Publish Or Perish

@arty_enigma | Prompt 1 • Jul'18

The infected people were different from zombies in one way. If you only listened to their speech, you could never say that they had any kind of infection. They seemed to talk like normal people, but deep within, they were controlled by those viruses.

She hated every part of it.

She was frightened beyond words. Isolation from the world was the only thing she could practice now, and of course, she didn't have the guts to go to sleep. It was just her and her cat in the house, otherwise empty.

Just then, she heard someone slam the door, making her jump out of her skin.

'Sam, open up, it's me!' The frenzied voice belonged to someone she knew. It was the fourth time he had turned up that day. With shaking, sweaty hands, she felt for something under her pillow. She found what she was looking for and held onto it tightly. A gun.

She crept downstairs and walked towards the door with footsteps as silent as a cat's.

'Samantha!' The voice shouted again, 'Open the door!' Another punch to the door resounded through the house.

'I won't! You have it!'

'Sam, please,' the voice pleaded, and Samantha felt her heart shatter into a million tiny pieces. It was her own brother she was talking to. She was helpless, but she was selfish too. She did not want to suffer.

'I can't.' That was her final answer. The slamming stopped. Not wanting to break into tears, she made her way to her bedroom and again went to her bubble. Her cat hopped on beside her and Samantha caressed its fur in silence . . .

. . . Until a deafening crash downstairs made her jolt. Gun tightly clutched and the pet feline hot at her heels, she sneaked downstairs and saw what she had been fearing. Her brother had not gone away. He had decided to carry out his wish by force.

'Bryce!' she shouted. 'No! Go away.'

'Shut that squeaky mouth of yours. I thought we were family!'

Samantha did not reply. She could not, when she saw what the disease had done to her brother. She could not begin to describe how horribly deformed he looked. Scars and gashes had conquered his body. His eyes reflected nothing but soullessness. His movements were slow and sluggish. All she could do was to level her gun at him. She pointed it directly at his midsection.

'No, Sam, what are you doing?' He started walking towards her. Samantha closed her eyes. The virus was going to kill him anyway. Better give him a clean death. She opened her eyes. It took all the motivation she could muster to pull the trigger. The gun went off. A deafening shot rang through her ears and the next moment Bryce was on the floor. She had killed her own brother.

Technically, he had already been half dead. The blow was cruel nevertheless.

She didn't dare to go near him. Now, with the blood and all, the chance of contracting the disease was higher—that is, if she wasn't infected already. She shuddered.

She could not stay there long. The broken window would invite more unwelcome visitors. That left only one safe option.

The basement.

Hardly did anyone know about it. First Samantha pocketed her gun and scooped up her cat in her arms, her only company. Then she grabbed bottles of water and bags of chips from the kitchen and hastily made her way to the basement, locking the door behind her.

Here, she crouched in a corner, and she was again trying to fight off her sleep. Her groans filled the silence of the hall, accompanied by her cat's occasional purrs. Her eyes stung. She waited in the darkness, though not sure for what. How long would she stay awake? She sat for one hour, which became two, then three.

Once or twice her ears caught the sound of footsteps and commotion upstairs, which soon died down. People must've entered. But nobody had a clue she was here.

She found that she could barely keep her eyes open. If those things—viruses, whatever—were inside her, they were ripping away her sanity. She started seeing weird things inside her head. Random faces and scenes appeared and vanished. Each time she closed her eyes, there was a new vision dancing in front of her.

This time, she saw her lone self, walking on a deserted road. She jerked her eyes open. In reality, only her cat was staring at her. The stare made her uneasy and warm at the same time. The cat silently kept her paw on Samantha's arm. The paw was wet. On a closer look, she noticed it was smeared with blood. The hungry cat must have killed a mouse.

Her eyelids drooped again. She was walking forward on the unlit road. She forced her eyes open, only to meet the intensifying, burning stare of her cat. Now, even blinking was making Samantha switch environments. She was flickering in and out of reality.

Every second she closed her eyes, she found that she had walked a significant distance forward, and she discovered that she was becoming drowsier with every step. It was just a few moments later that she saw something else. Just a faint silhouette of something on the road. Her world was shutting down on her like a bad light bulb. Now, as each moment passed, she saw either the dark object or her cat's intense glare. She didn't even have the energy to doubt her own resolve to not sleep.

She kept walking.

She did not stop until she finally saw what the object actually was. It was something she would have never thought of seeing in her worst nightmares.

Jutting out of the ground below, was a terribly starved and decayed hand. It was something that could only belong to the dead.

Stretching out, the bony hand clawed and ripped at the air, desperate to wrench anyone in its reach into the abyss below.

Seeing the sight made her squirm. She wanted to escape her reverie. But did she have the power?

The flickering only became more and more amplified as she tried to escape the darkness. Her cat's face came in front of her quite a few times, but slowly and gradually the trips back and forth stopped. The adrenaline was infinitesimal compared to the overpowering dizziness.

It was only unknowingly that she continued to walk forward, but not without clutching her shirt, holding onto life dearest.

Her steps eventually became automatic and unfaltering. Something inside told her that she would be out of this misery once she fell into whatever abyss was inviting her; that it was her destination.

She walked until the diseased hand was only a few feet away. Her footsteps started slowing down, and at last, she was only a mere step away from the hand's grip. The limb desperately mauled at nothing.

There was one last frantic moment, one last sight of her cat's unnaturally glowing yellow eyes, one final sign of hesitation before she took the step. The hand gripped her foot tightly at the ankle. She was pulled downwards with a surprisingly strong force.

But no, she did not shriek. Only a weak sigh left her parted lips.

As Samantha cascaded into the dark depths of the inferno below, her vision began to fade, until all she saw was the blackness of cold Death.

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