The lady made it just past our house when the contaminated finally caught up with her. There were six in total. The first one to reach her grabbed her arm and pulled her down, popping the shoulder out of the socket. The rest converged on her in a matter of seconds, ripping flesh from bone and body, leaving nothing free. Her screams were finally muffled by the contaminated tearing deeper into her body.
I looked away to my arm. Chelsea’s nails had dug into it hard. Small pellets of blood seeped from my body, lining her nails. “Chels,” I said.
She could only cry in response. It hurt her to see a person in such pain, and she feared more than anything that she would become one of the contaminated, inflicting the pain.
Chapter 8
I awoke to a clatter of pots and pans smashing into the floor, the noise only slightly muffled by the carpet. I jolted upright in my bed, but not nearly as fast as I used to. Chelsea had forgotten to disable our contraption three of the last five nights when she awoke, although one night Coal tripped it, but it had the same effect.
As tired as I was, I forced myself fully out of bed to check on Chelsea. She was sitting upright, trying to untie the bonds on her hand.
“Sorry,” she said in the darkness. I looked at my watch – it was three in the morning. “Go back to bed,” she said.
I gave a tired moan then walked to her bed. My hands began to compulsively take apart the ropes around her wrist. “I’m fine. Besides, I have to tie you to the bed again, once you get back.”
My hands finished with the knots. Chelsea rubbed her wrist lightly, pecked me on the cheek, and went to the bathroom. Why did she have to do this so early every morning?
I opened my laptop while I waited. My browser popped up with my homepage being set to the last active forum. I clicked on the chat room, hoping for someone to be awake. Unfortunately for my bored self, nobody was signed onto chat. I thought the worst for a minute, that they had been gotten by the contaminated or that their power went out, but then corrected that thought.
I clicked off of the chat room and into the regular forum for posting any updates on the world. Buffalant909, the guy living in Buffalo, New York, had posted an article. I opened it up to read it was something that he wrote on his own with a link at the end of it.
Buffalant909 summed up the article, which happened to be about the current population of the world. He confirmed that the entire world population may have been cut in half since the start of the contamination. It was also rumored that the contamination may be from an evolved parasite which came into contact with a virus, creating the parasite virus. His summary went on to tell of the contamination most likely starting in the water supply, and that the least affected places were those gapped by a great deal of water, such as the United Kingdom and Japan. He also suggested that Australia may be the only place not affected by the contamination.
I clicked on the article to read much of what Bufffalant909 had said in his summary, my eyes darting back and forth quickly across the screen. At the end of the article, it noted that the information had come from a research development in Germany which had sent the information all across the internet.
At the very end of the link, the Germans posted a map of the world. The continents and separate countries were represented all with different shades of blue, the borders of different countries were outlined in black. The key at the bottom showed that the countries were represented in blue were the unaffected regions, while those blackened out were the contaminated areas. My eyes went wide at this.
Europe, Russia, China, India, Central Africa, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, and the Philippines – all were blackened out in the map. The damage was catastrophic. Almost all of America was in darkness, save parts of Michigan and Nebraska. Some of Canada was still in blue, but those were the northern most areas with barren tundra and extremely harsh conditions. Pretty much all of Asia was blackened in. Japan avoided this, but it still had small representations of potential contamination.
The Germans credited their information to that of the nations which sent it. Apparently, as a last resort, the larger nations with a better grasp on what was happening had sent information in regards to what was contaminated and what was still a safe zone. The maps of China and United States were in greater detail than the areas that the contamination would spread faster, such as France or Spain which were smaller in size and close living areas.
I zoomed in on the United States map to get a better view of where the outbreaks were. The entire pacific coast was black, though parts of Washington were still clean, but those were closest to Canada. The black spread through the west very strongly. It stayed almost entirely black until Missouri. Once there, spotty blue areas popped up near St. Louis, Kansas City, and out west to Boulder, Colorado, though never in large concentrations. The city was gone, as was most of New Jersey, and Connecticut. The southern tip of Florida was clean, as was the St. Petersburg area, though how clean that was is still up to interpretation. The majority of the clean areas were those near the coast with a lower
