Fatality

They came from all sides and there must have been at least a hundred of them. Best I can figure they were all the people who turned while they were driving down the highway. As soon as we saw them we started running back to the truck. Grant and I got to the truck and jumped in when we realized that Keith had tripped on something and was on the ground with the whole crowd closing in on him. We grabbed the guns and loaded them as quick as we could. Don't know why we didn't load them before we left. "Yeah, I've had plenty of experience with unloaded shotguns," I interrupted looking at my arm. "Looks like it," Alex said before continuing. "We got the guns loaded and I yelled for Keith to drop back to the ground. He had started to fight his way to his feet. He dropped down into a little ball and we let loose. They were so close together it only took about 5 shots or so from each of us before Keith was clear enough that he could get up and hobble over to us. He was pretty banged up at that point but nothing that seemed too God awful. Grant handed him a pistol and helped him get back to the truck. I did my best to cover them. Then something, I have no idea what, blasted out of the woods like a damn train and ran straight into both of them. Keith got knocked into the truck and I guess it caught Grant cause a second later it was pickin him up and slammin him into the ground I ran over to him as quick as I could and blasted the bastard twice straight in the back of the head. I had to help Grant struggle to his feet the damned thing had knocked all the air out of him. I tried to shoot a few more of the people but I couldn't aim the shotgun for shit with Grant leaning on me. I grabbed the second pistol he was carrying and managed to keep them back long enough for Grant to catch his breath. I looked back at the truck and saw that Keith had managed to get in and was trying to get it back on the road. Grant and I made our way over and barely managed to climb into the bed when some sort of rope shot out of the woods and wrapped around me. It started to pull me out of the truck but luckily Grant was able to cut it with a hatchet he had. He yelled for Keith to get going while he pulled me back onto the truck. Keith hit the gas and we fell back into the tailgate. Thank God it didn't pop open or we'd be dead right now. We sped off down the road with at least 20 of those things still chasing us and they didn't stop chasing us. We just kept going until we couldn't see them anymore. "Ok ok, you fought off zombies but how did Keith die? Get to the point old man," John demanded clearly frustrated. "I'm just about to," Alex explained. "Ok so we just got far enough away from those things when Keith pulled over and said he didn't feel good. Didn't know what was wrong he just said he was cramping all over and his mouth was dry. I looked him over and he was covering in cuts but nothing too serious. Then I noticed that all of his cuts weren't bleeding. It hadn't been more than 15 minutes but all of the cuts were dry and cracking. Not scabbing over just like he had run out of blood somehow. I didn't know what to do I've never really been that good with first aid and I don't think anybody had seen anything like this. I looked through the first aid kit and all I found that I thought might be helpful was a few syringes of adrenaline. I figured it would at least help prevent him from going into shock. Grant said we needed to try to find somebody to help so we put him in the back of the truck and Grant sat with him and I started driving. Grant called to me through the back window said Keith was starting to seize. A few seconds later I heard a scream and Keith was attacking Grant. I pulled the truck over and Keith managed to throw Keith out of the truck. He fell to the ground but got back up quick as flash and started running back towards us. His eyes were glowing with and eerie greenish-yellow color. I knew what had happened. I pulled out my pistol and put one right through his head. He dropped to the ground in sickening lump. Grant vomited at the sight. I told him my guess is that the crowd of people must have been his first encounter with the virus and he wasn't immune like we had thought. After that we took a minute to rest. Buried the body and started driving. Picked up Elizabeth this morning like a said and we showed up hear. And that's the whole story.

"God dammit," John said as he slumped back on the couch covering his face with his hands.

Rabies?

About a week ago Keith came over and told us that he had seen on the news that we weren't supposed to leave our houses after dark. He said some weird disease was spreading and the city was under quarantine. I knew people had been getting sick, half the people from work hadn't shown up in a few days. Nobody called in just stopped showing up. I had no idea it was that bad at the time though. We didn't really know what to do so the next day we went to the Super Center and stocked up on food, just figured we'd ride it out. Then, last Tuesday the news actually started telling us a bit of what the hell was going on. They said-" "Yeah, yeah," John interrupted, "I know what the news said the first day. A new strain of the flu has crossed with rabies. Mass amounts of people are going rabid. The disease is airborne and highly contagious. Contact with diseased people results in infection 90% of the time. Blah blah blah. What happened to Keith?" "I'm getting to it." Alex explained, "hold your horses. When we heard that people were going rabid we decided this whole thing was gonna be a lot worse than we thought. We went down to the gun shop, thought we'd be ready just incase things got hairy. As we were driving into town we saw a bunch of soldiers all through town. When we finally got to the gun shop the place was closed, should've figured I suppose. No other place was open. Why would they? We started to leave when one of the soldiers motioned Keith over to him. He came back a few minutes later and I asked him what the soldier wanted. He said the soldier had no idea what was going on but it was getting worse by the day. He said we were the first healthy people he had seen in two days. The back door to the gun shop had been broken into yesterday. He advised us to arm ourselves as best as we could and leave town. They were setting up evacuation centers in major cities, Norman, OKC, Stillwater, Tulsa, anywhere with a decent sized population. Enough to make the amount of immune worth the effort of evacuating people. We went around back and sure enough the door had been broken down. A few other soldiers noticed us and we backed away from the door but they just nodded at us and we went inside. There wasn't much left, 3 or 4 handguns, coupla shotguns but not much ammo. A few boxes of shells, a scattered pile of handgun rounds and good amount of rifle rounds. Like I said no rifles but we figured we'd take some anyway. As we left we told the soldiers the building was empty so they didn't need to stand guard over it anymore. One just replied, 'You were never here. Take the South road out of town between 10 and 11 tonight. If you come across any military personnel flash your lights. Do NOT adjust your speed whatsoever.' We went home and packed up all the food we could. We were planning on leaving for Lawton. It was the closest place with and evacuation center. That's when you called. Figured if it was that bad we wouldn't fair much better in Lawton, so we decided we'd take Keith to you and we'd all try to find someplace to go. The more the merrier. At 10 we set out. Like the soldier said we passed three units. At each one I flashed the lights and we drove past. No big deal. When we got onto the highway there weren't too many people around, just the odd car here or there. After a while we were following behind a car and everything seemed fine. Then somebody... something, ran into the road. The car in front of us swerved to avoid it and drove into the ditch. I guess the driver hit his head and slumped onto the wheel because the horn went off and didn't quit. We pulled over to see if we could help. We got to the car and saw the driver had died, or was about to. He had cracked his head open. Never saw so much blood. Keith said he heard something so Grant pulled the driver off the wheel. We stood still straining to hear. Nothing.

Then it started again. Sounded like people, almost. People screaming but somehow more twisted, like they were all in pain. That's when they started running out from the woods.