Outbreak: The Extinction Chronicles

Chapter 2 Bizarre Creature

I had just finished fetching my arrows, as I struggled to pull the last one out of the friggin infected's skull. I even had to strain three times before I completely plucked it out, only to realize its arrowhead was gone.

Hard-headed bastard.

Pissed off with my broken arrow, I gave him a hard kick on his side. I looked at his lifeless body, and thought about what I just did. It was only then that I realized how my heart had turned cold, that killing became just as easy as snapping your fingers, and having no respect for the dead.

I don't know. Maybe I don't consider them as just sick people anymore. They are cold-blooded flesh-eating monsters, murderers, plague-bringers, the scourge, or anything that makes them sound not worth living. The hell they will just grab my neck and start chomping on me when I'm not looking!

The truth was, I had never taken someone's life, a man's life in particular, before the war had started, or at least that's what I could remember. However, as soon as the disease spread out of control, killing also meant staying alive. I even remembered when I took down my first infected. It was also the first time I shot a gun. My hands shook endlessly after that.

Then, we had been into an incident where we had to defend ourselves from a small group of bandits. We were in someplace that time, scavenging for food and water and anything useful, when they arrived. Honestly, I was overjoyed to be with other healthy people besides us. I was even too trusting that time, as I immediately put my guard down the moment our groups started talking. Until I heard, they didn't want us to bring home what we had looted.

Of course, we disagreed with what they wanted. We were only talking when one of them started to shoot. A fight broke out.

Soon, everyone was shooting their guns at someone. And I swear I wasn't helping my team at all. All I did was hide. However, it didn't take long before I had to go out and do my part.

I was merely defending myself though, when I took the last of them down. My immediate reaction was, shoot him more as he would just stand up and attack me again. And I did. When my gun was firing no more bullets, I realized, I wasn't shooting at an infected. I was shooting at a healthy human, for Christ's sake, and I just killed him. He's dead, and full of holes.

During the whole gunfight, I thought I would lose my friends, I thought I was going to die, and more importantly, I thought I was afraid. But when I looked at my hands, I realized... it never trembled.

Oh how I miss that nervous rattle, when now I never flinch taking the lives of anyone - anyone who endangers our existence.

Even so, we had always remained cautious at handling our guns, especially when scavenging or scouting an area, because we didn't want to mistake a friendly survivor with an unusually clean-looking infected. Though, such incident hadn't occurred to us yet, for we had not stumbled upon other survivors besides the hostile bandits and the nomadic looters.

Either way, it was pretty easy to tell if a person was an infected or not. Starting from the most obvious, an infected looked trashy and filthy, and sometimes sputtered with blood all over its mouth, hands, or even their ragged clothes. Then, they couldn't talk, but were capable of producing guttural growls and whimpers, including indistinct rumbles and moans.

The most definitive physical sign of  their disease, however, could only be found in their eyes and on their necks. We didn't have to be at arm's length to notice their reddened eyes. Those eyes were swarmed with bulging blue veins, which were also visible, scattered around like plant roots all over their necks. Such sight was hair-raising, until I got used to it after a couple of months. It was confronting them that I would never get used to.