In Between the Beyond (#1 in the Rotten Water Series)

Prologue

C.R.I.C.K. Labs — March 23, 2017 — 11:51 a.m.

"Doctor Chase," a man greeted nervously, gripping a damp white sheet of paper. A woman with small glasses turned away from her desk to face the man, smiling.

"Yes, Max?" she questioned, sitting her pen down upon some files, glancing at his hands, spotting an important piece of paper. "Are those Carter's results?" Max nodded, hesitantly handing her the paper. "Don't worry, you're doing the right thing."

"Am I?" he asked regretfully. "Because I'm not too sure anymore."

She gave him a gaze, almost as if she wanted to roll her eyes, but thought better of it. "What we're doing is necessary. It will pay off in the end, I know it will. Now if I'm not mistaken, I believe Hank is on his break. Go join him. We'll talk after Dr. Leafe gets me my other print-offs." Max didn't bother arguing. He'd been working fourteen hours straight. A break was much deserved.

When he entered the break room, his closest co-worker, Hank Phillips, greeted him with a cold cup of coffee. "Thanks," Max muttered, taking a sip. They both sat on a black sofa beside the large tinted window. Hank was raging about how his wife always expected him to pick his children up from school, but Max wasn't really paying attention, though he usually never did. The feeling of deep regret was building too much inside him to allow a normal conversation. Hank soon noticed Max's lack of involvement, asking how he was. Max just shrugged it off.

"Come on, man, really. What's up with you lately?" Hank asked, sitting his own coffee cup down.

Max hesitated to answer at first, but eventually gave in, rambling. "Are the things we do really the right things to be doing? We are literally ripping innocent lives from their friends and families, then using them as test subjects to a cause we don't even know if we can fix, and then we turn them into rotts? We're creating what could potentially take over our world."

Hank groaned. "For the last time, Max, we're not what created them. We're only making more so we can test our medicines for a cure. We sacrifice the few to save the many. That's it."

"I don't believe that. Not for a single minute," Max snapped. "You and I, we work for the lab and its research, we're nothing but a couple of servants. The ones in the higher field, like Dr. Chase and Dr. Carter, they know the true secrets of what's happening and why it's happening. They tell us they had nothing to do with how it started, and what, that's it? We're just supposed to believe that a virus that hasn't been known to be anywhere else but near this lab started somewhere else? The only reports of this happening elsewhere was after we started testing it. It's this lab's fault, and I know it. It's only a matter of time before we're all feeding on our brothers and sisters."

Before Max could get a response out of Hank, the red siren on the corner wall blared a deafening screech. The entire room jumped out of their seats, confused to what the issue was. But their confusion was soon outlived when a man came bursting through the door, covered in blood—only, it wasn't a man at all. It was a rott. What was once a human being, turned by a bite or by testing, was now a creature that feels nothing but hunger, hatred, and pain. Their only real motive is to get a man on the ground and rip him apart with their teeth. And that's exactly what this rott did. It stumbled into a woman, gripped her by the face, then sunk its mouth into her flesh. The woman didn't have much time to react, seeing as half her face was gone within ten seconds. Nobody bothered to try and help the woman, due to their feet pedaling towards the door at the other end of the room.

Hank opened the door, only to be greeted by a very unfortunate fate. A rott took one bite into his neck before Max cracked his coffee mug over its head. Within just a few seconds, Hank was on his feet again, except that this was no longer Hank. The bite of a rott can take just a couple seconds to transfer into the human body.

Hank's body wrestled its way to Max, swaying its arms left and right. Max had no other choice but to kill his once close friend. He unhooked the pen off his shirt, then jabbed it roughly into the top of Hank's head. Hank fell to the floor after the third stab.

Max was in utter shock at what he had just done, but the shock needed to be postponed. There were at least a dozen rotts in the room now, all hunting their next victim. Max sprinted out, seeing an even bigger chaos outside of the small break lounge. Lights were flickering, glass was shattered, walls were busted. Everything that could possibly go wrong in a situation like this was happening at that very moment.

Over half of his co-workers were dead, reborn into the stench of death. He had to make it away somehow. His eyes caught notice of three doors on the other side of the hall: a bathroom, a closet, and the assistant tech room. The tech room had computers. That's where he needed to go.

He sprinted across the hall, not daring to look back. He'd managed to make it into the room unharmed, only missing his second shoe. He slammed the door shut and locked it. As he went to turn for the nearest computer, a thud hit the door. Through the door's round window, Max could see a frightened Dr. Chase. She had blood on her forehead and tears in her eyes. She was clearly screaming to be let in, but Max couldn't oblige. He had to warn the world of what was happening, and if she was injured at all, it would jeopardize his whole plan. He mouthed the words, "I'm sorry," before turning his attention elsewhere.

He knelt down in front of a computer, opened his email, and began typing:

I am sorry to inform you all that the world is coming to a possible end. It will probably take weeks before it reaches anywhere else but North America; however, I'm certain no other continent will want to come here and interfere with what time they have left. As of now, we have no cure to what we call rotts. Rotts are deadly creatures that were once human. A medicine of some sort was infecting people, and we've been studying ways to cure it. We have had no breakthrough, I'm afraid. But I do have advice. From what we can tell, it is not spread airborne. It's spread through a bite or a scratch from another. A bite will turn you almost immediately. A scratch can take up to several weeks or just days before completely changing you, but the side effects will grow within you. Please stay safe and shelter your family. We can survive this somehow, I know we can. I'm sorry.

-Dr. Max White, C.R.I.C.K. Labs

He dragged the message into his send all tab, but it didn't work. Connection Error, popped up on the bottom of his screen. The internet must have been down. He tried it again. Nothing. His message had no chance of being seen.

A second thump cracked on the door. The rotts were going to get in, and he knew it. Maybe, just maybe, his message could be seen by someone, if only they were to wander across the lab in the future. He quickly pushed the table the computer sat on to the corner of the room, hoping it wouldn't be broken in the mess that was surely about to come. Then, he grabbed a piece of paper, writing: Turn On and Read.

After he had the paper stuffed into the keyboard crack, he put it on sleep mode, so that it would not die before it had the chance to reach someone.

BANG! The door had been broken down, and at least seven or eight rotts came shuffling in. Max walked away from the computer, leading the herd to the other side of the room. Coming to terms with his fate, Max fell to his knees, holding his arms out. He took one final look at the computer, then shut his eyes...

The pain only lasted a few seconds, soon being taken over by death. A rott's bite can turn a man, but a rott's feast... They stand no chance.