“How did it make the jump? Do you at least know that?” she asked as the bile rose up the back of her throat and threatened to choke her.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I don’t think that I can describe to you how dark the woods are at night if you’ve never experienced it. In order to ensure that I arrived at my hiding spot undetected, Kevin insisted that I make my way to it before the sun came up.
Trixie would not stand for being left at the cabin, so at least I had companionship. What she would do when I killed the boys was a source of some anxiety for me. I could only hope that I’d instilled enough loyalty in my new dog to keep her from turning on me. The last thing I wanted to do was kill Trixie, too.
I found it much easier than I’d expected to move quietly through the forest. Then again, I wasn’t hiding from anyone in particular so I didn’t have to be completely silent. Because of the time of year, there weren’t a lot of dry leaves on the ground to make crunching sounds underfoot.
Another thing about hiding in the woods before sunrise is the chill. I was dressed in jeans and a long sleeve thermal, but the cool morning air wriggled its way under my clothes and mixed with the cold sweat that had broken out over my entire body.
“Fuck,” I whispered an hour in. I’d wished I’d worn a jacket, or at least a second shirt. It almost felt like I was getting sick. The last time I’d been sweating while I froze was when I’d had the flu a few years back. H1N1 kicked my ass hard, and I’d begun to feel the way I had in the early days of that particular sickness.
It was just the predawn cold I rationalized, but if I were getting sick, sitting outside with no heat in damp clothes would only help the illness progress.
As the sun broke the tree line, a woman wearing black yoga pants, a pink thermal, and a black vest jogged by. I felt a stirring in my pants as I watched her apple-shaped butt bounce by me.
“Jesus, it must suck being a woman,” I whispered to Trixie after the woman was well out of ear shot.
I was there to kill kids, but I could have just as easily attacked her. There I was preparing myself for murder and my prick almost took control of my mind. How did women put up with our shit?
“If I was a woman, I’d walk around with an assault rifle strapped to my back,” I whispered to Trixie and gave her head a pat.
Would you shut the fuck up?
Kevin’s voice was only in my head, but I got the point.
The boys are heading this way now. If you keep blabbering about feminism to that dog, you’re going to alert them.
So, I kept it radio silent.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Boogieman in a Bush
“Evan, what are we doing?” Chris asked.
He’d had a bad feeling ever since he’d gotten in the car with Evan to come on the trip, but that morning when he’d woken up, it had been ten times worse. It felt like food poisoning, except that the pain and sickness in his belly weren’t exactly physical.
“We’re going to have some fun,” Evan sniped. “If you want to be a pussy, you can stay at the camp with my dad and watch him get loaded all day. I’m sure that’s something you’re used to.”
Chris felt the sting of Evan’s words and he fell silent. The fact that Evan wouldn’t say what he was planning was a bad sign in Chris’s opinion. With a full belly, Chris was thinking clearer. Something about the whole weekend wasn’t right.
Immediately, Chris’s mind filled with regret. He had a science project due on Monday, and he needed to get a good grade. He should be at the library and not out here. Sure, he had some food for a couple of days, but good grades were the only thing that were going to get him out of his life. Chris knew that he had to go to college, and whatever Evan had planned could stand in the way of that.
“Dude, I’m not a pussy,” Chris said with a ferocity he never knew he had. “But I can’t afford to get into trouble. I don’t come from the same place as you and Lyle. In fact, if we get into trouble out here, I’d be willing to bet that the world will blame me and you two will just be the poor white boys that I somehow corrupted.
“Come on, Chris,” Lyle said. “Lighten up. You can trust Evan.”
But Chris could hear the touch of fear in Lyle’s voice. Lyle was pretty fucking close to being as bad as Evan, but he wasn’t quite there yet. Still, he’d chosen his side as far as Chris was concerned.
“Yeah, Chris, you little nigglet beanpole, why don’t you run along back to camp and have my dad call your mom. I’m sure she’ll come out here and pick you up as soon as she’s done sucking cock for crack.”
“Fuck you, Evan. You cracker ass son of a bitch. The only reason you get away with any of your crazy bullshit is because nobody knows where you bury those trash bags. I do, though. I’ve watched the two of you. What’s in those bags, huh? Would it be something the police would be interested in? Would it get you locked up in Carver Mental Hospital?”
“I will gut you,” Evan snarled.
He started to go for his bag, but in the blink of an eye, a strange man appeared from the bushes behind Evan. Before anyone could react, the man had Evan’s hair in his fist and a huge hunting knife pressed to his throat.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I heard the things the tall, black kid was saying and it made my guts clench. He was there, but he wasn’t one of them.
How could I kill him?
Chapter Twenty-Seven
A man that looked an awful lot like Kevin Spacey appeared out of thin air behind the man who held Evan. It scared the shit out of Chris, but it didn’t seem like anyone else could see him.
The worse part was, when he spoke, his voice was inside of Chris’s head. Kevin Spacey’s mouth moved, but the sound was inside of the boy’s skull.
You either help him or you die.
Chris wanted to ask the voice who he meant, but deep down, he already knew. Either he helped the strange man kill Evan and Lyle, or he died too.
Chris shook his head no. He didn’t want to die, but he couldn’t help the man murder them. Chris knew that he needed to run. Kevin Spacey wasn’t real. He was a hallucination brought on by fear.
I assure you I am real.
Whatever was going on, Chris got the overwhelming feeling that it was something that had to occur. He was frightened at first, but that had begun to melt away.
Chris found himself feeling invigorated and strengthened. It was as if a light had crept into his mind and fragile body. There was a lion inside of him, and Kevin had left the cage door open.
He pounced on Lyle and knocked him to the ground. Lyle was a bigger, more robust boy, but Chris had the element of surprise. He pinned him to the ground and didn’t look as the sound of tearing flesh and gurgling came from the direction of the stranger and Evan.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
It was far easier to cut the kid’s throat than I’d thought it would be. When the skinny black kid jumped on his friend, I knew I didn’t have much time. Some sort of awareness flashed in that kid’s eyes before he pounced.
Up until that moment, I’d thought there was a chance that Kevin wasn’t real and that I was completely delusional. But that kid had seen Kevin. Something told him to attack his friend. I could feel it.
I let the body of the boy I’d just murdered fall to the ground, and with one little psychopath bleeding out on the forest floor, I turned my attention to the other.
He bucked once hard and threw the skinny kid off. One well-placed kick to the crotch and my helper was left moaning and writhing.
The kid who got up looked around for a moment. He’d probably been searching for a weapon. When he didn’t find one, the kid took off running.
It’s a good thing that kids were no longer allowed to move around much. When I was young, there weren’t many adults outside of professional athletes that could have caught me. We ran around outside all day every day.
This kid looked like he’d never run before. I was nowhere near the peak of my physical condition, but at least I had a
somewhat active job. Of course, I’d spend all of my hours outside of work sitting at a computer playing video games and eating shitty food.
So, there we were. Two semi-chubby, out of shape assholes, running through the woods. The kid was still a kid, though, and he ran for his life. I’m sure that gave him a power boost.
Good thing he tripped.
I was over him in seconds, but the boy had just enough time to roll over. My knees drove into his stomach as I came down on top of him. His fists made contact with my face and neck a few times before I was able to pin his arms.
There was a dragging noise behind me, and then the skinny kid appeared next to us. He’d limped along behind me and had caught up.
“What do we do?” he asked in a voice that shook with fear and pain.
“What’s your name, kid?” I asked as the other boy struggled underneath me.
“Chris, sir.”
“Chris, it’s not safe for you here. You need to go,” I said because I’d decided I didn’t want to kill that poor kid. He wasn’t like the other two. Kevin could go fuck himself. I was not murdering an innocent kid just to cover my tracks. “Go call the cops.”
“If you let go of his arm to grab your knife, he’s going to start hitting you again,” Chris said matter-of-factly.
“Shut up you little nigger faggot,” the boy I had pinned down spit.
Chris ignored him. “We have two choices. I can hold his arms while you do it. Or you keep holding him and I do it,” he said as calmly as if he were telling me to add milk to the grocery list.
“I’m not going to let you kill him. It’s my job. But you need to run because I’m supposed to kill you, too. I don’t want to, but I don’t know what will happen to you if you stay here.”
“Kevin said the plan changed. You need me alive.”
“You can see him?”
“Fuck you guys. Fuck this shit. Let me go.” The kid I had pinned started to scream and fight me. There was no more time for talking.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Olivia watched in horror as blood ran out of the side of Kyle’s mouth when he opened it to speak. They’d been afraid that the virus could turn hemorrhagic, and it had.
“How long have you been sick?” Liv demanded. She needed to know how long she had before it would take her down too. “Has anybody on the team come up with anything?” she asked desperately. It was hard for her to believe that she was the only one who could solve this problem. There were a half-dozen brilliant scientists on her team. Somebody else could come up with a solution just as easily as she could. Except she knew that wasn’t true. The others didn’t have the clearance to know the things she did. They were missing too many pieces to come up with the answer without her. The project had been designed that way to protect national security, but now there wouldn’t be a nation left to secure.
“I got the fever last night. I drove straight here,” Kyle said just before he dropped to his knees.
He pitched forward but kept himself from falling on his face by extending one arm. The other went up to his throat as if he were choking. Liv knew that his lungs were most likely filling with fluid and that he would drown internally.
She had to fight the urge to go to him. More exposure to his blood or mucus would increase her viral load. There was nothing she could do for Kyle, and it would only serve to shorten her lifespan.
Liv watched as he gagged and then spewed a combination of blood and fluid onto the ground. Kyle choked and gasped for air between every expulsion, but the air would never reach his lungs. His eyes and ears bled, and Olivia turned her head away as the back of his pants stained red with blood. Kyle was drowning in his own fluids and bleeding to death.
This is how it would be for almost the entire human population if she didn’t get back to the lab and solve the puzzle of the X virus before it ate her alive too.
Chapter Thirty
“I’ll hold his arms,” Chris said resolutely.
“Are you sure you can handle that?” I asked.
The kid nodded his head yes and then took the other boy’s arms from me. I guess the kid thought that was a time to try for an escape because he once again began thrashing and screaming.
By now, I was sure that someone must have heard us. A concerned camper, the police, or even the woman I was supposed to be protecting had to have been on their way to our location. I had to end it quick.
Even with Chris trying to hold him, the kid was thrashing around too much for me to cut his throat. I might not do it right and It wouldn’t have been quick for him the way it was for the other. I didn’t care how sick and twisted the boys were, I wasn’t going to make them suffer if I could avoid it. Not because of who they were, but because of who I was.
I decided that if I made it out of the situation alive and free, I’d live a life of integrity. If I had to work in a grocery store for the rest of my days, I’d be the best checkout boy that ever scanned a green pepper.
Then, I plunged the knife down. The boy squealed because I hit a rib and didn’t penetrate his heart.
“Fuck,” I murmured. “Hold him as still as you can.” Chris nodded at me but turned his head away. He didn’t want to watch. I didn’t blame him.
I brought the knife down again, and this time my blade hit the mark. I felt the metal sink into the flesh and then the gore underneath. It was at the same time a satisfying and horrifying feeling as the boy’s body seemed to suck the blade in.
He twitched and gasped, but the boy had stopped fighting. I watched his skin turn ghastly pale as shock and blood loss took him. There was nothing left to do but pull out the knife. I couldn’t leave it behind for the cops to find as evidence.
The body doesn’t give up what it takes so easily. I met with resistance as I tugged at the blade. I gagged when the edge of the knife caught on a rib that I’d barely missed.
“That was fucking horrible,” Chris said in a little boy’s soft voice.
“Yeah,” I said as I took deep breaths to keep the darkness from closing around me.
“Now what?”
Chapter Thirty-One
Liv heard someone scream in the distance, but she didn’t want to leave Kyle until she was sure he was dead. Her ex-boyfriend was on the ground convulsing as a frothy mix of blood and bile leaked from one corner of his mouth.
A small wail escaped her lips as she imagined eighty percent of the earth’s population going out the same way. “Just die already,” she whispered under her breath.
Her humanity was still in place just enough to keep her from leaving him to die alone, but she needed to get to the lab before...
A man covered in blood and a young, skinny black kid emerged from one of the hiking trails. It didn’t even occur to Liv that the blood on the man was from someone else. She assumed right away that he was in the last stages of the new sickness.
“Stay back or I’ll shoot,” Liv yelled without thinking.
“With what?” the man called back, but the kid did stop.
“Are you sick?” Liv called back.
“I think I might be coming down with a cold.”
“What about all the blood?”
“It’s not mine. We ran into a bit of trouble out here.”
Liv felt more relieved that she should. The man was most likely infected, but he wasn’t in the end stages. It never occurred to her that her blood might join the other staining his clothes.
A loud rasping breath issued forth from Kyle’s chest, and then he went completely still. Liv felt a slight tug at her heart, but she kept her head together. The only thing she could do at that point was try to keep more people from losing loved ones. She wished she could take back the mean things she said, but Liv knew that was impossible.
“I need to get back to my lab,” Liv said.
“I’ll take you,” the man in the bloody clothes said. “I’m Will and this kid is Chris. We’re here to help.”
“Thanks, but I’ve got my own car,” Liv said.
“Ma’am, I don’t think that car is going to take you anywhere,” Will said.
Chapter Thirty-Two
I could only guess that the little shits that wanted to murder her had snuck over to her cabin sometime during the day or night before and slashed her tires. Her car wasn’t going anywhere, and after everything I’d just done to protect her, I would’ve preferred to make sure she got where she was going anyway.
“My name is Olivia,” she said without really reacting to the sight of her vandalized vehicle. “I’ll grab my things.”
The entire time it took us to walk around the lake and get to my car, I expected the police or an angry mob to show up. When that didn’t happen, I wondered how long it would take for someone to find those kids’ bodies. Maybe nobody would until Chris went home and told someone what he’d seen. But surely someone had accompanied him to the woods, I thought. That person would eventually start looking for the boys. If they weren’t found right away, I’d have wagered that a search party would be combing the woods by nightfall. Amber alert and all.
Liv, Chris,Trixie, and I were long gone before that, though. It took us a while to get out of the heavily forested area and back to civilization. The problem was, civilization was not the way we’d left it.
“Where is everyone?” Chris asked from the backseat.
“Maybe people are just having lunch or something,” I offered, but I didn’t believe it. I had an inkling that Olivia knew what was going on. “What do you think, Olivia?”
“It’s a virus.”
“That’s what killed the man back at the cabin?” I asked.
“It’s what’s going to kill all of us unless I get back to my lab before it takes me.”
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