Dead Horizon

Tied

Alarm sounds rang and rang in the mist of sunrise.

"HELP!" A woman's voice called from the top floor of the shelter. The top floor was just above Ember. Kate sat straight up in the top bunk and her mind was circling in every direction possible. She woke up Ember, who was sleeping peacefully and Sophie who was hunched over in a fetal position. They trotted out of their cell, like everyone else was doing. The same man in a blue suit called on his speaker,

"Everyone! Remain calm. I repeat. Everyone must remain calm, there was a n accident on the fifth floor and the guards are taking control of it right now. Please if you are awake, listen."

He kept repeating the same thing over and over again, until he ordered that everyone must come down stairs to receive updates about what is happening and details on the latest news. The outside world was a disaster, something that people have been trying to forget, but they were not allowed outside after stepping in, so that worked well. Everyone in the shelter was gathered around in a huge circle and the guy in the blue suit was talking about the pathogen released by Russia and how it is affecting the whole world.

"It was not meant to be this way, the Russians wanted to release this pathogen as a threat so that only the U.S. could fall ill, but this pathogen is spreading fast and it has deadly outcomes if you are bitten."

People looked shocked, like they were in a dream or something. Everyone was forced out of their cell for this speech and threatened if they disagreed, or were still sleeping. Eleanor did not look bothered, but she was. Ellie was worried about her dad, she knew he did not have the strength yet to walk, so he definitely did not have the strength to fight.

"Bitten?"

The boy in the front of the circle gathering asked. Everyone stared at him in silence and Ember was surprised, by two things and one of them being a thought she should not be thinking of, not now. Ember shared the same thought with pretty much everyone else. Why are people not more involved? Why are they all just silently sitting and listening to the guy?

"Yes. See, this specific pathogen causes people to become, well, cannibals."

People looked at one another with their eyes wide open. It was like a real-life horror movie.

"But hear me out, it is not like a cold, it is almost as if it can not live in the host if it is not transmitted. The host has to be dead for ten minutes to be able to spread. The water in their body is a home to the pathogen released in the air and then it spreads in the fluids of the body, which then transport disease to your brain after it can no longer function, taking over with all of its abilities. The bacteria was made to be cannibalistic, parasitic and apocalyptic"

The guy made total sense and sounded wise, but he obviously did not add in the real details and specifics to calm us down a bit, but we all deserve to know the truth.

"So what do we do now?"

Ember asked, she wanted to come off as brave. Her mother looked at her and gave her the mom look, but she did not care about what her mother thinks of her now.

"Ahh, good question young lady. We wait."

He responded.

"That's all?"

The boy who had asked the first question said.

"Yes. Unless you want to go out there and kill infected, rotting people, with no brain at all and you having no experience, be my guest. Russia is being affected, Canada, all of Asia, all of the west, north, south, and east!"

The guy looked scared but he sounded tough. Ember looked at the little blonde girl sitting across from her and they maintained eye contact until the blue suit guy was done talking. The girl's eye conversation was interrupted by a big belch followed by a growl.

"Wait so after someone dies now, the virus attached to the pathogen is airborne until it reaches the water in your body, then takes over as the parasite in a host?"

Ellie wanted to confirm with Evelynn, she was kind of like her mother now.

"That's what he said. But it is not just us, it's all over the world Ellie."

Ellie asked what that growling noise was and no one responded. The suit guy told everyone to follow the guy in the red suit down to the basement after he made a hand gesture to the guy in the gray attire.

Biting At the Dust

Everyone was forced to follow him and the trail of people began to walk down the steel staircase that was rusting. The stairs lead to a small room, it was a basement, just not the kind that they imagined.

Ellie forgot about the most important thing to her, her father, the only person she had left to keep her going.

"Where's my dad? "

Eleanor asked the guy, as she broke the silence in the room. The guy put his hand on her shoulder and kneeled on the smooth, gray ground slowly and softly.

He whispered, "Sorry, kiddo. Your dadda has no strength and at this point, we must cast out the weak. "

It was like he was mocking her dad. He got up and his knee cracked loudly. Ellie's eyes started to water and she sat herself down in the dark corner of the room, not regretting that she had pushed the guy's hand off her shoulder when he told her the bad news. She let out a soft sob and wondered if they had killed him, left him there or he died naturally. If they left him there, maybe there was still hope that he could be saved. Maybe not?

Ember looked around the room, feeling bad about the little blonde girl's situation, but she had her own problems to worry about. On her eye's journey around the room, she spotted a case with something poking out of it. She walked towards it.

"Hey what are these?!"

Ember asked, shocked. She did not direct the question to one specific person, but to anyone in the small room. There were tons of people, smelly people, old, young and right in the middle, like her.

"Hey, girl! Don't you touch those! "

The same guy that made Ellie cry, pointed a gun in her direction and she put her hands up slowly. Everyone was watching, especially the boy with the icy-blue eyes. Everyone took a step back while a few young boys and girls let out a terrified scream with a scared face, but not because of the weapon. Something else causes adrenaline to rush up and down the hearts of lives trapped in the room.

There were dead bodies hidden mysteriously in the corner all along. No one knew. This was the first time anyone in the shelter has seen this happen. It's been on the news for sure, but this hit is different. The walking corpse came up from behind the guy and silently took a pause before it bit into his shoulder.

A shot rifled out of the small handgun the guy was holding. Ember ducked and the boy with the blue eyes grabbed a knife from his pocket that he had found at the shelter and stabbed the infected with a knife before stabbing the guy in the chest. He knew he was going to turn, everyone knew.

Ember hugged the boy as a thank you for saving her from another bullet being shot towards her head. There were more coming, and towards them. The more screams, the more death. Ember opened the closed latch and let out as many people as she could before she had to fight. She knew she wasn't ready, but the boy was there, the little girl who was going to give up on herself because of her dad was there, her family was there.

Ember gave a look to the boy and they had their guns loaded and knives in action. Ember was tall but Sophie wasn't. She knew deep down that there was no saving Sophie from the dangers of the world now.

Ember felt a deep drive to protect her family. As the infected dead came closer, Ember rushed towards them and surprisingly, there were not as many as they both expected. Driving deep down into the skull with a sharp knife, Ember felt like a killer, and nothing about it made her feel guilty...