Chapter 1 Part 1

Hey all--

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.