This is my first story on here but I have been stalking this website for a while now. I would love to see some critique and general feedback. I'll try to post a new chapter every Saturday if all goes well. Hope you guys like it. :)
It's been three years since I last saw a human face. I have seen faces, but not human faces. I was staying in an apartment with my friend, Garland, when Dr. Krippin's mutated virus came to the Dallas/Fort Worth area. We were attending The Art Institute of Dallas together, each of us deservedly granted with scholarships. At night we shared our creations. She flaunted her newest high-life chic outfit and I shared my concept art or a freshly sculpted game character.
I loved sculpting my imaginations on a computer screen and she loved drawing cute, daring, or practical outfits and then wearing them but we shared a white hot passion for art. It kept us in the same apartment for two years with only one or two minor arguments. It split our apartment in half; her half of our room was pale pink with black, white and grey accents while my half was white and blue, no exceptions. The bathroom was mine (color-wise), the kitchen and living room were hers. We came to an easy accord after one week amongst the cardboard boxes.
We met in our freshman year of high school- that would be eleven years ago now. Friendship was almost instantaneous and it lasted throughout the first semester, the second semester, summer break, and throughout the following years. Our bond stood unyieldingly against catastrophic break-ups and other trials of the high school life. We spent the holidays together and threw surprise birthday parties in strange places. College plans started in junior year. By that time I had a self portrait from Garland on my wall with her name signed on it and she had a self portrait from me labeled "René". Our artistic passions led and carried us to the Art Institute of Dallas.
But, of course, I still have to get back around to how it ended. Three years ago there was panic in the streets as airborne wildfire spread, killing everyone it met in less than a twenty-four hour day. We saw the news reports about Krippin's virus's mutation and fears that were boiling in the metroplex, so instead of showing off our creations after school we talked about it over creamer and coffee. Soon we had assured ourselves that we could ride it out together despite the hype.
Tomorrow is Saturday. We can skip school with no consequences at all. Stay inside all day and the day after that, we thought. We were very laid back people who didn't really worry about anything, believing that everything would work itself out. If worse comes to worse we can always just roll with the punches. That kind of mentality led us to sleep in that morning, phones silenced and doorbell disconnected, as usual. A simple do not disturb sign just wouldn't cut it. Someone had probably tried to ring the doorbell as evacuations started; knocked on the door, but we were also deep sleepers.
Minutes after we woke up something strange in the air alerted us to the problem. Strangely busy sounds came from outside. As the bedlam got louder, Garland looked out our window to try to see past the other buildings. I peered through the peep hole in our front door and checked the locks regularly. It was apparent that things really had gone wrong. It was stupid to have stayed.
Our nerves, if ropes, would have looked like hairy snakes. So much for laid back. We covered our mouths and noses with some of Garland's scarves after a man on radio reminded us that it was airborne. I can't remember what we were listening to at the time but he must have been from the World Health Organization or the Center for Disease Control. Military vehicles rolled in to keep order among evacuees and helicopters came in droves for the news or to carry people to safety. Our only major argument came an hour after the virus.
It was just a product of fear and anxiety. If we could have somehow stayed completely calm through it all we never would have argued. Neither of us could decide whether or not to leave or to stay. Both of us doubted ourselves and each other. To go outside in search of a means of evacuation meant risking infection and compromising the safety of our home, however to stay within that safety meant to risk infection in some other way or to risk possible starvation.
In the end we stayed put, afraid for our lives because of Krippin's virus, which boasted 10,009 cured cancer patients. That's what it started as: a cure for cancer. Dr. Alice Krippin reprogrammed the measles virus to target cancer cells but then it mutated into this.
The night was very hectic. Most people had left the apartment building but some had become infected and stayed inside their homes. One, or maybe two, changed. They survived the virus but it took over and so they paced back and forth past all the apartment doors, banging on them and demanding to be let in. They couldn't properly articulate any words at all. What words they tried to form came out like paper through a shredder. It was harsh or gurgling and sometimes they whined and wheezed. When they did that it sounded like they were pleading for help. Then they became aggressive again and pounded on the doors, snarling and hacking.
Someone came to our door after hearing the radio. The radio was supposed to give us something else to try to focus on but it brought it to our door. At least the voice was far too distorted to identify as a neighbor's.
Early the next morning Garland said that she felt nauseous and hot. I took care of her to the best of my ability for several hours but her fever rose and she slipped into delirium. She became irritable and swatted away the wet rag that I desperately tried to cool her with.
Watching her chocolate brown eyes flutter and roll made me sick to my stomach. The whites slowly turned spidery gray, followed by the irises. Her auburn hair was dark and stringy; wet with sweat. Sometimes if I brushed over it too roughly it came out in clumps. As she laid on her bed sweat pooled above her collar bones. Her fair skin was turning grayish and pale. Nothing could save her and I knew but I couldn't help but wonder how she had gotten infected. Why had it taken so long? Why wasn't I infected? Was I just not feeling the effects yet?
It doesn't matter now. She survived the sickness like whoever was outside that night. In the evening Garland sat up and she jerked her head from side to side, surveying the bedroom. She looked at me with absolutely no recognition and growled. The gun was already nearby me so I picked it up and threatened her with it. I told her to calm down and stay on the bed. I really didn't want to shoot her. As you can imagine, shooting your best friend would disagreeable at best. She brought her legs underneath herself, put her hands on the edge of the bed and leaped right for me. The gun went off before I could think about what I was doing. The snarling turned to shrieking as the bullet ripped through her left lung.
The crying started after the fourth shot tolled through the room. After a while (it's impossible for me to tell how long I stayed there) I took what I wanted into the living room and locked the bedroom door behind me. For three days afterward I listened to the city descend into relative silence. At night I heard other people like Garland.
The smell of her decaying corpse that had started spreading through the apartment soon had me packing. I couldn't go get the gun. It was in the bedroom on the floor where I dropped it. I couldn't stand to see that gun, much less to use it again even if it was necessary to save my own life. I had used it to shoot her four times. I watched her blood become speckles on the wall and a soggy red spot on the carpet. I couldn't stand to see Garland now.
I took a large kitchen knife with me, the sharpest I could find, and pulled away the barricade from the front door. I quietly descended the stairs and crossed the parking lot. Very few things moved. I saw no one.
Later I found an empty house that had been for sale in an established neighborhood full of tall trees and prim gardens. I felt wrong breaking into it. When the door finally opened I was met with cool, sad air. Although the aura felt sacrosanct, with the peacefulness of a spirit put to rest, I moved in. By nightfall I had a dozen lit candles throughout the barren house and a peanut butter-honey sandwich for company. As the sound of survivors essentially looting the other houses reached the living room the candles had to be put out one by one, so my sandwich and I were the only ones left.
The air pressure seemed to increase as I thought about what had happened in the past six days. It was now Thursday and Garland was dead. I killed her with four shots from my gun after she got sick and survived. Did I help her? Did my efforts to keep her alive push her to change? We chose to stay and acted like nothing bad could happen. Now everyone is dead as far as I can tell.
It must have started when cancer patients, who had surged into hospitals for the cure, came home. They were cured as it tracked down cancer cells, but then the virus mutated and started killing everything. It spread like the Black Plague on steroids, killing everyone, and firing the shot that started my grueling three year race.