Flash Fiction No. 40

#Flashfiction

Infected Vengeance

She burst through the door, the building alarm blaring in my ears. Her blue eyes were almost purple as they swam with blood. She turned to me with teeth readied for the kill. Her hair sprayed around her in crackles of black.

I cowered back in the alcove, hearing the silly girl in the other recess whimper as Kelis got closer. Overcome with rage, she didn’t seem to recognise me. But she had the disease that we’d been fighting. Her flesh had been tainted by that which is undead… but she did not have their mindless taste for human.

Intelligence still flickered, angry and vengeful, in her eyes and it was to this that I implored. “Please! I don’t want to die!”

There was a fraction of a pause followed by the piercing pain as her too quick nails punctured my arm.

She retreated whilst, wide eyed, I grabbed for my wounded flesh. Blood pricked my skin. Infection coursed through my veins. It spread out from the sharp injury, growing under my skin like creeping ivy.

With the disease, the virus overtook you, choking out your life. This was different. Something twisted inside of me, bubbling in my mind like loosed memories that were not mine.

I heard the screams of the other girl. She didn’t plead. She only cried out as scarlet splattered the walls.

Dizziness overtook me. I was dying, succumbing to the disease. It was a slow death that took hours to consume a body.

Kelis was back. She looked me over, understanding something that my fuzzy mind could not. Her hand curled around my arm, checking the wound, before she flung me across the room and discharged the shotgun into my chest. The floor impacted with my body leaving me out cold; yet, it seemed only moments until I awoke.

The other infected victim in the room scrabbled around. My eyes opened, the hole in my chest dissolved into fresh flesh.

Kelis had gone.

Her memories churned and unfolded in my mind, imparted with the virus’s injection into my blood. Yet, it was not the virus I knew. It had mixed with her blood, mutating into a new disease which retained thought.

But the mutation did not just afford this.

The bloodlust for human flesh was still there. The natural strength and speed of the infected individual was increased. It was a form of vampirism. Furthermore, the scientists in the building had known about this.

And one of those scientists was Kelis’s mother.

The ravaged girl charged at me, trying to sink her teeth into my skin. Her opened throat lolled on one side, nerve endings snapped beyond repair. The infection had not reached her brain before she’d died to be reborn. She was a brainless zombie, her only focus on feasting.

It was then I realised what Kelis had done. She’d saved me from the original disease’s mindless slaughter. She’d given me freedom from pain.

My fingers tore the head off the slobbering creature nearby. My mind was set with a new mission, fuelled by the new force of my powers.

Kelis was going to find her mother and wreak vengeance for the lies she’d been told and the experiments they’d enacted on her genetics.

I had to help her end it all.

[Continues in Infected Life…]

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