WHEN THE WORLD ENDS

INFECTED

As daylight disappeared and the moon blanketed London in beams of silver light, the city was devoid of life.

What had been a warzone just a few hours ago, now looked like a ghost town. Rebecca couldn't believe what she was seeing as she looked down from the fourth floor window of the hospital she had woken up in. There were cars everywhere: some had crashed, others had just been abandoned carelessly in the middle of the road. There was blood too. Lots of it.

Too much of it.

She spun around on her heels, realising that if she spent any longer gazing at the horrific scene it would drive her insane. Instead, she opted to plonk herself down lazily onto her bed. She looked up at the clock above her.

9:16pm.

Things had quietened down. Much like the city streets, the hospital wards seemed almost desolate. Only occasionally would a nurse totter in to check on the patients and then she would leave when she was content. Rebecca had sat in the Rest Room to pass some time, but the constant droning of the emergency TV broadcasts started to chip away at her sanity before long.

There was one man who had been sat in there the whole day. He was hunched over in a rocking chair, listening to a radio. All civilians are advised to stay indoors, keep quiet and wait for the authorities' assistance it broadcasted over and over like a broken record.

It didn't look like there was much assistance from the authorities.

Rebecca tried to distract her mind. She picked up a magazine from the bedside table and kicked back in her bed. She opened the magazine and rolled her eyes at the first article:

"KIM KARDASHIAN - HOW TO TAKE THE PERFECT SELFIE"

She almost chuckled too. What was part of her everyday life now seemed so irrelevant and pointless, considering everything that was going on in the world.

She flicked through a few more of the pages until she heard the curtain around her being pulled back. She put the magazine down and glanced up. A male nurse entered: the same one that had been on hand earlier in the day to help her.

When she was too busy throwing up, Rebecca hadn't had time to get a good look at him. He had a messy head of short, blonde hair and his pale skin was dotted with tiny, faint freckles. His eyes were a crystal blue colour and they brought Rebecca some form of comfort when she looked into them.

The nurse stepped forward, gesturing to the clothes that he had draped over his arm, "I brought you these if you want to get changed."

He put them down over the end of the bed and then walked to her side. She looked up at him and offered a weak smile.

"Thanks."

"How are you feeling?" he asked after a brief silence.

"Better" Rebecca nodded in appreciation, "I keep throwing up though. Twice since you last checked on me."

"That's just a side effect of concussion" he reassured her, "It should be gone in a couple of days."

A sinister thought suddenly crossed Rebecca's mind. What if she wasn't alive in a couple of days? It hadn't occurred to her until that point how close to death she had come. Not just from the car crash but also from those...creatures that were now roaming the streets. Anything could have happened to her. She was more than lucky to be sat in that hospital looking at articles about Kim Kardashian.

"How bad is it out there?" she found herself asking suddenly. There was an urgency in her voice. One that stated she demanded a satisfactory answer.