It started out as a fine day. The sun was shining, and I walked into the diner feeling happy. Today marked the first day in a long time that Chicago had a bright morning, and as I read the newspaper in my hand, I hummed a small joyful tune. Little did I know that the happiness I felt in the diner was going to be short-lived. The date on the paper was September 30, 1943. I hoped the War would end that day, since it seemed like an omen because in the morning I was feeling so grand.

After finishing both my coffee and the newspaper, I proceeded to my job as a barber across the street. I used to have bright brown hair back when I was 22. I was also naïve, since I used to live out on a farm and not in the city. After moving to Chicago in ’39, I tried to get used to the city life. It was especially hard, with the War, and on the 30th, I wished all my troubles would have gone away. Instead, they just multiplied.

While I was in the middle of cutting someone’s hair, I heard a sudden scream from down the street. “What could it be?” I asked myself. I looked out the window of the shop to see a corpse lying on the ground with people around it.

“Oh my, what could that be? Maybe we should take a look,” the guy whose hair I was cutting said. I agreed, and my fellow co-workers and I went outside. The corpse seemed like one of a young woman, but it was hard to tell. Another scream was heard, but farther down the street. It had seemed someone collapsed onto the ground. The police quickly arrived.

“What happened here?” the officer said. A man replied saying that the person just collapsed in the middle of the street. Suddenly another person collapsed in the crowd and everyone went berserk. I rushed into my shop. “Was there a sniper? Are they poisoned? Is this the work of Germany?” I asked myself. Sweat covered my face. I didn’t know what to do. People started to collapse- die- in the streets for no apparent reason.

“We’ve got to get out of here, Frank!” My co-worker John said as he put his supplies away. The guy whose hair I was cutting agreed. I didn’t know if I should listen to them or not, but I decided to for better or for worse. The three of us, John, Rick (the guy whose hair I cut), and I went out the back entrance and into an alley only to see another corpse. John gasped and started to gag. I looked closer, and it started to move. I stepped back, and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It stood up. Rick stepped forward and offered to help the thing that just stood up. I stepped back again and told Rick not to get any closer.

“AAAAARGH!!” I heard behind me. I glanced back and saw that John was being attacked by the corpses. I ran and behind me I heard the scream of Rick as well. I didn’t look back, and I ran as fast as I could. I didn’t know where I was going. All I knew was that random people were going mad, and I didn’t know if I was next. I dashed into the café where I was just 15 minutes earlier, only this time my mood was a little different. There were two other people hiding in the diner- an older man, who looked to be in his 40‘s, and a young boy who looked to be about 14 or 15.

“What’s happened?” I asked. The boy seemed to be in shock and was staring into space. The man, however, told me to come closer.

“I don’t know what happened, but my guess is that’s it’s something from the Nazis. They have a bunch of tricks up their sleeves, I bet this is their form of chemical warfare,” the man said. I didn’t know if I should believe him. He seemed a little cocky. I looked at his hands, and they were covered with blood.

“Were you fighting them off?” I asked. (By “them” I meant the monsters that attacked John and Rick. I didn’t know if the monsters were still human or if they were human at all.)

“ I had to fight a couple of them off,” he said, “ I found this boy standing in the middle of the street. It’s a shame. He could have became one of them if he stayed there much longer.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, “How can you become one of them by just being around them?”

“If they bite you, you turn into one of them.” He paused, and started to think, “Perhaps their saliva is what’s poisonous. Then whatever turned them into what they are now, must have been something they drank.” All the information was hard to take in at the time. I started to think. If it was something all those people drank, then water would be the most probable source since anyone could get some easily.

“We need to get to the water filtration plant. There, we could shut off the water to the city to so no one would get infected since the water is what’s probably poisoned.” My plan seemed pretty risky, but we needed to go somewhere. Besides someone else probably thought of the same thing, and we might find other survivors there. The man agreed, and me, the man, and the boy, started our journey to the plant.

We decided the best way to avoid the monsters was through the sewers and all we had to do was to come up through a manhole next to the plant. The tricky part was to try to not get any of the infected sewer water in our mouths. We dropped down into the sewers and quietly waded in the water.

“So, what’s your name, son?” the man asked.

“Frank,” I replied, and he said his name was Charles.

“Would the boy talk to you?” Charles asked me.

“No, he seems awfully quiet. How about to you?” I asked.

“He doesn’t talk to me either. He also doesn’t stop shaking. Do you think he is turning into one of them?” My heart sank. Perhaps Charles had a point. Maybe the boy was bitten. There was only one way to find out.

“We need to see if he is bitten or not,” I suggested.

“You have a good point, and maybe he could help us. If he isn’t bitten then maybe we could make him drink some of the water and see if it’s infected.” My respect for Charles disappeared. If his idea of a good plan was to risk the life of a kid for something that we were almost sure about already, then he was not to be trusted.

“You’re sick. Risking the life of a child for that kind of evidence is not worth it,” I said to him in a very nasty tone.

“Listen to me,” Charles replied, “If we don’t know for sure what caused the sickness, we could all die.” That was the point where I wished I really wasn’t there. Tough decisions like that confused me, but I still disagreed.

“If we die, we die,” I said, “But we are not going to risk the life of the boy!”

“Robert,” the boy suddenly said, “My name is Robert.”

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Kill me, kill me now. I’m bitten. I didn’t want to tell you earlier because I thought I might be a burden,” He said with tears coming out of his eyes. I didn’t know what to do, but it seemed Charles did. He pulled a knife out of the sewer water.

“NO!!” I yelled, “Don’t! Maybe he could still make it. Please don’t kill him.” Robert waded closer to me when Charles examined the knife.

“We need to put the kid out of his misery,” Charles said, “Now, just hold still Robert, this’ll-” Then all of a sudden Charles collapsed in the water, dead. I looked back and saw one of them behind him.

“Robert, come with me!” I yelled to the lad. There were multitudes of the monsters behind us, and they must have been following us through the sewers the whole time. I grabbed onto the boy and saw a ladder that led up to the surface up ahead. When we quickly got to the ladder, I had him go up first. As I waited, I could not help but see hundreds of the horrid corpses wading toward us. After we got onto the surface, we were surprised to see no monsters around. Both of us then ran in the direction of the water filtration plant. As I looked around, I saw absolutely no one. Were we the only survivors? Had everyone else been bitten?

“I see it!” Robert said as he saw the plant.

“How are you feeling?” I asked Robert for I knew he wouldn’t last much longer. I couldn’t help but be sad for him. As we neared the plant, my eyes were distracted by a piece of shiny metal off to the side. I walked over to it and saw a container with a curious liquid in it. On the side of it was a bunch of words written in German. I took it, even though I didn’t know what it was. As we approached the massive door into the factory, we heard a gunshot off in the distance.

“Stay close,” I said, “Go behind me.” I opened the door and stepped into the factory which had huge valves and containers full of water. More gunshots were fired.

“There must be another survivor,” Robert said to me gladly.

“Yeah, but what’s he shooting at?” I replied sarcastically. I was stressed out and tired. My only focus was to turn the water off to the city. I didn‘t think about what was going to happen after that. I didn’t care. I thought I was going to die. In fact, I believed I was going to die. I walked further into the building, and closer to the gunshots. I peeked around the corner of the next room and saw the human who was shooting at the monsters. I looked ahead of him and spotted the monsters he was shooting at. There were thousands. Each one was covered with blood and had razor-sharp teeth with pure white eyes.

“Is that a Nazi?” Robert asked as he pointed at the human who had the gun. I realized that I was too busy looking at the monsters instead of figuring out that the person who had poisoned the water had been a Nazi after all. This meant that my whole theory was true. The room across from me and Robert had the valve in it, and now all that separated me from my goal was an enemy who was guilty of creating the army of evil monsters.

Robert stood next to me and glanced at the monsters. He backed up and started to hyperventilate. I turned to him.

“It’s just a little bit farther across the room. We can make it,” I said to him.

“No, it’s not that,” he said between breaths. Robert pulled his sleeve down, revealing a deep bite mark that looked like it was spreading.

“Oh, no,” I said as I stood there frightened. I didn’t want Robert to die. I had to save him. Then I remembered- the container. It might be the cure. Or it might be the cause. I took it from my belt and examined the container once more. BLAM! A gunshot nearly hit me, and the German soldier ran toward me. He whipped me with his pistol and grabbed the container. He unscrewed the top and started to drink it. I stumbled onto the ground, and my vision blurred. All I could see was the crowd of monsters walking toward me and the Nazi drinking the liquid. I remember almost blacking out, but I tried to stay conscious. All of a sudden I saw Robert run toward the German and grab the container from his hands. The boy then ran forward into the other room and turned off the valve, which stopped the water flow. He then threw the container to me. “AAAARGH!” The monsters leaped onto the German soldier and killed him. They also started to come toward me. I got up, onto my feet, and attached the container onto my belt.

“Robert!” I yelled, with all my might, but he would not answer. He was gone and had turned into one of them. Yes, he was now one of them. Meanwhile, the monsters started to run toward me. I made my way back out of the water plant, running as fast as I could, as the evil monsters tried to kill me. I dodged, jumped, and sprinted my way to the factory door. The monsters were incredibly fast, but luckily for me, I was faster. With one final leap, I got onto the other side of the huge door which I had used to enter the plant earlier. I closed the door and locked it with the monsters on the other side. I was finally safe. I heard the monsters on the other side bang against the door. It didn’t matter though, I was safe and had the cure. VOOM! I looked in the far distance and noticed a jeep coming toward me. The jeep had military symbols on it and three people were sitting in it.

“Are you okay, did you get bitten?” One of the people in the jeep asked me.

“I’m fine,” I said. After that I told them the whole story and they let me into their jeep. It turned out that the Nazi had poisoned the water lines with some sort of chemical which made everybody mutate. I gave them the container and we went toward their base. After a horrid day like that, I learned to count my blessings.