The Contaminated: Where Were You When The Pandemic Hit?

by Kypers, Ryan

  The convoy’s engines started just as the stocky marine had jumped out of the truck, pushing the steps up behind him. “That’s all that we can hold on this trip. I’m sorry, guys,” he said with full sincerity to his voice. “As I am sure you have heard, we will be back in three days,” the marine’s emphasis on ‘will’ was so strong that he must have believed it to be true at the time.

  He opened the passenger door and stood in the truck with the door still open. “We’re going to be blasting our warning sirens, hopefully drawing out any of those contaminated.” He ducked his head inside, arm still holding open the door. “Stay inside. Stay safe.” The stocky marine pulled the steel door closed with a strong metallic thump followed by the roaring of engines as they drove off.

  Chapter 4

  My eyes followed the convoy to the end of the street until they turned towards the highway. I felt a gentle hand behind me, and I turned with it.

  Chelsea sat on the rock wall in the front of my family’s house, legs dangling over the side with a wide smile across her face. I was just about to speak when a blaring noise drowned out any other possible sound coming from the abandoned town.

  Both Chelsea and I slapped our hands up to our ears, trying our best to cover them well enough to prevent our eardrums from being slaughtered by the excessive noise. I motioned with my head to the house, hands still clamped over my ears. Chelsea nodded in understanding.

  We both sprinted to the door. I had always been a quick person, fast on my feet due to my lanky and tall body, thus my arrival at the door first. I ripped open the door and held it for Chelsea to run by without it slamming in her face. Once we were both safely inside, I slammed the door shut and flicked closed the lock. The noise lessened greatly in the house, but was still very audible through the thin walls and old style glass windows.

  “Holy noise!” I said. “I think that the town will be pretty clear of the contaminated if they are as mindless as the military says that they are.”

  Chelsea took a minute to catch her breath from the short sprint. “I’m not worried,” she said. “I mean, the outbreak started a few days ago and we haven’t even seen one of the contaminated. I highly doubt we will.”

  “I don’t think that they would evacuate to secure areas if they didn’t think the contaminated to be a threat,” I countered.

  She frowned at my disagreement, “I mean, I guess it’s possible that they’re worried, but I bet it’s more of a precaution than anything.” She stood up and walked over to the window, peeking through the drawn curtains. “Hopefully this issue will be taken care of soon enough. I haven’t heard a thing from my family since the outbreak started.”

  Suddenly my cell phone started buzzing. I never put on the volume for my phone. All of those standard ringtones are absolutely dreadful to listen to and should be experienced by no one.

  I pulled the phone out of my pocket to see ‘mom’ showing up on the caller I.D. “Hush a minute, mom’s calling.”

  Chelsea turned and sat next to me on the couch, trying to catch what was going on.

  I hit the ‘send’ button and put the phone to my ear, “Yes?”

  “Daryl!” my mom said. “I’ve been so worried. Are you on the convoy back?”

  I looked to Chelsea. It had not been planned for us to skip the ride back, but with Chelsea and I staying for the extra three days, two small children and their mother were able to fit on the convoy back. My mother still thought that we were on our way back with grandma.

  “About that. Mom, don’t panic, please,” I said, hoping that at the very least she would try to worry as little as possible. “Chelsea and I decided to stay-“

  “WHAT?!” mom yelled, a slight hint of hysteria in her voice.

  “Mom, chill!” I yelled back. “Gosh. It was us or the Figgins family. Grandma is on her way now and was going to explain this all to you. Besides, the convoy will be back in three days to get us.”

  I heard slight worried sobbing in the background. “Oh Daryl. I can’t argue with that. Please be safe.”

  I frowned at that. I understand the need for her self-comfort, but did she really think that we would not be safe? “Mom, we’ll be fine.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because store obnoxious amounts of canned food in the basement. Realistically we would probably be good for over a month with the way that you prepare,” I said.

  I heard a worried sigh, “Just don’t do anything stupid, and stay inside!”

  “I will mom.”

  “And take care of Chelsea.”

  “I will mom.”

  “And sleep in separate bedrooms!”

  “…”

  “Daryl?”

  “Mom?”

  “I love you.”

  “I know,” it wasn’t that I did not love my mom back, I just didn’t like saying it. There was just an awkward feeling to it. Call it my masculinity or whatnot, but it’s probably just not happening. “We’ll be fine mom, I’ll see you in a few days.”

  “Okay, but I won’t be able to call you. They’re shutting down most of the phone lines for emergency communication only,” I heard her shuffling open a piece of paper. “For when you get here, we’re in block four of secure area one two two seven.”

  “Block four of secure area one two two seven, got it,” I said more to Chelsea than repeating back to my mom. “Okay mom I’ll see you in a few days.”

  “Daryl, be careful!”

  “Bye mom, I will be.”

  “Daryl wait, one quick thing,” she said quickly.

  “What is it mom?”

  She cleared her throat. “On our way out, from when the National Guard picked us up from the school, I saw Chelsea’s parents,” she paused after saying that. “They were part of the contaminated, fully changed.”

  I stopped fully still for a moment, not knowing what to say. The phone was on the opposite ear of where Chelsea was sitting, so she didn’t hear.

  “Okay, mom, are you sure?”

  “Yes, Daryl. The marines shot them dead right in the street in front of the school. They must have been considered a bigger threat than young children seeing killing right in front of them.” My mom cleared her throat again, “I don’t know if you want to wait to tell Chelsea until you guys are here, or if you just want to do it now. I might wait until you are on the convoy, keep her spirits up for now at least.”

  “Okay mom,” was all that I could muster.

  “Be careful, Daryl.”

  “We will, bye mom.”

  “Bye son.”

  I heard the line go dead and the phone silent. I hit the end button to clear up the front screen of the device and lowered it to my pocket.

  “Any news?” Chelsea asked, completely unknowing to the fact that she had no one left.

  I looked to her. Though I cannot say that I loved her, as we were only dating for a few days then, keeping a straight face of basic emotion and not flowing out what I was just told became one of the hardest things that I would ever have to do.

  I straightened my head before speaking, one of the only times that I have ever done that before, “Well, she said that phones would be down, something about the military needing full access to communication or something. Probably not necessary but whatever. Oh, do you remember those numbers I told you?”

  “Block four of secure area one two two seven?” She replied.

  “Yeah, that’s where my family is staying, so don’t forget that when we are picked up in three days!” I said enthusiastically.

  “Oh good. Did she say anything about my-“

  “Shh!” I said, raising a finger to my lips and covering her mouth with my hand. Chelsea scrunched her eyebrows at me, not understanding why I was doing it. She raised her hands and shrugged her shoulders, questioning my actions.

  Then we heard, and both knew. The sirens had stopped, blanketing the town in quiet once more, and noise easily travels in a quiet place. Hell, noise has always travelled easily in my town. It was never
too loud.

  I had heard a hissing noise coming from outside while Chelsea and I were talking on my living room couch. It was coming from the back part of the house along with a light thudding, as if something was walking into a piece of sheet wood, being pushed back, then walking into the wood again, and repeating this process over endlessly.

  “Wait here,” I whispered to Chelsea. I stood up, and felt her hand tug me back. I frowned at her before lightly pulling my hand away. There was fear in her eyes so strong that a blind man could see it. I patted her on the shoulder and lightly caressed her cheek with the back of my hand before moving away.

  I went to the front windows, pulling the curtain back ever so slightly, just enough to peek outside. I saw our neighbor’s yellow house, and the darker grey one next to it, but nothing near them or the street. No, the sound was closer than that, probably next door, hopefully not at our door.

  I moved silently to the side of our dining room. It was lined with a stained table across the middle of the room, six matching chairs surrounding it. My mother kept her fine china in the cabinet lining the wall adjacent to the kitchen doorway, and our computer desk stood at the far corner, next to the deck window.

  I crept up to the first window at the side of the house, poking my nose above the casing just enough to see outside. The neighbor’s grey-blue house stood silently, nobody occupying it, and nothing occupying the outside either. Another hiss came, this time my attention was focused on the deck window. The house was playing tricks on me since we only had windows on one side of the house that I was on. This made it harder to pinpoint where the noise was exactly coming from.

  I moved closer to the deck window. I grabbed the rolling chair with both of my hands and gently rolled it along the floor to allow myself some room to look out the window above it. Chelsea’s body moved out of the corner of my eye. She was crawling into the dining room on all fours, not making much noise, but she didn’t know where the floor creaked and groaned from aged weight.

  I flung my hand up and gave her an annoyed but concerned face, hoping that would stop her from coming any further. She looked displeased by my refusal for her to come farther, but didn’t fight it. Instead she plopped down on her fine, round, uh – rear end, and folded her arms.

  The hissing came back, along with another thud against something hard. It was outside my house, the contaminated, and was bumping into either the deck or the house itself. Fortunately, it wasn’t on the deck, as far as I could tell from the noise anyway.

  I thrust my head up again, looking out into the back yard. I saw it, standing near the edge of the deck, almost rhythmically face planting its head into the corner of it. Its teeth were out, as if it were about to bite the deck for not moving. The whole mouth of the creature was bloody, as if it drank too much fruit punch Gatorade. Its body was an overweight male, and looked almost untouched other than the extreme paleness combined with the ghastly appearance and deep yellow eyes. Oh and the blood red mouth, that definitely set it apart from normal living people.

  I made a swinging motion with my hands to Chelsea. She vigorously shook her head side to side, practically yelling me to death with her head motion. It did not deter me.

  I beckoned her forward, until we were right next to each other. “I’m going to try and kill it,” I whispered. “It isn’t safe with that thing running around outside of the house.”

  Her head jolted back, “What if it gets you?!” she protested in the loudest whisper allowed. “This isn’t safe. The marine guy told us to stay safe!”

  “And letting a people eating contaminated to roam around the house, biding its time to break in when we least expect it is?”

  She frowned deeply at me.

  “I’ll be quick, I promise,” I whispered, pulling her into a reassuring hug. “It would probably be better if you got the door for me, this way I don’t have to worry about an escape route should it come to it.”

  Chelsea nodded in agreement.

  We shuffled over the floor and through the kitchen into the back mudroom which lead to the deck outside. I searched around the room to see my brother’s thirty-two ounce Rawlings baseball bat leaning against the wall. If there was ever a time where my brother’s laziness to not put away his things could ever come in handy, it was now.

  I gripped the handle of the bat as Chelsea put her hand on the door. I nodded to her and she gave me a light kiss in response before ripping open the door.

  I thrust myself out of the doorway and onto the deck, baseball bat in hand. The contaminated finally stopped running into the deck at my appearance, but began to hiss violently.

  Never taking my eyes off of the contaminated, I quickly made my way to the deck stairs and into the center of the back yard. The contaminated slowly followed, its movement hampered by a strangely twisted leg.

  I got into my full swing stance. Suddenly ‘whistle while you work’ popped into my head, somewhat inappropriate, as I thought, but a delightful notion all the same. I decided to whistle the national anthem to myself for the mere irony as the contaminated crept closer, its hissing releasing considerable amounts of spittle with every breath.

  Closer…Oh say does that star spangled banner… Closer…for the land of the free…Closer…and the home, of the …closer…BRAVE!

  Chapter 5

  Loud noises of pans and deep dished pots rang throughout the bedroom. I was suddenly jolted awake and partially threw, partially fell out of my bed. My head collided with the floor hard as my arm did the same with the fallen baseball bat next to my bed. I groaned for half a second before realizing what that those pots and pans were the alarm. Gripping the bat with full intensity, I bolted up and onto my mattress in a ready to go position, poised to strike.

  Chelsea stood next to the bed, a shocked look on her face. “Sorry,” she said.

  I sighed in relief and leaned the bat on the nightstand between our beds. She had not turned, just a slip up while getting up, unless she turned and was able to retain speech, but that would be too advanced for the contaminated I think, “You okay?” I asked.

  She nodded, “Yeah, I think so. I just was getting up to go to the bathroom. Guess I forgot about our little contraption.” She gave a nervous laugh at that while her free hand played with the ropes tying down the other.

  I moved towards her to help with the knot, all the while tripping over and stubbing my toes on the pans in between the beds. Once loose, she slid her hand out from the tie and gave me a quick hug before darting off into the bathroom.

  Deciding not to stand in the bedroom, basking in the most glorious sounds of peeing, I made my way downstairs to the kitchen. A slight patter was moving from the basement, then a thud of hollow aluminum. I opened the refrigerator without thinking about it and pulled out wet cat food. I sloshed a bit of it around in the can with a fork before placing it in the cat’s plate. It smelled almost good, the wet cat food. I had always been tempted to try a bit of it, but I could never work up the courage, not to mention that the cat would probably kill me if I took her food.

  She ran up the stairs of the basement as soon as she caught its scent, howling meows of delight the entire way. “Breakfast time, Coal,” I said to my cat. She was shorthaired and primarily black other than the white of her feet and lower leg, a dot of white next to her nose and a streak of white across her stomach. I was only able to catch a quick look from her yellow eyes before she began to devour the last of her favorite wet cat food. We still had some dry food left, but the wet food was her favorite. It was her specialty meal.

  She ate with strange intensity though I had not been starving her. Actually, the cat was probably eating the best out of anyone in the house. She made light grunting sounds as she ate. Whether it was from enjoyment or because she ate too fast, I did not know.

  I pet her back as she ate, my hand flowing across her soft fur all the way down to her thin tail. I don’t know how long I had been sitting next to Coal, but after a while I heard footsteps coming down the stairs. A few second
s later, Chelsea emerged from the hallway.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked. She did not look any paler than the previous day, but actually looked as if there was more color in her cheeks. Maybe she was getting over her disease, only to be plagued with another one.

  “Better,” she said in an unconvincing tone. I gave her the eyebrows of disbelief. “Okay, well maybe not better, but certainly not worse.” Chelsea walked into the kitchen and sat down on one of the seats surrounding the plain round table in the center of the room. “I don’t feel any worse anyway. Maybe I’m getting over the cold or whatever it was.”

  I placed my hand on her forehead. It was warm but not excessively so. No sign of fever was a good sign. While she may not have noticed, every time our eyes met I was searching for some sign on yellow, some sign of a change, a contaminated type of change.

  Finally satisfied with my checkup, I stood up and turned on the stove burner with a frying pan on it. “Scrambled?” I asked. She nodded as I pulled out the last two eggs in our collection. I sighed, holding them for her to see. “These are our last two eggs, and I don’t think that I can go to the supermarket for more.”

  She saw the worry in my voice, “Well do you still have any of the frozen bacon in the freezer? I mean if we have to, I guess we can eat that for breakfast.”

  I cracked the eggs and dumped them into a bowl to scramble the yolks with a fork. Once finished, I poured the contents onto the frying pan. Sizzling protein commenced.

  “I’m sure that we’ll be okay, though I’m beginning to doubt the convoy’s return.”

  Chelsea laughed at that, a sweet and honest laugh. It had been our inside joke that the convoy would return some day. Whether it was before or after the total destruction of the world was yet to be seen. She began to settle down as I flipped the eggs without a spatula, way cooler and chicks dig cooler things, though Chelsea really didn’t have a wide variety of males to currently choose from…