A New Infection

Chapter 1

Bella ran, her lungs burning, screaming for air. Glancing behind her, she saw them approaching. She gagged at their deteriorated state - their eyes stared straight, unseeing milky white spheres holding only a hint of what Bella assumed was their natural eye color. Their skin was a shade paler than what seemed healthy, with purple-blue bruises staining their skin. She had theorized that the gases loosed had released some sort of disease, making peoples' bodies rebel against themselves, driving them to slowly self-destruct. Red wounds covered any open skin, chunks missing here and there - a sign of hunger, since it was hard to find a food source, even for her, since she was completely sane. Probably. Bella shuddered to think about what happened, and the casualties when they got hungry.

Putting on one last burst of speed, she zipped around the corner and dove into a doorway, the wooden door itself in splinters, with the remainders sagging off the hinges. 

The odds were slim to none that something would be by the door, Bella thought as she heaved the cabinet in front of the door. Cringing at the smack of insane "zombies" slam against the cabinet, she touched the side of her Reader, hearing it whir to life in relief. She had invented it by the insistence of her mother - it looked like a pair of glasses cut in half, with a green-tinted lens. Through certain eye movements, a display panel would come up, showing a number of things essential to the apocalypse. An L-shaped strap secured the device on her head, with tiny sensors sewn into the fabric, that linked up with another device in her shoe that acted as a reflector - bouncing the harmless radio waves through her body, feeding the information to the interpreter at the base of her skull, which took inventory of her status. It would calculate her injuries which were displayed as health out of 1000; fatigue, how much energy she had to spare, which was displayed as base strength, and her rate of infection. It also had scanners displaying how close the nearest infected were, and a recent rushed update had added infra-red sensors targeted for anyone infected more than 3%, which was then dangerous. Flipping on the scanner, she surveyed the building - empty, save for a few rats. She inwardly kicked herself at her lack of foresight for not checking the building before entering it. 

She collapsed onto a squishy armchair in the next room over, dust and debris making her cough as it puffed out from the chair. She relaxed, letting her head fall back, getting the first rest she'd had in almost 24 hours. It had been a hell of a day.

~

It started at school, at 2:24 pm. When she had been called home, she hadn't expected her life to go so wrong. It was a normal day, but deep down, she knew something was wrong, however, in order to preserve what little image and status she had, she pushed the feeling down. She didn't want to be lumped in with the crazies. If you were with them, high school was more than brutal. It was hell.

In the fourth period, she got a call from the office.
"Anabella Silvette?"
"Yeah?"
"Yes, she's here. Why? Oh, okay. Bye. Bella, your dad's here. You're going home."
"Cool." She was confused but grateful. Her parents would listen to her. Bella swung her bag over her shoulder, tightened her perky ponytail and waltzed out of her history classroom.

She aimlessly wandered around the halls, heading in the general direction of the office. Peering into a classroom, she saw her friend from the bus, Ariana. Waving wildly to get her attention, she mouthed "I'm ditching you on the bus." Ariana pouted and Bella walked off, smug. Stopping once again to have as much time as she could for herself, she saw a poster for Caltech-Middle School. She snorted. The child on the poster couldn't have been more than seven. She squinted to read the caption. Fed... no, Freddie. Freddie Moore? Snickering to herself, she wondered just how much his parents paid for a so-called "child prodigy". Why was a middle school being advertised at a high school anyway? The danger vibe peaked in her, triggering the primal instinct of fight or flight. She quickened her pace, arriving in the office in record time. Well, almost.