Zombie Bite

Part 1

"You look like Carrie on prom night," I said. I aimed my gun at the man's face. I didn't want to shoot him, but I knew that I might have to. I studied the man, but I couldn't decide if he posed a threat to me.

His wild eyes stood out against his blood-soaked skin as he studied me. "Carrie?" he choked out. I had heard his voice before. It was the same voice that I'd heard asking for help on my radio.

"Yeah, from the old Stephen King movie. I watch a lot of old movies," I explained as I sized the man up. I had to hold my breath as the rancid smell of his body odor stung my nose. His face was a mess that consisted of little more than wrinkles and bruises. He wore a stained Harley Davidson t-shirt clung to his skeletal frame like a second skin. He managed to sneer at me, exposing a set of crooked, yellow and brown teeth.

"What's going on?" The man growled as if he was seeing me for the first time. "Who the hell are you?"

"I came here to help you," I answered. "Most people know to stay away from schools, so why are you here?" I asked. The infected tended to visit places that held memories for them. I'd heard people call the infected zombies, but that wasn't right. Zombies ate brains. The infected had no preference for which part of the body they feasted on.

"How the hell are you going to help me? You're a ninety-pound teenage girl who can't hold a gun without your hand shaking," he snapped.

"Are you willing to bet that I don't know how to handle a gun?" I asked, not feeling compelled to respond to his other insults. I was twenty-six years old, but I had a baby face that made me appear much younger than I was. "You didn't tell me what you're doing here," I said.

He didn't answer me, in fact, he wouldn't even look at me. I remembered running into a freshly infected woman who refused to look me in the eye. Was he hiding his eyes from me? "Did you lose a child? Is that why you're here?" I asked, trying to give him the benefit of a doubt.

He didn't answer. In fact, the only sound filling the room was his labored breathing. I took a step back, cringing as my foot landed on what used to be someone's arm. I kept my gun aimed at his forehead. My finger hovered above the trigger as I thought about running for the door. "Did you do all this?" I asked, gesturing around the room with my free hand.

"No," he managed. "These bodies were here and when I got here," he replied. He finally raised his cloudy eyes to meet mine, but I couldn't tell if they were cloudy with tears or from infection. "I didn't do this," he said with a smile that made my skin crawl.

I narrowed my eyes at him, trying to determine if he was lying. "Were you bitten?" I asked. Would I want to save him even if he hadn't been? I knew he wouldn't be an asset to my group, but would I be able to leave him?

"No," he said.

"What does that mean?" I asked, pointing to a symbol on one of the arms. I counted at least a dozen more mangled body parts strewn throughout the room. There were mainly arms and legs, but I did spot a torso or two. Each of the limbs bore the same mark. It resembled a semi-circle with a line through it. It was as if someone had treated the infected like cattle. I briefly wondered if they had started out infected, or if someone had infected them intentionally.

"How do you expect me to know? The fuckers were dead when I found them," he spat.

I forced myself to look away when I saw a small arm, but I found the rest of the room to be equally as disturbing. My eyes lingered on an old dry-erase board. There were at least a dozen different people's handwriting marring the once white board. My heart sank to my stomach when I read some of the hastily scrawled messages. There was an alphabet banner running the length of the room. Parts of the banner were intact, but a few sections were riddled with bullet holes. There were several overturned desks on one side of the room. I noticed a few mangled desks in the center of the room. It took a minute for me to realize that someone had twisted into something new: a cage. Luckily for me, the cage was empty. I couldn't help wondering what it had held. I frowned when I noticed the old textbook that was soaking in a small pool of blood a few feet from where I stood.

"I guess you don't need my help, or did you get me here so that you could rob and or kill me?" I asked. The man looked too weak to do either of those things, but I knew better than to let my guard down.