Chapter I

A Chapter by Wunderlich

The first chapter of the three-part story (this is also my seventh CWP for English 11).

Diane Morrison began walking up the steps leading to her apartment. She lived on the fifth floor and enjoyed it. She found it was good exercise when she had to bring her groceries in, usually resulting in two trips, which ultimately meant she would have to walk twenty flights of stairs. It was a pain when she was sick, but other than that she enjoyed the exercise, although she usually phased out anyways, entering an introspective mood, coming back into reality once she reached her floor.

Diane reached the third floor of the complex and rounded the corner in the small foyer of the stairwell, bumping into one of her neighbors, John Stadt. Diane and John rarely talked, but they recognized each other. They usually just exchanged “hellos” and continued on with what they were doing, but occasionally they would engage in a short conversation, like today.

“Hey Diane, how’s it going?” John was dressed for the cold day in a t-shirt and jeans. Diane was always perplexed at how he could deal with the cold like that and completely ignore the fact that the reason he gets colds so often was due to his poor choice of attire.

“Oh, nothing much. I just got back got from work, nothing special. What’re you up to?”

“Well… I went to my doctor earlier today and found out I have Staph. It’s not too serious but I’m going to the store to look for some ointment or something.” Diane looked away from John, not sure what to say. She thought about how silly it was to be repulsed by a minor case of Staph, but hell, she didn’t want it. It was probably that super strain going around. Diane thought about it for a short while, and decided on a few circumspect words for her neighbor.

“Well I’m sure they’ll have something to help you out. Anyways, I don’t want to hold you up or anything, you probably want to find whatever you’re looking for as quickly as possible, so I’ll talk to you later, bye.” Diane smiled briefly and walked up the stairs with her head down. She realized how hurried and specious her words were, but she figured John would understand.

Diane sat down in front of the TV, picking up the remote from the coffee stand and pressing the power button, all in one smooth, practiced step. The old TV flickered on, light from the screen illuminating the dim room from beneath a thin layer of dust that coated the television. A green ‘7’ shone in the upper right hand corner of the screen for a few seconds before dying away, leaving the news reporter on the television to talk undisturbed. As he talked about a current murder case, a never ending line of text scrolled across the bottom of the screen, announcing a spectrum of despicable news: rape, death, war.

Diane turned on the news, just like she did every day, with some sort of hope that there’d be an auspice outlining a better future. Of course there wasn’t one. There never was. She hadn’t expected much with the recent finding of her neighbor’s procurement of Staph, something that was the exact opposite to an auspicious evening. Diane kept watching though, her eyes dilated, taking in the large amount of light amidst all the darkness in the room. Her thoughts dwelled on personal issues, plans, and everything that did nothing with what was happening on the news.

All of a sudden a scream pitched through the apartment complex she lived in. She stood up, her eyes opening fully, awakening from the couple hours of inactiveness, and looked towards the door leading to the stairwell of the complex. She began to move towards the door quietly while the news reporter on the television droned on and on in the background. Once she reached the door she put her hand on the doorknob, cautiously turning it and pulling open the door. A small amount of light dribbled into her apartment as she stood in the doorway, staring at a man she saw even less of than John while the faint sound of swift footsteps faded away from below.

Her neighbor, Mark Susskind, lay on the ground, his body violently writhing, blood flying from his mouth, eyes rolled in the back of his head. Diane began to approach Mark, but stepped back when his body suffered one last violent jolt before becoming still. His body lay there in the corner of the stairwell, a large amount of blood on his neck and dots of blood on the floor and walls. Diane continued to stare at his dead body, unsure of what to do.

Finally Diane stepped up to her neighbor’s corpse and knelt beside him. She looked at the blood covering his neck and noticed that there was a bite mark. She stood up and walked back into her apartment, grabbed her phone, and was about to dial 911 with her shaking hands when she heard quick footsteps approaching from beyond the doorway.

She lowered the phone and watched as John appeared in the doorway. His mouth was covered with blood, as was his collar and hands. He was making a deep guttural growling noise as he stared at Diane. When Diane opened her mouth to say something, John charged her. His mouth was open wide and in the split-second Diane stood watching, she noticed bits of flesh hanging from John’s teeth.

She raised the phone and smacked John in the head once he reached her. He stumbled back and charged at her another time. Diane threw the phone at him, sparing her a short second, and ran behind the peninsula that partially separated the kitchen from the living room, grabbing a small dinner knife from the silverware drawer. She held the handle as tightly as she could with the sweat on her palms. When John began to hurdle over the peninsula, Diane closed her eyes and thrust the knife forward. A sickening sound of metal piercing flesh mixed with an animalistic cry echoed throughout her apartment. She opened her eyes and stared at John as he stumbled back from the counter and dropped to the floor, a couple inches of the knife stuck in his head.

With a sick feeling deep in her stomach, Diane bent over the peninsula to get a better view of John and noticed he was still alive, and apparently still wishing to get at her. She couldn’t bring herself to kill him, let alone listen to him or look at him. She rolled over the body of the kitchen counter that was parallel to the sofa.

She began to run to her bedroom but stopped at the sight of the TV. The news reporter was talking with perspicuity. He looked like a specter, his skin pale and eyes hollow. He kept repeating that some sort of side affect to recent Staph infections was arising in the infected. Diane stared at the TV, once again ignoring what the reporter had to say. She remembered that just a few hours ago John had been telling her about his recently obtained infection of Staph.

Diane phased back into her current situation. She ran to her bedroom and grabbed her car keys, cell phone, and a 9mm Taurus that her father had given her when she had moved into her apartment. She had fired the gun a few times and was an okay shot, but she had really hoped she’d never have to use it on a person or even an animal. She stuffed her cell phone into her Jeans’ pocket, held the keys in her left hand, and gripped the PT92 pistol in her right.

Diane cautiously stepped outside of her apartment. She looked over at Mark’s body. She was sure that John had done that to him. She couldn’t believe that the man she had talked to only hours ago had done something like that. Without realizing it, her hand holding the pistol gravitated towards the corpse. Deep inside her subconscious, what she was doing felt prospective, and without thinking about it, she pulled the trigger.

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