Here's a story! It needs editing and such(not to mention a title!), but I think it it's still decent enough to post. I slashed off a paragraph at the end, because I didn't think it gelled with the rest of the story.
Frank stares at the fifty-inch plasma TV, the only new thing in the small apartment, and the only that was not covered in grime. He shifts his considerable bulk for increased comfort, loving the fact that the chair was like a comforting glove around him. On the screen, thousands of the infected on one side of a barrier of tanks, while at the other end of the street was a equally large amount of protesters and reporters. If Frank was more observant rather then an unemployed snob, he would have noticed that the situation was no longer confined to the east coast, but had spread to the east like a wildfire. Frank had always figured the news was for events that didn’t concern him, but today he was wrong.
He watches with a small amount of interest as one of the ‘frothing zombies’ (as they were called by the press) leaped up onto a tank and took a threatening step forward as it screamed, “RAST! RAST!” A solider that was wearing a heavy oxygen tank and a myriad web of filters had been standing on the tank firing into the buzzing hive. An infected leaped up a vertical ten feet with the help of two others, and now it snarled. The solider shifted his aim and neatly blew six holes into the more immediate threat, almost ripping the abomination in half. The thing still lurched forward, infected blood pouring from its grizzly wound as the solider steps forward and smashes the butt of his assault rifle into the depraved creature’s head. It dropped a short distance and stays down as the solider begins to take a step back. It was too late, however, as three more infected leaped at him as he shifted his aim towards the second zombie. His expression one of wild panic, he fires into the closest one as the other three drag him down into the writhing mob. The other six troops on the tank scramble down, but there’s no point. The infected look up and hop frantically against the barricades, their eyes blazing with feral intelligence…
What had started out as another ‘skip’ news piece to Frank had mutated into the largest threat the United States and Western Europe had ever faced. It was just small chemical spill somewhere in Idaho by a pharmaceutical company, two workers die, more exposed, and the story at eleven. Some lawsuits were threatened in the intervening hours, but nothing too interesting. Frank was paying much more attention to the World Series at the time, with the Dodgers facing the Red Socks. Twelve later, the workers that had been exposed had gone insane with something that resembled rabies, only that the infected only attacked the infected, and did not seem to feel pain. The patients had left their room, attacked nursing staff, and had rapidly begun to propagate throughout the hospital.
Frank had infrequently monitored the problem in between World Series matches. It spread out of the hospital quickly, spreading to the streets. Local law enforcement had arrived in the form of two squad cars, which were overwhelmed by a hundred rampaging crazies. The infected scattered in rough groups of five, avoiding the police backup. Experts had reckoned they were hiding, and they were right. The things would hide in the day, and come out at night to hunt. They didn’t have any advantages, but Frank figured it was their version of Dodgers versus Brewers. The underdog didn’t have a chance, and ordinary people were the underdog. They hunted in packs, and their numbers grew.
The breaking point was Jack’s Bar. Four hundred people, small families with young kids, crammed in to listen to Neil Bergman’s crooning. Neil’s musical career was skyrocketing. Local music critic Jack Lorton said that the only way Neil’s career could go was up, and he was right. Four major record executives sat at the bar in Jack, shooting each other glares and each fingering a business card. They would never get to make an offer. Halfway through the third song, sirens began to whine nearby. Although a few worried glances had been cast, nobody did anything. By the fifth song, the howls were audible. As the crowd began to move for the doors, shots blared out as the sirens screeched around the corner. Two hundred zombies ripped into the bar, dozens leaping in through the skylights, many leaping through the front windows. Screams rang from the kitchen as the chefs were bitten. It was far too late, the zombies hacking through the crowd with bloody efficiency.
Neil Bergman was spotted two months later in LA, clothes stained and bloody, sprinting down Main Street with his pack.
___
The infection had ravaged the country, and that hadn’t bothered Frank. What bothered Frank was the World Series had been cancelled, and most channels were now running round-the-clock news about the efforts to contain infection, although more streets were taken by the monsters everyday. The United Soviet States had turned their holdings in East Germany into the world’s biggest containment area, layered with barbwire, patrols and mines. Frank did the only thing a self-respecting couch potato would do in the God-forbid situation of there being nothing good on TV. He turned on his DVD player and began to watch The Best 10,000 Moments in Sports History.
___
Nick Elder was panicking. He was sprinting down the empty sewage tunnel, a faint whiff of waste still detectable. That wasn’t his problem. His family was sprinting behind him, his two year old daughter on her mommy’s neck, and his little boy who should’ve been entering kindergarten clutching his mother’s hand fiercely. He couldn’t see them, of course, but he knew that’s what they were doing. Ray was running ahead of him, clutching the twelve-cell flashlight with white-knuckle intensity in his left hand and a sleek Colt .45 in the other. Nick was cradling a shotgun as he ran. Nick’s lungs were pounding, but that didn’t matter. What mattered is that Ray had been a sewage worker before the splitting of Berlin, and he knew a tunnel that was used to smuggle people from one side to the other. “Official guard policy was to arrest the travelers,” Ray had said, “but a quick cash infusion solved all problems.”
Then he had grimaced and had muttered just loud enough for Nick to hear, “But that was pre-outbreak.”
Nick and his family had travelled with his family from the UK to West Berlin. It had not been an easy trip, with a frightening plague racing across the mainland. His father had originally accompanied them, but he had left them in France, saying he wanted to meet with a few old friends before everybody died. Nick’s dad gave them a list of names with labelled phone numbers, and they had followed the path. Their contacts had varied in wealth, age, and nationality, but they all had one thing in common: a pale look of barely controlled terror. The final contact on the list had been Ray Green, a former manager at a small electronic based in America. When his company decided to move to West Germany in the early 80s, he had been a young man of 25 and had followed. The company had disintegrated five years later, rumours were spoken of embezzlements, and Ray suddenly had to find much more humbling work. He had talked about himself while sipping a cup of coffee and tracing a single blue line along a complicated diagram, and explained he didn’t want to go back home to the US because he liked Europe more while crossing off several sections of the chart. Proficient in German, English, and French, he was the perfect guide for Nick’s final leg of the journey, the attempt to get over the Wall.
Nothing could have helped prepare Nick for this. Bloodthirsty screams were ricocheting off the walls, amplified by the tunnel’s acoustics. Cold sweat mixed in with hot sweat on Nick’s forehead and he ran faster. His little boy was yelling, “Mommy, the boogeymen are coming!”
The insane cries of nonsense were rapidly approaching, and Nick knew he was running out of time. Ray was muttering under his breath in multiple languages words that Nick assumed were not taught in school. Abruptly, Ray stopped running and shoved upward, the light focussing on a tattered manhole. Ray grunted and shoved, and faint cries of, “Das Einsteigeloch öffnet sich!” could be heard from above. Vicious snarls were close, and Nick screamed, “RAY! GO! GO!”
Light poured into the tunnel as the cover was suddenly lifted off Ray’s shoulders. Three pairs of arms covered in thick, grey, sleeves with the Soviet flag on them reached down and hauled Ray up. Ray rapidly babbled in German, and as Nick reached the tunnel, a bitter blast of curses in half a dozen tongues and dialects reached Nick. The arms reached down with surprising speed and dragged up quickly, his scrawny frame no trouble for their rescuers. Nicks blinked as he was lifted out, the light battering his eyes, and then he was thrown harshly to the side. He heard a click, then his wife screaming. Her screams mixed into the depraved screams of the infected as he opened his eyes. A cry of “MOMMY” pierced the sounds of terrible hunger emanating from the monsters in the dark. His eyes opened to a solider arched back, boots braced against the concrete for a might throw. Nestled in the troop’s hand was a black sphere. Nick’s mouth fell open, but no sound came out. The troop threw the grenade into the tunnel as the two hauled the thick cover back on. Ray was arguing with someone who looked like an officer in a foreign tongue. The explosion sounded muffled beneath Nick, and his eyes swam with tears as one of the troops pulled up his sleeve, dabbed his arm with a swab, and jabbed his arm with a needle. Nick burst into tears while the troop extracted blood, dropped a device into the needle, and smiled as he pulled out the device. It was glowing green, but Nick didn’t care that he was uninfected. He was young, and he had so much to live for up to a minute ago. He stood up, grief quickly turned to anger. He stomped over to Ray as the troops stared uneasily at him. Ray turned to him and offered a sad smile, “I got you out, my friend. You’re-”
Nick cut him off with a brutal blow to Ray’s nose, breaking it easily. He screamed, “YOU DIDN’T SAVE THEM, BUT YOU SAVED ME! YOU DIDN’T SAVE THEM, BUT YOU SAVED ME!” The three troops lunged forward and plunged another needle into his arm, this one filled with a strong sedative. His awareness faded and his eyes slowly closed as he saw Ray clutching his nose (which was pouring blood), and the officer stare coldly at him, a smile which offered no compromise thinly laced across his face. The infection was being contained, but at what cost?
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Topic: Writing Workshop! (Read 19682 times)