Pain and red. The concrete presses up against my face. Even though it's black, I still see blood red. I will my eyes to flicker open, and they do. My head feels empty, and it aches. It aches badly. Using the concrete as a sort of trampoline, I pull myself to my feet and stumble around out into the street. There are others. They're leaning on poles, stumbling, just like me. I slide down next to a pole and hold my head in my hands. I don't know how much more I can take. I don't know how long I sit there, my head in my hands.
One day.
One night.
Two days.
Two nights.
Three days after my arrival, something happens. I'm sitting there, like always, unwilling to move. Two days into my silent vigil, I recognized a insatiable hunger in my stomach, a hole. And it will not go away. It will not go away. Late into the third day, several of the other infected look up. They're tentative, and then they start screaming. Some primal instinct tells me to follow them. I clamber unsteadily into my feet and start to run with the others, blending into a single, primal horde of feverish bodies.
We've run for about a quarter of a mile when I hear it. A wailing siren that causes my headache to blossom into new realms of pain. Something tells me that in order to cease this inescapable pain, I have to stop the noise. I have to stop the noise. I have to stop the noise. I can't breathe, my head is going to explode. It's going to explode. And then new color explodes into being. Bright yellow and blue and green, beautiful, non-red colors. They are outlining several forms that seem to be pumping with something. It looks far too wonderful to ignore. I make a beeline for the farthest one, as the others are occupying the first two. I scream at him and he fires wildly, but I barely notice the frenzied bullets whizzing by. There's only the heat coming off of him in waves that can warm up my freezing body. And then I leap onto him, tackling him, my teeth going for his neck and they penetrate.
I'm biting and blood flows, my teeth going through the skin and through the sinew and muscle until it connects with bone. I can't stop what I'm doing as I grapple with him, holding his gurgling form to the asphault. He fights but I can tell he's losing the battle to live. I bite and I tear at his flesh, enjoying the warmth slowly flowing back into my limbs, and my head seems to feel like it's floating, because oh, the pain is gone. The pain and the cold are gone. They're gone. I can barely believe it, but even after they're gone, I continue biting and tearing. I don't know why, but something feels satisfying as I swallow and destroy his corpse, but before long, it's finished. It wasn't long enough. As soon as I lean back from bones and scraps of flesh, the cold and the pain come back.
They come back.
They come back.
I don't want to move from here. I can't, my seemingly frozen limbs won't let me. So I lock into a kneeling position, simply sitting there, waiting. Waiting for the end, for the next warmth and euphoria, and that's it. I sit there for a week, motionless. A statue. And that's when it happens. Cold metal presses into my neck, and I smell it. Him. One of the living. Before I can react, before I can turn around to see his face before he dies, he says quietly, "Your name was Carolina." I start to turn, to lunge, ignoring this foreign statement.
And then there's a bang.
And I'm released.