Trapped

Created: 4/17/2018 Story Type: Short Story

Genre: Horror

*Trapped*

My name’s Angie Prescott. I’m seventeen years old, and I’m going to die, I know it. I’m on my own now, though I wish that things were different. That I had handled this horrible situation differently, but I didn’t, and now here I am. I wish that I had paid more attention to those stupid horror movies my brother used to like to watch, but no. I always blew him off. Both of my parents are dead now, and so are my younger brother and sister. It’s just me, struggling and fighting to survive in a world gone mad.

All of my neighbor’s have become these gruesome creatures. I don’t really know what else to call them. The news just called them monsters or the dead. But the truth is, they’re not really dead. If they were dead, they wouldn’t be up and walking around. They wouldn’t be trying to take a bite out of me or rip my face off. I basically call them the Turned, as they have turned into something that no longer resembles what they once were. As I think this, I shake my thoughts away and force myself to focus
on the present.

My lungs burn as I pump my aching legs and keep running as fast as I can. My back is killing me, and I'm struggling to catch my breath, but I don't look back again. I can't. As badly as I want to know if they're still following me, I'm too afraid to stop and check. I don't know how long I've been running,
only that I passed my neighborhood and then the Elementary school more than a few hours ago. I had glanced behind me and saw a group of them attack the Elementary school.

I can still hear the screams of the children and the teachers as they were ripped to shreds by the monsters that not only haunt my dreams, but are now chasing me while I'm awake. My heart starts
to thump in my chest and I can hear it pounding in my ears. It beats so loud that I feel like everyone alive or dead, should be able to hear it. Sweat drips down the back of my neck, but I don't lift a hand
to brush it away. I don't want to risk giving these fuckers a chance to take a bite of out of me.

The sound of their growls get closer with every second and even as I try to pick up speed, it still feels like that's not going to be enough. Their footsteps echo behind me, and as I'm running and passing up building after building and house after house, I find myself wondering something. Should I stop running and just try to find safety in one of these buildings or houses nearby? A few moments later, I realize that it's not a good idea. That it would be a huge mistake to do so.

Who knows if the houses and buildings are even safe? There's also the chance that I could get into one of these buildings or houses and get overrun by them. So no, it's just better to not take any chances. I feel a flash of what feels like wind at my back, and then I hear the one right behind me
let out an enraged scream that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

I glance to left and then right, hoping for some kind of miracle but find none. My breath is coming out in gasps and I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to keep running. I turn the corner and force myself to glance up and pay attention to where I’m at. The sign says Johnston Street and I know where I am. I’m sixteen miles and four hours from my house which was a shell of what it once was. These damn bastards have ruined everything they’ve come into contact with.

They’ve infected anything they could get their hands on. People, animals, furniture, clothing. And I don’t just mean in the sense of turning a person or animal into what they are. There are many ways that someone can get infected. The usual ways of getting scratched, bitten, or sick from the virus. But also if you drink after someone who has the virus, or if you touch... say, clothing that a sick or turned person bled on. I don’t know everything about it. Just a few things I picked up here and there, when it was early on in the middle of this mess and the news stations were still broadcasting.

But that’s long gone and most of the police, news anchors, doctors, paramedics, scientists, and anyone else that the government figured could help control the virus, were evacuated as soon as possible. This was so they could try and find a cure. But that’s not going to happen, because the virus had already spread through the city, and it’s still spreading. It started here, in Dayton, two months ago, and spread to Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and beyond. All because of Little Ashleigh Moore, who was patient zero.

That’s what most people called her. She was only nine, and had turned two hours after unknowingly eating a piece of meat for lunch that had some kind of bacteria in it. Ashleigh had had symptoms of food poisoning before she turned. You know how it goes, stomach pain, chills, dizziness, fatigue, weakness, sweating, fever. By the time two hours had passed, she was no longer the sweet little girl that her father loved and took care of. She was a killer who would bring about the beginning of the end for the city of Dayton in two weeks.

That first evening, Ashleigh bit her father, Dan, when he was taking care of her. He hadn’t understood what was happening, but had been wise enough to record everything that had happened as he tried to care for his daughter. The video footage was retrieved a few days later, by another neighbor who worked at the channel 5 Dayton News Station. I still can’t believe they had actually shown the video on the news once the shit had hit the fan, but they did and now the truth was out there. For better or worse.

But during the beginning, Dan had just been worried about Ashleigh. He hadn’t understood why her skin had turned sickly and gray. Her vomit had been black instead of the usual color of whatever she had just eaten. The fever had set in and the rest of the symptoms had come and gone within the two hour period. Once she had turned, that had been it for Dan. The video footage showed Ashleigh getting sick for the first hour and a half, and then at one point, her body had gone completely still.

There was video of Dan trying to resuscitate her, but it didn’t work. Ashleigh’s chest had quit rising and falling with each breath, and so he had pressed his ear near her mouth to check, but felt no breath. Then, he had tried listening to her heart, but heard no beating. This was finished with him grabbing one of her hands and pressing two of his fingers to check for a pulse at her wrist, and then at her neck and found none. Once that happened, he dropped his daughter’s hand and began to sob.

The video continued and people all around the world got their first look at the horror that awaited them. Especially when Ashleigh opened her eyes, which showed her black pupils, blue eyes, and the red blood vessels that had burst. The gray tint to her skin had set in over the two hour period, and since Dan had been mourning the loss of his daughter, he was unaware of the danger that awaited him from said daughter. Or well, what remained of her, if any did at all. She shifted on the carpet where her father had laid her down.

The sound of her moving was blocked out by the grieving of her father. Which is why it was too late for Dan, who only had time to look up before she was on him. A single bite to his left wrist and that was pretty much the end of Dan as he knew it. His screams and panicked shouts were seen and heard on the video. Also on the video was footage of the final two hours of his life, and then his transformation as he turned. Once that had happened, outside noises had drawn his attention and the sound of a knock at the door was heard.

This was followed by a familiar voice that called out and still sent chills down my spine as my mother called out to Dan, who had stumbled over to the door and started to pound against it. Now, my mother had no idea what was going on. And as Dan continued to pound at the door, she continued to call out to him, and twisted the handle of the door and pulled it open. When the door opened a few inches, one hand was still on the doorknob, with that arm out in front of her. This gave him the perfect chance to attack, and he bit down into the crook of her right elbow.

My mother screamed and ripped her arm away from Dan, where she slammed the door in his face and ran back to our house, three houses down. She returned home and called the police, but by the time they arrived to check it out, the Moore’s had already left their house to find someone else to chow down on. Not sure what else to do and not fully understanding the situation that she would find herself in just a few hours, she had cleaned her arm where the bite was, and then decided to go about her daily routine.

My mother put some laundry going and was in the middle of cleaning the kitchen when she called me at work on my lunch break to check in like she usually did. We chatted for a few minutes and she told me what had happened at the Moore’s house. Then she said she had to go. She wasn’t feeling well and wanted to try and get a quick nap in before my brother and sister, Jack and Fiona, got home from school. Little did I know that my mother would go from simply not feeling well, to a dangerous bloodthirsty monster in only two hours.

I found out later, that when Jack and Fiona had gotten home from school, they had gone to their rooms to watch TV and do their homework like normal, completely unaware of what had happened to our mother. But it didn’t stay that way for long. Our mother had turned while she took her nap, but before that had happened, she had closed herself up in the Master Bedroom, to keep my brother and sister safe, but it didn’t work. At one point Fiona had decided to take a break from her homework and went to find our mother.

When Fiona found her, I had just gotten home from work that night and was looking forward to having dinner with my family and maybe playing a few board games with my brother and sister. My sister had just knocked on the door to our parents bedroom, and I heard and called out to her, but she told me that we would talk later. I figured it was no big deal and started to walk towards my room, only to hear a scream a few moments later. I raced through the living room and up the stairs, just in time to see what looked like a nightmare version of our mother.

Within moments, she had scratched and bitten my sister. For several moments I only stared at the burst blood vessels in her eyes, the gray skin, and the nasty strip of flesh from my sister’s arm, that dangled from her lips. My sister had screamed, bringing Jack out of his room and down the hall to our parents room with us. Not sure what to do, I tried to talk to mom to figure out why she attacked Fiona. But she wouldn’t, or couldn’t talk, and instead, just let out a loud snarl and launched her body at me.

The last thing I saw before she pinned me to the floor, was the bandaged wound on the crook of her right arm. It only took a few moments to realize that this thing on top of me was no longer my mother. I yelled at Fiona to take Jack and run. “Fi! Take Jack and go hide in one of the rooms! I’ll take care of her and then go and get you!” When Fiona nodded and tugged Jack along with her into one of the other rooms, I shoved our mother’s body off of me and then took off down the stairs and ran into the kitchen.

I could hear her stumbling along behind me, and when I reached the kitchen, I wasted no time and ran over to the back door where Jack was told to always keep his baseball bat after practice. I picked it up and took a few breaths to control my breathing, and as soon as my mother entered the kitchen, I slammed the bat into her head. I kept doing it over and over again until she stopped moving. And once she stopped moving, I hit her a few more times, just to be safe. Eventually, I was satisfied that she was down for the count.

I kept the bat in hand and as I walked through the house, I glanced at the nearest clock and realized that I had wasted a lot of time. By the time I got back to the stairs and started to head up, I heard a noise come from outside, and went back down the stairs to check it out. I opened the blinds a little bit and saw one of the damn things with their jaws clamped around my father’s wrist as it pulled him down the street. The door of his car remained open, and his keys were on the ground. And while I wanted to chase after them, I  couldn’t.

I had to go back and get my brother and sister. I darted up the stairs and by the time I reached the top, heard a scream ring out and realized it had come from Jack. I pounded on the door for several moments, until it finally swung open. I watched as Jack clutched one of his legs, which had a scratch on it. It turned out that Fiona had scratched Jack when he tried to help her. And given what had happened to our mother, I didn’t know what to do. Well, I knew what I had to do, but I really didn’t want to do it.

A scream of rage came from nearby and I could only watch in shocked horror as Jack grabbed the bat from me and started to beat the shit out of Fiona. Once she stopped moving, he wiped the bat on his shirt and told me to go and clean it off. I wanted to protest, but he didn’t let me. I just nodded and left the room to clean the bat. When that was done, I returned to Jack and tearfully hugged him. He told me to leave and since there was nothing I could do for him, I did as he asked. “I love you, Jack. I love you, Fi.”

After I said that, I turned around and just left the house. From there, it spread like wildfire with all of the neighbor’s becoming infected. Since then, I’ve been going from place to place for the last two months, trying to find other survivors. Unfortunately, I’ve only had a little bit of luck and have come across a few dozen other survivors, only to see them become infected. So I figure that I’m better off on my own, where I can get in and out of places quickly and quietly.  

The Moore’s had only lived three houses down from mine. Once they'd gotten hold of my family, things had turned to shit pretty quickly and that was putting it mildly. I don’t know what to say now, except I guess that I was lucky to avoid getting bitten for as long as I have. I sigh softly and push thoughts of my family from my mind. I’ve wasted enough time going down memory lane and now these assholes are even closer to me. My lungs burn from trying to suck in air as I just keep going.

I look around me and know that my options are limited. I know that I said before, it wasn’t a good idea to go into any of these buildings, but I don’t have a choice any longer. I get one last burst of speed and turn the corner onto Bernard Street. From there, I dart into the first house I see. The front door is wide open and one of the Turned might be inside, but I stand a better chance against one of these stupid things instead of a dozen or more. I slam the door shut, but don’t have a chance to check the house I’m in.

I hear the snarling and moaning and before I know it, as I glance around, I see several of the Turned. It hits me in that moment and I realize what’s happened. I’m trapped. Plain and simple. I knew going into a house wasn’t a good idea. A few moments later, they’re surrounding me and I feel one of them bite a chunk out of my back, which makes me scream in pain. “I’m sorry Fi, Jack..” I say to my siblings. The Turned close in on me, and I close my eyes and swing out with the bat as a last resort, but it’s no use.

With one last burst of strength, I lift the bat and start swinging at these assholes. “I may end up being one of you assholes in a few hours, but I’m not gonna die without taking a few of you with me..” At those last words, I resume swinging my bat and prepare myself for what the final two hours of my life are going to be like. “I love you, Mom. I love you, Dad. You too, Fi and Jack.. I wish that I could’ve protected you guys.” That’s the last thought I have before I close my eyes and give in to the monster’s that are ripping me apart.

The end.

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