p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"Alex sat on a small sofa in her apartment's living room, carefully watching her reinforced front door as she did most of these days, holding a large baseball bat in one hand and a small tank of gasoline rigged up with a lighter in another. She could never be too sure that the door wouldn't hold./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"At first, Alex had thought that nothing was more terrible than the piercing shrieks and screams and groans of dead and dying men, women and children outside her apartment door in the hallways, the loud thumps and hungry, guttural cackling, the splattering of wet gore, ripping and tearing of flesh and the snapping and cracking of bones. She had experienced near—constant nightmares for the first two weeks trapped in the apartment./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"But now, Alex realized that she hated the near—silence more than she hated the screams. She hated the god—awful skittering and the emceeeek/em, emceeeek/em noises of the hundreds of spider—like critters moving on slender black legs on walls and ceilings, or the dry, husklike rasps and groans of the parasitized humans out there, and worst of all, the silent squirming and slithering of thousands upon thousands of those little sticky purple grey parasite—worms which now infested the former apartment complex she lived in./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"Despite the fact that she had double—tripled locked her doors and windows and had thoroughly boarded them up, blocked them, and sealed them from outside invaders, turned off and blocked up each and every last one of her apartment's pipes, she always got the feeling that they were looking for a way in. /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"She wished it would all go away. She thought about storming outside, bludgeoning them into piles of immobile goo with her bat yelling, "Shut Up! Shut Up!" to them, but that would have been an easy death sentence, if anything. It bore the risk of attracting hungrier, cleverer monsters than the ones that normally lurked around her door and in the hallways. Monsters who would no doubt break in with ease./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"If she wanted to live, she would not make noise. As such, she was very careful. She kept all her plates and glasses and silverware and all other belongings stored on the ground, ate on the ground, and was very careful not to drop anything at all. She did not dare at all to turn on the TV and unplugged and disconnected all of the electronics (even her fire alarm). She had learned her lesson after last time, when the sound of her alarm clock going off had attracted such a rush of Parasites and their human hosts that her door had very nearly given in. /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"She still shuddered from that memory. She had been forced to use gasoline to clear them out, and afterwards, her front door smelled of burned and charred Parasite and human for weeks. She did not let the parasites see her, either. She kept the window blinds tightly sealed and boarded up./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"Still, despite all that, she should have died ages ago, converted into some Parasite's lunch or a new Parasite host. To be honest, Alex was Immune. The fading, scabbing roundish bite mark on her right arm where a worm had tried (and failed) to burrow into her body was proof of it. By some miracle, she was poison to the Parasites. She could not be eaten and she was an incompatible hosts. Though, the parasites would still try to kill her./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"Alex sometimes wished she had not lived. Then she could just die without guilt like the others./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"emLike her dead friends./em/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"em /em/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"emLike her dead family. Like her Dad, Mom, and brother./em/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"She sometimes thought of her late family and wondered how they would react when they saw her now./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"em /em/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"emHer parents, no doubt would have been shocked to see her reduced to her current state, lean, gaunt and covered in dirt and her own sweat, her green eyes dull, normally long auburn—blonde hair covered in matted tangles, and her clothes a mess, caked in dried blood and goo. /em/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"She looked over at her storeroom, where she kept her dwindling supply of food and water. Even rationing wasn't going to stop the inevitable. At this rate, even though she took in the bare minimum to sustain her gaunt self, she would run out of food and water in a month./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"Under her breath, she cursed herself for being scared, for hiding in here and living while others had died./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"emIf she had been a little more reckless, a little more courageous, she would not have to endure this never—ending nightmare of monsters scratching at the door and scuttling at the walls. But she was a coward, and she was going to live out a coward's death. A living death. A slow, living death, dying of hunger or of thirst/em, she thought bitterly./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"At first, Alex had thought that nothing was more terrible than the piercing shrieks and screams and groans of dead and dying men, women and children outside her apartment door in the hallways, the loud thumps and hungry, guttural cackling, the splattering of wet gore, ripping and tearing of flesh and the snapping and cracking of bones. She had experienced near—constant nightmares for the first two weeks trapped in the apartment./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"But now, Alex realized that she hated the near—silence more than she hated the screams. She hated the god—awful skittering and the emceeeek/em, emceeeek/em noises of the hundreds of spider—like critters moving on slender black legs on walls and ceilings, or the dry, husklike rasps and groans of the parasitized humans out there, and worst of all, the silent squirming and slithering of thousands upon thousands of those little sticky purple grey parasite—worms which now infested the former apartment complex she lived in./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"Despite the fact that she had double—tripled locked her doors and windows and had thoroughly boarded them up, blocked them, and sealed them from outside invaders, turned off and blocked up each and every last one of her apartment's pipes, she always got the feeling that they were looking for a way in. /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"She wished it would all go away. She thought about storming outside, bludgeoning them into piles of immobile goo with her bat yelling, "Shut Up! Shut Up!" to them, but that would have been an easy death sentence, if anything. It bore the risk of attracting hungrier, cleverer monsters than the ones that normally lurked around her door and in the hallways. Monsters who would no doubt break in with ease./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"If she wanted to live, she would not make noise. As such, she was very careful. She kept all her plates and glasses and silverware and all other belongings stored on the ground, ate on the ground, and was very careful not to drop anything at all. She did not dare at all to turn on the TV and unplugged and disconnected all of the electronics (even her fire alarm). She had learned her lesson after last time, when the sound of her alarm clock going off had attracted such a rush of Parasites and their human hosts that her door had very nearly given in. /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"She still shuddered from that memory. She had been forced to use gasoline to clear them out, and afterwards, her front door smelled of burned and charred Parasite and human for weeks. She did not let the parasites see her, either. She kept the window blinds tightly sealed and boarded up./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"Still, despite all that, she should have died ages ago, converted into some Parasite's lunch or a new Parasite host. To be honest, Alex was Immune. The fading, scabbing roundish bite mark on her right arm where a worm had tried (and failed) to burrow into her body was proof of it. By some miracle, she was poison to the Parasites. She could not be eaten and she was an incompatible hosts. Though, the parasites would still try to kill her./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"Alex sometimes wished she had not lived. Then she could just die without guilt like the others./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"emLike her dead friends./em/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"em /em/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"emLike her dead family. Like her Dad, Mom, and brother./em/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"She sometimes thought of her late family and wondered how they would react when they saw her now./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"em /em/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"emHer parents, no doubt would have been shocked to see her reduced to her current state, lean, gaunt and covered in dirt and her own sweat, her green eyes dull, normally long auburn—blonde hair covered in matted tangles, and her clothes a mess, caked in dried blood and goo. /em/p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"She looked over at her storeroom, where she kept her dwindling supply of food and water. Even rationing wasn't going to stop the inevitable. At this rate, even though she took in the bare minimum to sustain her gaunt self, she would run out of food and water in a month./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"Under her breath, she cursed herself for being scared, for hiding in here and living while others had died./p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" /p
p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"emIf she had been a little more reckless, a little more courageous, she would not have to endure this never—ending nightmare of monsters scratching at the door and scuttling at the walls. But she was a coward, and she was going to live out a coward's death. A living death. A slow, living death, dying of hunger or of thirst/em, she thought bitterly./p