The Following Days

The following days were a mess . There was no information on what caused the blast . The more shocking thing was , they stopped investigating , whatever the reason was , I wasn't happy about it .

Aria and Benny stayed with me during these hard times . Aria's parents loved me , they would often ask Aria to bring me home and Benny's parents loved me as well , they would always make jokes about how I will be their daughter-in-law . Their parents allowed them to stay with me as long as it took .

Though I tried my best to not focus on what happened in the pharma , I couldn't stop myself , I wanted to know the cause of this destruction which destroyed thousands of life .

A week passed and there was no news , it was as if they forgot about the blast . I received all of my dad's life savings and it was more than enough to live in luxury for the rest of my life but I decided to go back , finish my studies and open the pharma again . I believed it would let me feel closer to my dad .

We came back to college , the whole college seemed gloomy . Everyone was sad , all the usual fun and excitement people had on their faces was gone . It seemed as if a ball of sadness had surrounded us .

Everyone started adapting to their lives , to the fact that many of us lost our families .

Kyle ! Never had I thought that I would be thinking about him . He had consoled me the day I lost my dad but he turned to his usual cold self after that . Maybe he is not as bad as he shows himself to be .

Right when we thought things were getting back to normal , we got an unexpected news . One of the officer who was investigating the perimeters around the blast was infected with some sort of bacteria or we could say virus . Whatever it was , it caused the person to behave strangely . The officer who was infected was found to be bitten by a rat near the investigation perimeters .

On hearing this , I started recalling what I saw the day I wanted to visit the pharma . The creepy thing that I saw was a rat , but it didn't seem like a rat , it was larger , had bizarre marks , was bleeding and had huge bumps on its body . I thought it was just an Ill rat or maybe it got hurt due to the blast . Now It made me think whether this rat is the reason of that officer's infection . Right when my mind was wandering around these thoughts Benny and Aria brought me back to reality

Then I heard the rest of the news , the officer who was infected escaped his cell two days ago and had bit the guard that was posted at his door . The guard has started to behave in the same strange manner and people are to be careful from the officer .

Everyone is forbidden from going anywhere near the blast perimeters and people are supposed to beware of any rodent or other type of animal or living thing that  doesn't look normal .

The Bernard pharma declared that they have taken the samples of the officer and the guard who were infected and that soon they might be able to cure the infection but for the time being everyone has to be careful .

Since we were away from the main city , we decided to live our lives in the usual way . We would go to classes , take down notes , enjoy our free time , prepared for upcoming tests and did everything the usual way .

Soon , it was weekend and we decided to join the other students in playing basketball . Right when we reached the basketball court , everyone seemed tensed , they were all worried and when we asked them , one of them showed us the latest news .

THE LASTEST NEWS : People were turning into savages and biting anyone and everyone that came in their view . The whole city was in chaos , people were killing each other . The remaining people were trying to save their lives and leave the city as soon as possible .

After reading this , none of us could think straight , all we could do was pray that the infection doesn't reach the college .

What I had learnt from my studies and from my dad was that , a cure can always be developed for any virus or infection and that there is always an antibody . The antibody is someone who has a strong immunity defense system which fights against the virus or any other foreign substance . Such people are rare but if you can find any such person , antidotes can be made using their blood and plasma .

But time is not something that we had and neither did we have an antibody to perform experiment with their blood and plasma . So the only shot we had at making it out alive was , survival .

According to the news , the infection was spreading faster as it was growing in number every second . It did not take much time to reach our college , a swarm of infected people rushed into the college , they broke the main gate which was locked .

Then , I saw them , I saw what horror every person has been facing . The people who are infected were not even in their right senses , they seemed like zombies . They were dead , some of them had their skin peeled , some had their hands or legs broken , some were missing few parts of their body and all of them had blood on themselves .

And that is when I realized , the fight for survival begins . We decided to fight for our lives and as soon as possible we ran towards our hostel rooms , from my room I packed a bag with necessities like - torch , lighter , two bottles of water that I had in my room , few packets of snacks that I had and a survival knife kit I had bought for camping .

We could not afford going to each of our rooms , because by the time we packed my bag and left the room , we saw the infected people running around in the hostel as well .

We ran towards the exit , but it was already filled with infected people , so we decided to fight our way out . We managed to fight our way out of it unharmed but now we didn't know how we were gonna make it out of college . While we were at it , a car raced towards us , it was the principal's car but to our surprise Kyle was the one driving it and he had two of his friends with him .

By the time we could ask what was happening , he said " Get in the car! Be surprised later ." Without a second thought we hopped into the car and he drove in full speed .

Once we were outside the college gates , I asked " Why did you bring principal's car and what happened to yours ?"

" Zombies loved my car , so they kept it " , he replied .

After a few seconds of silence , he said , " There were far too many zombies around my car , so I hot wired the principal's car . "

To his Z word , I replied , " Don't call them zombie , we don't know what they are . " "According to the novels I have read and the movies I've seen , they pretty much looked like zombies to me " , he said. I decided not to reply as it would turn into an argument .

We had not decided where we were going , we drove in silence . After an hour or two I asked , " Do you even know where you're going ?" "Yes , to my dad's pharma , it's around six hundred to seven hundred kilometers from here and it's not infected yet . ", he said without any hesitation.  But I did not like the idea of travelling so far , just to face my father's rival but I did not have any other option .

We have a plan , the destination and the path but we don't know what obstacles we are gonna face on our way to The Bernard pharma .....