Breach
Mike leaned over and vomited once more, quickly wiping sickly green bile from his lips. He hadn’t eaten in two days, but his body could always find something to regurgitate. He’d read the articles months ago, when things weren’t like they were now. They said the disease rested in a human’s body for around two months before it became active, that at that point there was no treatment to save you. The rest of the world had found that out all too bitterly, and when the quarantine failed it was imminent the States would too.
Shoving a ragged coat to the side, Mike reached out for the small plastic bottle, grasping weakly at it. His arms ached from hours of crawling across the shattered house, and his chest felt like it would burst open any moment. Mike hoped it would, to spare him from the unbearable pain stabbing across his spine to his brain. Finally maneuvering his fingers around the bottle, he brought it to his bleeding lips, his burning tongue reaching for a drop of water. All that came out, however, was a taste of bitter dust. Suddenly filled with a screaming fury, Mike raised an arm and lobbed the empty container across the house, where it bounced lightly off a scorched wall. Cursing under his breath, he felt the strength that had occupied his body just moments earlier fade. Crumpling in on himself, Mike shuddered violently as he felt his stomach lurch again. This time there was no bile, but instead thick blood streamed out of his mouth. Shuddering violently, he looked up to the crimson skies for salvation, his last breath leaving his liquefying lungs with a hiss.
A booted foot crunched a stray piece of oak furnishing as the man looked down at the adolescent’s body. We could have helped. We could have saved him, Jim. Reaching down, the man’s HASMAT suit wrinkled as he closed the boy’s lifeless eyes. The world isn’t what it used to be, Stan. We can’t afford to take in every hungry dog we lay eyes on. There’s no helping the sick; they can’t be spared. Came the dark response.
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