these “creatures” which had appeared in the areas of the world where night had already fallen. There were only a few reports of these creatures around the world and they had just started flowing in from so many people, especially here where it was still in the AM, thought that it was someone just trying to take advantage of a very bad situation to try to make it seem like not only were there “zombies” but these other creatures which never seemed to have the same shape. Some were small, like the size of dogs or cats, others were larger than “gorillas” and others which were even bigger. The largest was one that was over 30 meters tall and looked like it could run over just about anything it wanted to. Though all of these creatures seemed as different as other animals are from each other, they all had something in common which sent a shiver down my spine.
I should mention that I have this irrational fear of things with really pale skin, impossibly long and skinny limbs, with elongated heads, kind of like what an Alien looks like from those movies, but what really gets me is the eyes. They can be either sunken into the skull and black as the night, or glowing red and the only thing you can see of it in the night. Ever since I was a kid, even before I had seen those Alien movies, I had been afraid of those characteristics. Now then, how this relates to the current situation on the internet? In the light these creatures all have pale skin, limbs too long and skinny, elongated heads, mouths which look like a smile but only do so because of their sharp pointed teeth. One last commonality between them all, which I feel like is the worst, is that in the light all of their eyes look like they are shrunken back into the things head, and are black as the void. When in the dark, you can only see their glowing, red eyes and nothing else. Not the body or anything, just the unnatural glowing red eyes…
……. Another place, at the same time…….
“It’s November now…”, I say to myself as I look out the window and see the clouds which look as if they were just itching to drop a few feet of snow on this city. Still, these days are nice for when you just want to get cozy in front of the fireplace and drink some hot chocolate, unfortunately for me, my apartment complex doesn’t have any fireplaces nor do I have any hot choco to warm me up. All I have is the internet and the many friends I have made off of it. Though I still go to class every so often, I’m kinda a shut in who only talks to people he met on the internet. I don’t really care about what anyone thinks about it, nor do I care about how I should be out and about hanging with people my own age. All that matters to me is the internet and my friends which I made over it.
Though I made most of my friends from games I play or used to play, there is one who I actually became friends with in person. His name is Will Kenwal and he and I used to live on the same street forever ago. Best friends we were, that is until he had to move away. We tried to stay in contact with each other, but that was difficult considering our ages at the time. Years after I had lost contact with him I was playing a online game and started talking to this regular player who was pretty damn good at it. We eventually got in contact with each other out of the game and realized who we were talking to. I guess this is what you can call a “small world” thing. I found out that he had started college and was now in his Junior year, same with me. Though we lived thousands of miles apart, we found each other again and started playing all sorts of games with each other when we weren’t doing stuff for school.
Deciding it was about time to get on the computer and chill there for the rest of the day, I got myself some drinks and snacks and went onto my life on the internet. When I started my usual routine of checking the news and other random stuffs I started reading about this infection thing that was spreading all across the country. It sounded terrible, with how you do when you get it and then get up and attack other people, but for some reason I just thought of it as some elaborate prank. After reading those articles for a bit, I went to a website me and my friends frequent often and saw the same discussion about the infection, but also about creatures coming out at night and terrorizing people in places where it was already night. Again, I thought this to be too strange for it to actually be true so I kept on denying everything I saw, calling everyone “trolls” and what-not.
It was around the time I had started writing out a long explanation about what was really going on when I heard screaming and yelling from my hall. Not the normal kind with us college kids and all, but the kind where shit was going down. I got up from my computer and walked over to the door when I walked past my window which overlooks the city I live in. Something caught my eye while walking past it so I decided to take a look outside and what I saw was complete chaos. I looked almost like a war zone out on the streets, with National Guard troops gunning down what looked like people, and when I say the “looked” like people, I mean that they had the appearance of a person, but moved in a way that seemed way too alien to be natural. Usually you would expect the people with the machineguns to win this kind of confrontation, but unfortunately for the soldiers, the “people” had numbers and overran the blockade the soldiers had set up. What was worst was what they looked like they were doing with the soldiers. Though I was on the 14th floor, I could tell that these soldiers were being killed in a very brutal way, one in which no one under any circumstances should die from.
Distracted by the scene on the street I had forgot about the yelling that was going on in the hall. Rather than be that one white person to go and check out what was going on, I checked to make sure my locks were all locked. I then headed to my kitchen to see how much food I had. Not as nearly much as I had hoped, but it would do, at least for now. Finally realizing that people weren’t making this up, I ran back to my computer and started reading everything I could. Again, I see the same stories about strange creatures popping up everywhere, but I felt that the whole “zombie apocalypse” was a much more urgent matter. After the initial shock of everything I decided to message my friend about how he was doing in all of this chaos, since I was kind of feeling more alone in my whole life at this point with everything happening and all.
It was around 5 PM when I sent that first message to him, and he responded pretty quickly, I guess he was already online. We messaged back and forth for a bit about our current situation before he said he needed to go and help out with the barricading of the dorm he lives in. He said they were going to barricade the whole dorm area which consisted of 5 buildings, so that they could get from one building to another without having to deal with the infected. My last message to him, and the last time I would talk to him for a while was at around 7 PM. Then, the sun started to set and one of the most terrifying nights of my life began.
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