Edited. Now without the silly mistakes [hopefully]. Also changed the chapter order slightly.
"Now the fucker can't get it off."
Bartholomew finished with his task of carefully, if not lopsidedly, rolling duct tape over his arms, torso and legs. He sat back and looked into the full length mirror in front of him. The orange tape contrasted horribly with his blue sweater and green jeans, but it didn't matter, it's all the clothes he had left now.
"Stupid, fucking, dick, ass."
Grumbling darkly to himself, he ignored his mothers call from downstairs that she was leaving, that she loves him, and turned, rooting around for his school bag. "Yeah, yeah, and you'll love me when I get home too, big deal."
This kind of pain was intense.
Like nothing he'd ever experienced, not ever when he broke his arm in two places and fractured a rib because the guy who sacked him had a hundred pounds on him, easy.
No, this was worse. It was beyond the people, things, clawing and biting and tearing into him, easily drawing blood from his soft belly and face –it was weird how they ignored the fabric completely once his hood fell off, and sweater rode up– the only exposed skin on him.
No, it was also the intense burning that sang in his veins from the very first bite on his ear. He felt like he was on fire and all he could do is scream, and scream. Hoping somebody, anybody, would hear him and help him.
"What in Gods green Earth?"
Bartholomew could barely get his head to turn with the two things on him, with the pain that was screaming white hot, but he did and he saw a pair of feet not twenty feet away, next to his felled backpack. With a jerk, he freed a hand from under one of his attackers shins, extending it towards whoever it was, grinning like it didn't hurt at all. "H-help?"
He was fading now, and it felt like his stomach had been turned inside-out, which it probably had, but he was still alive, he was still breathing, for now.
His eyes slid closed, just for a second, just to rest, and by time he reopened them he was staring at an unfamiliar ceiling, his body screaming at him, and an elderly woman he didn't recognize standing by at his side.
She noticed he was awake almost immediately and practically assaulted him with a flashlight. "How are you feeling?" She didn't let him answer. "Sonny, you're lucky I was walking that way, or else you would be dead. It's a shame that those two got you like that. Tore you up real good."
Smoothing a wrinkle on his bedspread, she went on. "Somehow left your clothes intact, which was nice, I guess. I left them on you, rest assured. But I still can't understand why any person would-" She cut off, hesitating.
"Attack, maul, try to eat?" Bartholomew's voice cracked horribly and was rough to the ears. He wanted water badly. Where was his bag? He always brought water with him in his bag; he always needed it after his morning 3 mile run to school.
A bottle was pressed into his hand and his grabbed it the best he could, trying to pushing himself into a sitting position, it wasn't working. "Here you go, sonny." With a reassuring hand on his back, she helped him into a more upright position. "Now don't move too much, I stitched you up, but I ain't been a nurse in many years, so you'll have to stay still for a day or two."
A day or two?
A day or two?
He didn't answer right away, chugging down his water faster than he should seemed more important. But by time he was ready to talk, she was already prattling on again. "I have to get home, my mom will be worried." Bartholomew managed a smile, but was starting to feel wary about the woman. "Plus, what's the chances on me running into those guys again?"
"Sonny." She spoke softly, setting a hand below his knee atop the blanket. "The news has been talking all day about an Infection that is going 'round rampant. I don't think it's good for you to go anywhere." She looked apologetic, and sincere, but Bartholomew wasn't buying it, he had been kidnapped. It was some elaborate plot, he just knew it. "It seems the Infection makes people go crazy much like the two who attacked you, and they, well, attack other people. And if you're bitten, you turn into one as well."
Weird ass elaborate plot.
He glanced to around, while chugging back more water, trying to find a way to escape.
He had to get home, had to.
The door was open to his right, and she was standing to his left, so unless more of her goons were waiting for an injured boy to make a break for it, he was pretty assured with his ability to outrun an old hag. He doubted she was as in shape as he, after all.
But, just to be on the safe side- Bartholomew pushed the covers away, showing his bloodied sweater, still covered in duct tape. Wow, just by the blood he was covered in, maybe he should just let her have him. He might be too injured to run away.
He pulled his sweater up, showing his stomach. It was a maze of cris-crossing stitches and oozing wounds. Ignoring the woman's prattle, he glanced over to see she was gathering bandages. Okay, he'd let her do that for him too.
She was very precise on placing, what was basically a giant piece of gauze on him, that covered his wounds, before using ace bandaging, which Bartholomew frowned at, thinking about overheating and the sweat and blood and soon pus that would congeal more easily because of the damn skin coloured bandages, to wrap around his lower torso. It was tight, but not too tight, and he found himself believing that she had been a nurse, as if the stitches didn't show that.
Then, when she turned her back to wash her hands off, Bartholomew grabbed his back, shoving the bottle that was now mostly empty back inside, and ran for it, shouting a grateful "Thank you!" behind him. He made it out the first door and after a slight glance he saw the front door to the right. She was yelling behind him, her feet skittering over the floor as she tried to follow behind, trying to get him to stop, it wasn't safe.
Wrenching the big oak door before him, open he stopped dead in his tracks.
There were at least two dozen people wandering the streets aimlessly, all with the same blank look o their face as the two that had attacked him. Cars were parked haphazardly on the sidewalks and half wrapped around trees, door and windows broken, or simply left open for no reason.
But even from his spot he could see a few scared faces peeking out from behind curtains of a few houses that looked relatively untouched. Good, there are still some sane people.
"Wait!" That brought him back to the woman limping towards him; he shot her a smile before stepping out and slamming the door.
Bad move.
Many heads turned towards him and there was an eerie moment of stillness before one of them gave a cry and they all started running for him.
Fuck.
He slipped his other arm through his backpack strap, grabbed the loss ends and tightened them so it wouldn't all off. Then, he took off, the pain from his stomach was a sharp reminder of what these things would do, given the chance, so he forced himself to run faster, run through the pain, run away from a safe place.
Bartholomew made it home sometime later, much after night had descended and he had to find better ways to dodge the ever increasing horde of creatures that popped out of every place imaginable at him.
He stared up at the house, the image seeming to flicker before his eyes. This was his house right? Or was it the next one?
Something hit him from the side, knocking him to the ground. One of the things was attacking him, the horde long since left behind, but it was like the others; dead eyes, blood smeared face, grubby, clawed hands.
This was getting irritating. With a growl of his own, he kicked out; hit the thing in the chest and knocking it back. Looking down he noticed a tire iron next to the car a few feet away. He jumped for it, and swung it around behind him, catching the creature, which had come in for another attack, on the side of the face.
It fell again, this time with a sickening crunch, and did not get back up.
Bartholomew dropped the iron, but stayed crouched, for some reason it felt right, and crawled toward the house again. His had to be his house, if he had a house.
Going to the door, he stood back up and turned the knob, walking inside. "M-Mom?" He looked around, he could hear the television on someplace and the microwave was running. "Dad?" He felt cold, and he hurt, and all he wanted was for his mother to hold him in her arms and tell him everything was going to be okay. Even if it was a lie.
His skin was itching now, on the left side of his face, where one of hose first stupid fucking things had bit him.
Closing the door behind him, he ventured towards the kitchen, and saw that there were bottled water lined up on the counter, no doubt for him when he returned from school. He felt a pang of regret for not answering his mother this morning, but pushed it away and took his bag off. He dumped the contents out and replaced it with the water before putting the bag back on, you never know, right?
As he was doing so, he noticed his nails, if he could call them that anymore, were longer, sharper. He tried not to dwell on the blood under one of the nails and looked away.
He heard voices upstairs and immediately got excited, that had to be them. He ran for the stairs, not bothered by the fact that he couldn't even feel his injuries anymore, but he didn't remember that vase being there before. Or a stairwell for that matter.
Bartholomew stopped halfway up the stairs, swaying dangerously, his vision blacking out for a minute before returning. He looked around and suddenly nothing was look familiar, or if they did one second, the next they were foreign and it frightened him. "MOM!" He screeched, his voice going to a pitch and volume he'd never experienced before.
He opened his mouth to scream again, when he had a terrifying thought. What if I don't have parents? He shook his head violently and ran up the stairs. "MOM! " He saw a light on under a doorway and ran for it.
He wretched the door open and came face-to-face with the barrel of a gun. "Dad?" His voice was barely a whisper as he backed away. Bartholomew looked at the wielder of the firearm and it sparked some recognition, if faint. Behind the man was a slight brunette women. She was sobbing against her husband. He smiled, "M-mom."
Reaching out got his a warning shot near his feet. He jumped up and when he landed he was on his hands and the tips of his toes again, only this time he was growling at people that he knew he loved, he just didn't know why. "Why?"
He man was giving him a hard look, but tears were streaming down his face. "You're not my son." Bartholomew's hackles rose at this and he gave a fierce cry.
That's not true. I am. .IAM.
"Not anymore." The next shot would have hit him square in the forehead if he hadn't of jumped back. "Get out!" Another shot that he dodged. "I don't want to do this!" They were backing him towards a window, but he didn't take the escape route. The people, juicytenderflesh, in front of him looked like easy prey now. His mind blank of everything but what he needed.
Kill.
Eat.
Mate.
Two of those could be knocked out real easily.
He grinned wickedly, relishing in the sudden terror to descend on the humans before him, how they turned to run and he let them for a moment, just a moment, before running a few paces and pouncing on the bigger ones back, easily tearing through the shirt and into the giving flesh below.
Two screams resounded through-out the house.
He could get used to this.
Days passed in a blur, as a sudden madness of sorts overtook him. All he could see was red, all he could feel was the delicious pain he cause, all he could hear was the screams that followed him everywhere he went.
It was a good sort of madness, a madness that kept him alive while his mind tried to sort out the damage in his brain. He couldn't remember anything, not even his own name, or if he had any loved ones, not that it matters, or if he'd ever been any different than he is now. Made it seems fine for what had once been festering wounds on his stomach to be fine the next day when he woke, only heavy scarring remaining.
That was, of course, until he started having the dreams during his rare resting periods. Dreams of tearing and clawing and killingkillingkilling.
After the first night, he woke up, his own fingers clawing at his eyes. He calmed and used his claws to dig out chunks of white flesh, cutting the veins that once connected the spheres to his sight. But now, he was oddly okay with the sudden lack of sight.
The only thing he liked seeing was the bodies he mutilated anyways, not the rest of the destruction. The days that passed, weren't the best, he continued to have nightmares, and he kept missing targets when pouncing, but he was getting better at using smells to determine if something was like him, or his next meal.
And his hearing could help determine location, just by them stepping of gravel. But, he hadn't had a successful kill in nearly a week and he was getting hungry, he refused to be like the lowly others who ate scraps from others. That's when he heard a door below his rooftop perch open.
He crouched, pressing his chest to the cool tin. He sniffed, confirming that it was human, if a smelly one, and scared. So deliciously, scared. He grinned and waiting, listening for the optimum time to leap. Just a few more steps now, the human was getting more confident now.
Now.
He landed squarely on the human's back, male he can tell now by the spicier scent. The human blind panicked beneath him, screaming, for a moment, wiggling around so that he was perched on the others lap. He was getting yelled at, but he didn't care. Somehow the scent seemed familiar, and it made him all the more eager for this.
Clothe blocked him from his target, but it was easy enough to remove, just a quick swipe, all the while grinning. He relished a moment more in the yells, the squirming, before flexing his fingers and plunging them forward, digging into the soft tissue easily and tearing it away.
The best kind of revenge, really.
Unsure of where that thought came from, he continued with his task, the scream almost as filling as the flesh would be.
A loud bang cut him off and he jerked to the right, sniffing, his hands never stopping in their motions, he growled lowly, head jerked back and forth. He made a quick decision, almost instinctual, and leaned down sinking his teeth into the exposed skin of the humans neck.
Infecting him. Killing him. Marking him.
As he leapt away, his hand brushed fabric, and he grabbed the torn sweater in one bloodied fist before racing away, wondering if the human would come find him when he could. When he was Infected.
He hoped so.
