Suddenly there was a hoot from one of the men as the fatter of the two companions charged forward, flailing fire axe in hand. He stopped in front of the boy, who hissed at him, but the man did not seem to care. He lifted his leg so that his boot was resting gently on the boy’s chest, then thrust it forward with enough force to throw the boy five feet backwards.
“You see, Earl?” the man said. “They ain’t nuttin but a bunch ‘o mindless freaks!” he walked forward to where the contaminated boy was, back on his feet. The man kicked the boy again, square in the face. “Nuttin!” he said
“Jimmy, just finish the job!” I heard Earl say from the side of the cameraman. “No reason to squander around playing with these freaks.”
Jimmy turned around, glaring at Earl. “I think I earned my play, Earl. My family ain’t ‘round anymore for me. Gotta find my fun some other way! S’not like Imma get to see my Sunday football, am I?”
“JIMMY!” Earl yelled.
Suddenly Earl emerged from the sides of the camera just as the boy leapt forward at Jimmy. Earl reached out and pushed the boy away, but not without the contaminated boy’s teeth marks tearing along his arm. “SONOFABITCH!” he yelled. Earl quickly raised the sledge hammer and smashed the boy’s face in. The contaminated child suddenly went limper than a teenage boy walking in on his parents.
Earl whipped his arm about, flicking blood all over the street. “Fucker got me!” he yelled.
Jimmy reached up and grabbed his arm, “You saved me, Earl. Thanks.”
“Thanks my ass! You were foolin ‘round and should be dead by now. My dumbass decided to jump in.” He looked up at Jimmy, “You’re welcome, cuz.”
Jimmy smiled in response, “You’ll be fine. C’mon, let’s go find you some help with that arm.”
Earl nodded and began to walk towards the camera. As he did so, Jimmy’s fire axe rose above his head and landed hard on Earl’s, splitting the skull in a bloody mess. “WOO!” Jimmy yelled. “Did you see that?! His head fuckin ‘sploded!”
Jimmy danced and laughed around his cousin’s dead body, blood seeping out of the hole in his head as the video cut off.
DR. YLSRUS3390: Shit man.
RRDRAGN99: You watch it all?
DR. YLSRUS3390: Yeah. Pretty brutal. Hit close to home.
RRDRAGN99: You knew someone killed in the confusion?
DR. YLSRUS3390: No, well, not yet.
RRDRAGN99: ?
DR. YLSRUS3390: Chelsea, DEDLOVER, got bit today by one of the CRU.
RRDRAGN99: Shit.
Chapter 3
Engines roared to a stop as the military convoy trucks appeared on my street. We heard over the television broadcast to have a flag posted outside of your house to wave the military trucks down with. They would be stopping wherever there was a flag, regardless of what was waived. There were American flags, white flags, bed sheets, and I even saw one flag made of someone’s boxers, hopefully unused, flying on a pole.
The convoy finally made it to my house, a sigh of relief coursing through my body. Chelsea was standing next to me, “Grandma!” I called into her apartment side of the house. “Grandma, the military dudes are here!”
“Okay, Daryl,” I heard grandma call from the other room. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
I looked to Chelsea, “I guess we’re out of here then,” I said.
She smiled, “Yeah, I guess so. Though to be brutally honest, it really hasn’t been very dangerous. Everyone is running around like chickens with their heads cut off, all afraid of the contaminated coming to hunt them down, and we haven’t even seen a single one! It’s probably just some government hoax.”
“Yeah, that’s why the government would use all of this time and money that they don’t have,” I replied. I put my arm around her shoulder, “Besides, there’s no reason that we can’t be careful, just in case it is not a hoax.”
“Daryl,” I heard my grandmother call. “Can you get my suitcase, please?”
I sighed, looking at Chelsea, “Of course, grandma!” I smiled and went into my grandmother’s side of the house. Her suitcase was stationed between her plaid couches, one on opposite walls, with a glossy wooden table in between. The suitcase was a deep grey and black mixture of triangular designs, something that a grandmother would buy.
I wrapped my hands around the handle and hoisted it into the air. It was heavy, like really heavy. It must have been somewhere near fifty pounds. Only grandma could have a worldwide crisis laid in front of her and still be able to overfill a suitcase.
“I’ll meet you outside, grandma,” I said as I went to the front door, conveniently held open by Chelsea. “Thank you, m’dear,” I did my best impression of a forties detective, which was not very good. She smiled, pushing me out the door, a duffle bag wrapped around her shoulder.
We made it to the end of the driveway. Men in military equipment were running up and down the street, trying to organize everyone. There were eight trucks in all, each must have been equipped with six members of the marines, who were all equipped with various weapons designed to kill anything that it was pointed at. The oddest thing about the situation was the quietness that they moved in. There was such little noise moving down the street that I swear I heard a man having a coughing fit a few houses down.
A tall and thin man walked up to us with a tablet computer in his hands, “Name,” he said without any greeting.
“Uh, Daryl Willows,” I replied instinctively.
The man moved his finger across the screen
