[Jason Grimm]

Chapter 1


The town of East Glen, five miles from the East Glen Chemical Research Facility. An orange 1998 model Camaro sped down one of the narrow roads in town that led in from the interstate while metal music erupted from the speakers inside. A half-smoked cigarette rested in-between the thick
fingers that held the top of the black steering wheel. Pale blue eyes watched the road as black goatee-enclosed lips took the cigarette and pulled rich smoke from its brown filter. The clock in his car read 12:03 am as he looked down while his black ponytail rested to the left.
He noticed that the road was unusually void of traffic for a Friday night, and he could see a vague amber glow off in the distance below a trailing cloud of smoke that was barely visible in the turbid night sky. He imagined that it was a fire caused by the dry weather that had stuck with them for a few weeks, and thought nothing more of it as he took one last puff from the cigarette and
prepared to flick it out the cracked window.

Once again, Victor found himself in his car, leaving nothing but soured memories behind him. It was time for someplace new, and with that place he could have a fresh start. He longed to find something that he truly needed; a straight-forward reason for living. He was one of the most skilled tattoo artists on the east coast, and that just wasn’t enough. Victor needed a warm smile in his life to melt away the cold nights he’d grown to loathe.
Abby was gone, and nothing would bring her back. By now, he was sick and tired of being life’s bitch...Victor needed to move on with some resemblance of a life before his lack of one killed him. Since Abby’s death, the only thing that he had to keep him company was the thick scar at the base of his skull from the car accident that had taken away the memory of more than two decades of his life. Abby had been the only concrete thing he could touch and hold; the only thing other than his skill with ink and a needle that gave him a sense of identity. He had no memory of his parents beyond what Abby had told him while keeping him company in the hospital after the coma released its hold on him. Victor was still searching for his true self, and feared he would never find it.

He looked at the window for a second while disposing of the cigarette butt, and when he looked forward to the road ahead he had enough time to see and feel his car hit a person that was walking along his side of the road. He could hear the body roll over the top of the car, and saw it fall in the road behind him in his rear- view mirror. The person then rolled off the road and into the tall grass that waited in the ditch. Victor immediately slammed on his brakes and brought the car to a sudden halt, wasting no time getting out of the car to see what he had just done.

The hood of the car was bent upward on the driver's side, and just above the headlights rested a severed arm that was wedged partially under the damaged orange hood. Victor covered his mouth as the realization of what he had done hit him like a fist, his eyes widened all the while.
He placed his hands onto his knees as his stomach grew weak. He gagged several times and then spilled the contents of his stomach onto the pavement with a harsh groan. While wiping his mouth he noticed that the severed arm stuck onto his car was in various states of festering decay. His eyes grew wider as he turned around quickly to find rotten flesh wrapped partially in a rotting blue suit less than ten feet from him.
Without thinking twice he lunged forward and kicked it firmly with his right foot, knocking it down and away. Victor then jumped into his car and floored the accelerator after closing the door, and was quickly a safe distance away from the walking waste he had seen.
"What the fuck's going on?" he muttered to himself in panicked breaths as he tried to calm down. "That's just not possible. The fucker was dead before I hit him...but he was walking...What the fuck’s going on?” he asked once more as his breath came to him short and stale.

His driving slowed as he finally came to a small store exchange a couple of minutes later: two gas stations, a partially demolished bank, and a truck stop style diner. On the opposite side of the road by the first gas station there were two hatchback cars of yellow and off white that had hit each other head-on. The yellow car was empty, and the blonde woman in the white car was slumped partially out of the driver's-side window, which was dripping with crimson liquid that had pooled on the pavement below. There were a couple of cars in parking spaces close to the entrance of the store, but Victor saw no one walking around inside. After looking at his gas gauge he hesitantly pulled around the wreckage and drove up to pump number 3, where he got out of the car and began pumping unleaded into the car's hungry stomach. As the car refueled, Victor walked up to the store's entrance while the glass doors slid open on cue. He saw no one inside the store, so he began looking for something to drink in the wall coolers. After grabbing a cream soda and a few pieces of jerky, he made his way up to the counter to get a pack of cigarettes as he tried to compose himself. On the other side of the counter Victor found the remains of a teenage cashier lying in a pool of blood; her flesh partially consumed and her clothing bedraggled. Victor quickly wrested a pack of
cigarettes while his hand dodged a torch lighter display and hurried out of the store before his constitutions failed him again.

He waited the seeming eternity until the gas tank was full, and then wasted no time getting the car ready to depart. Just before he opened the door and got into the car, he noticed a steady trickle of liquid coming from the underneath of the car. After he raised the hood, he quickly found that the
radiator had been damaged and was leaking coolant frantically at this point. Until it was repaired, his Camaro wouldn't go far before it stopped running completely and more damage was done. Unless he could find a healthy automobile with keys, he was going to be on foot in a bad place alone.
After lifting his head from under the hood of the car he saw movement from the corner of his left eye. He turned around quickly with a sharp exhale, but saw nothing other than the parking lot and the fueling stations around him. As Victor made his way to the fringe of the parking lot near the road he noticed that the dead woman that was partially hanging from her car window was now gone, leaving nothing but a staggered blood smear leading off to the diner across the street. He then jumped sharply as three gunshots rang out from the other gas station across the way. Less than a minute later Victor saw a muscular and ebony-skinned man stagger out of the front of the store, his
left shoulder and arm glistening with pristine blood that dripped onto the waxen concrete he walked across. His face was distorted by pain as he staggered, and the instant he saw Victor he raised his right hand which contained a clip-fed .45 handgun.

"Wait!" Victor yelled loudly, causing the man to lower his weapon and almost release a sigh of temporary relief.
Once the threat of being shot faded, Victor made his way over to him and saw that he was missing a fair hunk of flesh from his shoulder. The guy was losing a lot of blood, and was already visibly weakened from it. His white tank top was mostly red at this point, and he was already having problems standing.
"Help a guy out, would ya?" the man asked in a flinched whisper as he almost fell onto Victor while Victor tried to help him support his weight. "Bitch in the store came from behind and bit into me. I...I can't feel most of my arm."
"Do you know what's going on, man?" Victor asked as he helped walk him to the other gas station where his car sat, and where Victor's first aid kit waited in the center console.
"I was with some friends up in Evansville playing a little pool, makin’ a little money, and was out 'till almost eleven-thirty. When," he staggered in words as Victor sat him on the undamaged side of the hood.
"Keep talkin' man, I'm getting the first aid kit out of the car." Victor informed while opening the car door and removing the first aid kit he mentioned.
"...When my buddy Joey dropped me off at my house, my parents' mini van was gone, and the house was empty," he explained. "I found a note telling me that it wasn't safe to stay at home, and that dad had been attacked by a maniac and was being taken to the hospital up there near the research facility. I drove up there and it was insane..." he concluded as his eyes seemed to drift to another place momentarily.
"What?" Victor asked trying to pull the guy's mind back to what he was saying.
"At the hospital...people were running around like maniacs...attacking each other. I've never seen anything like it before," he said as his eyes locked with Victor's. "I came back here to grab some cash and get some things. That was fuckin' stupid. So damned stupid...”