Since we were all feeling so much better we decided we should all go home. We got to the front door and looked outside to see if it was safe. We stood there staring in horror.
It was Janet.
She was on top of a man with her hands around his throat. She was biting and tearing at his tongue and lips and... Eating... Them...
I had never heard a man scream like that before. We rushed her and I swear she hissed at us. She didn’t attack us; it was just like she didn’t want to share. Like the lady in the store. I stepped back but saw Bob kick Janet in the head, step on the man’s throat and tear his cheek off and eat it. He kept his foot on the man’s throat so he couldn’t escape, and had a look on his face like he didn’t know what he was doing and couldn’t stop. He was shaking violently. Then we all joined in. We were uncontrollable. It’s like something took over and made us animals. We tore into him like jackals.
He didn’t stop screaming until we finished his organs.
He was dead and we had killed and eaten him.
We all sat there covered in blood and meat and Carl started to scream, so did I. This disease had turned us into something. Changed us. Had it made us mad? We remembered then that the TV said it might be rabies. We just attacked a man and ate him like animals would, with no regard to who he was or his loved ones. I looked over and saw Janet staring at the sun. Babbling something that sounded like a song and then running off. We all went inside and no one said a word until I spoke up.
“Why?” That was all I could say.
“We just killed a man. We ate him alive until he died.” Michelle said staring at the wall.
We were all silent.
The most disturbing thing was that I felt better after the attack; energized and almost ecstatic with no pain at all. I could tell the others felt the same.
“Whatever disease we now have made us do this, made us insane, just like everywhere else. We need to get to a doctor now!” I said. “This isn’t just the flu or rabies. It’s something else.”
All agreed. None of them wanted to risk harming their families. Bob had the biggest vehicle so we got in his SUV and headed to the hospital. We thought it would be best to stay together. Now the streets were eerily empty of moving vehicles. There were people, abandoned cars, and fires everywhere. And a lot of blood and dead bodies.
We arrived and the hospital grounds were crawling with madmen, attacking and eating anyone they could.
“Are you all seeing this?” Carl asked in disbelief.
Police were shooting people and the National Guard had obviously been called in because there were military everywhere. A bullet hit the windshield and Bob floored it.
“Let’s go to my place.” I said. “It’s the closest. We need to get ourselves together.”
We got there and there was still no phone, no way to communicate at all except via the internet. I was on my laptop and I turned on the TV. We took turns cleaning ourselves up, Carl first.
According to blogs and chat rooms from all over the world this shit was literally everywhere now, not just major cities... People were going crazy and becoming killers, no one was safe. There was a rumored vaccine that was being developed at the Pentagon; the “heavily guarded” Pentagon.
Something suddenly dawned on me.
“Why do you think none of us feel like eating any of our group?” I wondered out loud.
“It has to be because we are friends.” Bob said.
“I hate Carl, he’s an asshole.” Michelle chimed in. “He’s always staring at me.”
“But do you hate him enough to eat him?” I said, realizing how insane that sounded just after the words came out of my mouth.
She said nothing, just kind of smiled a little.
We continued to clean up and flip from news channel to news channel. The news was now reporting that a vaccine did exist and prevented people from catching the disease, but nothing out there cured it yet. No news organizations or web sites were saying what the disease was, just the usual speculation of flu and rabies.
“If they have a vaccine for it then they have to know what it is.” Bob said authoritatively.
“They could synthesize the virus for a preventative vaccine without knowing exactly what it is.” Michelle said.
Bob looked at her sternly.
I didn’t care, all I knew is that I was getting hungry again and that maybe I could eat Carl. He is an asshole after all.
We finished cleaning up and decided to go out and look for help. We didn’t know what else to do. We all had weapons. I still had my baseball bat. Bob had a gun in his truck. Michelle had a gun in her purse and Carl had one as well. What the hell, I felt like “Joey Ballpark”. But this is Virginia...
Bob drove us through the streets and we saw people staggering around bloodstained and staring into the distance. Literally falling apart, mentally and physically. Bleeding, insides hanging out, looking at us and screaming. Some would walk up to the truck and attack it.
Is this what we would become? Is this what the disease would do to us?
We drove for a while and I began to think about my son and if he was alright. I missed him and I was worried. Then I heard something from the back seat and turned to look. Horrified, I saw Michelle chewing into Carl’s neck. There was dark red blood all over him, just pouring out. Carl didn’t make any noise at first; he just stared blankly out the window. Then he began to scream and shake as she completely ate through his neck, tore his head free, and continued eating it.
Her face and hair was covered in blood and her eyes were lifeless yet somehow menacing. Carl’s headless body twitched and flailed uncontrollably. Just then Bob let go of the wheel and lunged into the back seat at Carl’s body. The truck lurched to the right and I grabbed the wheel and pulled myself into the driver’s seat. I straightened us out and hit the brakes. I didn’t know what was going on, but needed to get the hell out of the truck.
Bob and Michelle looked different than when we attacked the man at the office. Really different. Soulless, with no regret. I got out and went around and pulled Carl’s body out of the truck while Bob growled at me. He fell out of the truck and kept eating, tearing Carl’s torso to shreds. I gouged Michelle’s eye while I wrestled her out as she was biting into Carl’s cheek. I then saw his eye turn and look at me. I will never forget that. I may forget other things, but not that. He, or his head, was still conscious while she was eating him. I got back in the truck, drove off and never looked back.
The truck radio said that there were “safe zones” set up by the military in the Norfolk/VA Beach area, so that’s where I was headed. After a while I saw I needed gas if I was going to go any further. To make things worse, the terrible, burning pain was back and all my muscles were knotting up and fire hot. I pulled into one of the few gas stations that wasn’t on fire, put my credit card in the pump’s slot, and crossed my fingers that what was left of the infrastructure would read it and unlock the pump. It worked! I filled up the truck and went inside to see if there was food.
There were three dead and half eaten bodies on the floor. There was a woman hiding behind the counter screaming.
“What’s your name?” I asked. “Do you know where I could get some help?”
She just kept screaming. So loud I couldn’t hear myself talk. “Get out, you monster. Get away from me!” Then she started to take bottles from off the shelves behind her and throw them at me.
I grabbed her by the shoulders to calm her down. I wanted to help her but before I knew it I had thrown her to the ground and was on top of her tearing at her throat. God it felt good to kill her and eat her. The warm blood and flesh. I ate until I could no longer eat. I couldn’t control myself. I was a cannibal. What was I infected with?! Rabies doesn’t do this does it?
Just then a van pulled up out front. It was like the one that had taken the man from in front of my apartment. I looked down at myself and wondered how I would look to the people in the van. I was literally covered in that woman’s insides.
Three men in hazmat clothes jumped from the van.
“Tag him and bag him!” I heard one of them shout.
They burst through the door, tasered me, grabbed me, and took me outside. Then they threw me in the van. Maybe they were going to take me to the hospital... or jail. I was a murderer after all. There were others just like me in the van. I asked them who they were but all that came out of my mouth was groans and gurgles. I couldn’t speak, however hard I tried. They groaned as well, but I thought I understood them somehow. Then I felt another huge shock throughout my body, and I was out.
2
Containment
I don't want any of them here. They are a dangerous element. There is no way to determine their loyalty... It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen, he is still a Jap.
American citizenship does not necessarily determine loyalty... But we must worry about the Japanese all the time until he is wiped off the map.
-General John L. DeWitt, February 1942, before the United States Congress. Internment of Japanese-American citizens began three months later.
I don't want any of them free. They are a dangerous element. There is no way to determine our safety... It makes no difference whether they are American citizens, they are still infected.
American citizenship does not necessarily determine safety... But we must contain and kill the infected until they are wiped off the map.
-General H. D. Forrest, December 2012, before the United States Congress. Internment of Infected American citizens began three HOURS later.
I woke up face down on a cement floor. Every muscle hurt, I had lost control of all bodily functions, and I was vomiting profusely. I turned my head and was in what looked like a large airplane hanger. There were hundreds of us, infected people, all lined up in rows rolling on the floor covered in our own bodily fluids like animals. I tried to get up but I couldn't. My hands were tied behind my back and my feet were tied together with plastic ties. Each of us was separated from the other by about 6 feet and we were secured to the floor. Hazmat teams were going from person to person giving what looked like some sort of shot or inoculation.
Then two men grabbed and held me still and another said “Madden”. One of the men holding me grabbed my wrist, looked at a bracelet that had been put on me, and also said “Madden”. Then they pushed what felt like a quarter under the skin on my arm and put a metal collar around my neck. I was lifted up, given an extremely painful injection in my lower back, burn branded on my forehead, and thrown back down to the floor. I felt a knee to the back of my neck, and heard what sounded like a power drill. I felt it go into the back of my head quite a ways and then pull out. “Bag it.” One of them said. They actually drilled into my head for some reason, and I saw it happening to others. Did they shoot something in or take something out? What is this place? I could smell burning flesh and felt pain in my forehead, and then I started to feel dizzy and must have passed out.
I came to being dragged outside into the bright sunlight while others were brought in. The shots must have been a tranquilizer because I was unable to fight. We were taken to large tents with little space, about 10 of us per 10’ X 10’ tent, and our ties were cut. I noticed that everyone in the tent had a Hazmat-type logo branded into their forehead. Mine still hurt. There wasn’t much room and I sat there dizzy, weak, and in complete disbelief.
A military man in protective gear came to the front of the tent and began to speak.
“I don't know if you can understand me but if you can please listen carefully. I am going to read you a message from the President of the United States. Greetings my fellow Americans. You are all in the Leesburg, Virginia, Infected Containment Center. You have been brought here to this ICC because you are infected with an as yet unknown virus or disease and you have been determined to be a danger to yourself and others. Your families have been notified of your whereabouts and there will be visitation in the near future. It will do you no good to try and leave this center to try and find them on your own as they have most likely been taken to safe zones. We believe this infection is the result of a terrorist attack and we intend to protect you here at this station until a cure can be found and it is safe to move about this great Nation of ours once again. I wish you all the best. Remain strong, and God Bless America.”
Then he walked out. Infected Containment Center? Visitation? I thought of my son. He had been interested in joining the Military. It had been too long since I had seen him. My work and his school and travel. Then the arguments, the stupid arguments. I hoped they told him where I was. I hoped he would come to see me...
I went to the front of the tent and looked out. A wall, maybe 15 feet high, surrounded this place. There were men with rifles on the wall, but they weren't facing the outside, they were facing inward toward us. Guards also manned four high towers; one tower was in each of the corners of the camp. I guess I hadn’t thought about the word containment and its implications...
I saw several people run from another tent toward the wall and they were immediately fired upon by the guards. They were shot many times before they went down. Their bodies were picked up and thrown onto a flatbed truck and taken to the other side of the grounds. I kept watching but lost site of the truck as it drove over a hill. I walked toward the hill to try and see what was going on. One of the military hazmat white suits saw me watching and had a soldier come up and slam the butt of his gun into my jaw. I fell to the ground in unbelievable pain. I crawled slowly back to the tent, went in, and made my way over bodies to an open space and passed out.
I awoke to what could only be described as a propaganda machine. We were walked out of the tent and into the night by guards. The pain was horrible and it showed on all of our faces. Someone else must have seen what went on with the group that was killed earlier today so I looked around to try and seek them out. Large screens and speakers showed films of our Government “helping” the infected to the containment centers and “protecting” them. Soldiers escorting smiling elderly infected folks tenderly into buses that would take them to beautiful places to get well.
The woman on the screen went to a lovely beachfront location for treatment. I could only imagine that this is what the general public was seeing, too. But why show us? Maybe they thought that if we saw it enough we would believe it and think that this would happen to us? People love to see the “star treatment”, whether it's a Hollywood starlet's “crib” or a musician's expensive car collection. The old woman that was helped by the soldier was shown at the beach now in front of a lovely bungalow with her family looking completely cured. The worse thing was that as I looked around, most of the others staring at the screens were smiling, and looked relieved.
Just then the flatbed trucks from last night rolled towards us. They had mounds of raw meat on them but I couldn’t tell what kind. There wasn’t nearly enough for all of us. The trucks parked and we all walked toward them and ate. The pain immediately left as the blood red meat slid down my throat. All of us groaned with pleasure. But it didn't seem to satisfy my hunger completely. I felt ravenous, we all did, and there wasn’t nearly enough. The meat was gone and I noticed a bloody shirt on the truck bed. Then I saw a shoe, and on further inspection noticed the foot still inside it. Before I could comprehend what was going on, it hit. Screams first, then growls. A sort of Frenzy took over. We all tore into each other. I bit into a man's neck, just above his metal collar and just kept eating. I was on top of him and had just torn off his head when I noticed that we were being filmed. Lights shown on us and cameras were rolling from atop a large military vehicle.
Men in Humvees were exchanging money, bets, based on who was being eaten. I continued to eat the head I had removed, I couldn't help it. When all was said and done about a third of the group remained. I tore the thing they stuck in our arms out of a dead body and put it in my pocket. I also shoved the collar from the head I ate under my shirt. They herded us back to our tent.
We all just sat there. Some of us were left
mindless by now, whether because of the infection or the events that had transpired. I looked at the chip I dug out of the arm and it was obviously an electronic tracking device. A tag with the mans name, Charles Dunnis, printed on it. The collar, I couldn't figure out. Maybe a shock collar, like for invisible fences? Maybe not.
Morning came and the sunlight showed what the camp really was; an extermination facility. There were many burn piles where bodies had been torched, presumably the remains of the dead from last night's Frenzy, but who knows. The infected walked freely about the camp and we were all in various states of decomposition to some degree. Our wounds just didn’t heal. Some of the soldiers gave out duct tape and bandages. Some of them shot the infected for fun. They had various names for us, “Quarries”, short for Quarantines, seemed to be the most popular. And yeah, “Zombies” was used quite a lot.
Zombie. I hate the Z word.
Het Madden, a Zombie Perspective: Book One: WRATH 2012 Page 2