Hello?
That seems to be a word we say a lot. A word that could save your life, sad as it seems. My name is James, but I've grown up with the name 'Jim', and it's stuck, which I'm a little disappointed with. I always saw myself as a James. Oh well. Names aren't important. Anyway, my name is James and for the last month or so, I was in a coma. I'm awake now, obviously. It's been less than a week since I woke up, and when I saw in that first day was the worst mindfuck you could ever imagine.
Hello?
There couldn't be anything particularly sinister about a motorway petrol station, you'd think. You wouldn't expect the place to be full of mentally mutated corpses unless you knew. However, in this kind of situation, you either knew or you were dead. Four of us, only four of us.
You feel ill like you never thought you could when the air ranks of death. Palpable, tangible death in every breath. God, had I known what was going to happen, what I would see, what I'd feel, what I'd, elementarily, do… I'd have never gone in. Thinking about it, it was stupid, I have this sick feeling that I was trying to prove myself to Selina.
Or maybe it was something different, something worse. God, I was still – I am still – aching over the loss of Mum and Dad. I was angry. I wanted revenge on the whole sodding virus. You don't think straight when you're upset. You don't think straight. You think like a wild, angry creature. You think… for a second, you think it wouldn't be too bad if you were… like them. It sounds so bad when you say it but it's true. They didn't want me to wake up, they knew, they knew about it all and they left me; I didn't know what hurt more, the fact they were dead or that they kept me blind from the truth. I sound like I'm going on about the fucking Matrix.
He was only a boy. Like Selina said, if I hadn't killed him, he would have killed me. I had him under my foot and I smashed his face in. What else could I have done? I couldn't bear the thought of killing these people that had rescued me and got me out of London alive. I'd seen someone change, I'd seen people that had been my family's friends since as long as I could remember, fall through the window, eyes ablaze, drooling blood. I could understand why they called it 'Rage'. But when that boy came at me, I got him like it was second nature. I'd never killed anyone before. I hit the vicar, but that didn't count. I still thought it was all some vile nightmare.
God, let it end.
Hello?
Let this whole fucking nightmare end now.
Hello?
Don't wake up.