The Beginning of the End

It all happened too fast. The blood. The stench. The overwhelming sense of panic and
chaos. The Campion Virus was just another strain of the flu that was a media ploy. Every night I would read blogs, watch news specials, and hear from classmates about the “potential epidemic” that would arise from this new strain. I ignored it all. When I started to see the live footage of the infected, I still doubted. I told myself that it was all fancy editing and some fake blood. There were many others such as myself. Bullheaded, doubting fools. I am not one to resign myself to the lies that the masses fall to. I am hard pressed to believe anything that I already do not know for myself to be fact. That’s just me. I didn’t start to actually realize what the Campion Virus, the Super Flu, actually did until it until it affected me and the ones I loved.

It was a cold night in September when the effects of the virus spread through my
life. Me and my family were at a friend’s house in the small town of Los Banos, CA. My mother had been complaining of a horrid stomachache and nausea towards the end of the night. We said our goodbyes, and headed home for the sake of my mother. Little did we know, we were saying our final goodbyes to our friends and our normal lives. By the time we reached our house, her condition had worsened. Her skin had turned as pale as death itself. Her eyes were bloodshot and her face was blotched with a sickly black pallor. We took her to the Emergency Room immediately. That car ride was the longest car ride of my life. Time seemed to slow as I watched my mother deteriorate in front of my eyes. Her breaths came in short rasps. She was coughing up blood and was unresponsive to anything we said. Her beautiful skin looked stretched, she was
pale white, and her white floral dress was peppered with stains of blood. She turned and looked me in the eye. Her eyes. They were crimson red. Our eyes locked for what seemed like an eternity. I saw the oncoming headlights, I heard my sister scream. Time stopped, fire engulfed my mother who was still staring into my eyes. I reached for her, and was thrown from my seat like a ragdoll.

I awoke, watching lights pass above me. Every five feet, another bar of light. I looked down my chest, into a long hallway, painted white. Every so often we would pass a hallway. Screams echoed throughout the eerie halls. I raised my forearms. They were charred with glass embedded in them. I felt nothing. I heard a woman’s voice tell me I was going to be all right and I slipped out of consciousness.

I awoke in a hospital bed; both my arms had been bandaged as well as half my face. The sheets were covered with what I assumed to be my blood. The halls outside were pitch black. There was a faint
glow of the emergency lights, pointing the direction out of the building. The building was completely silent. There were no sounds of cars, people, anything. I stepped out of the bed and slipped on a large pool of blood, narrowly avoiding smashing my head on the side of the bed. I stumbled my way to the door and leaned out into the hallway. There was a man, standing in the middle of the hallway, swaying back and forth under a flickering light. I shuffled out into the middle of the hallway, and called out to him. He picked his head up and then the silence was broken. A horrible moaning began to echo throughout the bowels of the hospital. The man standing in the hallway started to sprint at me, arms flailing through the air. I stumbled back and tripped over some wire as he neared…