The Virus

Two

Iop. Taking in the information. "Breakout as in like a breakout of a disease." I stammer unable to contain my worry. He nods with a deep sadness in his eyes. Like he'd been keeping it in for a while and yearned to talk to someone about it. Yearned to finally let in the cold truth of the world.

"It's gone. All of it. We tapped into a car radio and there is a repeated warning that's been airing for over two weeks. It's telling everybody worldwide to stay inside and stock up as much food and water as possible. It's bad. Really bad." He replies.

I look at him and sense the fright in his eyes. He's scared of whatever is going on. And if Noah is scared then I'm terrified.

Noah continues to explain. "We were all walking home. Laura and Becky were there too. But my USB I left it back at school and went back for it. You wanted to come with me and left them."

 I nod, remembering the situation as if I was living it, making the decisions, saying the words. But it was just a far off echo in my mind. 

"Then, we got to school and Mark, Alex, Solomon and Jayden were there. We went to get the USB and came back. They were still there but were worried. Apparently the gates had been locked without them knowing and we were unable to get out. We all tried to find ways out but the fences were too high. And the trees that lined the field just shielded even higher fences. We were stuck." He stops.

"Is that how we ended up here, then?" I ask. 

He runs his hands through his hair and sighs before finally nodding. 

"After a while we just sat and waited it got dark soon and then things got weird. Cars drove around with loudspeakers telling everybody to make their way to Washington Stadium for an unknown reason. It stopped within twenty minutes and we dozed off. But at six in the morning we were woken up by screams. All the people who had stayed behind were attacking each other. And we thought most of them were dead. When they started moving again." He explains. 

I make a small choke, and I decide to say something only to realise there was nothing to say.

"They are mostly dead. They can still walk and feed but that's about it. They sort of just walk aimlessly when there's no survivors around to eat." He says it as though it's completely normal.

I try to wrap my head around the whole concept of dead people that were still slightly alive and wanted to eat my face off. "Are we safe?" I ask.

He looks at me and replies "I think so. The building is like two hundred metres away from the actual metal fence so they can't sense us unless we make noise and then it's only a few. They don't seem to have any real strength and aren't getting through the front anytime soon. But there is a hole in the fence hidden by trees. We found it last week and have been working on ways to seal it effectively but also give us a way out." This reassures me slightly but the uneasy feeling in my stomach doesn't leave and if the world is as described I don't expect to feel safe anytime soon.

I sigh and sit on the desk behind me, closing my eyes for a second. 

Noah approaches me, "Hey, are you okay? I know it's a lot. You were there. I don't know how you don't remember," he explains. 

I shrug and look out the window. I still didn't really know what was going on. 

Noah and I sit in silence for a few minutes as he allows me to devour the information and to stop panicking. I was grateful that he gave me time, my mind was swirling. 

Eventually, Noah sits up and turns to me, "come on, let's get you a shower and some food, it'll be morning soon. You can see the guys, I'll show you around."