• *Infection*
    1. The Beginning

    The blood stained teeth. The soulless white eyes. I’ll never forget those bloody, cold and dead faces. Last night I lay in my bed watching the news. It seems that’s all I watch on TV these days. I was thinking about the next day and my ever repeating job. How I wished for my daily routine to change and maybe get some excitement in my life. I’m only twenty-four years old but I’m tired of doing the same thing over again every day. Little did I know last night though that my life would change. But for the better? Now I would really say that. I fell asleep around eleven pm with the TV and lights in my room still glowing hot. I awoke around five in the morning to my TV buzzing with one of those annoying, unnecessary Emergency alert tests. I decided to stay awake seeing as I would be getting up in about half an hour anyway. I looked at the TV with my sleepy eyes. The TV was still on with breaking news. Apparently around three am some crazy homeless guy snapped and attacked 3 people walking home from a bar downtown killing two. The third got away and hid in a nearby bank. He had been injured though. The homeless man had bitten the man in the forearm before he escaped. They say they still didn’t catch the murderer. The guy who had been bit then came on screen as they were interviewing him about what happened. “We had just left the bar.” The man said. “we were on our way back to my apartment when right in front of us, a man who appeared to be homeless stumbled out of an alley way. He looked injured and had blood stained on his shirt and was holding his neck. His arm dropped from a giant gash near his collar bone. He looked straight at us with evil soulless eyes and began limping towards us. One of my friends took a few steps towards him asking if he was ok. The homeless man started walking, or stumbling, a bit faster toward friend number one as me and my other friend stood back not expecting what happened next. The man lunged at my friend biting him in the neck. As he lay there screaming in pain my other friend, friend number two, muttered what sounded like a curse un his breath as he ran up and tried to kick the man in the chest to get him off friend number one. The man grabbed his leg and bit him right in the calve. I watched in terror as friend number 1 bled from the neck and mouth choking to death. I felt helpless; there was nothing I could do. He died right there on the spot gasping for air not saying anything. I didn’t know what to do, I was frozen in terror. The man shoved his fingers into my still alive friends’ stomach as he let out one of the lowest most terrifying growls iv ever heard in my life. My friend screamed a blood curdling scream as the man ripped his stomach open. The only thing I could think of to do was try to push the man off. I gained as much courage as I could and ran at the man full speed, putting all of my weight into pushing him off. He grabbed me and bit me right here on my forearm.” He winced as he looked at it. The camera changed to the scene where the side walk was covered in blood. The female reporter was talking about how the bodies and murderer were both missing. “– just a grotesque murder. I don’t know how someone could do thi-.“ then a pause as she listened to her ear phone for information. “I just got word that the third victim has blacked out.” The screen changed once again to the man who had survived. He was lying on his back as a few paramedics put him on a stretcher and into the back of an ambulance. Before the driver could get into the ambulance the vehicle started shaking as blood sprayed the back windows. One of the paramedics opened the back door and fell out onto his knees and started running away, covered in blood. The other paramedic was being ripped apart by the man who had blacked out. It seemed as though he went insane. Then what happened next shocked me. The insane man pulled out some of the now dead paramedics’ intestines and started eating them as if he had never had a meal in his life. Then at that moment the screen went black and a bar ran across the middle saying “Too violent for television. Sorry for the Inconvenience.” I changed to the next channel and the next one but they all said the same thing. I looked at the clock which read 5:45. I was going to be late. I disregarded what I had seen but it stayed in my mind. I got dressed in a hurry and walked down my stairs, and into the kitchen. i grabbed a banana to eat and shoved my keys and cell phone into my pocket. As I opened my door I saw a few people running down my street, but I couldn’t see their faces so I figured they were on a morning run. That was until I saw three more people running faster towards them. One looked at me and I could see his face. He had the same soulless white eyes I had imagined when that guy on tv explained the homeless man he saw, and his mouth was covered in blood. He seemed to forget about the people he was chasing before and turned and ran straight at me. I stood there for a second wondering if this was real then slammed my door shut and backed up. No more than 2 seconds later, the thing ran into my door. I knew because of the loud thud that shook my windows next to the door. This was followed by scratching, pounding and almost inhuman growling. All of a sudden it stopped after about 5 seconds, and then almost instantly the thing crashed through my door and onto the ground next to me. I jumped in fear and ran up my stairs into my room and to the closet where I grabbed my wooden bat and ran back to the top of the stairs. I hid around the corner by my bathroom. I heard the thing climbing up my stairs slowly. I waited for the perfect moment. Right when it got to the top of the stairs right next to me, I swung the bat as hard as I could right into its face. Blood covered the bat in the area I used to hit it before the thing rolled down the stairs, slamming its head on the ground in a pool of blood. I walked down slowly holding my bat ready to strike again if needed. I got to the bottom stair and looked at the thing. It laid there. Suddenly it started twitching and trying to get up. I lifted my bat and swung down as hard as I could, smashing in its skull and spattering the floor and part of the wall in blood. The thing finally stopped moving and lay there dead. I decided it would only be best not to go to work today and try to find somewhere safer. Maybe get out of this city. I grabbed the door handle and opened the door slowly and peered out side. It seemed safe so I opened the door more and more until I could step out. It was light now, but not in the normal way. The sky was red, the sun hidden behind smoke and the city now had a dead scent to it.

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