Page 10 of Afflicted

“This ever happen at the farm?” I ask Matt quietly.

He nods, a pained expression on his face. “They only made it in one time, but it was bad. They got to the maternity ward and…” He trails off as Gina gasps, and shakes his head. “Never mind.”

Without thinking I reach across and take his hand, which he grasps tightly. We all need comfort right now.

The fact that the attacks aren’t happening as often should probably comfort me. The Afflicted are probably dying off, starving to death slowly. They’ll all die out eventually, right? But in the meantime, are they getting more desperate?

There’s an explosion somewhere nearby, and a collective shriek goes up in the dorm. Fuck, fuck, fuck. They’re trying to blow open the gate, that has to be it. Gina throws an arm around my shoulders, clutching me to her to comfort herself as much as me.

We’re so fucked.

I should want to die, right? Why would I want to keep living like this? This sucks. It’s not a life. It’s an existence.

But I don’t want to die. I don’t want to end my life in agony, suffocating on my own blood as my lungs fill with it. Like my mom, my dad, like my poor brother who fucking died alone on our kitchen floor, the phone clutched to his mouth as he begged me to help him. All I could do was tell him I loved him. All I could do was listen to him die.

Tears bite at my eyes, and I turn my face into Gina’s shoulder. I’m scared. I’m fucking terrified.

There’s another explosion, and the ground beneath us quakes. Gina and I sink to the floor, Matt joining us quickly. And the others all follow suit, as though being lower to the ground will somehow help us.

There’s gunfire right outside the dorm, and there’s a sound, a bloodcurdling groaning sound, like something from a zombie movie. Afflicted. They’re in the compound. We’re thin metal walls away from them. We’re going to die. Fuck, we’re going to die.

Bullets ping off the outer walls of the dorm and I press my hand to my mouth to stop myself from screaming. Gina is crying now, silent tears rolling down her cheeks as she clutches on to me.

“It’s OK,” Matt whispers, moving closer to us, putting a hand on my shoulder. “It’s going to be OK.”

I nod. I know it’s not going to be OK. We’re fucked. But I nod anyway.

There’s a sharp pinging sound, followed by another explosion, but this one is smaller, maybe it’s further away? There’s a chorus of sharp cries outside, and I can smell something, like bug spray almost, sharp and sweet and deeply unpleasant. It burns my throat and makes me cough, coating my tongue in a furry layer.

Something starts banging and clawing on the door, shrieking wildly. We’re all silent but the room is so taut with terror we may as well all be screaming. I clasp Matt’s hand on my shoulder, and we keep our eyes fixed on the door.

They’re here. They’re right here, trying to get in. They know where we are. They’ve found us. Maybe the feeders have abandoned us now, too worried about themselves. They’ll make more humans. They can just breed them, they don’t need us. They left us to preserve themselves.

Bullets slam into the door, and I can’t help but cry out. There’s shouting, so much shouting and so many heavy footsteps outside. More bullets fly, and one of the windows cracks from side to side.

And then suddenly, the shrieking stops. Everything goes quiet, well, as quiet as it can considering what’s just happened. The air becomes lighter, and I try to breathe normally, to stop the air rasping into my lungs in a panic. I begin to shiver violently as the adrenaline of the moment floods my body, and Gina hugs me tight.

“Is it over?” She asks after a few minutes.

There are voices outside. Feeders talking. I strain to hear what they’re saying, to get any hint of detail, to try and glean what’s fucking happening. I swear one of them says “eliminated”.

Matt rises tentatively to his feet, creeping up the wall underneath the window, angling his head to peer out. He looks left, then right, then drops back down to the ground. He crawls over to us and shakes his head.

“I think they got them all,” he whispers. “There’s feeders out there, and they seem pretty relaxed.”

The speaker mounted on the wall overhead crackles to life. “Please remain in the dorms and remain calm,” the voices announces robotically. “Lockdown conditions will remain until morning.” There’s a high-pitched whir as the announcement ends, and the speaker falls silent.

We all climb slowly onto our beds, fear etched into the faces around me.

“Shit.” Matt sits down heavily, his eyes still widened with mild shock. “What a first day.”

“Yeah,” I say with a nervous laugh, “welcome to Hell.”

CHAPTER5

JULIET

“Are you awake?”

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