malignant

Stephan sniffed and rubbed the snot away from his nose, with a dirty shirt sleeve. He’d been wearing the same shirt for ten days. There was no need to count days anymore. But he did it to keep the frail thread of sanity he felt leaving.

He looked around the room. It used to be a pretty cool set up. He had all the toys a guy could want. Just a month before, he bought the 70” flat screen that he’d wanted since last year. He was going to get the guys over and make Sunday’s and Monday’s the getaway nights. There was nothing like some violent football collisions, to get the adrenaline going and discuss the past week’s adventures.

“Well fuck that to hell. Ain’t that right babe?”

He directed the question to his fiancée Kathy. She was handcuffed and chained to a chair, near the apartment door. Her face was pale and her eyes looked like she was a hundred or so miles away. Her breathing was rapid, pulse was weak and she had a fever.

“What are you talkin’ about?” she asked, almost in a whisper. “Fuck what?”

“Damn. Your memory is goin’ fast. They said that was one of the symptoms. Do you feel like you have a fever? I mean, you don’t look so hot.”

“Take these damn chains off me, Stephan. I’m not sick. I told you, I don’t have it. I ate that bad deer chili and it gave me some kinda food poisoning. Let me go.”

“You were just fine, last night. Now you got a fever and you look like shit. You stay chained up. I love you but I love me too.”

Kathy found the strength to spit at him. “You’re an asshole!”

“…And you’re contagious. I don’t want it to be this way. You saw what they said on the news. We have to be cautious. This thing has gotten out of hand. People are roaming the streets and turning. You don’t know who has it!”

The young woman let her head fall backwards and a long sigh escaped her lips.

“If I had known you were such a pig…damn.” She snapped her head forward and looked at Stephan. He was sitting across the room, on the floor, with his back against the sofa. They had pushed it next to the far wall to watch the door. The first two nights they were trouble free. But after that, there were attacks and attempts to break in almost each evening. People were panicking and there were no answers. Mass hysteria was setting in and there was a general lack of control, to say the least.

BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!

The loud knock made Kathy jump.

“Who the hell is it?!” Stephan demanded. He cocked the Glock he was babying and pointed it at the door. He had positioned Kathy near the entrance to see if she would draw out any stragglers in the building. They stayed in a four family unit but didn’t know what was going on in two of the other apartments. The Vega’s were dead. Manny shot himself and his wife on day five. They left a note on the door. Their bodies stank to high hell. Mr. Bachman was an old man in his 80’s. He cried for help for a few days and then went silent. He was surely done.

BOOM, BOOM!

“Knock again and I will blow you the fuck away! Who is it?!”

Kathy shook her head and sobbed slightly.

“It’s one of them,” she said softly. “We should have checked the basement door. I told you they could get in that way.”

“Shut up,” Stephan snapped. “It really don’t matter. Nobody’s comin’ in here.”

“It could be someone who needs help. You can’t assume everyone is infected. We’re still okay. 

Maybe they’re just afraid like us.”

Stephan stood and walked towards his fiancée. He stood next to her and watched her. He pushed her head back, with the gun. She was breathing a little easier. He put the gun in his waist, reached into his pocket, pulled out surgical gloves and snapped them on. He felt her forehead. She was burning up.  For a moment, he wanted to cry. This isn’t how he envisioned the time before their marriage. He planned wild sex, trips to tropical islands and general debauchery before they settled into married life. The outbreak put all that on hold. Thanks to some stowaway from South America, the world was on the brink of extinction. The Night Plague, they labeled it. It was a malignant form of sleeping disease that cased the infected to mutate rapidly. In the first stage, sleeplessness, loss of nervous system control, skin atrophy, the onset of rabies, are just a few of the effects. It’s quite the nasty little bugger.

“Food poisoning, huh? You’re burnin’ up. You got scratched buy that guy, when we were raiding the store. I told you to be careful and you let your guard down!”

Kathy looked up at Stephan, with pleading eyes. “Sweetie, it’s not what you think. I’m a med student, remember? I’d lock myself in the bedroom if I thought I was contagious.”

Maybe she was right. Maybe he was starting to be just as insane as the people they saw roaming the streets. He was suddenly glad she’d talked him into the second floor apartment. She was almost a doctor. She had no reason to lie.

Stephan snapped off one glove and carefully used it to remove the other. He marched to the bathroom and flushed them down the toilet. He glanced in the mirror, before leaving. The scraggly beard looked crazy on him. Kathy mentioned he needed to take a razor, when they were in the store.  He scratched the light fur and moved back to the living room.

As he walked past the dining room table, he snatched up the keys to Kathy’s prison.

“Finally,” she said, watching him untangle the chains and click open the lock. “You’d think I was some malignant creature instead of your wife to be.”

“I’m sorry babe,” Stephan crooned, while pulling the chains from Kathy’s slender frame. “ I just had to make sure. You looked so fucked up.”

“I understand,” was all Kathy whispered in his ear as she lightly kissed his neck. Her hands caressed his neck and slid down his chest, as their tongues met in a passionate kiss. The fever wasn’t as bad but he was right. She felt like shit. She pulled the gun from his waist, pushed him back and shot him in the leg. One landed in his thigh while the other was a loud tear to the kneecap. Blood and skin flew across the hardwood floor as if someone had popped a balloon. Stephan screamed in pain, as he back peddled on the floor, using his good leg. She aimed higher and squeezed another into his shoulder. It knocked him into the sofa.

“WHAT THE HELL?! KATHY, WHAT ARE YOU DOIN’?! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!”

“You were gonna kill me! You had me at that fucking door like bait on a hook! A piece of meat! You never really loved me. You never cared. I was supposed to be your meal ticket to luxury. FUCK YOU!”

Stephan gingerly propped himself up, to ease the pain. Each move was excruciatingly difficult. He watched the blood pouring from his wounds and looked up at Kathy. The rapid breathing was back. She was twitching and her skin was visibly crawling. There was a light foam bubbling from the side of her mouth.

“You lying bitch.”

“Doesn’t matter. I get to see you die. You could have at least treated me with some dignity.”

BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!

“Who the hell is that?!” Stephan yelled through his pain.

Kathy eased over to the door and stood triumphantly.

“Last night, after another of your meaningless, empty attempts at sex, you fell asleep as usual. While you were snoring like a drunk, I took a trip down to Mr. Bachman’s apartment. He told me, a while back, there was a spare key under his doormat. He’s such a sweet guy. I used to go to the store for him all the time. He trusted me. I digress. I went into his apartment and low and behold, he was sitting in his chair, chewing on Cinnamon. You remember his cat, right? Well he noticed me, dropped the half eaten cat, popped up and came after me. He sniffed at me, snorted and went back to eating.”

Stephan moaned and squirmed in pain. Kathy opened one chain.

BOOM, BOOM!

“Well I couldn’t let the man go hungry. I knew I was sick, when he didn’t attack me. I only had a few days of sanity left. So I promised him a decent meal…along with…myself.”

She popped another chain lose and then opened the deadbolt. She flung open the door. Mr. Bachman ambled in. He looked around the room, sniffing loudly. He released a spine tingling hiss that caused his mouth to open and expose rotting sharp teeth. He whipped his head towards Stephan and quickly lumbered and limped over to the injured man.

“NOOOOO!”

The filthy old man struggled with Stephan and  sank his powerful jaws into the soft bloody flesh of the wounded thigh. He tore a chunk out as the man screamed and tried to shove him away. Kathy dropped the gun as she coughed up bloody gray foam. Her eyes rolled back and she let out a primal scream. Her bones crackled and skin crawled and itched. She slowly walked over to her fiancée, fell onto her knees, and fought with him until she bit into his throat. The satisfied moans, chewing and slurping, slowly eased Stephan into a deep remorseful sleep. 

His last view was of the 70’ flat screen.

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