In the summer of 1966 The source of the outbreak The Infected.
14 blocks of Tulsa's
East Side
were quarantined.
is
STILL UNKNOWN
Those who survived spent the
next 3 days defending themselves against
-West Side Story trailer parody
I do not own anything, only Lia (who appears briefly... several times).
Log-
Three weeks. Three weeks since the sicknesses started, three days until it was no longer contagious. -Darry Curtis
I didn't have it, luckily enough, but some of my gang wasn't very lucky. Poor guys- they had no idea what they were doing half the time.
Supplies are low; and it's dangerous to go out onto the streets now. Infected people are wandering around Tulsa, even on the West side... of course, they don't have to worry about anything. They've got food, for crying out loud! Food!
But... we're probably one of the lucky ones. Just last week, I went to stick my head out the door and saw Shepard on the doorstep, his back ripped open and his spine missing.
Tulsa. Is. Hell.
Darry set the log back onto his desk, and walked into the living room. Johnny lay on the couch, his eyes blank. Ever since that disease had hit him, he had been like that. Just silent, staring. Two-Bit and Soda, the other two who had got it, were different. While Two-Bit was still as goofy as ever, he didn't seem to smile anymore. Soda, meanwhile, had become depressed.
There were only a few people that had had the sickness pass through them without staying permanently. Those people knew of the hell others were forced to endure every day, and the horrors that the mind would create.
Johnny sat up and looked around the room. The hair on the back of his neck stood up, and he shuddered involuntarily. He bit his bottom lip and looked out the window, where the stars were shining brightly.
It's nothing, it's nothing, it's nothing... His mind was like a broken record, repeating the same thing until he thought he would go insane.
"It's nothing." Johnny whispered as he drummed his fingers on the wood and peered nervously out the window.
He was just about to give up, when he saw something out of the corner of his eye.
It was a figure, lurching down the street, only a few houses away. Every few seconds, it would pause and look around, as if confused. Something else was moving down the street as well. At the speed it was moving (and the irregular shape of the hindquarters) Johnny guessed that it was a child on a tricycle.
The smaller figure stopped, inches away from the larger one, and then a ear-splitting screech filled the air. The larger figure swooped down upon the child, and, despite the distance from the Curtis house, the crunching of bones and the popping of flesh could be heard.
Johnny jumped away from the window, his eyes wide with horror. He had known that the Infected would resort to cannibalism (how else were they to get food?) but... that was a child!
"It doesn't really matter, does it?" Ponyboy asked from beside him. "Who they eat?"
Johnny shook his head, forcing the bile that had risen in his throat back down.
"Did you... were you ever... y'know..."
This time, he turned to face the younger boy. Had he ever been tempted to feast on human flesh? To tear the skin from someone's bones? Johnny shuddered, remembering how he had thrown himself against the bedroom door in an attempt to get at the others. He had been so hungry... not just for regular food, but for...
"I... I gue—yeah." Johnny mumbled, feeling ashamed of himself.
Ponyboy threw an arm around his shoulders, and smiled warily. "Well, at least you're not that way forever, right?"
"Right."
"Did it... hurt?"
"What?" Johnny asked emotionlessly.
"Being sick like that."
"Yeah, I guess. I mean, your mind starts to go all funny, and you get real hungry. But you ain't really hungry for anything... normal. It's like; you want to eat... people, Pone. And you start wanting to just kill anything that's in your way of getting to people. You get real cold, too. Like you've been stuck in a freezer somewhere, and you're freezin' to death. After all that's over, your mind comes back, but part of you's just gone, and it ain't gonna come back," Johnny's voice was shaking now. "And you... you feel really... like you want to just... you feel so bad. Depending on how long you've had it, you're hungry, an' since the cold wears off, you're feeling like you're about to die from the heat. Then these images just get caught in your brain. You just want to kill yourself, Pony. Yeah, it hurts."