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- January 24, 2008
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[size=1]Just something I've been toying around with. Let me know if you think I should continue. Oh- feel free to copy and paste into a word document if you have trouble with the font :/[/size]
[size=0]- “The cure.” It was meant to stop all signs of physical aging. No woman would ever have to endure a wrinkle. No man would ever lose a strand of hair. Even in their old age, bones would stay strong and skin would stay smooth. Did they know the side effects? No. There had not been nearly enough time to find out if any existed. Did they care? Of course not. They had been offered a sip of the fountain of youth, and there was nothing quite as sweet.
Then… came the infection. It started in New York. The infection spread like a wave of disaster, hurling swiftly over skyscrapers and through the busy avenues. It drove anyone or anything that it came into contact with insane. People ran mad. People killed people. Animals prowled the streets, tearing the hope from any soul with a vicious bite. It spread. It spread so quickly even the armed forces were taken by surprise. Barely anyone escaped. Those who did were scooped up by government officials and never heard from again. By then, New York City had become a gaping cesspool of infection. It had to be contained. Nuclear weapons were the solution. With a fierce, otherworldly explosion, they had wiped out the greatest city in existence…[/size]
[size=4]TWO YEARS LATER Chicago, Illinois[/size]
[size=3]BRYAN[/size]
[size=0]The graveyard shift in the Michael Reese Emergency Room was about as active as the grave of Henry VIII at a similar hour. Resident doctors were virtually nowhere to be found, as meager hospital staff roamed the halls envying one another’s jobs and self-titling theirs the worst.
“Bryan… why don’t you just go home?”
Blue irises peered out from beneath shortly cropped, spiked raven hair. The call came from Dr. James Stromm, a burly, balding man who looked as famished as he was aged. “I hardly think five paramedics are necessary tonight.”
“What, and miss out on all the fun? You just wanna do it all yourself,” sarcastic humor lined his youthful, deep tone, “Why don’t you take a break? You look starved.” Compassion lit up his features.
The older man sighed. “Maybe I will. This has been one of the slowest nights I’ve ever seen.” And he rounded the corner into the nearby corridor.
“Hey, isn’t that supposed to be a good thing?” It went unanswered.
The lobby was stranded. The dull, antique air-conditioner seemed to spew frigid air down from the vents, cradling the dusty linoleum and practically beckoning the dead. Bryan glanced around for a moment, considering his solitude, and edged down onto the nearest sofa. The doors to the back burst open, and he shot right back up.
“Hey, Wolfe, we have a call for an injured, old dude! Let’s go!”
The ride out into the outskirts of the city was a generally quiet one. Bryan’s teammates weren’t especially welcoming to the new and younger paramedic. Granted, he had enough muscle to discourage any bullying, but after a few weeks of cold-shouldering, Bryan wasn’t sure he wouldn’t have preferred being bullied.
The dancing red lights slowly dimmed, as the ambulance rolled to a stop in front of a large, Victorian home. Bryan leapt out into the wintry night, eyes flicking around in a disapproving manner. He loathed suburbia. He had escaped it. Why the hell would he want to come back? There was something about the cookie-cutter houses, spacious lands, and empty streets that grinded his heart and knotted his stomach. A subtle flash brought back history, as his teammates readied a gurney for an elderly man whose condition was probably the result of tripping over air.
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“Lisa!” The young adolescent hissed into the silence, as a short silhouette clambered over in his direction. “Stop making so much noise! D’you want to get us caught?” He recognized the frantic shaking of her head. “Then stay close and watch where you’re walking, huh? There’s no way I’m letting that asshole anywhere near you again.” Bryan remembered his way through the cellar. As he led his younger sister through the obscurity, memories flashed before his eyes as lifelike as the small beams of sunlight he spotted in the distance.
His father had walked out on his family when Bryan was fairly young, and his mother had whored around until one man struck her as decent enough to marry. She did. His stepfather was the antichrist. There was no one quite as sadistic. His stepfather had always warned him to stay out of the cellar, and it was one, curious night that Bryan found out why. He had crept down the stony steps, noting the few articles of furniture in the room: a worn couch, an antique television, a dusty VCR, and a relatively new camera. Atop the VCR, tapes were stacked upon other tapes, all unlabeled and hued as though they had been repeatedly used. Bryan popped one into the machine, turning on the television and watching in horror.
The following week, Bryan had decided no place was as awful as the house he lived in. He warned his sister to keep her distance from their stepfather until they were ready to leave, and most of the time… it worked.
“Alright, we’re here. Watch the stairs,” he reminded Lisa as he led her up the steps, shoving at the duel doors. His heart froze with terror. They were locked. They hadn’t ever been locked before. Why now? Suddenly, the opposite door to the cellar creaked open.
“Goddamnit, I knew you were planning something, huh boy?” That voice was horrifyingly familiar. Loud, angered thuds signaled heavy footsteps down the stairway they had entered from.
“Lisa, run!” Bryan cried, shoulder-tackling the doors to little avail. He turned back in time to watch a pair of gargantuan hands shoot toward him and clamp around his neck. The boy sputtered, his sister’s horrified cries filling the cellar from afar. His legs swung in the air uselessly, trying to cause some sort of damage but unable to get the proper momentum. His fingers clawed into his stepfather’s wrists, but they remained firm and true in their intentions. He felt life slipping from his grasp. His eyes began to close.
Suddenly, with a deep howl, Bryan was released and fell to the ashy floor. His stepfather clung to his unmentionables, falling to his knees. Lisa stood behind him looking stunned at the effect. Without another thought, Bryan quickly arose and dashed toward his sister, ushering her back out through the other entrance, and out the front door. They were free.
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“Hey, Wolfe, you gonna help us out, here, or are you gonna stand there like an idiot all night?”
Bryan exhaled deeply, biting his lower lip and following his two coworkers toward the mossy house that awaited them. They noticed a squad car not far ahead.
“What the hell are the cops doing here? The neighbors said they just thought he fell.”
“Damn pigs are probably just tryin’ to show us up again.”
“Or they could be trying to help?” They both looked at Bryan as he spoke, narrowing their eyes.
“Who’s side are you on, anyway?” The new boy rolled his azure eyes, following the others in with the gurney in his hand. “Well go ahead, golden boy!” Bryan sighed and stepped inside ahead of them.
“Hello?” The only response was more silence. Stepping into the house, Bryan was dosed with a disgusting hint of nostalgia. The smell of age clung to the air like the cold, although everything felt unusually tight-spaced. Mint green walls were littered with family photos, probably of people who barely thought to call the elderly resident. “It’s the paramedics from Michael Reese! Is anyone here?” Something felt horribly wrong. The taller, lanky paramedic gestured toward the second floor and the short, circular one nodded back. He started up the stairs. Left with the meaner of the two, Bryan couldn’t help but juggle with the suspicions dancing in his mind. “Where could he be?”
“Well, I don’t know, wise guy, I mean it’s only a mansion!” Bryan shot back a dirty look. “Hey, asshole, I’ve only ever tried to be nice to you. Cut me some damn slack, would you? It’s not easy working with people who act like five year-olds.” The round, older man looked ready to pounce, but he merely turned away, craning his neck to look into what appeared to be the kitchen. His eyes lit up. “Holy shi- Go call for help!”
“Aren’t we help?” Bryan rushed forward to his side, eyes straining in the dark to see what was wrong. There… spread on the kitchen tile… was a police officer, lying face down in a pool of what appeared to be his own blood. “Jesus!” Bryan felt his stomach drop, his face flushing pale as he stumbled over to the doorway. Before he managed his way out, a blood-curling cry pierced the dry air from behind him. Bryan turned on his heel, trying to figure out what he was seeing. His partner was definitely a part of the jumble of limbs that now stood by the kitchen. There were two other men, both much larger and paler. They grabbed hold of the plump paramedic… and they bit into him. “What’re you doing to him?” A low snarl alerted him from behind. He whipped around once more to spot a score of ferocious-looking people, all sprinting toward the house with hell on their heels. There wasn’t a shred of humanity in their distant eyes. What were they? Bryan panicked, exhaling shortly before slamming the door and turning the lock.
A short, horrified whimper passed his lips as he circled once more, watching the monstrous people biting at his lifeless teammate on the floor. One’s head whipped up to peer at him. It was time to go. “Anderson!” He called, as a storm of pounds erupted upon the front door. Then… a single tear of blood dropped down a breath away from his face. With all the terror and hesitancy in the world, Bryan slowly curved his head back to look for a source. It was, as he feared. Staring right back down at him was his other partner, Anderson, his eyes rolled back in his head, and his mutilated body strung over the railing. A flash of movement brought Bryan back to level. One of the cannibals had already gotten to his feet, and Bryan raced toward the carpeted stairs, scrabbling up to the second-floor landing. Without giving the snarling creature at the other end of the landing a second glance, the surviving paramedic leapt into the nearest room and slammed the door behind him. Goddamn suburbia.[/size]
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