Amelia

I took in the crouching figure, slurping and chomping down on something. My throat tightened and my stomach turned.

"Chloe. What are you doing?" My voice was weak and scared. Chloe snapped her head in my direction. Blood dripped from her mouth, and she threw the intestine down. She bared her teeth and hissed at me and charged. Before I could stop myself, I pulled the knife back and plunged it into her skull. My chest was rising and falling as I yanked it out and plunged it in again with a wince.

I jerked, sweating and gripping the bed sheets. I threw off the covers and the cold winter air immediately greeted me. My wet eyes dried after a few blinks, and my throat felt parched. I stood slowly, before making my way downstairs. My hands were shaking as I held my phone with one, and wrapped the other arm around my waist.

Light was already coming in through the blinds, and I could smell coffee being brewed, "Couldn't sleep?" Emma greeted, taking a sip from her mug.

I shook my head, "Not really."

"Make sure you at least try. We have to stay rested, warm, and dry. We can't afford to get sick." She gave me a sad smile, like she wanted to smile, but her eyes looked heavy.

I nodded, giving a small, "Thank you." I took the coffee from her extended hand and sat at the counter. The warm substance felt heavenly as it moved down my throat. "Couldn't sleep either?"

"No, I'm just worried, is all." Emma shook her head as if her worries didn't matter.

I nodded, "Couldn't get through to Ryan?" She shook her head.

I still couldn't believe what was going on despite my willingness to go along with it. It just didn't register. I took a deep breath, trying to focus on the coffee.

"Do you think anyone who gets sick turns into-" Her voice caught in her throat.

"I don't know. I have no idea, and this all seems so unreal." I shook my head, "I thought Chloe was sick because her and Jason had taken some pill when we were in the city. They stayed zoned out for several days, so when she was fatigued and tired all the time, I just thought it was an aftereffect of whatever they took."

"But Jason didn't turn." Emma spoke quietly.

"No, he didn't." I shook my head.

"Do you know what they took?"

I shook my head, "I don't know what it was. Jason said it was called hype, but on the packaging, they spelled it with two i's." I recalled the tiny square wrapping in Chloe' palm.

"Some hype, they were still doped days after they took it." Emma's worried eyes drifted to the insides of her mug, "Do you think that could've caused it for Chloe?"

I shrugged, "I really don't know."

*

"Where did they get it?" Tristan asked.

"Some guy was handing it out at the club we were at. Jason said it was his friend, but I wasn't too sure. He had tons of boxes filled with those." I watched as they processed this.

Elmer was the first to speak, his eyes shifting around the small group of us, "Think about it. New Year's Eve in New York City. That's millions of people, and let's say only a quarter of them are dumb enough to take a drug a stranger gives them. That's still twenty-five thousand people. And the chances that they all live in the same place? Slim to none. Everyone goes home and the world is screwed."

"You said he had boxes?" Tristan refocused.

"Yeah, the pills were each individually packaged." I nodded.

"That means they have a whole warehouse packing it up." Elmer's brows knitted.

"What else? Anything you notice about your friend?" Tristan urged.

I thought hard, recalling her odd activities in the past week and a half, "She had trouble sleeping- sometimes she'd stay up all night. Sometimes she'd sleepwalk- that was before she started throwing up everything she ate."

"She couldn't hold anything down?" Tristan continued.

"She did for like an hour. She'd binge eat and then it all came back. I've never seen her that hungry." I shook my head.

"Was this the whole time or just in the beginning-?" He attempted to gauge the timing.

"The last couple of days." I whispered.

Tristan's stomach growled, he chuckled as he shook his head, "Worst possible timing, but we can have lunch in my place. You guys get Elmer and his wife, and I'll start lunch." Emma and I bundled up in our coats as we made our way over to Elmer and Linda's barrack. We knocked on the door before entering.

A squeal reached my ears before I realized what was happening. Emma flew to the ground with a figure hovering over her. Emma struggled against Elmer's wife, reminding me of Elmer's struggle against Chloe. My eyes darted around the room for something, anything.

I grabbed a lamp off of a side table and smashed it over her head. Her scream reached an ungodly decibel, making me cringe. She turned around to me, getting off of Emma. "Linda, please don't do this." She stalked after me as I backed into the kitchen. My eyes darted around the counters.

"Matt!" Emma screamed from the open door. Linda's head snapped around, and without thinking it through, I grabbed a knife from the wooden block and stabbed it into her back. She screamed, and my hands shot to cover my mouth in shock at my own actions, and my body racked as struggled for air.

I had to do anything to help Emma.

Emma was breathing hard, still staring at the ceiling where her friend was just hovering over her. Matt burst into the townhouse, his gun drawn, his eyes shifting to Linda lying on the floor, "I'm sorry."

Matt's attention snapped from mine to the area where Emma lay. I flinched back as the shot rang through the house, and echoed through my ears. I could only hear my breathing for the following moments. I held my knees as my chest violently crashed into my body with every breath. Linda lay still on her side, the knife still in her back, and the baby bump uncovered a bit by her lifted shirt. What had I done?

Emma curled up in Matt's arms as her gaze held mine. I was frozen in place until I heard Emma's shaky voice, "Thank you." Matt nodded, his eyes watery as he held her head to his chest. I moved back over to my mat by the wall, my eyes stuck on nothing in particular as my mind strayed elsewhere.

Time passed, but I wasn't sure how much. A few guards arrived, obviously checking out what caused the round of gunshots. I couldn't focus on anything. I replayed everything over and over again. How had Elmer's wife even turned?

I mindlessly watched the motions around me, until Tristan came up to me. His lips moved, but I hadn't been focus on him. "What?" I asked.

"Would you mind joining me? I'm going with Frank to view the bodies. It'd be good to have a psychologist's point of view." Tristan repeated. I glanced around the now clean room.

"I'm just a student."

"You still have more knowledge about the human brain and patterns than I do." Tristan encouraged. It wasn't like I had anything better to do, and if one thing had remained the same in all this, it was probably my interest in the human brain.

I followed Tristan and a few guards to a cold room. It definitely wasn't a morgue, but it could've been a nurse's office or small surgery room. "The usual patients in here are workers who've had a production line injury or cut." Frank explained as we entered. "Tristan says you're a psychologist. Any thoughts on this?"

I watched the motionless bodies as I spoke, "He was scratched yesterday morning by my friend. I thought he would've needed a larger dose of whatever's going through their bodies."

"Do you know if she's been scratched?" Frank prompted.

"I don't know." I kept my eyes down.

"If it's not the drug what else could it be?"

"It could be a mutation in a genome. I'd have to check her body first, and examine a DNA sample to come to that conclusion."

"A mutation caused around the world? At the same time? I don't think so." Frank stepped away from the corpse tables to retrieve a news radio.

Well, I'm not some biologist.

He turned it on, some static came through before the voices, "I would recommend finding your nearest safe zone, or buffer zones. A global pandemic of this scale would need immediate action."

A host asked, "What happens if we get everyone to safe zones?"

"Once there is full separation of infected and non infected, researchers will have some breathing room to determine treatment possibilities. Depending on prognosis, 'treatment' may start immediately. Steps would be taken to get key infrastructure facilities back up and running, and then eventually, civilization would start returning to normal."

Civilization would start returning to normal? How bad was everywhere else? I hadn't even thought about the cities and people attacking each other so brutally. If I hadn't been with Ryan's parents, I'd be with Chloe. Dead- or infected? I wasn't quite sure there was a difference, or which would be worse.

Frank turned the radio off, and set it to the side. "Amelia, is it?" I nodded, "I think it would be in everyone's interest to know more about methods of infection. Can you check her body for scratches?" He glanced down at Elmer's wife's body.

"I can try."

He nodded gratefully, and left us after a few more words. I washed my hands, and slid on gloves. This was going to take hours, checking her entire body for any minor scratches or abrasions. I needed the distraction. Otherwise I'd consume myself with-

Had I really killed this woman and her child?