Project 43
2618

They came to get us within a few hours, we ate in cafeteria setting and where given chances to use the bathroom to clean up. The people escorting us wore a combination of what I recognized as standard Personal Protective Equipment- or PPE and what looked to be like the medical grade protection suits used by some people that I would see working in the wing I lived in or when I was down in David's lab.

We saw other people like us. Some scared, some had torn or bloody cloths, some had injuries. Everyone was in controlled groups with at least double the staff supervising where we walked keeping us carefully separated. It was then that I realized that we had to be in a school like in the shows I watched, and it made me wonder how many people where here with us.

By the time we returned to our room I expected to feel dizzy, shaky or some other symptom since we hadn't had any protein for breakfast, just warm brown mush and some fresh fruit. The withdrawals of my medication and the lack of protein was significant enough I would begin to deteriorate becoming fatigued, headaches, body aches ect...

It never came though.

What did come?

Before lunch our blood was drawn.

I knew what this meant. They would replace something odd with my blood, there was no doubt about it. I didn't know why it was different but it certainly would show me as sick. Right?

I expected to be carted off while I ate my lunch, watching the people slowly go through the line- people sanitizing it before the next group came through. Then when we returned to our room.

Mark was growing erratic- another colorful bruise on the side of his face and a split lip. When they finally came it was when the sun had begun to set. It was then I finally started feeling run down.

Just... not in the same way I expected. My brain became foggy and everything in my body was telling me to rest and sleep. There wasn't pain- not in the way I had experienced before just a slow fatigue getting heavier and heavier on me.

So when they came for dinner I just curled up and slept, thankful for the silence when my roommates where escorted out for dinner after I refused to get up. Honestly the logical part of me was pretty sure I wasn't going to wake up. There was one point I remember waking up and feeling terribly cold, but I quickly fell back asleep. There where no dreams just a strange heavy darkness as time passed. It felt like ages somewhere in my mind when in reality it was only a few hours when we all woke up from an alarm blaring in the middle of the night.

It wasn't coming from our part of the building- but it was still loud enough to jolt everyone awake. Men ran down the hall, shouting as they went- the doors unlocking.

Everything was suddenly chaos as I stood in my room- everyone evacuating down the halls watching people swarm and run in the opposite direction of the alarm. It wasn't until the halls were nearly clear that I joined them, walking slower and in less of a hurry as people scrambled or tripped past me.

I followed the small flow of people down the hall and out the giant metal double doors. There were trucks loaded with people driving off and the chain link fence they had put up since we left was slowly rolling shut- only to be stopped by several people suddenly dashing after the last car stuck in the gates.

No- not people.

Those things.

The infected.

Somehow, I found myself standing at the double doors- watching all of this happen as several people ran my way back into the building past me. I should have run when the infected chased them or done...

I don't know.

Something.

Instead, I stood there as their gaze seemed to focus on me. Their mouths open and dripping with blood as three of them ran towards my immobile body. In that moment it was as if time was suspended.

I was going to die.