Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives.

A. Sachs

Chapter 11

The Salt Enters the Wounds

"Sabrina!" Sean yelled as loud as he could while he kept on looking in all directions. Her and Mike were nowhere to be seen.

"Mike!" Pat yelled even higher than Sean had.

"Where the fuck are they? Did they just take off?" Sean asked out loud, though he didn't expect Pat to have an answer. He then threw the jack aside in frustration. It bounced a little when it hit the ground and continued to slide under his car.

Pat followed it all the way, but then saw something inside the car. Or the lack of that something. The backpacks they had left in the car was now gone. All four of them.

"Sean, look!" Pat said and pointed at the car.

Sean turned around and saw it. Did they take all four backpacks with them? He thought. But that doesn't make any sense.

Trying to make sense of it, he looked closer at the backseat. The guns were missing too. Obviously they had felt it necessary to relocate. Maybe they have been attacked? He thought, but that didn't add up either. That didn't explain why they took four heavy backpacks with them. Normally you would just grab your feet and run. And speaking of running, the most obvious place to run to would have been the gas station, because that was where he and Pat had been. Sean looked at the asphalt around the car. There were no bullet casings lying around either. If there had been a battle there, casings would have been all around.

"I don't think they have fled." Sean said to Pat. "Where ever they are, they are not hiding."

Pat looked puzzled at him.

"What are you saying? That they are safe?"

"Well, maybe not safe, but they certainly left the car intentionally." Sean said, pretty confident in his theory.

But what could be so important that they would leave the car? Sean thought, looking around. He noticed that there was a big apartment building right in front of him. It was the same one he and Pat had been running alongside with on their way to the gas station and back. Actually it reached all the way down to it.

"Of course!" Sean said out loud, the hope filling his heart. "They're in that building."

"What makes you think that?" Pat asked still not getting a word of what he was saying. But Sean never answered his question; he just started running to the entrance which was only a few yards away. Pat just shrugged and followed him inside.

When Sean opened the door, he suddenly realized that Mike and Sabrina could be anywhere in that building. It could take hours to find out where they were.

"Do you mind telling me why you think that they're in here?" Pat said when he finally caught up with Sean. He sighed, but decided to explain.

"I know Sabrina. I'm pretty certain that she heard somebody call for help or something, and then decided to go look."

"Some other survivors?"

"Yeah. And maybe that someone was injured and that's why they took the backpacks." Sean explained.

"It does make sense, I suppose." Par agreed. "But we will still have a problem locating them. This building is huge."

Pat was right. No way were they going to find their friends by checking each and every apartment.

There must be a better way to find them. Sean thought.

"Do you have your cell on you?" Pat asked suddenly.

"No, it's in one of the backpacks. Yours?"

"The same. Guess it wasn't going to be that easy."

Sean looked up the stairs which were lit up by a little round lamp on the wall of each floor.

"I've got an idea." He said and quickly ran outside again. He then looked up at the building to find an apartment with the lights on. That could give them a clue of their whereabouts. Unfortunately several lights were on in the windows, so it could be either one of them. Pat walked out to him.

"You know what? If we're not coming to them, then they're coming to us." He said and pointed the shotgun up in the sky.

The gunshot ripped through the silent morning, echoing through the empty street like it was a valley. As the echo died out, Pat chambered another shell. Sean got the idea, and started looking at the apartment windows with the lights on. Nothing…

Pat fired another shot. The echo dying, then silence once again. Then suddenly someone's head appeared in one of the windows. It was Mike. Both Pat and Sean faces lit up, relieved to see him.

"Sean? Pat? Is that you?" He yelled down to them.

"Of course it's us, you fuckhead!" Pat yelled back to him.

"What are you doing up there?" Sean yelled too.

"I'll explain later. You have to get up here! They're coming!" He said and pointed in the direction of the gas station.

"Who's coming..?" Sean was about to say, but it died out in a whisper as he saw what it was Mike was pointing at. A big group of undead was heading right their way, and they were moving pretty fast. They were still about 100 yards away, but with that pace they would reach them in minutes.

"Maybe firing the shotgun wasn't such a great idea." Sean said, looking at Pat as he realized that they had been attracted by the sound. Pat didn't answer this he just started running for the entrance. Forgetting everything about fixing the car, Sean just ran as fast as he could.

The door swung open as Pat pushed it. The door had opened so fast that it got swung right back at Sean when he reached it. As he got hit by it on his right shoulder, he started spinning clockwise as a reflex. It was a trick he had learned while playing football in highschool. The trick was to use the power from a tackle to make a spin, thereby tricking the opponent. This time he didn't mean to trick the door though, but simply to recover from the hit as fast as possible.

As he exited his spin he continued forward up the stairs. Pat was already far ahead of him, turning the next bend of the stairs. Sean remembered how high up the apartment window Mike had been in. It had been the fifth window from the floor. So they had a lot of stairs to climb.

When Sean reached the third floor he noticed all the blood covering the walls and steps. There were some bullet casings here and there too, but no dead bodies. The entire staircase smelled like copper and something rotten, but sweet somehow. Like rotten fruit. The smell wasn't unbearable, but Sean was still disgusted by it considering it was the blood causing the staircase to reek like that.Lucky for him and Pat, the higher floors wasn't as bad as the third. There were a couple of stains, but not much. It was like there had been a fight only at the third floor.

Suddenly Sean caught up with Pat. Not because Sean had been running faster, but simply because Pat had stopped. He would have continued, but the stairs between the fourth and the fifth had been completely blocked. On the stairs were chairs, sofas, bookshelves and all kinds of stuff. Sean even spotted a stereo system complete with speakers and amplifier. It was impossible to try and crawl over it, and to remove it all would take hours.

"Guess somebody had the same idea as us." Sean said, panting a little because of the trip up the stairs.

"Only these guys have been much more organized." Pat said pointing out some of the things in the pile. "See. It hasn't been thrown like we did. This is carefully placed, specifically to make it hard to tear apart. Whoever did this, had time to make sure nobody got past."

"But how the hell did Sabrina and Mike get past it?" Sean asked.

Then all of a sudden a rope ladder fell from the fifth floor, leaving it dangling above the stairs they had just climbed. Sean looked up to see where it came from. It was Sabrina standing there with her arms crossed, looking down at them.

"Need help?" She said grinning.

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Pat gave Sean a hand to help him get up from the rope ladder. When Sean got up, Sabrina handed back their weapons, which they had given her on their way up.

"So what is up here, since it made you decide to leave the car?" Pat asked, sounding a little offended by the way his brother and Sabrina had just left them.

"Well, we were standing around the car, seconds after you guyshad left, when suddenly a woman started yelling to us from one of the top floors. She told us that it was safe up here and that she needed help so we went to check it out." Sabrina explained as she showed them to the door. She opened it and showed them inside.

"So there are other survivors up here?" Sean asked.

"Yes, this is their apartment." Sabrina answered, but noticed that Pat and Sean still had a lot of questions. But she waited, because they had someone to meet first.

She showed them through a hallway and let them into a living room. In there was a middle-aged man lying on a madras on the floor. Bowing over him were a woman around the same age as the man. Mike was standing next to them, looking like he wanted to help but couldn't.

"Karen here helped us get up using the ladder, and showed us in here." Sabrina explained and pointed at the middle-aged woman. "It's her husband who seems to be sick. That's why she called for us."

Sean looked at the unconscious man who looked awfully pale and was just barely breathing.

"Is he… you know… infected?" He asked her with a low voice.

"Maybe, I don't know." Sabrina said, shrugging. "We haven't had the time to check him for bites or anything. We've given him a couple of painkillers to ease the pain and the fever."

Sean then moved over to the woman, Karen. He sat down next to her, laying a hand on her shoulder. She was shivering and when she turned her head, Sean saw that she was crying. Her eyes where red from the tears, that were running down her face. Her long dark red hair was untidy and was hanging down in front of her face. Sean couldn't tell exactly how old she was, but he guessed that she was in her late thirties, since her husband looked like a guy in his forties. But then again, it was hard to tell since her face was messy, her husband was ill. That could easily add a couple of years to their age.

Sean then spoke to her in a soft, calming voice. "Karen, my name is Sean." She stopped crying for a second and dried her eyes. "I need to ask you a few questions, okay?"

She nodded, removing some of her hair from her face.

"Tell me what happened to your husband?" He continued with his calm and caring voice. She sniffled a few times.

"We heard some noises from the street and was about to go see, when Lester suddenly collapsed." She exhaled and took a deep breath before continuing. "He had been feeling ill the past few days. We didn't think it was anything serious, and he told me not to worry."

She paused for awhile, and turned to look at her husband, Lester.

"Then I quickly ran to check if there were anyone down on the street there could help me, and luckily there was. Your friends then got up here to help my husband." She said and started sobbing again.

"Okay, I see." Sean said. "This is going to sound weird, but has Lester been bitten by any of those strange monsters?"

She looked over at Sean again.

"No, I don't think so. He made sure that no one could come up here."

"He hasn't been near any of them?" Pat suddenly interrupted.

"I don't know. He was gone a long time, when he built the barricade." She said. "He wouldn't let me help him."

Sean looked up at Pat. They both remembered all the blood there had been on the third floor. It wasn't Lester's blood by the looks of it, but he had definitely been attacked down there.

"We need to check him for scratches or bites." Pat said, sounding a little too cold. Sabrina slapped his arm for that.

"What? No, my husband needs rest." She said, getting defensive all of a sudden.

"Yes, we understand, but your husband might be in danger of being infected." Sabrina said, trying to explain the seriousness of the situation to the poor woman. "We just need to make sure that he isn't"

"Yeah? And what if he is, huh?" She said, getting up from the floor.

They all went silent for awhile. They all knew that he was going to die, because he had all the symptoms. It was just a matter of time before it happened. The problem was to tell her. How do you break it to a woman that her husband is going to die from a killer virus? But they didn't have to. Their silence told everything she needed to know.

"He's going to die, isn't he?" She said with a low voice. Then she sat down again, laying her arms on her dying husband. Sean still couldn't get a word out. There was nothing he could say to make her feel better.

Lester was lying really still. He didn't move at all. That was when Sean noticed that his chest didn't move anymore. It was like he had stopped breathing.

"Lester? Lester!" Karen called out, suddenly making the same awful discovery. She started shaking his arm, then it got more and more violent while tears formed in her eyes. "Lester!"

She stopped shaking him and started hugging him.

"Don't leave me!" She wept, lifting him up while holding him. His head rested on her shoulders.

They all stared at the man with the pale face and white lips. His eyes were closed, but Sean felt like he stared back at him. A tear started falling from Sabrina's eye. She couldn't stand watching it, so she hugged Sean burying her face in his chest. Sean put his arms around her, stroking her back in an attempt to comfort her. Mike had his arms crossed, holding a hand in front of his mouth. He wasn't looking at Karen and her late husband anymore. But Pat was still staring at the dead man.

Karen cried out while the tears were falling from her face like a waterfall.

"You lied to me…" She wept while she rocked back and forth, holding her husband close. "You said you were fine…"

Still staring at Lester's closed eyelids, Sean suddenly saw something. It seemed like his eyes were moving under them.

No way, he is dead. You must be seeing things. Sean tried to convince himself, but he was pretty certain of what he had seen.

Then something happened that made his blood freeze in his veins, like he had gotten a shot of liquid nitrogen. The seemingly dead man's eyes suddenly flipped open, revealing two white eyeballs staring right at him. Not that he could see what they looked at, but he felt that the eyes were at him.

Sean stepped back from shock, releasing Sabrina who looked up at him. She saw the terror in his eyes and turned around to see. Lester had started moving his arms, grabbing his wife by the shoulders.

"Lester!" She sniffled, sounding happy in the belief that he had woken up again by miraculous means. He had awoken, but not to be with his wife once again. As she turned to see his face, he tightened his grip around her and lunged for her neck. She screamed as his teeth sunk into her flesh.

Sean finally snapped out of the trance he had been in and ran to rescue Karen. So did Pat and Mike, but Sabrina couldn't move an inch. Sean grabbed Karen by her arms and Pat and Mike grabbed Lester. They started pulling them away from each other, but Lester wasn't about to let go.

Pulling as hard as they could, they finally got them separated. But Lester still had his teeth in his wife, so when Sean pulled together with the brothers, Karen's main artery got ripped out of her neck. The blood sprayed out of her, while she screamed even higher than before. But in fact it was Sabrina who screamed with her. She just stood there, paralyzed by the terrifying display.

Sean fell on his back, Karen landing on top of her. She desperately tried to cover the blood gushing wound with her hand, but the blood kept on flowing out of her.

The brothers threw Lester into the sofa and Mike was fast and pulled out his .357 Magnum.

"He's a fucking zombie!" He yelled, panicking. "Why the hell isn't he dead!"

The Lester zombie slowly started to get up from the sofa, so Mike couldn't hesitate. He aimed and pulled the trigger at its head. The brain matter spattered up the wall behind it, and it fell backwards back into the sofa.

On the floor Sean was fighting to keep Karen alive. He tried to cover the wound with both hands, keeping pressure on it.

"Stay with me, Karen! Stay with me!" He commanded her, but she didn't seem to register anything. She was slowly drifting away. Her eyes became more and more distant as the seconds flew by.

Up till now she had been waving her arms and legs around, but her strength slowly dissipated making her spasms more lazy and slow. Until she suddenly stopped. She had a few convulsions, before she exhaled for the last time. Sean could feel the life run out of her. Her chest sinking, like her lungs were deflating. Her eyes had an empty stare, as if she looked right trough him.

Sean removed his hands from the wound. The blood had stopped its constant flow, only a little blood pulsated out of it. He looked at the carpet around her. She was lying in a pool of her own blood. Sean's hands were covered by blood too. He turned his palms up, while the blood dripped of his fingers.

His friends just watched him in silence, as he got up and went straight for the bathroom.

Sabrina was staring at Karen's dead body. She sat down, in the chair behind her and started crying, covering her face with her hands.

Why did this happen? They didn't deserve this. No one deserves to die like this. She thought to herself.

Mike was just as upset as her, but he still found the resources to go and comfort her. He sat down next to her and wrapped an arm around her shoulder.

Pat walked over to Karen's dead body. He kept his distance, not wanting to get too close. Her skin was white as paper and her eyes stared at the ceiling. Pat pulled himself together and paid his last respects to her by closing her eyes.

Rest in piece… He thought, but he quickly snapped out of it, when he suddenly heard the sound of glass breaking from the bathroom.

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"Aaargh!" Sean yelled as he slammed his fist into the mirror, breaking it into millions of pieces. He just had to get that out. He hated the whole situation, and his anger had been rising since day one. In some ways it was better to get angry, than to get scared. If you get scared, you're close to giving up. But as things were at the moment, giving up was the dumbest thing he could do. Instead he just let loose his frustrations, and after hitting the mirror, he felt a little better.

He turned the sinks tap and washed his hands clean of Karen's blood. The white sink got all red asthe bloodied watertwirled down into the drain.

Sean started thinking about what had just happened in the living room. He hadn't been thinking of why Lester got up again after he had died. He had just reacted to the situation as fast as he could. There had been no time to think.

It must have been the virus. Sean thought. It kills you and then you turn into one of them.

He then thought of his own wounds; the bite mark on his arm, and the scratches on his wrists. He was infected himself, and sooner or later he would turn into a zombie too.
He swallowed hard at the thought. I don't want to end up as one of them.

But then he thought of what his father had said, and the fact that he hadn't gotten the symptoms yet. Maybe there was hope. Or maybe his body had been fighting of the virus somehow, delaying the effect.

It was hard for him not to know which. Was he going to die, or live? He would have felt better knowing for certain that he was going to die, because then he could accept it. But he couldn't as long as there was hope.

He loved to believe that he was going to be fine, but why him? Why should he be fine, when everyone else was dying?

Sean dried his hands in a pink towel, which was hanging next to the broken mirror. He then realized what he had just done.

Great! Seven years of bad luck. Just what I need. He thought and left the bathroom.

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After about 15 minutes of calming each other down, the group decided to stay there for the night. Or rather the day, because the sun was actually up. They all needed to sleep, and get some to eat, so they waited with changing the tire of Sean's car till they had rested.

Of course they didn't stay in Karen and Lester's apartment. They left for the one opposite of it, across the hall. But before they left, they put both bodies on the floor next to each other and covered them both in some sheets. Sean felt bad leaving them as they had been before. And he thought it was the least they could do for them.

As they entered the hallway, Sean opened a window and looked outside to check if his car was still there. He knew it was, but he just had to check. But what he saw down there was more than he had expected. About 30 or 40 zombies were walking around down there, their arms groping in the air. Some were walking around and some just stood still, swaying back and forth like wheat in the wind. It was those zombies that had been chasing Sean and Pat earlier. But apparently they had lost them, since none of them was trying to get inside the apartment building.

"Pat. Come check this out." Sean said and waved Pat over to him. He stuck his head out the window too. "Do you think we need to worry about them?"

"No, don't think they would attempt to get up here. They're not that smart, I think." Pat said as he got back in. "Besides, I don't think they would get through the barricade either."

As Sean and Pat had stopped, Mike and Sabrina continued into their "new" apartment. They followed them inside and closed the door. Sean flipped the lock with a click, before moving further into the place. Luckily no one was home, and there were no "surprises" waiting for them either. No dead people, neither undead nor dead dead.

After going the whole apartment through, they sat down in the living room to relax for a second.

"Does anyone want some to eat?" Sean asked, though he wasn't hungry himself. Well, he felt like starving, but just the thought of eating something after witnessing a husband attempting to eat his wife, made his stomach twirl. His friends just shook their heads, probably feeling the same way as him.

"I think its best we all just got some sleep." Sabrina spoke. It had been awhile since she last said something. Since Lester had opened his eyes, after dying, she hadn't said a word. But now she had finally calmed down. At least enough to speak again.

"I'm taking the couch." Pat said and looked over at Mike, who sat in one of the armchairs. "Mike?"

His brother had already fallen asleep. He had been so tired that just relaxing for two seconds, had made him fall asleep. Like when you come home from a long day at work and you sit down and turn on the TV. Then you usually fall asleep, even though you hadn't felt sleepy earlier.

Sean couldn't help smiling a little. He too looked forward to get some sleep, but he was afraid he couldn't close his eyes. After staying up for so long, he had gotten over-tired, leaving him restless.

"Okay, I'm going to use the bedroom." Sean said and Sabrina followed him. Sean felt a little weird using another person's bed, but then again what was the alternative? The floor? He didn't even consider it at all; the bed was the only option.

As they both placed their backpacks at the floor and took their shoes off, Sabrina realized something.

"How long has it been since your last shot?" She asked Sean, wondering. He thought about it for a second.

"Fuck. You're right. I haven't taken one in ages." He suddenly realized. Normally he would take a shot everytime he started feeling low on blood sugar, but he hadn't felt like that ever since they left his house.

That's weird. He thought and opened his backpack to find the insulin.

"Better take one now then." He said and smiled at her.

He pulled out a "pen", removed the cap and lifted up in his T-shirt. He stung himself in the lower abdomen and pushed the button on top of the pen. He held it there for five seconds and then pulled it out. He couldn't feel the big difference. Usually he felt relieved when getting a shot, like when drinking water when you feel really thirsty. But he didn't feel a thing. It was really weird, because he had been burning of a lot of energy all day and night. And still he hadn't needed a shot.

He didn't know where to put the pen. Hehadn't taken the container for the pens with him, so he just put it back into the "pencilhouse" he was keeping the new onesin.

Turning around he noticed that Sabrina already had fallen asleep. She was lying on her side, but she hadn't covered herself with the duvet. She just laid there with her clothes on. He guessed she didn't bother to take it off, or maybe she just felt a little weird sleeping in somebody else's bed.

Sean then wouldn't bother either. He just laid himself next to her, staring up at the ceiling.

Earlier he hadn't felt tired at all, but now as he lay there, his eyes started to get heavy. He tried to fight it for awhile, but he gave up in the end. And so the ceiling went darker and darker, until he finally closed his eyes and fell asleep.