"Viral"

Ray stood waiting for the young boy to get to safety. “How? How the hell do you justify doing this to anyone, much less kids? Do you even realize just how sick you and everyone like you has become? Forget the virus your just.....Less then human”. Ray looked at the man at the other end of the forty-five he was holding to the guys head. Never could Ray have seen himself capable of killing anyone but the thought was sure on his mind right now.

“Look man, I am just trying to live”. Ray had heard this before but that was no excuse for chopping up and eating another human. “ Just let me go and you will never see me again” the guy said to Ray as he slowly tried to take a step back. “Do not move one more step or so help me god this bullet will find its way to the other side of your head.” Ray still was not use to the idea of taking a life and he had no idea if he would be able to if it called for it. “your not going to shoot me” the man said with a slightly wicked grin on his face. “You know if you fire that gun then your a dead man too”. He was right and Ray knew it. There was no less then twenty people in the next building who had yet to find that Ray had made his way into their camp to rescue the young boy.

“So, I am going to tell you how the is going to go down. I am going to walk out of this room and you better hope you can run you stupid S.O.B.” He had a full on smile going at this point. Ray could feel his heart beating faster and faster. All that was going through his mind was the image of what this man was about to do to that kid if he had not walked in when he did. POP. The gunshot took Ray by surprise. He did not even feel himself pulling the trigger. The bullet made a small round hole in this guys forehead and splattered the rest onto the wall behind him. Ray found himself shaking. He had killed this man and knew he should feel something other then the joy he felt at the sight of this cannibal falling to the ground.

The feelings of accomplishment were short lived however as he could hear the sound of the others coming. Ray ran out the back door and made his way quickly to the cover of the woods behind the houses. He knew exactly what would become of him if they caught him. He would not die quickly. They would keep him alive for as long as they could while eating little bits of him. He had smelled the burning of human flesh coming from the camps before. He had heard the screams coming from the dieing as they had thin slices of flesh removed for food. Ray had no intention of having this happen to him tonight.

As the sound of the approaching mob rang louder in his ears he ran harder and faster. He could hear gun shots ringing out in the night getting ever so close to ending his journey. He could feel as a bullet pierced his skin, hitting him in the shoulder. His adrenaline causing the pain to fade into an ever so slight pinch. Ray knew he was hit but he could not stop running. He ran up onto a small stream flowing with a decent current and without thinking he jumped in and began swimming with the flow of the water. His left shoulder was of little use right now but he pushed himself to get every inch of movement out of the wounded limb.

Swimming for what had to of been a couple miles thanks to the quickly flowing water he made his way to dry land and laid there attempting to catch his breath. He took an extra shirt from his backpack and wrapped it around his shoulder the best he could to try to stop the bleeding. There was silence except for the sound of the water. He had made it to safety, for now.

After resting for a minute or two he emptied out his backpack trying to dry off the contents. Ray grabbed his water bottles and filled them up in the stream, wrapped his book back into an old shirt after wringing it out and then plotted his next move. He couldn’t stay by the water and he knew it. Being that far in the open was never a good idea nowadays. He had began to feel the pain from his shoulder as he stood to collect his belongings. Ray decided he would have to find somewhere to rest soon and attempt to remove the bullet that had likely missed killing him by less then a foot. He walked for about an hour till he came up to an abandoned car sitting off in the grass. It was at least a hundred yards from the road that he could see in front of him. This would have to be his resting place for the night.

After a few hours Ray was awakened by the sound of intense arguing. He stayed as still as he could while still raising his head to get a view of who was out there. Ray recognized one of the guys from the camp he had ran from just a few hours back. He thought to himself that there was no way they knew how close they was to him. He didn’t even know if they had come out this way still searching for him. He watched them carefully as they made there way just a little further down the road. Ray knew he was not safe there and even if they didn’t have there guns there was no way he was fighting them off.