Immune

         Bruce Callahan hadn't noticed the man who stepped in front of his car on the highway until it was too late. As he felt the entire vehicle lurch, and his windshield shatter into a hundred thousand tiny pieces he assumed that he had hit a deer. It was only after he slammed on the breaks and the large mass went flying forward into the path of his high beams that he realized it was a person.

         He threw his door open and pulled out his cell phone to dial 911. Even from ten feet away it was apparent that the man's arm was broken. A long, jagged piece of bone jutted from his elbow. He wasn't moving either which wasn't a good sign. Strangely, Bruce's call didn't go through and he was greeted with a dial tone on the other end.

         "Crap," he muttered under his breath, before stepping out and jogging over to the man he had just likely murdered. It actually wasn't the first time Bruce hit someone. Back in 97' when he first got his license his friend had distracted him and he'd hit a fifteen year old girl. If her dad hadn't been a minister he probably would have pressed charges.

         He slowed to a walk as he got closer to the pedestrian. It wasn't just his arm that was broken after all. His shoulder was dislocated, and his right foot was twisted up in a grotesque angle. There was blood caked on his shirt but that couldn't have been from Bruce hitting him because it was already dried. His shirt was tattered, and he smelled like a pile of garbage. It seemed likely that the man was homeless.

         Bruce reached down and checked for the man's pulse. The putrid stench that emanated from him was only worsened as he got closer. With his free hand, he covered his nose. Even after working as a janitor at the mall he had never smelled anything quite that bad. A minute passed and there wasn't the faintest hint of a heartbeat. With no knowledge of how to perform CPR, the most Bruce could do was try to call an ambulance again. The call still wouldn't go through for whatever reason.

         He continued trying the number over and over for the next five minutes. The man he hit was running out of time he knew, and was probably already beyond the point of no return. To make matters worse the long stretch of country road Bruce had been driving that night was almost never used, and the police pretty much completely overlooked it. It was just a long, boring stretch of nothingness.

         Seeing no other choice, Bruce began to drag the man towards his truck. He was a big guy, likely one hundred pounds overweight, and a good six feet tall. Just as he made it to the halfway point there was a sudden noise. It sounded like someone moaning, but where had it come from? Bruce glanced around, searching for the source of the noise. After deciding it must have been an owl or something, he continued to drag the man. He couldn't think of anything else to do but drive him to the hospital.

         Then the moan came a second time, much louder and more pronounced. Bruce's eyes widened as he realized that the source of the moaning was the dead man. Suddenly a hand reached out, pulling him to the ground with an iron grip. There was a tearing sound, and suddenly his leg began to hurt. Looking down he saw that he had been bitten.
         
"What in the hell?" Bruce shouted. The man had no answer for him as he went down for a second bite. Bruce began thrashing against him, kicking him in the face and shattering his nose. Finally breaking free of the lunatic's grasp, he limped to his car as fast as his injured leg would allow. He climbed into the driver's seat with a labored effort and gunned the engine. The man slowly got to his feet and began walking toward him.

         "Get the hell out of the way," Bruce muttered under his breath. But instead of moving aside to let him pass, the man began walking towards him slowly. His arms were outstretched as if he couldn't tell that Bruce was almost six feet away, and he swiped at the air trying to grab him. Bruce put his car in reverse and began backing up. Once he felt comfortable enough that he had enough room to get around the psychopath, he put it back in drive and sped past the guy, who slowly turned around and began following the car back towards town.

***

         Fifteen minutes later, Bruce arrived at his apartment building at the edge of Greenwood. It was crappy little rat hole where most of the local drunks ended up after they got kicked out, but the cost was the lowest in town and that meant more money for food and gas. Though he promised himself he would be out of Greenwood within a year of moving there, he ended up liking the little hick town.
         
The first thing he did when he got upstairs was clean the wound out. One of the major concerns on his mind was whether the man had any STDs. The man had gone from being dead to cannibalistic in mere seconds. He didn't know what kind of disease could cause that to happen but he sure as hell wasn't going to find out.
         
After patching himself up as best he could he limped over to the couch and sat down. He turned on the TV but quickly discovered that something was wrong with the cable. He flipped through all of the channels but they were all simply black screens. Suddenly his cell phone rung in his pocket. The call was from his ex-girlfriend Courtney.

"What do you want?" Bruce asked. They weren't on the best terms after their breakup. I could hear people yelling on the other end of the line. It was probably another in the endless chain of parties she ended up at.

"I need you to come pick me up right now," she sobbed. The only other time Bruce had heard her cry was during the fight that ended their relationship. He had caught her sending naked pictures of herself to a coworker.

"What's wrong, did you run out of booze?" Bruce asked spitefully. The pain in his leg made him even more annoyed.

"Look, I wouldn't be calling you if I had a better answer. I'm near that used car lot off of Sycamore, and people are going crazy over here. They're eating each other," her voice broke. It was that last sentence that grabbed his attention. There was no possible way she could be talking about the same kind of thing that happened to him earlier.

         "What do you mean people are eating each other?" Bruce asked. He could hear the sound of tearing flesh echoing through this mind.

         "I'm not sure where it started. I was walking home from work and suddenly people were screaming and running in every direction at once. I went to get a look at what was going on, and I saw a woman on top of a man tearing his neck open. I ran and hid behind a dumpster after that. Now there's no way that guy can be alive after what that woman did to him, but he just got back up and now he's attacking people to," she whimpered. A loud pop erupted in the background and Courtney let out a loud sob.

         "What just happened?" Bruce asked. There were a few more loud pops followed by the sound of footsteps.

         "I'm going to the alleyway between the mechanic's place and that strip club my sister used to work at," she told him. Bruce knew the one. He actually dated Courtney's sister before he dated her. Before hanging up she said, "I'm begging you. Please come get me."

         There was a sudden loud scream from the apartment next to his. That one belonged to Jim Crawford and his girlfriend Karen, and they actually got into fights pretty often but it was different somehow. Bruce limped over to his closet and pulled out the baseball bat. Though he didn't play much of the sport himself he liked to keep it around for protection. Break-ins were frequent in that neighborhood. He didn't want to be caught defenseless.

         Another loud scream followed by something being knocked over caused Bruce to quicken his pace. Jim was notoriously abusive but he had never made Karen scream like that before. As he stepped out into the hallway he immediately saw the trail of blood leading up towards Jim's apartment.

         He must have come in right behind me, Bruce thought. The door to Jim's apartment hung ajar and he could still hear Karen screaming. A couple of the others on his floor emerged into the hallway as well to see what the ruckus was. They all converged on the apartment at the same time and what they saw inside wasn't pretty.

         Chairs and tables were overturned and shattered plates and glasses were littered all over the floor. The stereo was playing a forlorn country song at a low volume, and the television was playing some romance movie from the 70's or 80's. Beer was spilled all over the floor, and a huge puddle of liquid vomit was saturating the couch. At the other side of the room Jim was beating on the door the drunkenly.

         "Shit," said Connelly, a large African-American man from a few doors down. He was ex-military, and one of the few people Bruce trusted around there. He had served a few times in Iraq, and ended up hitting the bottle pretty hard as a result. The difference between him and the other drunks was that he was getting his life back on track.
         "Jim, you leave that poor woman alone you hear?" said Margaret. She had a sway to her step as well that betrayed her lack of sobriety. She walked into the apartment towards Jim, and Bruce had the sudden urge to stop her.

         "Hey Marge, you might want to back off. You don't know what he's capable of," Connelly warned apparently sharing Bruce's unease.

         "Oh tough shit. I beat the crap out of my ex-husband and he was twice this little douche's size," Margaret replied with a slight slur between words.

         Margaret crossed the room towards Jim who seemed to take no notice of the audience that he had attracted. Bruce knew that something wasn't right about the whole situation, but it was hard to dissuade drunks once they had their minds set to something. It was only after she grabbed Jim by the shoulder that she realized she should have stayed across the room. As he turned around slowly everyone let out a collective gasp.

         Jim's throat was completely torn out leaving a gaping hole and an expose esophagus. His right hand was missing his ring and middle fingers as well and exposed bone protruded through where they should have been. He shot his arm clumsily in a jerky motion, grabbing her by the shoulder. She started to say something, but it quickly turned into an unintelligible scream as he bit off her ear.
         
         "Get the hell off of her," a junkie named Mitchell yelled. It was no secret that the two of them were sleeping together. It was mostly because he kept booze on hand at all times. He rushed over and pushed Jim back, causing him to topple over clumsily. Margaret collapsed to the floor and clutch at the hole where her ear used to be. She was bleeding heavily, and looked deathly pale.

         As Jim slowly climbed to his feet Bruce sprang into action. It was obvious that the man wasn't himself, and he was already trying to take another bite out of Mitchell, who was too busy trying to help Margaret to notice his impending doom. Bruce's mind drifted back to earlier that night, and how Jim was acting practically identical to the man who had bitten his leg. He didn't hesitate. With a swing of the baseball bat to the side of the head he sent Jim toppling into the wall. Not giving the psychopath the chance to stand back up Bruce swung once more. It took four minutes of bludgeoning to finally get him to stay down. He didn't show any sign of feeling pain even after Bruce had destroyed his jaw.

         "What the hell, man?" Bruce breathed. The door Jim had been trying to break through opened cautiously, and Karen poked her head out.

         "Is it safe out here now?" she asked. Her face went from fear to sorrow when she saw her boyfriend lying on the ground, very dead. For all of the shit that he had put her through, Bruce could see that she still loved Jim.

         "Marge is bleeding out! Call an ambulance now!" Mitchell yelled. Connelly was already dialing the number into his cell phone.

         After about thirty seconds he took the phone away from his ear and shook his head. Mitchell cursed loudly. It was apparent that his feelings for Margaret were a lot deeper than an occasional Saturday night fling. He was pleading with her to stay with him, but Bruce could see that she was already slipping in and out of consciousness. Finally, after a minute or so more trying to keep hold of her life, she let it go.

         "Mitch, I'm sorry man," Bruce said. He reached over to put a hand on his shoulder, but Mitchell pushed it away, and laid his head against Margaret's chest. Tears began to stream down his face which caused Bruce to think about his own predicament. If he didn't get to Courtney soon she might end up like that too.

         Then her eyes shot open. Bruce looked down at her in disbelief. It was impossible for her to be alive. It had to be. She had just bled out right in front of them. Then he saw that her face was vacant like the man from earlier and like Jim's had been through the bludgeoning.

         "Move!" Bruce said forcefully. When Mitchell didn't respond he shoved him off of Margaret. She wasn't alive at all he realized. She was stuck in a state between life and death. A body without a soul. A zombie.

         Suddenly Margaret lunged at Bruce, knocking him to the ground. The baseball bat rolled away across the room, leaving him unarmed. With more strength that a girl her size should have she pinned him to the ground. There was no remnant in humanity left in her eyes, but her mouth was turned up in a vicious snarl, her teeth inching closer to his exposed neck. Just as she was about to bite into him there was deafening blast, and suddenly Margaret became dead weight. As Bruce shoved her still body off of him, Connelly extended a hand.

         As Bruce got to his feet he eyed the pistol in Connelly's right hand. He had never seen a gun up close before outside of a shooting range. It was one of the few instances during which he was glad to see one. Especially in that part of town.

         "Shit, Courtney wasn't exaggerating," Bruce said.

         "What do you mean? What the hell is all of this?" Connelly asked.

         "I don't know. Courtney says people all over town are eating each other. Everyone's turning into a murderous psychopath. It's probably a disease," Bruce replied.

         "Yeah well I'm not sure there's any disease that can bring back the dead," Connelly replied. A silence fell over the room for a moment. Though Bruce had already thought of it, hearing the words out loud made him uneasy. It was like having one else say it made it seem even truer.

         "Dude, there's no such thing as zombies. She was just in shock or something. You guys killed her you murderers!" Mitchell said, getting to his feet. He stormed out the door and down the hall to his own apartment. He slammed his door hard enough to wake the dead.
         
         "That's what happened to Jim too," Karen absently, standing over his corpse.
         
         "What do you mean?" Bruce asked gently. There was a powder keg of emotions brewing in the woman and he didn't want to light the fuse.

         "Jim came busting through the door all messed up like this. I tried to call an ambulance for him, but he was dead within a minute or so. Frankly I'm not ever sure how he got back here with the injuries he had. I checked his pulse twice and listened for his breathing. He was dead, and he got back up," she whimpered. A visible shiver ran down her spine, and Bruce knew not to question it further. She was almost at her breaking point, and the last thing they needed right then was a woman in hysterics.

         "We need to get out of here. You guys can come with me, I'm going to head for the military base up north," Connelly offered.
         
         "I can't. Well, not yet at least. Courtney is stranded in the middle of town somewhere, and it sounds like shit has already hit the fan there. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I didn't at least try to find her," Bruce said.

         "Look, it would be best if we stick together," Connelly said.

         "I'm not changing my mind," Bruce replied.

         "I know. That's why I'm coming with you."

***

         With no reason to stay any longer, Karen opted to go with them as well. They couldn't get Mitchell to answer his door so they had no choice but to leave him behind. It was for the better anyway, Bruce thought, because he was unstable. It hurt to look at things that way, but it was more a choice of survival than anything else. Risking all of their lives for a person who was too absorbed in his drugs to care about real life anyway just didn't seem like a fair deal. After piling into Connelly's truck they had sped off in search of Courtney. As they drove further into town it was apparent that things weren't going to be that simple.

         "Holy crap," Connelly muttered. Bruce echoed his sentiments. A graveyard of twisted metal lay ahead of them. Thirty or forty cars stood between them and their destination, all of which were abandoned. Or at least that' how it seemed at first. When Bruce looked closer he could see figures walking aimlessly about in the distance.

         "Think they're infected?" Karen asked.

         "There's no doubt. Just look at the way they're walking. Nobody would be caught dead out here tonight. Pardon the expression," Bruce replied.

         "What do you want to do?" Connelly asked. He was in the process of checking the two clips he carried for his pistol. He did so with a trained precision taught through years in combat zones. In a terrible sort of way, conflict like that probably made him feel at home.

         "Shit cut the engines," Bruce hissed. All around the truck shadows were starting to move as the infected seemed to emerge from everywhere. There were at least forty of them, all drawn by the sound of the car. Once the engine shut off they continued walking towards the truck, but without nearly as much zeal.

         "We are so screwed," Karen whined softly. Bruce put a finger to his lips and she quieted herself. The infected, like children with short attention spans began milling about. They were no longer focused on finding the source of the sound. More than likely they didn't even remember hearing one.

         Bruce had his hands clenched tightly around the baseball bat as one of them past directly by the window. He thought for sure that it was going to see him and start trying to break its way through, but it never even turned in his direction. He looked over at Connelly who nodded. He had seen it too.

         "What do we do?" Connelly mouthed.

         "We're gonna have to go around," Bruce said with a mixture of whispers and hand gestures. All the while he expected the infected to pick up on him with some sort superhuman hearing, but they never did. They just continued to wander about aimlessly. Suddenly, Karen screamed. Staring in the window at her was a woman with an eye dangling out of the socket, tethered to her by her optic nerves.

         All of the infected snapped to attention at once like trained animals. They all turned to face the truck and began walking as quickly as their clumsy motor skills would allow. The woman with the messed up eye began beating against the glass with slow, heavy blows. Connelly turned the keys in the ignition and the engine roared to life.

         "Shit, shit, shit," he muttered as he backed into several infected, knocking them back in a blackly funny domino effect. What would have cleaned the clocks of any normal human being was a mere setback to them, and they got to their feet immediately like nothing had happened. If they weren't trying to eat him, Bruce thought, it might actually be fascinating.

         As Connelly sped away from the crowd of infected they had attracted and turned onto a parallel street they found that they were in luck. The police had blocked off the street for some reason so not many cars hadn't gotten through there. Something had though because the barricade was completely destroyed and the cop cars that lined it had dents in them.

         "Do you think there'll be a cure for this?" Karen asked.

         "I know for a fact there must be something. Maybe a vaccine," Bruce said, running a hand over the bandage on his leg.
         "What makes you say that?" Connelly asked.

         "Because one of those bastards bit me about an hour and a half ago and I still haven't turned. I haven't even experienced anything besides the usual pain that comes with getting bitten by a person," Bruce explained. Connelly brought the truck to an abrupt halt.

         "Let me see it!" he demanded. Rolling up the leg of his pants, Bruce began removing the bandage slowly. He prayed and prayed that there would be no signs of infection. When he looked down at it he was relieved to find that there wasn't.

         "Holy shit. I noticed with the others that their wounds had turned black. You look completely fine. Are you sure you were bit by one of them?" he asked.

         "Yeah, I'm positive," Bruce replied. That was the best news any of them had since the whole thing had started.

***

         As they pulled up in front of the mechanic's shop, Bruce dialed Courtney's number into his phone. A few infected were walking around in a daze at the end of the street, but it didn't take much to grab their attention. They seemed to be drawn to sound like moths to flames. So as the phone rang, he hoped to god that she had hers on silent.

         "Bruce? Are you in that truck outside?" Courtney asked as soon as she picked up. Her tone was urgent, and I could tell something was wrong.

         "Yeah it's me. Are you in the shop?" I asked squinting through the windows looking for movement.

         "I'm in a broom closet. Some of them are in here with me. I can't get out," she said.

         "Stay, put, I'm coming to get you," Bruce replied. She started to say something, but hung up quickly. One of the infected had probably heard her.

         Stepping cautiously out of the truck with the baseball bat, Bruce checked each direction to make sure that the infected hadn't taken notice of him. Connelly followed suit with his gun in hand. In the truck he had been told not to use it unless things got bad. Realistically, it was likely that they would.

         The front door was locked, but the side door had been beaten in by the infected. There were at least four of them, two of whom were trying to get into a closet in the corner. Bruce motioned for Connelly to keep quiet and began walking towards them slowly, hunched over like a hunter stalking his prey. As he approached the nearest infected, he brought the bat back behind his shoulder. Once he struck the others would hear it, so he lingered for a second, readying himself for a fight. Finally he slammed the bat into the infected man's scalp. There was a loud crack as his skull caved in, and suddenly all of the other infected turned their attention towards me.

         The next one went down just as easily with another heavy blow to the head, but the other two both reached me at the same time. As he got ready to swing at one of them, the other tackled him to the ground. Suddenly they were both on top of him, and as he put my right arm up to try and push them away he felt teeth sink into his wrist. He bit his lip until it bled to stop himself from screaming and alerting all of them outside.

         For a moment he believed that he was going to die. Even if Connelly got one of them, the entire place would be swarmed within a minute. Accepting that he might die, he pictured Courtney in his mind. Back when their relationship had worked, it had been the best time of his life. He thought that if he had tried harder that he might have gotten to keep that feeling. Two loud gunshots broke him from this trance. Both of the infected fell down at his feet, very much dead. This time permanently.

         As he got to his feet Courtney burst through the closet and threw her arms around him. He hugged her back for a long time. He had never been so happy to see an ex-girlfriend in his life. She withdrew and looked down at his bleeding arm before slowly backing away.

         "It's okay. I'm immune," he told her.

         "You two can catch up later. We need to get the hell out of here now," Connelly said. Killing two infected before they could step through the door.

         "We can't go back out that way. We need to get the front doors open. Cover me," Bruce said, but Connelly was already on it.

         Grabbing the baseball bat, Bruce sprinted over to the door and tried to break it open. It did nothing except bounce off the glass. Cursing under his breath, he tried it again as Connelly fired more shots at the advancing infected. The sound was a beacon to them, drawing them in from practically every direction. That they were being funneled through a single doorway was the only reason they hadn't overrun them yet. He continued to try to break the glass as Connelly reloaded. He began firing at them again, but he had to back away because they were coming in greater numbers. It looked like a surging sea of people had made landfall.

         Finally the glass gave way, and Bruce went crashing through, cutting himself on the jagged edges in the process. Courtney followed him and ran for the truck. As Bruce looked for Connelly inside he heard gunshots going off rapidly. Stepping back through the door he could see that they were almost on top of the veteran.

         "Get the hell out of here! Your life is more important than mine. Get to the military and have them start making the vaccine," he yelled. For a split second he looked Bruce in the eyes, and in the next instant he was pulled into the crowd. From within the crowd one last gunshot went off.

         Bruce sprinted to the car as fast as his injured leg would allow. He climbed into the driver's seat and turned on the engine just as all of the infected began filtering through the opening in the door he had created. He stepped on the pedal as hard as it would allow, and sped off, knocking a few of them down in the process.

         "Where's Connelly?" Karen asked. He shook his head but kept his eyes firmly on the horizon.

         "I'm sorry for everything. Thank you for coming to get me," Courtney said, placing her hand on his shoulder.

         "Yeah," Bruce replied, but his mind was far away. He felt numb to her touch as he sat there driving the truck of a man who had sacrificed his life for him.

         I won't let you down Connelly, he thought to himself as he passed the city limits of Greenwood, I swear that to you.