Story #1: Silent Moments

A scientist, David Barker, is attempting to find the cure for AIDS. After toiling around in his laboratory for six months, he believes he has done it, but he has accidentally created Litosis, the zombie sickness. He goes up to his test subject, Tom Darden, who is ready to be injected with “the cure.” The scientist sticks the needle into the test subject’s vein.
The vein starts to bleed heavily as soon as the needle is out of his arm. Tom has to catch a plane in an hour, so the two try to clot the wound. It won’t stop bleeding. After five minutes of continuous bleeding, it clots, but turns a dark plum color. The two people decide it would be best to have David go to New York to watch for other side effects.
The flight is twenty-three hours. It has been two hours since he’d been injected, and all Tom has is a fever and sore muscles. The only thing that David is doing is taking notes.
Soon, Tom has been through every side effect. He had even died. David is sitting by Tom’s lifeless corpse, wondering where he had gone wrong. And then, the body stirs. David was so scared, he takes off for the bathroom and locks the door behind him.
The plane starts jerking. The passengers and flight attendants start screaming. The plane begins to plummet straight to Earth. Everyone gets infected. Everyone, that is, except for David, who gets away. Barely.
The apocalypse quickly makes its way to Chicago and its surrounding area, where four friends and a tag along live.
The friends are at Trent’s bonfire. It isn’t very late, probably not even eight yet. Merci hears something, off in the trees; it sounds like it is struggling towards them. Her friends disregard this, as Nova said, “It’s probably just a deer that has been shot. It’s hunting season, it happens a lot around this time of year.” They don’t think anything of it.
The first zombie bursts through the bushes that surround Trent’s yard.  The kids turn around and run into his house, which is already over run. Ryan takes them over to his house.
Ryan’s family likes to hunt, so they have many weapons at their house. As they lock the doors and windows, his little sister comes into the kitchen. She’s curious as to why the older kids are scrambling around, collecting food to take somewhere safe.
“Hey Lily, can you go stand by the door? We’ll come get you when it’s time to go, okay?” Ryan says to his little sister.
“Okay!” she exclaims to her big brother, happy to do what he says. She skips over to the door, her long blonde hair bouncing all the way.
Ryan smiles, turns around and hears a crashing behind him. Everything seems to go in slow motion,; he spins around, fear in his eyes. The zombies have gotten in. Suddenly, his friends are pulling on his arms, telling him they have to get out, they have to leave.
The only thing Ryan notices is his little sister, who is screaming in the hands of the zombie.
Finally, Ryan seems to realize that they do actually need to get out, with or without Lily, as much as that pains him. He can’t help but to blame himself for putting her in that situation. She was only four. It just wasn’t fair!
Ryan turns into a zombie killing machine. He won’t use a gun, he’ll only use a machete; he feels like he has more control over how much pain the zombie goes through, even though he knows zombies don’t have feelings. On the way out of the house, Ryan takes the lead. He wants to be the last thing that those zombies see before they die. Again.
After a couple weeks of camping out in tipped buses and fighting zombies, they run out of ammunition.
“What now?!” cries Merci, losing hope that they’ll survive.
“We just need to go raid a hunting store.” It’s one of those rare moment where Nova points out the obvious that no one else can really seem to figure out for themselves.
The group all looks at Ryan; he’s the hunting master. He’d know where the closest one was.
“It’s two blocks away,” he says, not meeting their eyes. He doesn’t want them to know that the only thing that keeps him going are his thoughts of Lily.
They leave the bus, checking both ways, making sure there wasn’t any zombies around. There isn’t, which is kind of weird. You never really see the any street without some dead guy on it.
About half way to the store, they hear a whimpering from behind a dumpster. Merci checks behind, since she is the littlest. Being five foot one, she can fit into almost any tight spot.
As it just so happens, behind the dumpster hid Olive Buckley, the girl who puts the dumb in dumb blonde. She had gotten everything handed to her on a silver platter, everyone knew that.
Not one to turn away from a person in need, Ryan helped pull Olive out from her hiding spot. He accessed her wounds, said there was nothing wrong with her and asked if she would like to stay with with them.
“If you choose to stay, though, you have to pull your weight. You can’t just sit back and expect us to do everything for you.”
“Oh, you can count on me, Ryan!” she said, meekly.
They finish walking to the hunting supply store, not seeing a single zombie along the way. When the group gets to the supply store, they barricade the door, not taking any chances. There is a door in the back, which they open ever so slightly, just in case they need to make a quick get away. And that’s when Olive spots the first zombie of the day.
As perviously stated, she’s not the brightest crayon in the box. She freaks out, and shoots it. The sound of the gun alerts other undead of their location as well. Ryan looks at her, and then the rest of the team.
“If we’re to go out, let’s go out fighting,” he says, his words motivating the team. They go to the back door, so they can limit the amount of zombies that get inside the store. There isn’t anyone guarding their backs; everyone is too busy fighting the zombies coming through the door. No one notices the zombie that is limping up behind them.
It grabs ahold of Merci, gripping her arm in its hand, the flesh falling off. It actually seemed to move quite fast. Seconds felt like hours; Merci was struggling to get out of the undead’s hand, hoping that she could get away before she was bitten.
Trent turns around, and yells something. But Ryan has come up behind the silent assassin, and has cut his arm off, before anyone else could even realize what was happening behind them.
The zombies blood sprays in Merci’s face, getting in her eyes and mouth, infecting her.
“Just kill me. I’m going to be more trouble than I’m worth if you don’t,” she looks around, desperate for someone to answer her final plea.
Trent steps forward, towards his best friend, and says, “I’ll do it.” Merci starts sobbing and Trent looks into her eyes. All he can see is forgiveness and understanding. She understands why he has to do it, but why can’t he bring himself to do it?
Nova speaks up, “Trent, it has to be done. If you can’t do it, have someone else. We can’t have her endangering us.”
“I know that, but… she’s my best friend. The only best friend I’ve ever had…”
Ryan steps up, and cuts her head off. “That wasn’t so hard. Maybe if you hadn’t been complaining about it and just did it, you wouldn’t be feeling like you did something wrong.”
Trent doesn’t hear a word Ryan says; he’s looking at Merci. He starts crying and shoulders past everyone else. “Come on,” he sniffles, “let’s go.”
On the way back to the bus, no one says a word. As they walk past a cemetery, they see a man in a lab coat. He’s crying. They approach him and ask what is wrong.
“You won’t understand,” the man sobs. “My name is David Barker, and I was just trying to do something to benefit humanity and I accidentally started all of this.”