The Victims

In a dark but desolate, ending world a young man finds himself alone and confused, surviving the apocalypse. The first two chapters include him far into his journey and the epiloque before the quest.

Chapter 1: The Twitching of Fingers

  I woke up all of a sudden and heard screaming and snarling. I heard a girl say, “get up” and I looked around to see Chris, Amanda and two other people. I scanned down to my hand and saw blood. Was it mine? The snarls were coming closer.
“Good thing you’re awake sleeping beauty.” Chris said, “We would have left you here.”
  I blinked a few times and noticed my clothes had blood all over them. A gun lay next to me. Amanda pulled me up and yet again the blood curdling screams arose.

 “They’re here.” She said as she cocked the pistol back. “The victims are back.”

  I gulped as everyone readied themselves. There was so much confusion, that honestly I didn’t even look to where I was in the first place. It was an old cabin by the looks of it. Wood was strong but I knew it wouldn’t last long. And I knew that the victims knew that as well.
“There has got to be around 20 to 30 of them out there!”
“What about the roof? Do we have any flare guns? There has to be something similar. We can distract the victims for about five minutes. That gives us enough time to cover some distance from these things.”
  Everyone nodded and agreed with my plan. We looked around for this miracle flare gun for a few seconds before the sound of teeth hitting glass came back. The hard wood chipping, glass making that horrifying sound… crack… crack… crack… The window was chipping.
  “God damn it hurries, find something!”
  The screaming didn’t help our search. As everyone looked for the gun, I tried to dig deep into my mind to reason with myself: why was this happening? People began to die left and right and people began to get sick.  These sick people were given medicated blood and for a while, they were all right. But they came back to the hospital, begging for more blood. They started to lose their hair, began to turn disheveled human beings. Later a while tending to the victim, a doctor was bitten and torn into pieces. Except… these things drank and ate the blood of someone else. They weren’t necessarily vampires; they just lost all their humanity and wanted to eat. The outbreak started here in Texas.

  “Found it!” one of my companions hollered.
  We gathered as much equipment and essentials as we could. I took a thermal white jacket and a hatchet lying on the table, as if it were waiting for me. We got up to the roof and waited for Amanda to shoot the flare into the other direction. It was cold… I saw to two feet of white and red on the ground. And I saw them. Screaming because of the hunger, screaming because it wanted more, screaming for us.

   I quickly put on the white jacket while Amanda shot the first flare up into the air. A dazzle of red smoke and fire shot up into the sky, whizzing past the horde thirty or forty feet away. Intrigued the victims ran- not limped- RAN as fast as their legs could carry into the forest with the red light. I see why we only had five minutes. Chris uttered one word.
“Go.”

   We ran on top of the roof and jumped down close to some wooden boxed close to the cabin. A plethora of snarls rose as we landed on the cold damp grass. Only a few of them remained as we made break for it. One of the survivors punched the victims furiously as another one of our friends kicked it in its stomach. It looked angry until Chris slapped a pick axe into its head.  Finally able to think clearly I saw what our attacker looked like. It was an unholy mix of man and beast; it was a frail old woman, she had sharp nails, distinct discolored veins. Its hands were like that of harpies, they had sharp nails filled with dirt, blood and grime and its mouth was probably the most disturbing.

  It had perfect straight teeth. I could only imagine what exactly these things had to do to bite into the flesh of at least one of us and drink its meal. The force it had to use… I dare not think of it. And lastly its eyes were the most prominent of its features. Its eyes were out of place, cat like. Blood shot, red veins coming towards the inexistent pupil.  Just as I was about to hold its mouth open to observe it’s molars again, it’s fingers began to twitch.

 

Chapter 2: The Sound of Sirens

  I woke up to the sound of sirens. My mother and father were already packing up, rushing and a sound of anxiety in the tone of their voice. Something was happening. But… what? My mom told me to get dressed quickly. That we were going to the airport to the city where my aunt lived. I looked outside and saw a mass amount of people getting hats, personal belongings, photo albums.
“Must be a hurricane”, I thought to myself.

  I ignored it and listened to my mother telling me to pack up. I put on some clothes I find near the back of my closet: a black t-shirt, some cargo pants. I took only two water bottles, some gloves, flash lights, a radio, 4 batteries and a Swiss army knife my father gave me a few weeks ago on my birthday. Hell, I took my PSP for the car ride that would soon follow. As soon as I finished getting my stuff ready, my dad grabbed me by the arm and forced me into the car, saying he didn’t want to waste any time. At first I was annoyed with how he was treating me, but soon realized that he only wanted us to be safe. I got into the car and shut the door no questions asked.

   “Hmm, no clouds out today”, I mumbled under my breath.

  It was peculiar… no dark clouds, no drop of rain, but so many people were evacuating the city, I naturally thought that there was some sort of commotion. I’ll spare the details, but we did eventually reach the airport. Only there was a specific check point a few yards away from the airport. They didn’t let any more cars pass through so we had to get our supplies from the trunk and get to the check point on foot. They were oddly checking our blood. Small needles took out the red liquid from each person that entered the check point.

  Finally, it was my family’s turn. Both my parents went through A-OK, their blood samples took about a few minutes to draw. Mine? It took about thirty minutes to get my blood sample. Not the process of doing it, but the men in the hazmat suits were arguing… As soon as they caught wind of me watching them, they went quickly went into another tent to “discuss” about me. Why even check our blood if we’re trying to evacuate a city because of a storm..? Eventually, they came back to me and asked me to follow the men in uniforms. But they weren’t wearing uniforms. They were wearing black suits, each with gas masks with a high tech sci-fi look.

 But I followed them, which my parents obviously didn’t like. They yelled for an attendant, asked why they were taking their son away. The tone was hush as I saw the color drain from their faces. Slowly my mother’s tears turned into shrieks of bewilderment.
“My baby! My baby!” I heard my mother cry. I didn’t know what else to do so I yelled for my family too. The men physically pulled me up as I squirmed to break free, but stuck me into a black taxi. What was going on…? What the hell was happening? For some reason I looked to the driver for answers, and instead was given a surprising strike to my neck. I saw a needle piercing my skin. I passed out on the seat.

  I woke up to the sound of sirens. No… that’s not right. I woke up to the sound of silence. I heard nothing. Not my mother’s cries, not my father’s hurried tone to pack up. Just me and my hushed friend, silence. I looked around the entire house and saw everything was perfectly still. Everything was intact, nothing out of the ordinary; the car we took to the airport was in the exact same spot that we put it in, still in the driveway. All that was different was my clothes were at the foot of my bed, and a loaded gun right next to me.

Author's Note

ignore the grammar problems. I'd like to know what else to do. I have more chapters to write but so far I felt that sending you this would be great to increase my interest in continuing on with my story. Thank you very much for reviewing!