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Description
   Like a Movie


INTRODUCTION

     It was a hot humid summer in 2036 when things went wrong. Horribly, terribly, devastatingly wrong. It started with one person; an accident. A violent, gruesome one, but an accident all the same. The second time? Just a coincidence. But when these 'freak accidents' started popping up everywhere, becoming more and more frequent as the days went by, that is when we started to worry.
You're probably wondering what I'm talking about, right? You're saying, "Why am I listening to this crazy person? Freak accidents, so what? What's the big deal?" And I'll tell you. The accidents were far from normal and it was becoming more and more obvious to us, citizens of the Nation, that our crumbling government was not going to do anything to stop them from happening.
What these accidents were, nobody really knew. We all knew they weren't accidents though, they were attacks, murders, crimes. But nobody wanted to admit that. Some said these were planned attacks, and others said it was a virus, which it sort of was. It was a virus that affects a person's nervous system, brain; internal organs…pretty much everything that keeps you functioning. It killed off skin cells, causing the infected person's flesh to begin to rot away, while in their mind they went insane. The worst part about it however, was that amidst this insanity, there were cravings. The primal, burning craving. The craving for human flesh.

PART I
COMING HOME

"This strange virus is real, and it is spreading. Civilians are warned to stay inside their houses and to keep doors locked. This is Andrew Webster, nightly news," a news reporter announced from a large television in the center of the airport before cutting to commercial.
"Wow, things have really changed from the last time we were here," my older brother Corey pointed out.
My brother and I, we haven't been home in a while. When our parents got divorced our mother got custody, so we moved in with her. Our father stayed where he was, on the small Islands of the Nation. "They sure have," I agreed. "But you don't actually believe this, do you?"
Corey shrugged and looked out a large panoramic airport window. "I don't know, Sage. Things have just been really weird lately."
We left the airport, empty handed since we hadn't brought anything from Mom's house, and walked the familiar streets. They were strangely quiet, even for a town in lockdown. The sky above us was a slate gray and thin clouds threatened rain.
We rounded a street corner and found our father's house, as disorganized and messy on the outside as ever. We walked up the chipped old steps to his cluttered porch, and noticed something strange.
"Hey Corey, do you think he's even home?" I asked, and pointed out the fact that the lights in his house were out, giving it a horror-movie-house type feel.
"I don't know, but I guess we'll find out." Corey reached out and knocked on the door. Surprisingly, the door was unlocked and open. It swung wide with a slight squeak of protest.
I gagged and put my hand over my nose. "My Go- What is that smell?" The air that wafted out of this dark house was just plain disgusting. And I don't mean older-brother-dirty-gym-socks smell, because trust me; I know what that smells like. I mean it smelled like an abandoned-butcher's-shop-with-all-the-rotten-meat-still-there kind of smell.
"It smells like something died in there!" Corey gagged. "Jeez, Dad really let the place go…" Corey stepped inside, the top of his shirt over his mouth.
I followed him hesitantly inside, and peered around in the gloom.
The once-clean beige walls were smeared with an unknown crusty substance that trailed into the dining-room.
When we walked farther into the house, towards the dining-room it was even worse. It seems like our father had emptied out his refrigerator, dumped it out on the wooden kitchen table, and smashed it up into unrecognizable soup. After a couple moments of silence, slow, scrabbling footsteps crawled around on the floor above us.
"Should we go check that out?" Corey asked, with no fear in his voice.
"I don't know…" I said uncertainly.
"You can wait down here, and I'll go upstairs," Corey grabbed a baseball bat that was leaning against a table and walked out of the dining-room.
I looked around quietly, with fear swirling in my stomach like a cold frost. Could this really be happening? I wondered. Could our father really be one of them? Like in a movie? I walked into the kitchen, off to the side of the dining-room and looked around. It looked pretty much like the rest of the house, and I picked up a large kitchen knife off of the counter for protection.
I heard a commotion from upstairs followed by some loud shouting and muffled thumps. "Corey!" I called and ran to the stairs. "Corey, are you alright?" I was answered by more thumps. "I'm coming!" I ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time and sprinted down the long hallway at the top of the stairs. I stopped running when I came to a slightly ajar door and I pushed it open slowly.
Inside, I saw my brother with the baseball bat beating a hideously disfigured man over the head with it. Blood splattered on the walls and on by brother's dark brown shirt, but he ignored it as easily as if it were rain.
"Corey!" I screamed at my brother.
He turned towards me and dropped the baseball bat. "Sage…" he said dazedly. "Dad…he's…"
I walked slowly closer to the disfigured man, who was now way dead and was hit with a wave of recognition. "Dad! He…he was one of them…!" I cried out in horror.
I took a closer looks at the man I had known my whole life, and loved with all my heart. He lay in a broken heap on the cold hard floors, his face twisted into an angry grimace. His skin was pockmarked with holes, and was splotched with the grays and greens of decay.
I felt a lump in my throat and tears began to well up in my eyes.
My brother put an hand on my shoulder and we stood there for a couple of moments in silence. "We have to get going," he said quietly after a while.
I rubbed my eyes and nodded. "Are we going to run into more of them?" I asked fearfully.
"Honestly? I don't know," Corey answered. "But if we do, we can handle them."

PART II
THE INFECTED

     Outside of our father's house it had begun to rain, so before we left I grabbed one of my father's large umbrellas with the pointy top, the kind parents told you to be careful with so you wouldn't stab anyone. But that's exactly why I grabbed this specific umbrella, so it could double as a weapon. We walked outside, in the pouring rain, sheltered by the thin plastic membrane of the umbrella. We must have looked pretty strange to any bystanders, a brother and his sister, walking in the pouring rain, the older brother carrying a bloody baseball bat and the girl with a large kitchen knife. Both us must have looked especially ridiculous on account that the umbrella we were holding had a colorful rainbow pattern on it.
We must have walked like this for twenty minutes before coming across another of them.
It was a tall woman this time, she walked with a limping, broken gate and she had two little children following behind.
Corey and I stopped dead in our tracks and stayed quiet, hoping that they wouldn't see us, but to no avail.
One of the children tripped, and as it got up, it caught a glimpse of our colorful umbrella out of the corner of its rotten eye. It snared something and the Infected family turned towards us.
We stared at each other, with the woman and her balding rotten head, and our colorful umbrella, in shock for a moment before the children leapt at us, growling like little rabid demons.
Corey immediately jumped into fight-mode, batting the children away like flies.
The mother snarled and limped towards us, surprisingly fast.
I folded the umbrella down so I could use it as a rainbow murder-stabbing-thing and held it in front of me like a weapon.
The mother batted the umbrella away easily and she grabbed my arm in a decaying grip. I stabbed at her with my kitchen knife, embedding it in her chest but the mother reacted in no way other than loosening her grip a bit.
Taking this moment of opportunity, I wrenched my arm out of her grip. "Run! We need to get out of here!" I shouted at my brother frantically, and sprinted away from the family of Infected, leaving my kitchen knife embedded in the chest of the mother but bringing my umbrella.
Corey stopped beating the little kids and ran after me, gory bat and all, and we didn't stop running until we knew that the mother and her demon-spawn weren't following us anymore.
As we leaned against one of the Meeting buildings, catching our breath, Corey began to laugh. It started out a quiet chuckle, and ended up a loud hysterical cackle.
"What's so funny?" I asked my brother, a bit worried.
"I just feel so ridiculous…You and I fighting zombies with a rainbow umbrella and a baseball bat! I keep thinking somebody is going to jump out and say 'Psyche! We got you guys! You should have seen your faces!' you know? It just feels like a movie!" He answered me, still laughing slightly.
I smiled slightly. "Yeah, I know. Nothing feels real…" I kicked a stone distractedly, and it clattered across the street hitting a man's dead body that I hadn't noticed before. I shuddered at the sight of the mangled man. "We should probably look for some food…maybe at the supermarket we can find some." I said to Corey, just wanting any excuse to get away from that dead body.

PART III
YOU CAN'T RUN, AND YOU CAN'T HIDE

     At first, as we walked through the Supermarket's large parking-lot full of abandoned cars, we thought we were finally safe. We could find some food, and maybe when we got inside we could find somewhere to rest up for the night, but as we got into the store, we saw that everyone has had the same idea as well. We walked around the store, looking through the empty and moldy shelves, looking for some food for a couple minutes before noticing that there had to be at least fifteen other people in the store as well.
They looked, alive and not-infected until a bald man with long, skinny arms walked into the flickering glow of the store's last working overhead light and we saw that his skin had the familiar grayish green tint of an Infected.
Apparently, these were some of the newly-Infected people so they still had some of their normal brain responses working, so when they noticed that we knew that they were Infected they all swarmed towards us.
I stabbed one of the closest ones through the eye with the end of my murder umbrella, and whacked another one over their rotten head.
Corey was beating another two Infected away and gesturing towards the door. "Go, Sage! I can handle these, just go!" he shouted at me.
"What? No way!" I shouted back. "I'm not leaving you here, Corey!" I jabbed my umbrella into the chest of the bald Infected and kicked him straight in the knee, causing him to topple over.
"Fine!" Corey ran towards the entrance, and I followed him. "Get into the nearest car, and lock the doors! We can probably hide from them in one!" We ran into the parking-lot, and I dove into a truck that had its front door wide open.
I looked out the dusty car window just in time to see Corey slip in a puddle and come crashing to the ground. "Corey!" I screamed.
"Leave me!" he called, and was quickly surrounded by Infected. I heard him yell something else back at me, but I quickly stopped listening as I heard the Infected snarl even louder, and my brother's screams of pain, that pierced my heart.
After what seemed like an eternity later, the Infected stopped munching in their newest victim, and turned their attention to the car.
Unluckily, one of the younger, smarted Infected had seen Sage's mad dash to the truck and had snarled it to the others. The group of Infected moved away from the pile of blood and gore that once was my brother and began scraping at the truck with their crimson fingernails, and shook the truck violently.
A smash of glass and the muffled sounds from outside became clear and sharp, and grasping hands like beggars reached out to me.
I poked and stabbed the hands away and kept the Infected from reaching, until a window behind me shattered and I was pulled roughly out of the truck. I grasped my bloody umbrella for dear life and looked up at the gray sky that was soon blocked out by the starving monsters. I shut my eyes tight and got ready to be eaten alive, and ripped apart violently, but that never came.
Now, the next part is mostly a blur but I tell you what I remember. I was on the ground, ready to be eaten and join my brother up in heaven when, out of nowhere gunshots blasted like fireworks, and the snarls of the Infected ceased.
I heard the shouts of people, they said something like 'We found a survivor!' and 'Is that an umbrella?' I was lifted by strong arms, umbrella and all, onto a Jeep, and we drove to a helicopter, where from there I believe they took me to a hospital of some sort to be checked out.
Looks like out crumbling government decided to help after all.

PART IIII
EPILOGUE

        After the whole incident with the Infected, the government and their 'Search and Destroy' scoured the entire nation, and even came up with a sort of spray that killed the Infected. Infecticide they called it. Anyways, after months of scouring the nation and making sure every last Infected person was destroyed, every citizen of the Nation had to get a vaccine to make sure nothing like this ever happened again. The Nation went back to its peaceful, non-murderous ways.
I moved back in with my mother, and later became a scientist, studying dead things, and creating life-saving medicine. I do have nightmares of these past incidents, and of my brother. I think of what I could have done to help him, to save his life. But then I realize, I couldn't have done anything to help him without being eaten myself, and I know he wouldn't have wanted that. I try not to forget these memories though, because they helped me become who I am today. My mother doesn't like that I turned down all these trips to a counselor, and how I kept my murder umbrella. She just doesn't understand what these memories mean to me.
As Corey once said, 'It was all just like a movie.'


     Washington- July 12th, 2063: Usually reliable government sources reported that a man was murdered in Chicago.

Description
   Like a Movie


INTRODUCTION

     It was a hot humid summer in 2036 when things went wrong. Horribly, terribly, devastatingly wrong. It started with one person; an accident. A violent, gruesome one, but an accident all the same. The second time? Just a coincidence. But when these 'freak accidents' started popping up everywhere, becoming more and more frequent as the days went by, that is when we started to worry.
You're probably wondering what I'm talking about, right? You're saying, "Why am I listening to this crazy person? Freak accidents, so what? What's the big deal?" And I'll tell you. The accidents were far from normal and it was becoming more and more obvious to us, citizens of the Nation, that our crumbling government was not going to do anything to stop them from happening.
What these accidents were, nobody really knew. We all knew they weren't accidents though, they were attacks, murders, crimes. But nobody wanted to admit that. Some said these were planned attacks, and others said it was a virus, which it sort of was. It was a virus that affects a person's nervous system, brain; internal organs…pretty much everything that keeps you functioning. It killed off skin cells, causing the infected person's flesh to begin to rot away, while in their mind they went insane. The worst part about it however, was that amidst this insanity, there were cravings. The primal, burning craving. The craving for human flesh.

PART I
COMING HOME

"This strange virus is real, and it is spreading. Civilians are warned to stay inside their houses and to keep doors locked. This is Andrew Webster, nightly news," a news reporter announced from a large television in the center of the airport before cutting to commercial.
"Wow, things have really changed from the last time we were here," my older brother Corey pointed out.
My brother and I, we haven't been home in a while. When our parents got divorced our mother got custody, so we moved in with her. Our father stayed where he was, on the small Islands of the Nation. "They sure have," I agreed. "But you don't actually believe this, do you?"
Corey shrugged and looked out a large panoramic airport window. "I don't know, Sage. Things have just been really weird lately."
We left the airport, empty handed since we hadn't brought anything from Mom's house, and walked the familiar streets. They were strangely quiet, even for a town in lockdown. The sky above us was a slate gray and thin clouds threatened rain.
We rounded a street corner and found our father's house, as disorganized and messy on the outside as ever. We walked up the chipped old steps to his cluttered porch, and noticed something strange.
"Hey Corey, do you think he's even home?" I asked, and pointed out the fact that the lights in his house were out, giving it a horror-movie-house type feel.
"I don't know, but I guess we'll find out." Corey reached out and knocked on the door. Surprisingly, the door was unlocked and open. It swung wide with a slight squeak of protest.
I gagged and put my hand over my nose. "My Go- What is that smell?" The air that wafted out of this dark house was just plain disgusting. And I don't mean older-brother-dirty-gym-socks smell, because trust me; I know what that smells like. I mean it smelled like an abandoned-butcher's-shop-with-all-the-rotten-meat-still-there kind of smell.
"It smells like something died in there!" Corey gagged. "Jeez, Dad really let the place go…" Corey stepped inside, the top of his shirt over his mouth.
I followed him hesitantly inside, and peered around in the gloom.
The once-clean beige walls were smeared with an unknown crusty substance that trailed into the dining-room.
When we walked farther into the house, towards the dining-room it was even worse. It seems like our father had emptied out his refrigerator, dumped it out on the wooden kitchen table, and smashed it up into unrecognizable soup. After a couple moments of silence, slow, scrabbling footsteps crawled around on the floor above us.
"Should we go check that out?" Corey asked, with no fear in his voice.
"I don't know…" I said uncertainly.
"You can wait down here, and I'll go upstairs," Corey grabbed a baseball bat that was leaning against a table and walked out of the dining-room.
I looked around quietly, with fear swirling in my stomach like a cold frost. Could this really be happening? I wondered. Could our father really be one of them? Like in a movie? I walked into the kitchen, off to the side of the dining-room and looked around. It looked pretty much like the rest of the house, and I picked up a large kitchen knife off of the counter for protection.
I heard a commotion from upstairs followed by some loud shouting and muffled thumps. "Corey!" I called and ran to the stairs. "Corey, are you alright?" I was answered by more thumps. "I'm coming!" I ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time and sprinted down the long hallway at the top of the stairs. I stopped running when I came to a slightly ajar door and I pushed it open slowly.
Inside, I saw my brother with the baseball bat beating a hideously disfigured man over the head with it. Blood splattered on the walls and on by brother's dark brown shirt, but he ignored it as easily as if it were rain.
"Corey!" I screamed at my brother.
He turned towards me and dropped the baseball bat. "Sage…" he said dazedly. "Dad…he's…"
I walked slowly closer to the disfigured man, who was now way dead and was hit with a wave of recognition. "Dad! He…he was one of them…!" I cried out in horror.
I took a closer looks at the man I had known my whole life, and loved with all my heart. He lay in a broken heap on the cold hard floors, his face twisted into an angry grimace. His skin was pockmarked with holes, and was splotched with the grays and greens of decay.
I felt a lump in my throat and tears began to well up in my eyes.
My brother put an hand on my shoulder and we stood there for a couple of moments in silence. "We have to get going," he said quietly after a while.
I rubbed my eyes and nodded. "Are we going to run into more of them?" I asked fearfully.
"Honestly? I don't know," Corey answered. "But if we do, we can handle them."

PART II
THE INFECTED

     Outside of our father's house it had begun to rain, so before we left I grabbed one of my father's large umbrellas with the pointy top, the kind parents told you to be careful with so you wouldn't stab anyone. But that's exactly why I grabbed this specific umbrella, so it could double as a weapon. We walked outside, in the pouring rain, sheltered by the thin plastic membrane of the umbrella. We must have looked pretty strange to any bystanders, a brother and his sister, walking in the pouring rain, the older brother carrying a bloody baseball bat and the girl with a large kitchen knife. Both us must have looked especially ridiculous on account that the umbrella we were holding had a colorful rainbow pattern on it.
We must have walked like this for twenty minutes before coming across another of them.
It was a tall woman this time, she walked with a limping, broken gate and she had two little children following behind.
Corey and I stopped dead in our tracks and stayed quiet, hoping that they wouldn't see us, but to no avail.
One of the children tripped, and as it got up, it caught a glimpse of our colorful umbrella out of the corner of its rotten eye. It snared something and the Infected family turned towards us.
We stared at each other, with the woman and her balding rotten head, and our colorful umbrella, in shock for a moment before the children leapt at us, growling like little rabid demons.
Corey immediately jumped into fight-mode, batting the children away like flies.
The mother snarled and limped towards us, surprisingly fast.
I folded the umbrella down so I could use it as a rainbow murder-stabbing-thing and held it in front of me like a weapon.
The mother batted the umbrella away easily and she grabbed my arm in a decaying grip. I stabbed at her with my kitchen knife, embedding it in her chest but the mother reacted in no way other than loosening her grip a bit.
Taking this moment of opportunity, I wrenched my arm out of her grip. "Run! We need to get out of here!" I shouted at my brother frantically, and sprinted away from the family of Infected, leaving my kitchen knife embedded in the chest of the mother but bringing my umbrella.
Corey stopped beating the little kids and ran after me, gory bat and all, and we didn't stop running until we knew that the mother and her demon-spawn weren't following us anymore.
As we leaned against one of the Meeting buildings, catching our breath, Corey began to laugh. It started out a quiet chuckle, and ended up a loud hysterical cackle.
"What's so funny?" I asked my brother, a bit worried.
"I just feel so ridiculous…You and I fighting zombies with a rainbow umbrella and a baseball bat! I keep thinking somebody is going to jump out and say 'Psyche! We got you guys! You should have seen your faces!' you know? It just feels like a movie!" He answered me, still laughing slightly.
I smiled slightly. "Yeah, I know. Nothing feels real…" I kicked a stone distractedly, and it clattered across the street hitting a man's dead body that I hadn't noticed before. I shuddered at the sight of the mangled man. "We should probably look for some food…maybe at the supermarket we can find some." I said to Corey, just wanting any excuse to get away from that dead body.

PART III
YOU CAN'T RUN, AND YOU CAN'T HIDE

     At first, as we walked through the Supermarket's large parking-lot full of abandoned cars, we thought we were finally safe. We could find some food, and maybe when we got inside we could find somewhere to rest up for the night, but as we got into the store, we saw that everyone has had the same idea as well. We walked around the store, looking through the empty and moldy shelves, looking for some food for a couple minutes before noticing that there had to be at least fifteen other people in the store as well.
They looked, alive and not-infected until a bald man with long, skinny arms walked into the flickering glow of the store's last working overhead light and we saw that his skin had the familiar grayish green tint of an Infected.
Apparently, these were some of the newly-Infected people so they still had some of their normal brain responses working, so when they noticed that we knew that they were Infected they all swarmed towards us.
I stabbed one of the closest ones through the eye with the end of my murder umbrella, and whacked another one over their rotten head.
Corey was beating another two Infected away and gesturing towards the door. "Go, Sage! I can handle these, just go!" he shouted at me.
"What? No way!" I shouted back. "I'm not leaving you here, Corey!" I jabbed my umbrella into the chest of the bald Infected and kicked him straight in the knee, causing him to topple over.
"Fine!" Corey ran towards the entrance, and I followed him. "Get into the nearest car, and lock the doors! We can probably hide from them in one!" We ran into the parking-lot, and I dove into a truck that had its front door wide open.
I looked out the dusty car window just in time to see Corey slip in a puddle and come crashing to the ground. "Corey!" I screamed.
"Leave me!" he called, and was quickly surrounded by Infected. I heard him yell something else back at me, but I quickly stopped listening as I heard the Infected snarl even louder, and my brother's screams of pain, that pierced my heart.
After what seemed like an eternity later, the Infected stopped munching in their newest victim, and turned their attention to the car.
Unluckily, one of the younger, smarted Infected had seen Sage's mad dash to the truck and had snarled it to the others. The group of Infected moved away from the pile of blood and gore that once was my brother and began scraping at the truck with their crimson fingernails, and shook the truck violently.
A smash of glass and the muffled sounds from outside became clear and sharp, and grasping hands like beggars reached out to me.
I poked and stabbed the hands away and kept the Infected from reaching, until a window behind me shattered and I was pulled roughly out of the truck. I grasped my bloody umbrella for dear life and looked up at the gray sky that was soon blocked out by the starving monsters. I shut my eyes tight and got ready to be eaten alive, and ripped apart violently, but that never came.
Now, the next part is mostly a blur but I tell you what I remember. I was on the ground, ready to be eaten and join my brother up in heaven when, out of nowhere gunshots blasted like fireworks, and the snarls of the Infected ceased.
I heard the shouts of people, they said something like 'We found a survivor!' and 'Is that an umbrella?' I was lifted by strong arms, umbrella and all, onto a Jeep, and we drove to a helicopter, where from there I believe they took me to a hospital of some sort to be checked out.
Looks like out crumbling government decided to help after all.

PART IIII
EPILOGUE

        After the whole incident with the Infected, the government and their 'Search and Destroy' scoured the entire nation, and even came up with a sort of spray that killed the Infected. Infecticide they called it. Anyways, after months of scouring the nation and making sure every last Infected person was destroyed, every citizen of the Nation had to get a vaccine to make sure nothing like this ever happened again. The Nation went back to its peaceful, non-murderous ways.
I moved back in with my mother, and later became a scientist, studying dead things, and creating life-saving medicine. I do have nightmares of these past incidents, and of my brother. I think of what I could have done to help him, to save his life. But then I realize, I couldn't have done anything to help him without being eaten myself, and I know he wouldn't have wanted that. I try not to forget these memories though, because they helped me become who I am today. My mother doesn't like that I turned down all these trips to a counselor, and how I kept my murder umbrella. She just doesn't understand what these memories mean to me.
As Corey once said, 'It was all just like a movie.'


     Washington- July 12th, 2063: Usually reliable government sources reported that a man was murdered in Chicago.