My eyes slowly blinked open.
Where am I? I thought wearily. This wasn't my bedroom...this was somewhere completely different. And I was moving.
I began to lift my hand to rub the sleep out of my eyes, but stopped shortly. I was trapped. Not just trapped- I was tied down to...to a gurney?
I finally realized where I was- a hospital, and someone was pushing the bed through the dark, abandoned corridor. I tilted my head back to see a doctor pushing me down the hall. I couldn't make out anything but what he was wearing; scrubs and a surgeon's mask, but not any facial features.
"Where am I?" I asked him, my voice cracking near the end. He didn't respond. It didn't even seem like he noticed that I spoke. I swallowed hard. "Hey! Where am I?! Where's my brother?!"
Still nothing. He continued to push the gurney through the hallway and stared straight ahead. My heart began to race. I struggled against the straps, trying desperately to free my arms and legs, but it was pointless. The restraints were so tight they nearly cut off the circulation.
Suddenly, we stopped moving. The doctor moved to unlock a large, windowless door and pushed the bed inside.
I heard him utter a single word.
"Infected," he said, and shut the door behind him, leaving me alone in a room that was pitch black except for the flickering light above my head. I heard the soft click that meant he locked the door and the sound of his footsteps retreating down the hallway.
"Hey!" I screamed. "Come back! You can't leave me here!"
There was a quiet moan in response to my cries. Then two. Three more voices joined in.
I froze and saw the figures of people emerge from the darkness, cold dead eyes piercing mine as they struggled to limp their way toward me with childlike clumsiness. As they got closer, I realized that I recognized a few of the faces. They were all people I knew; my little brother Tanner, my dad, my aunt, my best friend, my neighbor...
I looked down at my stomach and saw that my shirt was torn to reveal my flesh, which was swollen and dripping with blood from a bitemark.
My head snapped back up to see the now dead faces of my friends and family next to me. They began to tear at my skin and lift whatever they could to their greedy mouths as I screamed in pain.
Then everything went black.
My eyes yanked open to the familiar walls of my bedroom. I was breathing hard, and covered in a light sheen of sweat.
It was...it was just a nightmare, I thought. I sat up to turn on my bedside lamp and looked at the clock; 3:24 a.m. I sighed and ran my fingers through my hair.
A dream...but it felt so real. As dramatic as the scenario was, I really felt like it was happening. I know I felt those things tearing me apart, bit by bit. I shuddered, still hearing the sound of them sucking my blood off their fingers.
Infected. The word turned over in my mind. Infected because of the bite? I couldn't help but raise my shirt, half-expecting to see the swollen bite mark, but instead, finding nothing but the plain, pale flesh of my stomach.
"Stupid," I muttered aloud. Of course it wasn't real. Whatever was happening out there...it's all just a story. The world is still the same, right?
Still, I knew that without that lamp on, I wouldn't be able to sleep tonight. I crawled back under the covers and wrapped myself tightly, trying to expel the dream from my mind and go back to sleep.
Tomorrow will be better, I thought. Tomorrow will be better.