2020: The Pandemic - Zombie Edition

1: The Hospital

True! --nervous --very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses --not destroyed --not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily --how calmly I can tell you the whole story.

-Edgar Allan Poe

*

Beau and his sister Charmaine were sitting in a dimmed waiting room. Their friend, Michael, was hit by a rubber bullet during a protest. He had walked straight into an open field between protesters and policemen. The nasty wound on his shoulder was the result, so they grabbed him and brought him to see medical treatment.

It was past midnight now and it started to drizzle outside. This would make the walk home even worse, Beau thought to himself. He stretched his arms above his head until they made a satisfying crack sound.

"Give it a rest." He said, breaking the silence in the waiting room.

"I just want to watch the news, idiot." Charmaine barked back, while trying to make the old TV work. She even whacked it a couple of times with the remote.

"I don't like what they said earlier on the radio." She added and readjusted the mask they were forced to wear during the pandemic.

"You mean the entire 'missing-corpses' ideal? C'mon, you really that dumb?"

"Shut up!"

"No, you shut up!"

"Both of you shut up!" a middle-aged man said a few seats away. He had been reading, but grew annoyed by the bickering between the unruly siblings.

"Mr. Harold, I didn't even notice you." Beau pulled down on his own mask and grinned with a set of white teeth.

"I've been sitting here since you entered the building, young man."

"My bad." Beau faked a sheepish smile, while mentally rolling his eyes at his history teacher. The creak of one of the doors saved the siblings from the awkward encounter with their teacher. Michael stepped out with a bandaged arm. He waved at the nearest nurse and limped towards his friends.

"Let's get out of here."

~*~

The rain ceased to stop and made the walk home uncomfortable. While leaving the hospital Beau naturally became aware of his surroundings. This area of the city didn't have a great reputation and with the looting happening, he couldn't help but feel uneasy.

"I can't believe those pigs actually shot me." Michael halfheartedly scratched his bandaged wound, while laughing as if it didn't happen.

"Be glad that you're white." Charmaine scoffed at his carelessness and punched his wounded shoulder. They both knew that it was going to leave a mark, her strength was no joke.

"Yeah, yeah  it could've been worse, but I'm still surprised."

"You going to chicken out now?" Beau commented with a half-raised eyebrow.

"Now way bro! I was just saying that- Wait, is he okay?"

Both Beau and Charmaine fixed their identical, dark set of eyes on what he was pointing at. Across the street stumbled a man over a bench, his clothes drenched by the weather.