Chapter Fourteen

As night crept closer, the four people boarding the night at my mother's house and I talked. In that time I learned about some things about them.

The kid's name is Nicholas Macintosh, but he goes by his middle name, Greg. He is (or perhaps I should say was) a senior at Eastern High School. Apparently, the school was closed the day the infection struck for some reason, and Greg repeatedly would say that's the only reason he's still alive. He and Lorraine are related; she's his maternal grandmother. Neither of them knows the whereabouts of Greg's parents; Lorraine's daughter and son-in-law.

Lorraine herself I had already had a chat with earlier, but I quickly learned she was the kind of person to make the topic of a conversation gravitate towards herself, whether she meant to or not, and thus I learned quite a bit about her. She lived a great deal of her life overseas with her husband in the military (she never specified whether it was army, navy or what). Most of her time she was stationed in Korea, in the two decades following the Korean War, just before everyone else was being drafted to Vietnam, and later in her life in Okinawa, Japan for what she called "pointless office jobs", until she and her husband reached the age of retirement and moved back to Kentucky to be with her family.

Jim lived next door to Lorraine. They both lived out in some old, upper-class neighborhood in Prospect, a good ways north-east of here, almost into Oldham County. He just turned forty years old; he said his birthday was just last week. Jim moved to the United States from South Korea when he was a small child. His name was originally Jin, but his parents decided to "Americanize" it when they arrived to help him fit in growing up. When I asked him if he ever thought of changing it back, he asked me why I wasn't using my birth name. Touché. He worked a 9-to-5 job for a banking firm downtown. He told me his job wasn't exciting in the least. I believed him.

Ann bears no relation to the other three, other than what the past week of constant fighting and survival has created. She won't talk to me much either. All I've been able to gleam is that she was born in 1985; two years before me. She was attending night classes at Jefferson Community and Technical College, and was close to reaching a degree when the infection struck. She worked full-time as a driver for UPS to pay for school.

The day of the infection, Greg was doing some yard work for Lorraine to earn a little extra money. He was out in the front yard mowing the lawn when both Ann and Jim arrived on the scene. Ann was delivering a package; I asked, but no one can remember what it was. Jim ran out of his house frantically, telling the two they need to see what's on the news. "This is serious! You have to see what's on the news!" He said. He was having trouble finding the right words to say. He knew no one would believe him unless they saw it for themselves. Ann said "Someone just sign for the package. I have a lot more places to go", but Jim persisted it would only take a moment, and that their lives were in danger.

The three of them walked into Lorraine's house, where she already had the TV on to CBS, where the words "LATE BREAKING NEWS" were displayed in large bold letters at the bottom of the screen. "Half the channels are broadcasting this. I can't believe this…" she stuttered.

"What is it?" Ann asked.

"It's a plague." Jim responded. "At least, I think it is. It's making people go insane as soon as they come into contact with it."

"What on Earth?" Greg gasped. Lorraine shushed them all and told them to listen.

The anchors reported they had footage of the 'inexplicable carnage', as the man put it. He was choking up as he said the words. The camera then switched to one from a news helicopter hovering over downtown. A reporter shouted into her microphone, but her words were being drowned out in the mass of noise. Outside the helicopter was the sight of a warzone. The streets were filled with vehicles all in a chaos, a crowd was running in a mad wave from a menace unseen on the camera, people were trampling over each other in their attempt to flee. Some shouted at the helicopter, both furious curses and pleas for the lives. "The scene here is absolutely horrifying, I don't know I can say… oh my god!" The reporter cried as the camera swerves to a skyscraper, the Humana building, where two figures crash through a window and plummet to the sidewalk below. A howl somewhere in the distance echoes across the buildings. "Nobody knows where it came from! It's turning everyone mindless… almost like they're zombies or something! Everyone needs to hole up in their house, let no one-"

At that moment the picture skipped multiple times, then turned to noiseless static. There was a silence in the house none could find the voice to permeate. Lorraine tried changing the channel. The same fizz greeted them on every station.

"What…" Greg uttered, "what the hell was that?" No one knew how to answer. "What the hell WAS that?"

"I told you! It's… I don't know, a biological weapon maybe? I don't know!" Jim exclaimed.

Greg's breathing became quick. "I have to get home… My parents… I have to-"

Lorraine interrupted. "It's too late for that. That's too dangerous."

"You have a better plan?" Ann retorted. "I'm about to get the fuck outta here, too!"

"Were you not watching that?" Lorraine shouted. "Did you see that? How are you going to run from that? Do you even know what that was?"

"Well, what you suggest we do then?" Ann posed.

Lorraine thought for a moment. They all thought. "The bunker."

"Grandpa's old Cold War bunker?" Nick asked. "That's still down there?"

"You remember him always boasting about how it would withstand a nuke, right?" Said Lorraine. "I never really believed him, but I'm sure we would be safe. There's still enough rations and water in there to last months, as well. I say we let this thing, whatever it is, blow over. Better safe than sorry."

"I'm going to call my parents. They can get over here-"

"The phone lines are out. Cell phones aren't working either." Jim broke him off. Greg cursed.

"That's not good." Lorraine mumbled. "That means the destruction's close. We need to get in there now! Unless anyone else has a better idea?"

No one did. The four of them stayed in that bunker for fifteen days, until they simultaneously realized that they were going nuts and that it was probably safe outside by now. Being that the bunker was originally designed in case war broke out, a stash of firearms was kept inside it. Lorraine showed the other three how to use them, before they hesitantly opened the heavy metal door and stepped outside.

They met their first infected within half an hour. It was one of their neighbors, though they knew not who. When it was obvious the man was out for their blood, Lorraine fired a burst of rounds into him. The others were shocked at first at the apparent murder, but quickly learned to follow suit. Thus began their trek through the wasted suburbs and highways. Most of the time was spent in stealth, avoiding detection as best as possible, but sometimes staying hidden was impossible, and violence was the solution. They had yet to be overwhelmed by a number they did not have enough bullets for, but one lucky infected did get through their phalanx of fire to scratch Jim across the cheek. The other three were scared to death he would become one of them in little time, as was Jim, but it never happened. This was when they came to the realization that they must be immune to the disease. "I mean think about it." Ann had said. "We don't know how hardy this disease is. It could be in the air, in the water. If we weren't immune, we surely would have caught it even without being injured."

This lightened their fears slightly, but they still had plenty to be afraid of. The other infected that looked like me, the 'witch' they called her – I hadn't forgotten the story. Apparently she took at least ten times more firepower to take down that your average infected. Am I really that durable now? I don't feel like it. The day I blacked out and woke up a "witch" I cut my cheek just as normal. Not to mention I was having trouble carrying four or five grocery bags.

I set the thought aside as I lie down to sleep. It had been another extremely exhausting day for me. I'm getting rather tired of those.