Title pending

Days 0 to 3

Day 0

"Rough year, uh ?"
A man sat down heavily in a chair right next to me. 

"I'm glad it's over."

It was the 31st of December. I was attending a very loud party with one of my best friends. Everybody was trying to put behind them what a year it had been. People were dancing, cheering and drinking loudly. When midnight came close, someone turned off the music, and we started counting down the seconds we had left before the end of the year.

 Almost everybody was smiling 60... Almost everybody... 59... I tried to remember why this year had been the worst ever. My girlfriend had dumped me. 45... Then my father passed away 40... I miss him so much... 30... My apartment was flooded because of the heavy rains in October   10... the reparations cost me an arm and a leg 8... But I thought it was over, finally 5...That I would be able to put all my pain and grief behind me 3... And then, it happened 1...

As we reached midnight, everybody cheered and the large house where the party was held erupted with laughter, said cheers, and a horrendous scream. The music was still off and everybody froze. We had all heard it. Panic-stricken, everybody looked around slowly to find out where the scream had come from. I knew. I had heard it directly behind me. I slowly turned my head to face its origin. I was now looking at the door through which we all came in a few hours earlier. Between me and the door, there were several things. First, a huge bowl filled to the brim with punch (nobody wanted to drink that, they'd rather drown in much more alcoholic beverages). The punch was bright red and quite still in its bowl. Dropping my gaze a few centimeters down, I noticed another bright red liquid tainting the tablecloth. Someone had knocked a few glasses down while trying to break their fall. Another person was bent over them to help them up, or so it would seem. At first, I thought that was it, that the man on the floor had fallen down and screamed in pain. But that was not it. Had I been ten centimeters shorter, I could have sworn he was just knocked unconscious and the woman bent over him was trying to wake him up. But I was not ten centimeters shorter. From where I stood, I could clearly see the front teeth of the woman bent over him turning bright, deep red. A pool of blood started forming around them and I realized that the woman was tearing the man's flesh apart and eating him alive. She must have dealt a nasty blow to his head, or cut his throat clean, because he had only screamed once before collapsing. I glanced at the door behind them and thought hard. But there was no time. Somebody else had seen it. The whole house shook with the shrieks of terror that erupted left and right. Those who were brave enough launched forward and took the woman off the man's corpse. I had only one thing in mind : get the hell out of here.
That idea saved me. I made my way through the small crowd that had gathered to this end of the house and went out by the back. As I was leaving, I heard the crazy woman screaming and slashing the air with her arms. I heard another scream, someone else had been bitten, but it didn't seem bad. I left my friend behind, texted him that I'd be off to my place to rest and started the engine of my car. I made it back to my apartment safely that night.

Day 1

5 A.M.

I had a very disturbed sleep last night. Flashes of red pools of blood and men missing half of their faces kept popping up in my dreams. I woke up in a start around four A.M. when a bloody-mouthed woman jumped on top of me. No more sleep for me.

I got up and poured myself some coffee, turning on the radio as I did. At first, all I could hear was white noise, so I turned the frequency button left and right. It was an old radio which I had modified to be able to pick up frequencies from police cars and ambulances. I liked listening to them from time to time. This time, no one seemed to be around. I searched the frequencies for another ten minutes before I finally landed on something interesting. It seemed like the woman who had attacked the man was being moved in a police car. Except that her description did not match with the woman that was at the party. Different clothing, different age. I leaned in closer to listen to what they were saying. Apparently, they had come across that one as she was mauling a homeless man in a deserted street. They had had to pin her down and nearly knock her out before they could put her in the car. One of the officers had suffered deep scratches and bites on his forearm. I turned off the radio and heard the police car sirens passing by, ten stories below. I knew they had to be close-by, that thing couldn't pick up signals from far away.

I turned the TV on and proceeded to waste a good chunk of my early morning.

9 A.M.

I picked up my phone once more to send yet another message to my best friend. He told me he had come home safe yesterday, but we had plans for today, and he still hasn't replied to me. I know it's early, but still, he didn't come home past one A.M. yesterday night.

10 A.M.

I received a text from him, but I can't read it. I don't think anybody can, actually. It looks like he just hit random keys and sent it. I tried calling but I always end up on his voicemail.
I called his girlfriend, but she didn't answer either. At one point I thought I had reached him, but all I could hear on the other side of the phone were some rattling noise and heavy breathing. I jumped into my car and went to his house as fast as I could. He only lived a few blocks away, so I got there in no time. I crashed my fist hard on the door and waited for an answer. Several minutes later, I heard something hit the door on the other side. Someone was running their hands up and down, scratching the hard wood. I pulled and pushed with all my might, but the door was shut tight. I yelled a few times but the only answer I got was more rattling on the other side. Something was definitely off with him. I called an ambulance on the spot and waited for them.

8 P.M.

The doctors told me he will be fine. When the ambulance arrived, I helped them bring down the back-door, and we found my friend passed out on the floor in front of the door on which I had been knocking. His girlfriend wasn't home. His eyes were red, and he had a nasty bite on his arm. I think it's the one he received while restraining the girl at the party. He was unresponsive so the nurses put him on a stretcher and drove him to the hospital. Apparently, several people in the same state had been admitted a few hours earlier. I recognized a few faces from the party. I left after I bade goodnight to my unconscious friend, telling him that I'd come visit him the next day.

Day 2

I woke up around six that morning. I showered, tried to find a good frequency on the radio, gave up and ate some breakfast. At half-past eight, I decided I would visit my friend. I turned the engine of my car on and started driving. I arrived at the hospital around nine and went to his room. He wasn't there. I asked a nurse, and she told me the doctors had decided to move him and the other patients together because they showed similar symptoms, and they didn't want them to infect other patients, given that their condition seemed highly contagious. I made my way down a few staircases and finally reached the doctor's office. He greeted me, and we went even further down to some kind of basement. I was my friend's closest idea of a relative (he had no family and his girlfriend was out of town) so the Doc told me it was fine for me to visit him, but I wouldn't be allowed in his compartment. He explained to me that he had woken up and showed signs of aggressive behavior. We arrived in a very white and long room. On the other side of a long glass pane we could see four different boxes. In each of them we could see a bed, a night stand and a different person. The one on the left-end side was still sleeping calmly. The second one was starting to move in his bed. The third one was my friend, and he was eyeing us as though he would jump through the glass any minute to punch us in the face. The fourth one was occupied by a woman who was walking in a circle, banging the walls as she did. The Doc told me that my friend had gone through all the different states I could see. They start off very lethargic, then they start moving in their sleep. After that, they get up and start walking faster and faster, showing signs of anger that grow as they walk, and eventually, they remain quite still but seem to attack whenever a human being is close-by. I could hardly believe what he told me. He offered me to see by myself and told me to get near the glass. The second I stepped out of line and reached the glass, my friend leapt with incredible force and the whole pane trembled. I fell back and the Doc helped me up. he told me that two of the four people in there were nurses. They had tried to restrain my friend and ended up scratched and bitten. There were four of these installations in the hospital, and they were all full.

Day 3

That night, shit hit the fan. And it hit it hard.

It was a few minutes past midnight when the Doc called me. I had given him my number because I was the only one he could tell about my friend. I picked up, and he told me that there had been a containment breach. An infected nurse had hidden her condition and came back later to free the patients. Apparently, she was desperate and stressed-out. She did that so she wouldn't be the only one to die from the mysterious disease. I asked him what this had to do with me, but he didn't answer directly and urged me to come as fast as I could, that I would find my answer there. I got off the couch and in my car.

I arrived at the hospital twenty minutes later. The Doc welcomed me in his office and showed me footage of what happened. There was a note on his desk.
On the camera footage, we could see the nurse walk up to the different containment blocks and open them all remotely. I thought that after that, the nurse would go back to the main block, but instead, she joined one of the infected in their containment block. It was the third block, my friend's block. As soon as the door opened, my friend jumped on the nurse and bit half of her face off. I almost vomited from shock. Blood splattered everywhere. I turned my head away from the monitor and looked at the note on the Doc's desk. It was a suicide note. The nurse had written down what he had told me on the phone. Her name was Laura, she was infected and couldn't bare the idea that she'd be locked-up and left to rot in a containment block. She had decided that she would free the infected and end her life at their hands. I looked at the Doc. His face was rather pale, and he told me that the infected had been running loose in the basement for several hours now. No one wanted to deal with them, and rumors that other nurses were infected were already spreading. After he told me this, he slowly rolled up his sleeve and showed me a deep, glittering yet tiny scratch on his forearm. He told me that Laura had scratched him when he had found her snooping around the control panel of the containment blocks earlier today. He had only a few hours ahead of him before falling asleep and waking up again, just like them.
I remembered what happened at the party and told him that he would show aggressive behavior before falling in a lethargic state. He was aware of that. I was starting to freak out, eyeing the door behind me to prepare my escape, but then I saw it. His feet were chained to his desk and chair. That man was ready to die.

I asked him what he wanted me to do. Nobody could enter the basement because the infected were roaming near the entrance and opening the door would set them free... But then again, there might already be other infected outside. He reached under his desk and drew a revolver out of its encasing. He also took out a large amount of bullets from another drawer. He told me that the gun would be mine if I finished him off once he had turned, otherwise, he'd kill himself here and there. I accepted his offer.

We spent several hours like this. It was hard to speak, but I didn't have to. He told me all about how he thought that this was the end of an era. He was convinced that the infection would spread. I told him in a whisper about what I had heard on the radio the morning after the party. We stood there, contemplating what we thought would be the end of the world. After a few more hours, he started growling. His eyes were redder than ever and foam was starting to come out of his mouth. He was clenching his teeth hard. He told me through gritted teeth that he was starting to turn. Before he completely lost control, he told me that they had scanned the infected and that their brains seemed perfectly fine. In fact, he suspected them to be fully aware of what was going on, but to be unable to control their bodies. He wanted me to know that, he wanted me to witness it.

About ten minutes later, his teeth came free from his will. He tried to jump on me but the chains held him up, and he fell head first. He lifted his gaze and our eyes met. Tears started pouring down his chin as he tried to bite my ankles. He was in there. He knew what was happening, I was sure of it. He was right. I lifted the barrel of the revolver, aimed for his head and pulled the trigger. My ears were still ringing when I got inside my car. I slammed the key in the lock of my apartment and gathered my stuff as fast as I could. If the Doc was right, staying in a big city was the last thing I wanted. And the Doc was right.