A thick black sheet of darkness covered Tommy's vision as he stumbled, not walked or ran, but stumbled, his way through the church. There was a churning sensation in his gut that elicited gurgling sounds and made him feel as if someone had a firm grasp on his throat, not choking him but leaving him short of breath and wanting to halt his body, allowing him to rest. But he couldn't, for he was being pursued by several hulking heaps of disease ridden flesh with keen senses of smell and the knack for hunting down anything with "clean" blood and tearing it to shreds with ease. They were fast, and they had his scent, coming down the hallway after him with blinding speeds.
Coming around a corner, Tommy tripped over his own feet, the exhaustion finally catching up to him, bringing him to the ground with his pursuers on his heels. He began to yell, or he tried to yell. The only sounds that came from his mouth were scratchy cries and ragged moans. He had been bitten, and he could only think about how long it might take for the infection to run its course, turning him into a zombie, hunting for blood and fresh food.
The veins on his arms and legs began to stand out of his skin, as if they were trying to break free of their restrains and form their own body to support. They were followed by the rest of his cardiovascular system, producing bulges on his chest and back, and even a few on his face, mainly aiming towards his eyes, which were as blood shot as they could possibly be without blinding him, but that didn't matter much because the objects that were in his view of sight were blurred beyond recognition. His brain was one giant, pulsating migraine which left all of his senses either useless or dulled.
He gripped for his face, the veins, which were normally of a bluish tint, were slowly become filled with a dark, crimson red liquid, making the blue turn to purple before shifting to the almost-jet-black shade. If he could have made out what the bulges on his body were, he most likely would have panicked, but with an al-mighty hand gripping his throat tighter and tighter by the second, and a violent, turn-neighbors-into-enemies disease slowly coursing through his body, he barely found time to slip into unconsciousness.
As Tommy's eyes slowly rolled back into his head, he had flashes of Taylor. For a moment he was back at the YMCA, hopping off of the treadmill to try and assist his dear friend. She was screaming, her face to the ground, as the infected who was bitten by the first infected to run in through the front doors, was on top of her, clawing at her, blood dropping in big, clotted clumps from its mouth.
He was afraid, his legs freezing up as if seized by solid ice, his lungs practically collapsing in his chest, making breathing a thing of the past. The odd thing, besides the zombie on top of his friend, was that he didn't need to breathe. It was as if he was just a ghost, revisiting some past experience, and for all that Tommy had been through in the past few days, he wouldn't doubt for a moment that he was dead. In his head, being dead was better than becoming an infected anyways.
The infected finished its run with Taylor, leaving her on her stomach, her back lashed and bleeding like someone who had the misfortune of being whipped by a nine-tailed-whip. If Tommy hadn't have been watching the attack as it happened, he would have had no idea that the bloody mess that was on the floor in front of him was once his friend. No one would have been able to realize that it had once been living. Even Tommy had a hard time believing it.
His ghostly body, still wracked with the all-too-familiar feeling of fear, dropped to its knees beside Taylor. He hovered both hands over what he imagined was her back, trying to understand what he had let happen right before his eyes, when he heard the soft sounds of a piano. Being confused by the sudden sound development, Tommy's eyes shot around the room, looking for anything that might be making the beautiful music that was deafening his ears. Then his hand brushed a chord hanging from his head, and he remembered the MP3 player that was tucked nicely into his pocket.
He pulled it from its place holder and set it down next to his friend's body, taking the headphones out one by one. The corpse began to move, first its legs twitched, then its arms tried to prop itself up, failing at first. After a few botched attempts at sitting up, the corpse of his friend got itself into a poorly supported, upright position.
Tommy's jaw dropped, seeing the face-beautiful and unscathed-of Coleen in place of Taylor's. But it wasn't taking its place, it was Coleen's body now, and in Tommy's head it had always been her. He felt a few tears sting the edges of his eyes, remembering every single moment that he had spent worrying about her while he was away. Now she was dead, and it was his fault. But she wasn't dead, she was sitting up, and her face looked as if it had not been harmed in the attack at all. Her body told a different story, but Tommy didn't notice. He was transfixed by the radiant blue eyes that latched onto his, keeping him paralyzed.
"Do you know what you have to do?" Coleen's voice echoed inside of itself, making it sound like it was skipping, and repeating, almost like a scratched CD.
"I have to take you home." Tommy said it without wanting to. His mouth worked on its own, as if it were a separate organism that was just sharing the space on his face. He wasn't even sure why he had said that. When the words reverberated out of Coleen's mouth, Tommy had been baffled. He had no clue as to what she meant, or even what she was getting at. When he answered, it felt like he was watching an actor read from a script, and this script seemed to be forged from a b-side, Stephen King novel.
Coleen nodded, just before her mouth spread open, the skin covering her teeth tearing with a loud ripping sound that matched that of paper. Her vocal chords shook and the sound they made was piercing and agonizing, like all the pain she had gone through in her entire life was being forced into a split second yelp. Tommy's vision blackened, he felt his ears filling with blood until all sounds were drowned out, and when he tried to breathe in, nothing happened.
Hearing his heartbeat, and using it as a timing system for his attempts at breathing, he continued to try to compress and expand his lungs. It was as if the electric pulses that told his lungs to work were being redirected out of his body into the apparently empty vacuum that he appeared to be in. The beating began to slow, the thumps growing further apart until one final thump halted his heart, now matching his lack of breathing.
Everything was kicked back into action in one crippling blow. His eyes opened to the darkened interior of a once safe haven from the infected, his lungs expanded, drawing in one giant gulp of smoke filled air, his ears became drowned in the surprisingly loud presence of silence, and the feeling awoke in his body, letting the cold of the ground, the warmth of the air, and the liquid feeling of blood to coarse across his body before he finally adjusted.
He breathed, forcing himself to calm down, until he felt he was able to sit himself up. Struggling, just like Taylor (Coleen) had done in his dream, he got himself propped up against one of the walls in the sermon hall. He was confused, almost to the point of panic, because, when he looked around, he saw infected scattered throughout the wreckage of the sermon hall. They didn't seem to be aware of him, but who knew when they would be. Tommy sure as hell didn't want to wait and find out.
One groaned only a few inches behind him, causing him to jump up into a standing position. He stared at it for a moment as it slowly whirled around on its heels, facing him with its blood coated eyes primed on his face. Tommy didn't waste any time, he just took off running, heading for the door. The infected roared, blood splashing out of its mouth onto the floor, before it followed in hot pursuit.
As Tommy made his way out of the sermon hall the other infected that were present got whiff of his sudden re-birth, turning towards him and lunging their bodies after him, hoping to get their claws dug into his skin. Tommy, being rather quick on his feet, avoided any further injury, bursting through the entrance to the church out into the bright sun-lit sky. He squinted his eyes and tripped over himself, falling to the ground and scrapping his hand on the pavement.
He looked down at the small trickle of blood that was forming on his palm before he pushed himself back into a standing position. Letting his legs do the rest, he took off down the sideway, east, towards the small town park. He heard the infected close on his tail but they couldn't seem to catch up. Maybe it was adrenaline, or maybe it was just luck, but these infected weren't faster than Tommy. He forced a smile at the thought.
Then, as he was running, he felt a sting in his side from the bite mark, and he almost stopped dead in his tracks. Shouldn't I be infected? Tommy thought, over and over again, going over the whole incident, the infected leaping on him, and the feeling of teeth penetrating his skin, followed by his body's slow breakdown and eventual, but short, death. None of it made sense, but then again, after that Sunday, nothing ever made sense. It was as if the laws that the world ran by were completely abolished and replaced with random nonsense.
He didn't quite shake the thought, but he pushed it towards the back of his mind as he focused on surviving long enough to come up with some kind of explanation. Sprinting faster than he had ever gone before, Tommy continued his way down the sidewalk and into the wide open Catlin Park. Leaping over a fence, and jumping over a set of teeter-totters, he blasted his way into the small sandpit and out into the spacey pavilion that held the bathroom and several, double sided benches. Everything seemed to blur and mesh together, like an oil painting, making Tommy's head spin for a moment before everything sharpened in his vision. It was like he had been pumped full of adrenaline, and it was beginning to take effect, pushing his muscles to carry him faster, making his vision stronger and forcing all of his senses to kick into a heightened state of awareness that Tommy didn't know was possible. He felt like an animal, but he wasn't. He was still human, and he still wasn't infected, but he did feel more alive than he had before he had been bitten.
Tommy wasn't sure what had happened to him, but, at the moment, he didn't much care for details. He was just happy that he was alive and that he was actually escaping from the small group of infected that was on his heels only a few seconds ago. Now they were still in the pavilion while he was across the street, working his way into the backyard of a previously occupied home.
He ran until the growls were nothing more than background music for his daring escape. He ran until he tripped over his shoelaces and fell into the dirt at the edge of the town.