Think 28 Days Later except not 28 days later, more intricate and with an all-boy cast for slashing purposes (but there isn’t actually that much of it in this story).

Chapter 1 Aftermath

The rapid flashbacks flickered like a dying candle, revealing the truths behind the boy’s lost memories. They were never welcome to his consciousness.

A woman’s scream in the kitchen.

Something smashing through the living room window.

Searing pain in his left shoulder.

Black nothingness.

…

Blurry bright light.

Television white noise buzzing in the background.

A heavy nauseating smell filling the air.

A woman’s bloody body lying in the center of a hallway, a man’s body tossed sloppily to the far end.

A room worn to shreds, the bodies of two little girls torn apart and scattered across the floor.

Blood. Endless blood. It covers everything.

Bloody hands balled into bloody fists.

Bloody hands.

His bloody hands.

The sandy-haired youth couldn’t remember how long he’d been bare-back riding the old mare. After wandering away from his summer home and following the bush road, he’d come across her. She too had been wandering, trying to escape the insanity. Because that’s what it was. The world had gone insane. Including him.

What was his name again? No, he didn’t want it. He didn’t want to bother trying to remember it, trying to sift through the last few sane portions of his mind and his memories to retrieve the name and the life it had led. He was worse than dead now. He was a ghost, a specter. He was Specter, the frayed remnants of a ruined soul. Yes, Specter was his name now. It held more meaning than whatever his original name had been.

Specter stared straight ahead at the empty dirt path that shifted with every stride the horse took, his hair ruffled by the weak, dusty breeze. His tanned skin was sweating under the intense heat of the sun that was glaring down from its cloudless sky, but he didn’t care. He didn’t even have anything with him other than the clothes on his back. He didn’t really see what was in front of him, though he tried to, if only to keep his mind in a blank state. All he could see were the flashbacks, the mostly suppressed memories of his traumatized mind. He was probably in a state quite similar to shellshock.

Blood. Screaming. But the pictures and the sounds didn’t fit. It was like the visual part of one sequence was being playing while the audio of another sequence supplied the noise. There was something wrong with him. Maybe head trauma? Had he hit his head and jostled around his brain, messing stuff up in there? It was so strange, losing one’s sanity piece by piece.

Even if he didn’t really remember it, Specter knew what had happened to him. On television for weeks, those scientists… they’d talked about it, warned the public, suggested precautions… not like they had helped any.

He’d been sitting on the couch, his family all around him in the TV room. It was on every channel, all over the news. Something had happened a few weeks before. They’d discovered some new chemical in some old caverns in Iceland or something, some old element that they thought no longer existed. The scientists were all excited, talking about breakthroughs and discoveries to me made… “Promise for the future of the Human Race” one had called it. The man probably wasn’t alive now to realize just how wrong he was.

As the hours ticked by on that endless night in front of the box, reporters interviewed the remaining scientists from Iceland. Something about a mishap in Paris…and the discovery that the chemical altered human brain tissue. Or something. Specter could no longer arrange the events in a straightforward fashion in his mind… his memories were all over the place.

An Outbreak. By nine o’clock it was an outbreak. In Paris, in London, in Naples, in New York, in Toronto…no country or city was spared. He and his family watched as one by one, each country was struck…city by city, neighborhood by neighborhood. They were saying…at first they assumed it was airborne. No, no it was airborne. But it had altered itself, the bacteria or whatever. It couldn’t survive long in the air and stuff. Now it was transmitted by…saliva. And blood.

Blood.

It had drifted everywhere before ceasing its airborne assault. At least a few hundred were contaminated in each country at first…and it spread like wildfire after that, through the very people they had contaminated. Or the death spread, anyway.

People were going crazy from the bacteria, attacking each other, biting and scratching, killing, furious and angry…insane. The movie clips from home videos the media were showing the world only furthered the panic. By midnight, there was no more news. Every channel was on a blank standby. The rest of the world not yet touched by the horror was blind now, and they could only wait.

Specter wasn’t sure when exactly it had happened…his father had gotten up, he had all of these ideas to board up the house and…but then he never got to explain the rest. That’s when the insanity had come crashing in from the living room window.

Right. Specter tried to focus, but he was getting dizzy again…the insanity had come in the form of their nearest neighbor, Mr. John Farley. His face was distorted and his eyes glowed red, and he was covered in blood…his own, it seemed. But then what? The pain…yes, he’d been bitten on his shoulder. Mr. Farley had bitten him, and his father had beaten him off with the axe from the shed. Once he was in as many pieces as possible, he and Mother had started asking him questions. But their words were blurring into one another…his head pounded and he was backing away and then…

A woman’s scream in the kitchen.

After that it was a blissful blank, if only for a few hours. He’d woken up on the front lawn, sore and disoriented, but alive. And he wasn’t insane! Or so he’d assumed…he’d forced himself up and wandered to the front door.

As Specter tried to review the scene the pictures flickered and flooded into each other, but he remembered being confused at first by the quiet. The confusion grew to anxiety, and from anxiety to dread, which grew to horror and finally attained a shocking and terrifying realization.

They were bodies. His family, turned into mangled corpses in their own home. His dad was bent in a strange way in the hall, further down were the bloody remains of his mother, and his sisters…Alexia and Mari…their blood painted the walls of their room.

It was Mr. Farley! He’d…but…no, his father had killed Mr. Farley…but then…And he knew it at once. A dreadful calm filled him as he had let his bloody hands fall to his sides and he gave into his strange new madness.

He was contaminated. He’d killed his own family. He was clearly insane.

Now here he sat upon the nameless mare, he was the Specter. No name, no answers, no sanity. And he was all alone.

LINEHERE!

Silent contemplation and time had done wonders for Specter’s condition. His mind was clearer, his thoughts rearranging themselves slowly… Or it might be the fact that he was starting to starve. It was the second day he’d gone without food, and now that he was less dazed, he felt it. But it was more likely that he’d die of dehydration first. Two days without water and riding in the sun, it was a wonder he was still conscious. Or maybe it was because he was…contaminated.

Either way, he needed fluids. But the only river he’d come by had been filled with bodies and blood, and even though he was near death he refused to drink it. That would have proved he was really insane.

So here he was, his back against a tree beside the endless bush road, too weak to sit up straight on the nameless mare, and the old mare (who’d had absolutely no problem with drinking the bloody water) was munching happily on the grass, mocking his condition. But for her part, she didn’t leave his side either.

He was absolutely beside himself with shock when he saw a form approaching from the distance. Someone not dead? It was a miracle. They weren’t walking like one of the contaminated would either, not growling or sniffing the air...one of the discoveries the scientists had made before the news had been cut off was that the contaminated had heightened senses. Did he? He didn’t really fit the usual description of one of the contaminated either; he wasn’t completely crazy, he didn’t have the urge to attack this person coming down the road, or the horse beside him, which according to the scientists a contaminated person would do.

Maybe he was somehow partially immune to the contamination? That would explain the strange effects. The person was getting closer now. It was a boy that looked around his age (which happened to be seventeen) and he was squinting in Specter’s direction. He’d obviously seen the horse, it was a horse after all, hard to miss, and he seemed to be trying to figure out exactly what Specter was. He wasn’t moving after all.

Specter raised a weak hand, but it fell back to the ground a second later. He was too weak to move. But it had been enough. The boy had broken into a run and was at his side in moments, panting and looking concerned. His messy black-brown hair was all over his face, and he had one of those sweat bandanas around his head, though it did absolutely nothing to control the unruly hair.

“Holy crap! Are you okay?” the boy asked, taking off his backpack (which he had, apparently, though Specter had noticed before) and pulling out a water bottle, “You look like something out of the Sahara Desert! Here, open up.”

Specter found it very difficult to comply. His mouth felt glued together. He finally managed to force it open, his cracked lips starting to bleed to moment he opened his mouth, but the boy tipped the bottle and water spilled into his mouth and down his throat, and it was heaven. The boy offered more and more and Specter accepted gratefully, drinking the whole bottle without raising an arm. He couldn’t, really.

Now that his mouth was wet again, he cleared his throat and coughed, trying to push himself up into a more comfortable position, and the boy placed a hand on his back and helped him do it. So helpful, this one. He probably hadn’t seen anyone alive in days either.

“Thank you.” He managed at last, trying to smile.

“No problem, I’ve got tons of food and water.” The boy answered conversationally, gesturing with his thumb to his backpack, “I’d be more than happy to share.”

Specter smiled again. A Good Samaritan in the midst of all this chaos? He must be the luckiest boy alive…in certain respects.

LINEHERE!

For the next hour they ate fruit and bread and the “Samaritan” chattered away, and Specter listened with interest. Apparently he’d been in a plane just a few days earlier, but all the insanity had broken out while he was on it. It had crash-landed a few miles into the bush, and he’d been the only survivor. It had been a school trip apparently, to Barbados. He’d taken all of the supplies he could carry and put them in his bag, and he’d just made it to the road and had only been walking on it for about ten minutes before they’d met. He’d chosen his direction at random, it was lucky he’d come by, he’d just had a “feeling” that this way was the right way, he said.

“By the way, my name’s Devon.” The “Samaritan” stated unexpectedly, offering his hand.

“Hello Devon.” Specter replied shaking it with his own now that he had the strength, “Call me Specter.”

“Specter? That’s such a cool name!” Devon exclaimed enthusiastically, “Is it your real name?”

“No. I don’t remember my real name.” Specter stated honestly.

“Seriously? Dude, you must’ve been in the sun too long. You sure you don’t have sunstroke or something?” Devon put his hand to Specter’s forehead as if to check for a fever. The sandy-haired boy just stared at him placidly, noting that his eyes were very bright turquoise, and he didn’t think they were contacts. That was much more interesting than Specter’s average brown eyes, anyway. And Devon had a birthmark on his right cheek, a little mole that seemed to distinguish him.

Devon continued to chatter, and Specter tried to pay attention, but his mind was wandering. He was starting to worry. He was contaminated. Devon deserved to know. He should tell Devon. Now. He really should. Why wouldn’t the words come out? Just two words: I’m contaminated. And then, an explanation of how his condition was different. How hard was that? Do it, Specter!

But it didn’t matter how hard he tried to say it, he simply could not. He didn’t want to lose this potential friend. The thought of being alone again was unbearable. Besides, maybe he wouldn’t go crazy again. Maybe it was a one-time thing. Maybe…but maybe it would happen again tonight. Could he risk Devon’s safety? He didn’t like these kinds of choices. It was a lose-lose situation, and he got to pick what he was going to lose.

He decided to play it by ear just as Devon started to get up. Having not heard a word he’d just been told, he blinked up questioningly.

“Well? Up! Up! Let’s get on this horse and head east, like I said.” Devon offered his arms and Specter took them and was hauled up easily, taking a few moments to regain balance.

“What’s east again?” Specter asked as he steadied the grey mare.

“Hopefully a city, but it’s the opposite of where you came from in any case and where you were headed right? Where exactly are you headed?”

It took Specter a moment to answer. It was strange, but he had a certain place that he’d wanted to go. He’d headed that way by instinct, without thinking.

“I want to go to Toronto.” He said suddenly.

“What? Toronto?” Devon had a double take, “That’s so far from here! And it’s probably overrun with, you know…them. But why Toronto?”

Yes Specter, why Toronto? It took him a moment to sift through his memories and remember what made the big city so special.

“A…an old friend of mine moved there a while back. We were best friends, and we became pen pals when he moved away.” Specter had to think hard to even remember what he looked like, “His name’s Allan. He’s the closest thing I have to family left in Canada. I have an Uncle in New Zealand but…”

“We are not going to New Zealand.” Devon responded with a smirk.

“No, we’re not. So it might as well be Toronto, right?” Specter offered, shrugging a little.

“Alright, then I guess that’s where we’re going.”

LINEHERE!

They rode the mare (whom Devon had named Gazali, which apparently meant “mystic” or something strange like that) until nightfall, when they came across a small abandoned hunting cabin. It was empty inside, give or take a few old hooks and shelves.

They were both beyond exhausted, and it seemed like the perfect place to spend the night. Paranoia got the better of them though, and they ended up bringing the horse inside with them for fear it would get attacked or that it would attract…them.

“Okay, so whoever wakes up first wakes up the other, right?” Devon clarified as he hung his backpack on a hook and clicked on a flashlight.

“Right.” Specter replied, sitting down and leaning back against the wall.

“’Kay. Let’s get some rest then. Goodnight Specter.” Devon said, settling down on the opposite side of the cabin and clicking off his flashlight.

“Goodnight Devon.” Specter mimicked, but he did not close his eyes. He was looking around, stunned of what he was seeing. The fact was that he could still see. In the dark. Really well. He had night vision. This was new. He stared at his hands.

There was a shuffling sound suddenly, like something had just made Devon jump. He saw Devon fumble for the flashlight and shine it straight at him. He looked very frightened.

“Your eyes are glowing red.” He uttered quietly, his body tensed.

The was a shocked silence. His eyes were what? Red? They glowed in the dark then. Just like…the contaminated. Like them. Now Devon knew, and he was scared. Now what?

“I’m not going to hurt you, Devon.”

LINEHERE

Please REVIEW! I need to know what you guys think of this new story of mine! I tried to make it weird, you know? But still interesting. Is it okay? Please tell me!