A New Virus

Ch: 1 (old)

~~~A/N~~~

This and the first twelve chapters are part of an old version of this book, I've rewritten these old chapters into something new, and completely different than what is listed in and up to Ch: 12. The rewritten book doesn't start until after the A/N after Ch: 12.

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I was outside the fence with my best friend, Sarah, who was standing beside me as I looked at my sister's grave. I laid blue and purple flowers along her grave, she liked those colors as they were her favorite. It seems as if yesterday was when she died when in reality she has been dead for 10 years. The memory kept on playing over in my mind as I stared at her grave. I always came to her grave once every month to put flowers over it.

"Are you alright?" Sarah asked me in a soothing voice. I looked at her and nodded as I noticed that the wind was blowing her long strawberry blonde hair into her face. She pushed her hair out of her face before glancing around the area once more. "We might want to get going." She told me.

I nodded and backed up from the grave before I slowly started to walk away from the graveyard. My sister was only one of many who were buried in the graveyard. We were about a good 15 minutes walk from the gates of the Stronghold.

We walked along the side of the road, the trees and the bend in the road made it a bit hard to see the gates of the Stronghold. There weren't many zombies in our area but there where still some in the world, somewhere. We haven't seen any in our area for over two months, but I whenever someone goes outside of the fence we still haft to be escorted by someone with the Heartfire virus. They thought that the virus would run in my blood seeing as how it ran in my parents but that was found out false when Emma had died.

Sarah suddenly pulled to a stop as we rounded the bend, there were two zombies at the gate. It looks like the guards hadn't noticed them yet. "Up a tree!" Sarah hastily told me. I quickly ran to the nearest tree and quickly climbed up as far as I could. I looked back down at Sarah, she had drawn her sword and had charged full tilt at one of the zombies. One of the zombies quickly turned around and paused for a split second as it noticed Sarah charge at it. The other one was a bit smarter and ran out of Sarah's path before it noticed me up in the tree. Its eyes glowed a bright red as it charged at the tree. I watched as Sarah had killed the one zombie that had hesitated before running to the one that was now below the tree that I was in. The zombie was fast and got here before Sarah had started to chase it. The zombie started to climb the tree to get to me and at that moment I noticed that it was swift. I tried to get further up in the tree only to notice that I was as far up as the tree allowed me to be.

The zombie was fast and I let out a big scream as it had managed to grab my leg. At that moment, my mind forgot about Sarah and tried to think of a way to get out of its grasp. I shook my leg, trying to get the zombie to let go of me. The zombie tried to bite my leg but couldn't as the small branches of the tree prevented it to get that close to me. I was glad that it couldn't come any closer to me but that didn't help my paranoia as it still held onto my leg. I kicked its head with my other foot as it tried to pull me towards it. It growled and let go of my leg as it fell out of the tree. I suspected that it wasn't just me that caused it to fall out of the tree as I wasn't that strong so Sarah probably did something else to distract it as I had kicked it. I sat on the branch and pulled my legs close to my chest as I watched Sarah kill the zombie. We hadn't seen a single zombie in two months and now we saw two and one was a swift, zombie sightings are rare nowadays, swifts are even rarer. Just the fact that we had both seen a normal zombie and a swift meant that my luck had nearly run out today.

"Are you alright?" Sarah asked me.

I froze for a split as my emotions were everywhere before I nodded my head. I still stayed in the tree, not wanting to come down and jinx my luck anymore today as I didn't trust my surroundings. Sarah climbed up the tree and sat on a branch next to the one that I was on.

"Are you hurt?" Sarah asked me. I started to shake my head before my eyes caught hold of scratch marks that were near the spot where the zombie had grabbed me. Sarah followed my line of sight and gasped as she saw them. There was a chance that I had been infected as we didn't know if any zombie fluids had been on the zombie's nails.

Sarah jumped out of the tree and inspected the zombie before telling me, "there is blood on her fingernails, whether or not it is just your blood is the real question though." I nodded my head as I stared at the lifeless creature.

"Anya! Sarah!" I heard someone yell. I looked up to see that my mother, Isabella, had run over here. Her dirty blonde hair flowed behind her as she ran over. Her blue eyes were brightly glowing as she stared up at me and came to a stop. By the way, she looked I know that she had seen the scratch marks. "Are you ok?" She quickly asked me. She then looked at the two zombies, she was surprised to see two of them. "How did we not noticed these two before you came back?"

"Two months we haven't seen a zombie and then a normal one and a swift just showed up?" Sarah asked. "Something just isn't right."

"A swift?" My mother asked. "What happened?"

"It climbed up the tree and got hold of Anya's leg," Sarah told her.

"And you just let it do that?" That mother yelled at her.

"I thought that they were both normal zombies when I saw them." Sarah defended herself. "I killed the first one before I noticed it was swift. Besides, it was faster than a normal swift as it had started to climb the tree well before I got back over here."

"Faster?" My mother asked. "How close did it get to Anya?"

"Just an arms distance away," Sarah told my mother. "It couldn't get close enough to bite her as some smaller branches blocked its path."

"That's good." My mother said before starring at the scratch marks on my leg. "Please tell me that she got those from the smaller branches on the tree." Neither Sarah nor I said anything and she started to inspect the zombie at the base of the tree. She gasped as she saw the blood on the zombie's nails before looking at the scratch marks that were on my leg. My leg hurt was the zombie had scratched me as fire surged through my veins. However, that sensation was only near the scratches.