The Infected

Chapter 1

 

 

3 weeks before the outbreak

 

“Dad, I don’t wanna move!” Emma, my 14 year old daughter, groaned for the 50th time that day. “Too bad Ems, we’re doing this for your mother, this is the biggest job opportunity she has ever had.” Emma just sighed and stared angrily down at her feet, knowing that she would never win the argument.

About a week ago, my wife Samantha had been offered a job at one of the biggest scientific research centers in the country, HasCorp. She had immediately accepted the offer and we had started packing up the house. Our kids, Brendan, who’s 10, and Emma, had been less than thrilled about moving, but really they had no choice in the matter.

Fast forward two weeks and we were finally settled into our new home. The kids had both managed to make some friends and they were both pretty happy with their new schools. Me and Sam had both quickly accustomed to our new jobs, mine being a teaching position at Bren’s school. We were all happy. Little did we know that very soon, all of this was going to change.

The first recorded case of the virus was 2 days before Fathers Day. Everything was fine, and then the victim, who’s name I do not know, started to feel the first symptoms of the virus, although back then, no one actually knew that there was a virus. A fever, headache, nausea and weakness in the limbs came first. Then came the memory loss and complete loss of movement in all limbs. Then came radical temperature changes in the body. Then came death. And then came the worst part. They came back. As a complete, utter, terrifying monster. This…thing…couldn’t remember anything about its life. Its like it was a completely different person.

No one in the same room as it survived.

This continued on for weeks, people at random would get sick and then die and then turn into these monsters. People were calling them “the infected”, and they looked a lot like the zombies from that TV show The Walking Dead.

Fast forward another two weeks and these “zombies” were crawling all over the city. No one had any clue how the virus had broken out, and no one knew how it had spread so quickly but everyone was terrified that they would be the next ones to get infected.

People had started living underground, people had moved to the country and I had heard of countless cases of suicide, because people would prefer to die under their own circumstances rather than being turned into a monster. No one I knew had been turned yet and everyday I hoped and prayed that no one would.

Until my own son came home complaining of a headache.

Sam started freaking out, as did Emma. I tried to keep a cool head, remonstrating that it could be just that; a headache, but no matter how hard I tried to convince my family, and myself, that nothing was going to happen, there was always that little voice in the back of my mind telling me that it had begun; my son would soon be a monster. The next few hours were absolute torture as Bren’s symptoms got worse and the reality finally dawned on us that it wasn’t just a simple headache, and that we had to get out of the house and leave Bren behind. That was the hardest thing I had ever had to do. Sam and Ems were crying and I was barely holding back tears. We all got into the car and drove as far away as we could from the house. From Bren. From then on we only had one goal, and that was to survive. We kept driving out into the country, just trying to get away from where the virus had originated. We eventually had to stop for fuel in this tiny little town just outside of the city. There was barely anything in this one horse town. A corner shop, a tiny little rundown pharmacy, a gas station and a few small houses lined the empty, dirt track roads. A sign hung above the gas station with the paint peeled off the letters, making it illegible. I opened the door and cautiously stepped out, just incase there happened to be an infected around the corner. I told Emma and Sam to stay in the car while I filled up the tank. A few minutes later we were ready to go and we left without paying. What’s the point of paying for gas when there’s a deadly disease spreading like wildfire around the country? And it’s not like anyone was there to take the money anyway.

We drove for a few more hours and we came to a small abandoned farmhouse, out in the middle of nowhere. We slowly walked inside and after scoping out all the rooms, we concluded that it was safe to stay in for a few nights.

 

Yay, new story! I like this one, and I know where I wanna go with it, so that's good. I'm really not very good at updating, so i apologise in advance for the slow updates. I don't really know why I'm writing an author's note, I'm not sure anyone actually reads these anyway :D

thanks for reading, if you do

xo Sarah