Chapter I
I pulled the hoodie on my jacket further over my head and sunk lower in my seat. I glanced up and took a bored glance around the math classroom. Bare white walls with no decorations whatsoever surrounded me. My classmates’ heads had fallen on their desks and soft snores were audible. A few tapping feet were amongst the class as well.
All of these obvious signs of inattentiveness and boredom unfazed Ms. Tranzal. Her short, obese build barely fit into her chair; the rolls of skin on her face jiggled as she droned on. She had short and greasy brown hair and dark moles dotting her face. Her desk was as ugly as she was. Papers, ungraded and graded alike, lay strewn atop the creaking wooden desk. Bag after bag of potato chips covered the floor around it. Everything about this woman was dull as the classroom in which we were entrapped.
I moved my arm to support my drooping head. In doing so, I knocked over my binder, spilling its contents onto the floor. I cursed under my breath as this was the thing I had always wanted to avoid. Attention. My anti-social attributes thundered in my head as I scrambled to retrieve my papers. I threw them inside the binder and slammed my head on it, trying to shield myself from my classmates’ stares. Ms. Tranzal continued on as if nothing had happened until the bell cut her off.
I gathered my things and, although I sat at the back of the room, was the first out the door. I walked through the school as fast as I could without drawing undue attention. I pushed open the front doors and practically ran out.
Immediately my senses were filled with pleasantness. The deep blue skies dotted with fluffy white clouds, the rumble of thunder from an approaching storm. The smell of freshly cut grass filled my nose as I inhaled the crisp afternoon air. Had it not been for my anti-socialite attitude, I would have skipped around. I walked across the lawn towards the crosswalk. As I walked, I felt the joyous nature around me burn down in my head from the heat of the stares and catcalls from my undesirable ‘peers’. I quickened my pace, desperately trying to escape their eyes. I took a detour through a nearby apartment complex. I lost them after weaving in-between apartment buildings. Their shouts faded in my ears as I emerged from the complex and continued my walk home.
I noticed unusual traffic on the road beside me. Dozens of cars rushed past beside me on the street. I knew it wasn’t rush hour, and they all seemed to be speeding in the same direction. I kept walking, but the roar of the rushing traffic kept my mind in a spin . I looked into one of the cars, trying to see if they looked sick or desperate. I’ll never forget what I saw.
The man I saw was grey-ish white. Sweat beaded his body and his clothes hung in tatters around his body. His face was covered in bile, and his arm was ripped to shreds. Bite marks covered the arm. I noticed the horrifying resemblance the bites had to human teeth. His car sped past me, depriving me of his presence, but his image was imprinted into my mind.
I sped up my pace. Leaves crunched underneath my feet and their crushed remains scattered across the asphalt in the wind. My mind thought about the man I saw. “Could those have really been bite marks?” I whispered to myself.
I remember reading that the human mouth was infested with bacteria higher than that of a dog. Any bite that pierces the skin will more than likely cause infection. But that didn’t look like any infection I had ever seen. More like the effects of a virus. I disregarded the disease the man had for a moment and rewound to the initial point of the man’s infection. If the bites had caused whatever was happening, why was he bitten? The man showed no signs of harm by another human other than the bites. No bruises from a punch. Nor a kick. Just…bites.
A distant braying sound shook me from my reverie. My head shot up and my ears strained. Anyone could recognize the sound, the way it rises and falls and then rises again. An emergency siren. A loud crash and a screech of burning tires against asphalt brought my attention away from the siren. A large red SUV had slammed into a dark blue Honda Civic. The impact flipped the Civic over twice and I saw a red liquid splatter the cracked windshield. The SUV hadn’t flipped, but it smacked into an electricity pole, launching the seatbelt-less driver. I could hear the sickening crunch of bone against wood.
My mouth was agape. I fell backwards onto the concrete sidewalk. A gas tanker that was heading towards Race Trac was run off the road by a pick-up truck that was swerving around the street erratically. The tanker smashed through the brick wall of an elementary school nearby. Electricity from cut wires sparked dangerously near the now-leaking gas tanker. The two things clicked in my head. Gasoline was spilling all over the school’s parking lot and inside the school itself. Electricity, which caused fire. The second the electricity sparked the highly-flammable vapors coming off the gasoline…
I yelled a loud curse and rolled around, knees under my stomach and my hands around my neck, facing the opposite way of the coming explosion. I recited the Lord’s Prayer in my head, knowing this may be my last few moments. All of a sudden, a sound unlike anything I had heard before erupted. My ears began ringing. The air around me was scorching and I felt like my skin was melting. The heat sucked all the air out of my lungs. I screamed a silent scream.
The world was falling apart before my very eyes.
