by S. M. LITTLE
While this was going on, Shirtless had gotten back up, albeit slowly, and charged a prone Mike. He dove at Mike and the pair rolled off of Lead Pipe. Shirtless got a couple of good punches in before Mike could counter.
Using his own weight, Mike rolled Shirtless to the left and ended up on top of him. Mike reared his right arm back and laid a punch that would have made Ali blush. Shirtless was out cold.
Mike stood up to check on Pete, who was standing there watching the show.
“You could have helped!” Mike said.
“Why should I do that when I had three to your two?” Pete asked.
“Hey, your three turned into my three,” Mike shot back.
“But one of mine had a lead pipe,” Pete countered.
“Yeah, that’s the one I took. You never could handle your own, always gotta pawn them off on me,” Mike chuckled.
“Not my fault that he went to you,” Pete replied.
“I’m just better looking,” Mike said.
“Yeah, for a jackass, you look pretty good,” Pete retaliated.
The two continued their banter back and forth as they walked back to the base, leaving the five goons laid out in the street. It wouldn’t be the last time they saw those guys.
CHAPTER NINE
NEW YORK CITY
Amy sat on her bed, feeling lousy and trying to decide whether to call in to work on her last day or not. She had wanted to quit on the spot, but her boss made her fulfill her two-week notice. She hated every second of it.
Her boss refused to stop hitting on her and she ended up sleeping with him two more times. He had also threatened that if she did not fulfill her notice, he would make her life a living hell. He was a rich man with connections so she knew he could live up to his promise, and it would be impossible to find another job in her field.
She just could not shake this bug out of her system. She had tried everything she could think of, but it just wouldn’t end. Amy was running a fever, had chills, diarrhea, some vomiting and overall felt like she had been run over. The body aches were the worst. She could barely move.
“Enough of this,” she said to herself. She picked up the phone and called the office.
“I can’t make it in today,” she told her co-worker. “This bug is killing me.”
“You know what he will do if you don’t make it in today,” her co-worker said.
“I know, but I need to go to the hospital,” she told them. “It’s getting worse.”
“Ok, I’ll let him know,” her co-worker said, but Amy didn’t hear her. She had collapsed and started convulsing. Her co-worker could hear everything that was happening over the phone but did not quite understand what was going on.
Deep inside Amy’s body, the synth blood from her transfusion had anchored itself to the molecules in her body. It attacked with a ferociousness and was literally changing her body at a molecular level.
The co-worker could hear the volume of Amy’s whimpers and moans increasing and could not get Amy to respond to her increasingly frantic demands.
“Someone call 911. Amy collapsed at home,” she yelled out, still listening in horror as Amy changed.
Whimpers and moans quickly turned to screams. Not just any screams, screams of terror, screams of pain, a high-pitched wailing filled with rage. The co-worker could not understand what was happening. It sounded like Amy was being skinned alive.
Body builders transform their own bodies by working out and stressing the muscle groups. Each group that is stressed feels sore for several days while it heals itself, thus growing bigger and stronger. The transformation of the muscle groups takes months of hard work to get the desired results. This all happened to Amy in mere moments.
The co-worker sat in horrified fear. The screams were so loud that other workers could now hear them across the office. The high-pitched screams then started turning into a gurgling sound, then turned to venomous growls. The growls sounded evil and had sounds of rage laced in them.
At home, Amy’s muscle structure changed from lean, almost skinny, into that of a hardcore body builder in seconds. Bones shattered to accommodate the new muscle structure. Every time a bone broke, Amy howled louder. Pain radiated through her body as broken bones healed in seconds. The bones moved on their own, reforming with an intense fire. The burning was like nothing Amy had ever felt before. It was like a million suns had taken up residence in her body.
The pain from the change was intense and unyielding. So much so that it triggered a primal urge in the creature that used to be Amy. It needed to be fed. It needed fuel to continue its relentless assault on her body. Once the hunger hit, she was no longer Amy. She was no longer a member of humanity.
All she could think of was to feed and by feeding the hope was the assault would lessen. Until then, she was this mindless, roaming void, looking for anything to relieve the pain.
Amy was now a massive creature. She looked like an enormous body builder that had been working out her entire life. Her eyes were dull and lifeless and her teeth now had razor sharp points on each of them.
Her blood had changed at a cellular level, transforming into a luminescent purple goo. Her veins popped out, clearly visible from a distance and she actually glowed purple.
Just as her veins popped out, Charles came home. He was sweating and very pale.
“Babe, I’m home,” he called out. “I think I caught whatever you have.”
Amy barreled through the house, down the stairs and launched herself at Charles. The weight difference from the old Amy to now was incredible. Charles had no chance of fending off the attack.
She landed squarely on his chest, knocking him down and onto his back. She stayed there, on his chest, drinking in the scent from his body. Growls and snarls escaped her lips and then she stood up and moved away from Charles.
Fear ran through his entire body as he watched his wife, or what he thought was his wife, look down on him. Screams erupted from his mouth that he didn’t realize he was letting out.
Back at the office, all of Amy’s co-workers had stopped what they were doing to listen in on what was happening. They could hear the screams from Charles and the snarls from Amy. It sounded like Amy, sort of. It was her tone of voice, but much deeper. Deeper and filled with rage and hatred. They all sat in horror as they could hear a door opening.
“Paramedics,” a voice called out.
Amy’s primitive brain recognized that there was new prey in the room and she leapt at the voice. She tore into the paramedic like a fat man at a buffet. The second paramedic stood in terror as Amy ripped out the throat of the first guy with her teeth. She had a look of intense satisfaction on her face as she swallowed the flesh.
The second paramedic and Charles vomited all over the floor while watching. Charles had managed to reach a crouched position but all of a sudden, he fell flat on the floor as he started to scream anew. Agony ravaged his body as he started to turn. He trembled at the feelings coursing through his body. He didn’t know what was happening to him. All he knew was he had never felt this kind of pain before.
Convulsions took over as he quickly made his conversion to join the ranks of the undead. Only, his change was different. It wasn’t nearly as long as Amy’s and not nearly as intense. It was only a fraction of what Amy had gone through.
By the time the change had finished, Charles was a mindless body. Green, glowing veins popped out. His eyes were covered with cataracts and he had zero visibility left. Smell was now his primary sense and it worked better than a canine’s. His only focus was biting everything and everyone around him.
The second paramedic had collapsed from a fear-induced heart attack and was in no shape to counter anything Charles did.
Charles stumbled over to the second paramedic and bit into his throat, ripping it out and swallowing any blood that ran into his mouth. Unlike Amy though, Charles was content to leave it at that. There were others to go bite. He slowly stood up and stumbled out the door.
All th
e while, Amy continued to feed on the first paramedic. She had ripped open his chest cavity and was devouring his internal organs. She had the most pleasant look on her face, but that only lasted for a few moments until the hunger came back. No matter how much she ate, the hunger was always there. It would never relent, never stop driving her to consume as much as she could. Rage continued to fill her very being. Continued to make her destroy any living thing she came across until the hunger was satisfied. But it never would be.
CHAPTER TEN
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
Bob was at Virginia Mason Hospital in downtown Seattle. Ted had come down with some sort of fever that wouldn’t go away. Ted was lethargic, pale, had body aches that wouldn’t quit and generally felt horrible. Bob had come with him to the emergency room as support but was shocked when they immediately admitted Ted into the hospital. Something in his bloodwork had come back weird, and they wanted to monitor him.
Bob was in the room with Ted, watching all the monitors. It was a small room in the ICU. It held one bed and several machines with which to monitor Ted. He was on oxygen and had every conceivable wire and tube hooked up to him. There was a window next to the door so the nurses could look in as they walked by.
Ted had fallen asleep a little while ago and Bob did not want to wake him up. Bob texted Tina to tell her that Ted had been admitted and he was going to hang out for a while to help him.
Just as Bob finished texting Tina, Ted’s monitors all went off at once. Ted’s blood pressure shot up, his pulse skyrocketed, and his fever reached temps close to 108 degrees. Nurses came rushing in before Bob could even yell for help. One nurse ushered him out of the room and shut the door. Bob watched through the window.
Ted started convulsing as the nurses started packing ice bags around him. Sweat poured off Ted as his temperature continued to climb. The monitors connected to Ted continued to blare their warning sounds until a final, telltale steady tone was heard. Ted had died.
Bob stood in utter shock, too dumbfounded to even move. He heard his heart pounding as the nurses started to clean up Ted.
“What the…?” Bob said in a near whisper. He couldn’t believe he had just watched his friend die. He was so healthy only days ago. What the hell happened?
“Sir, I asked you if you know where Ted has been?” a voice said.
It took a moment to register with Bob that a doctor had been speaking to him.
“Excuse me?” Bob said.
“Was Ted ever out of the country?” the doctor asked.
“No, never. Ted never left Washington state. He’s always been here. Hated to travel,” Bob said.
“We will need to ask you some more questions. Did Ted have any family?” the doctor asked.
“Just me. I’m…I was his best friend,” Bob corrected himself. “His parents died years ago. Only child,” Bob said in a daze.
“Ok, if you could come with me. We have some things to figure out,” the doctor continued. “We need to figure out what he might have come in contact with over the last week. People just don’t spike a severe temperature for no reason.”
“I understand,” Bob said, taking one last look at Ted before he started to walk away with the doctor.
The nurses were doing their best to get Ted cleaned up and get the machines unhooked. None of them saw the movement from Ted until it was too late.
Growling, Ted rose from his bed and bit into the first nurse he could reach. He tore a huge chunk out of her arm and spit it out. She screamed in horror as she looked at her arm. Blood poured out of the wound, coating the floor. Ted reached the second nurse before anyone could react. Flesh ripped from her upper arm as people started to figure out something was wrong.
As both nurses dropped to the floor, screaming in pain, the third nurse tried to reach the door, but Ted was between her and the door. She tried to run around him, but only bounced back as Ted lunged at her. She fell to the ground and within seconds Ted was on her, biting her neck. Ted tore away the side of her neck with a grunt and blood spurted everywhere, pulsating out with every beat of her heart. She bled out in seconds. Ted chewed and swallowed the flesh, giving a grunt of satisfaction.
Bob stood transfixed, looking into the room. Seconds ago, he had watched his friend die, now his friend was roaming around the room, biting and eating nurses. Bob watched as Ted chewed away on the nurses, noting that Ted’s veins had popped out on the surface of his skin. They looked green and had a slight glow to them.
“What in the actual fuck?” Bob shouted out.
The doctor called for security and then charged into the room. He didn’t get very far before he slipped on the bloody floor. Ted quickly realized he was there and attacked. The doctor, as he lay on the floor, watched in horror as Ted latched onto his leg with his teeth. Screams of pain erupted from the doctor’s mouth as Ted jerked his head back, ripping a sizeable chunk out of the doctor’s calf muscle.
As all of this was happening, four security guards rushed into the room. The first one slid on the blood and ended up crashing face first into Ted. His nose was bitten off within seconds. The following guards entered more carefully, reaching Ted just as he was going to take another bite of the first guard.
The three remaining guards grabbed Ted all at once in an effort to subdue him and were surprised by the strength Ted used to throw them all off of him. They attempted to grab Ted again and this time they held on for dear life. One guard managed to stand up and grabbed the flexi-cuffs he had on him. As the cuffs were being put on, Ted bit another guard that had come too close to his mouth.
They half dragged, half carried Ted out of the room. As they were exiting the room, the group passed directly in front of Bob. Bob could clearly see Ted’s eyes. They were filmed over with cataracts and Ted’s face was blank. Bob jumped back as Ted started snapping his jaws in his direction. This was not his friend anymore. Bob had no clue who this was, only that something had taken him over.
All in all, Ted had bitten three nurses, one doctor, and two security guards before they could subdue him. One was now dead and the other five would soon wish they were.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
NORTH LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS
Emergency room duty wasn’t exactly something that Lucy loved, but she didn’t loathe it either. It was just something that she had to do. It appeared the chaos from the last time she was in the ER hadn’t let up at all, until tonight. Thankfully, everything had been quiet this evening, except for the occasional case of the sniffles and an overanxious parent.
She was working with the same nurses from her previous shift in the ER. Both nurses had finally recovered from the shock of being sprayed with blood. They had initially freaked out, until they were reminded that it was synth blood and no testing for HIV or other diseases needed to be performed. Unpleasant as it had been, being drenched in blood, it was a small price to pay in an effort to save a life.
Both nurses weren’t feeling all that well tonight. They complained of body aches and fatigue, and both had developed slight fevers shortly after they came on shift. Lucy was about to send them home when a middle-aged man came into the ER complaining of chest pains. He was severely overweight, sweating, and said his left arm was numb.
The patient was rushed into a room and Lucy went to work. She quickly diagnosed the man with symptoms of a heart attack and immediately put him on oxygen and gave him an aspirin. Aspirin, as many people know, can work as a blood thinner, keeping blood clots from forming until further treatment can occur. Next, she sent one of the nurses to get the cardiac catheterization kit. It is a kit used to run a flexible tube from a blood vessel from the wrist or groin, into the heart to perform diagnostic tests and help resolve known heart problems.
Surprisingly, tthe man lay on the bed, calm and collected. Lucy didn’t need to tell him that if he was overanxious or panicked, he could make things worse.
“What’s your name?” Lucy asked him. Talking to the patient was a good way to keep them from thinking about what was
happening around them. If they started to think, they might start to panic.
“Andy,” he replied.
“Well Andy, has anything like this happened before?” Lucy asked. She had a hunch it wasn’t his first heart attack, he was just too calm and collected.
“Yes, three times,” he replied.
“You’re an old pro at this, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Unfortunately, yes. Wife keeps telling me that I need to change my diet and exercise. Just don’t have the will power to do it.”
“Well, we’ll have you fixed up in no time,” Lucy said as reassuringly as she could. Andy was in bad shape and she could tell he wouldn’t have much time left if he didn’t change his ways.
Lucy got the catheter inserted in Andy’s wrist and was carefully threading it up to Andy’s heart when one of the nurses dropped like a rock. She was ghost white and had started convulsing. Shouts of pain echoed through the room. The shouts turned to screams that reverberated throughout the ER.
Lucy was stuck. She had a cardiac catheter partially started in a patient and one of her nurses had dropped to the floor with convulsions. She didn’t know what to do. Indecision struck her for the first time in her life and it didn’t feel good.
“What the hell was that?” a voice asked. Lucy turned her head to see that Dr. Long had come running into the room to assist.
“Maggie collapsed. She hasn’t been feeling good,” Lucy shouted. As she finished her sentence, she looked at Maggie, the fallen nurse. Maggie was writhing about on the floor and pain flared in her eyes, but along with that was something else. Rage. Lucy could see rage in those eyes, and it wasn’t any rage, it was a rage filled with vile hatred. Lucy gasped at what she saw next. Maggie’s eyes rapidly glazed over with cataracts. Lucy continued to stare as the veins in Maggie’s body popped out and turned green.
