Chapter 1 - Infected

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Chase

I never imagined a glamorous life for myself when I was younger but I never thought it would come to this.  Sitting in a hospital room with plain white walls, plain plastic chairs and pale bored looking guards by the door whilst I nibbled on my younger sisters’ wrist.  The guards were for her protection to make sure my hunger didn’t get out of hand and turn me wild.

She watched every time, morbidly fascinated, even though she knew it drove me crazy.  It’s not like I did this for kicks, I needed her blood to survive.  I know what you’re thinking – vampire!  No, I’m not.  Except for the blood thing there’s nothing remotely vampire about me.  I have Hep Z.

It’s a virus that has a much more scientific name which most of us can’t pronounce so the rest of us just call it Hep Z or Hepatitis Zombie but I think the former has more of a ring to it.  Technically I’m not a zombie either, not yet.  At first the virus was discovered as a cure for cancer.  And it worked like a charm but the virus had deadly side effects too.

Once you have the virus, without proper medication, it strips you bare of all humane qualities such as morality and humanity.  It left you remorseless, savage with an insatiable hunger.  The Infected who made it to this stage of the decline were called Roamers.  No one knew what to do with them at first except to lock them up until scientists found something to help them come back to themselves.  But once you got to that stage there was no coming back and we soon learned it was never a good idea to keep large groups of them together.  It got messy.

Eventually the Purebloods were born.  Younger siblings genetically created with an antidote in their blood stream but even this was only temporary.  Without frequent feedings from our siblings we would eventually be lost to the Hep Z and end up like the other Roamer’s.

“All done?” Maya asked.

“Yeah, thanks.” I said wiping my mouth then licking my fingers, hating myself while I did it.

“Don’t be embarrassed, Jess.  It’s not like it’s my first feeding.  We’ve been doing this for years.”

There was a knock at the door and a nurse in pale blue scrubs entered.  “All done?” she smiled.

“Yes, ma’am.” Maya said, holding her wrist out for the nurse to bandage it.

“Dr Montgomery will see you in room two, Miss Chase.” The nurse said, dismissing me offhand.

“Okay, everything looks good here.” The doctor said, removing the blood pressure cuff from my upper left arm.  “Everything else looks good.  Your blood works came back with no irregularities, well, at least none we didn’t already know of.  You’re as healthy as you can be, Jessica.”

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⏰ Last updated: Jan 03, 2015 ⏰

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