head pounded, and I worried I had sustained brain damage. The wound was so wet and fresh, I could feel the blood trickling down the nape of my neck.
Tears of fear and confusion welled up in my eyes, and I held back the desperate, choking sobs burning in my throat.
The carriers, I thought suddenly. Where were they?
A few yards away, my campfire was still burning. The fire was larger than before. Whoever had made it wasn’t worried about attracting unwanted attention. Then, my vision focused in on the lumpy shapes around the fire. As my mind cleared, an idea of the likely scenario unfolded slowly. They had grabbed me, struck me on the head, and tied me up.
I hadn’t spotted them at first because they were so wild and dirty from living in the woods that they blended right in with the leaves and trees. They were sleeping around the fire, their dark, dead eyes tucked back into their skulls.
My food packages were strewn around them, now completely empty, as though the carriers had binged and fallen asleep after Thanksgiving dinner. There were four of them. How had I miscounted them before?
How had one subdued me on his own? Their bodies weakened by the virus, carriers weren’t supposed to be very strong. What made them dangerous was their overwhelming numbers and a complete lack of human emotions. The fourth must have been lurking in the trees and struck me on the back of the head so the others could grab me.
I had never seen carriers before, except on the news. They wore raggedy scraps of clothing so filthy they were barely recognizable. One of them was draped in the remains of an Orlando Magic basketball jersey. Another, clearly female, wore a torn pink sweatshirt with Greek letters and dirty, ripped jeans.
Their skin had a pale, sickly yellow pallor, and they were bald except for a few patches of downy fluff. Their mouths looked chapped — red and raw — but there were no signs yet of the oozing sores carriers developed around their mouths. Some people said it was an infection from feeding on the raw, rotting flesh of dead animals, but scientists seemed to agree it was a symptom of the disease itself.
Carriers were not cannibals, but they nearly always killed their victims. That was what bothered me most: Why hadn’t they killed me yet? Carriers didn’t take hostages; they ripped apart any living thing they came in contact with.
The scientific community only spoke to the press about carriers in hedged language with a liberal use of “we believe” statements because no one had found any scientific proof of what caused the disease or how it worked. It was widely accepted that the virus ate away at the part of the brain that allows humans to feel empathy and control their impulses.
Greyson said uncontrolled killing was just a survival technique. Significantly weaker than humans and hunted by the PMC, carriers moved in groups and treated all humans as a threat. They were unregulated and unstoppable in large packs. Almost no one ever survived a carrier attack.
No one ever survived.
It took a moment for that fact to wash over me. Was this how I was going to die? A brutal murder? A long, slow torture to the death? Maybe they would eat me — cook me slowly over the fire and cut out my eyes for dessert. If the carriers couldn’t find any animals to feed on, why wouldn’t they resort to cannibalism?
I slumped back against the tree, my self-pity and terror competing for dominance. How had this happened? I was just a college student going about my life. I was documented. I followed the law . . . mostly. How had I ended up an orphan on the run, in the woods and about to be killed by a gang of monsters?
I’d never given much thought to how I would die, but I’d always imagined I would have an opportunity to say goodbye to the people I loved — to make some final grand statement about the meaning of life and what I had stood for.
There was no chance of that. My parents weren’t
Tears of fear and confusion welled up in my eyes, and I held back the desperate, choking sobs burning in my throat.
The carriers, I thought suddenly. Where were they?
A few yards away, my campfire was still burning. The fire was larger than before. Whoever had made it wasn’t worried about attracting unwanted attention. Then, my vision focused in on the lumpy shapes around the fire. As my mind cleared, an idea of the likely scenario unfolded slowly. They had grabbed me, struck me on the head, and tied me up.
I hadn’t spotted them at first because they were so wild and dirty from living in the woods that they blended right in with the leaves and trees. They were sleeping around the fire, their dark, dead eyes tucked back into their skulls.
My food packages were strewn around them, now completely empty, as though the carriers had binged and fallen asleep after Thanksgiving dinner. There were four of them. How had I miscounted them before?
How had one subdued me on his own? Their bodies weakened by the virus, carriers weren’t supposed to be very strong. What made them dangerous was their overwhelming numbers and a complete lack of human emotions. The fourth must have been lurking in the trees and struck me on the back of the head so the others could grab me.
I had never seen carriers before, except on the news. They wore raggedy scraps of clothing so filthy they were barely recognizable. One of them was draped in the remains of an Orlando Magic basketball jersey. Another, clearly female, wore a torn pink sweatshirt with Greek letters and dirty, ripped jeans.
Their skin had a pale, sickly yellow pallor, and they were bald except for a few patches of downy fluff. Their mouths looked chapped — red and raw — but there were no signs yet of the oozing sores carriers developed around their mouths. Some people said it was an infection from feeding on the raw, rotting flesh of dead animals, but scientists seemed to agree it was a symptom of the disease itself.
Carriers were not cannibals, but they nearly always killed their victims. That was what bothered me most: Why hadn’t they killed me yet? Carriers didn’t take hostages; they ripped apart any living thing they came in contact with.
The scientific community only spoke to the press about carriers in hedged language with a liberal use of “we believe” statements because no one had found any scientific proof of what caused the disease or how it worked. It was widely accepted that the virus ate away at the part of the brain that allows humans to feel empathy and control their impulses.
Greyson said uncontrolled killing was just a survival technique. Significantly weaker than humans and hunted by the PMC, carriers moved in groups and treated all humans as a threat. They were unregulated and unstoppable in large packs. Almost no one ever survived a carrier attack.
No one ever survived.
It took a moment for that fact to wash over me. Was this how I was going to die? A brutal murder? A long, slow torture to the death? Maybe they would eat me — cook me slowly over the fire and cut out my eyes for dessert. If the carriers couldn’t find any animals to feed on, why wouldn’t they resort to cannibalism?
I slumped back against the tree, my self-pity and terror competing for dominance. How had this happened? I was just a college student going about my life. I was documented. I followed the law . . . mostly. How had I ended up an orphan on the run, in the woods and about to be killed by a gang of monsters?
I’d never given much thought to how I would die, but I’d always imagined I would have an opportunity to say goodbye to the people I loved — to make some final grand statement about the meaning of life and what I had stood for.
There was no chance of that. My parents weren’t
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