Thought I would go ahead and post what I have of the first chapter. It's not much but it's the first few thoughts of our protagonist and the first encounter so I figured it was tasty enough to throw down and prove that I am actually working on this. Slowly, but surely.
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Chapter 1- Michael Clark
It all started last Wednesday.
I was on my way
to get some lunch and this preacher was standing in the middle of campus on his
milk crate, swinging his Bible in the air, telling us the end is nigh and we’re
all going to hell. There were people standing all around him yelling their oh-so-clever retorts at him—trying to
challenge him, make him admit he’s wrong. They’re dumber than he is. They’re
giving him what he wants.
“The end is
here!” he cried at the top of his lungs. “The sinners will go to hell!” The
crowd howled their retorts. “Like you, blasphemer! And you, harlot!” he shouts,
pointing at various members of the crowd.
A student pushes
his way towards the preacher.
“You! Have you
come to me to be saved?” he said, beaming like a proud father. With a groan,
the student stumbled into the preacher grabbing him tightly around the waist.
The preacher screamed as the protester sunk his teeth deep into the preacher’s
forearm. Preacher whacked the protester with his Bible and shoved him away. The
protester got up and bit someone else. He bit a third person before someone
finally had the good sense to restrain him until campus security got here. The
preacher looked sick as he stumbled back on his box to deliver his final words.
“The end… is
here!” he said.
That’s the most
fun I’d had all day.
The following
week, everything went to hell.
* * *
Today started
off as a normal Thursday; the same kind of Thursday that has followed
Wednesdays for generations. I get up, and I go to class, just as I have all
semester. Nothing special. I’m sitting in class, half-listening to my peers
discuss the hot topic of the day. I watch the minute-hand of the clock creep
slowly by each number and I inevitably get distracted and accidentally tune in
to the conversation, catching a few words of someone’s opinion before tuning
back out.
“Well I can understand how you might think that when you read the text
the wrong way…” one student begins, cutting off another.
“Actually, if you did more than just read the Wikipedia page…”
The professor sits at his desk, twiddling his thumbs, certainly not
preparing to step in or moderate the discussion that has quickly escalated from
reasonable arguments and irrelevant anecdotes to unintelligible shouting. Those
who aren’t participating in the shit-flinging competition are staring blankly
into space, doing their best corpse impressions. I envy their ability to tune
out the din of the argument and wonder how no one else can possibly be getting
as irritated as I am. Watching the time pass, which it now seems to be doing at
a most tedious pace, doesn’t help to distract from the headache that’s
beginning to pound underneath my temples. As my mind wanders to innocent
thoughts of What if my classmates were to
suddenly and unfortunately… I realize have to leave.
The fresh air
and warm spring sun do help a little to calm my mood. I choose a bench in a
shady part of the quad. I see ahead of me the swelling throng of students
milling about the main plaza, but this week there is no group of protestors or
sights to be seen other than the students going about their business. They are
smoking, talking, laughing, walking, running, studying, and overall just
enjoying life. Suburban university life—isn’t it just precious?
I only get a few
minutes of massaging my angry brain and trying to find a song to fit my mood
when my day goes from bad to worse.
First, I hear
screaming in the distance. There’s no doubt there. Students stop to look
towards the sound. Their looks of confusion turn to noticeable fear when the
crowd in the plaza begins to run and the screams become contagious. It’s
amazing to see a crowd of what seems like hundreds of people all abruptly
running in the same direction like frightened gazelles, tripping and trampling
over each other with only self-preservation in mind. Behind the runners, I’m
expecting to find an escaped lion, a blazing inferno, or a madman brandishing a
machine gun—or hell, maybe all three—but instead I see a portly gentleman
sprinting at top speed. How curious.
I wonder why all these people would be running from a seemingly innocuous fat
man.
Then I see them for the first time.
A small group—no
more than a dozen—is chasing the fat man. He loses his breath and collapses to
his knees, still struggling to get away. The fastest of them catches up with
him, leaping high in the air, pouncing on his back like a cheetah. Several of
them stop and gather around him. At first it looks like they’re just giving the
fat guy the beating of a lifetime, but in the gaps we can see the blood start
to flow as they proceed to take huge chunks out of his flesh and devour them on
the spot. The terrified shouts of those around me sound muted and distant as I stand
there with my mouth open, frozen, witnessing the cannibalistic madness. I mean,
what do you do when you see something like that? Yell? Scream? “Hey stop eating that guy!” one might
say. I could have stood there all day not knowing what to do, but the instant
they were done with the first course, they began to look around for the next
one. I’m a deer in the headlights. I make eye contact with one of them and feel
thousands of icy fingers crawl over my skin and down my spine. I feel, for the
first time in my life, real fear. I run as fast as I can.
