Battle of Ash

Chapter 2

"The day of my birth, my death began its walk." 
Jean Cocteau

20xx.10.23 03:23

Samantha dragged in a ragged breath; everything in her hurt. Even breathing was painful. She couldn't stop the itching, boils rising deep purple from her skin burst from the friction; blood and spore flying violently into the air.

She blinked, so tired, and adjusted the camera in front of the computer.

"Month 6, day..." She tried to get some moisture back in her mouth, "Day 4. It's over. We've lost everything. Can you see me?" She looked into the camera, wiping at it as tears and anger overwhelmed her. "Do you see what is happening? How can you not do anything about this? H-how have you-" Emotions won, cutting off her words, stealing her air.

Bitterly Samantha sobbed into her hands, disgusted by herself.

20xx.10.25 06:27

Samantha held up an arm, the weight of it making her muscles shudder and burn. Fungus racing along under her skin, growing and spreading; change from the red of inflammation to a more greyish color. The fungus trails spiraling just beneath the surface were violent blue and green. She was a walking contamination unit. Samantha looked back to the camera, hunched over the tiny desk. Fingers picking at the raised veins.

"The spores my body produces could infect up to 60 people every minute. But I am in here and they are safe because of that." She brought her knees to her chest. "I had to put Shelby in the infected room. She succumbed just a day after John."

Samantha angled the camera to the bullet proof containment chamber James had originally been put it. It was now littered with five other bodies; two of which were still twitching and moaning.

"The parasite has become something else in them." She explained, repositioning the camera to center on her. "They aren't awake, their brains clearly state they are in a coma. But their bodies still move, they sometimes make such awful-" A shudder ripped through her, "-such awful noises. The scans show activity in the parts of the brain responsible for muscle control, appetite and impulse. There is no activity in the emotional or cognitive portions of the brain." Fingers tapped anxiously on the desktop, twisted in her shirt, ran through her hair. "Testing of the spinal fluid suggests a foreign enzyme but with my ever increasing spontaneous bouts of-" A deep breath. "O-o-of mental instability, I am afraid to begin such delicate testing." Her voice was a whisper, tortured now as her eyes trailed from the screen to the room where one of the infected had made a whispered whine. "Sometimes I think they are trying to talk to me. Begging me to save them, let them out, give them something to eat.

"I can't though. I know what would happen if I let them out-" A loud echoing bang ripped through the silence, making her jump. "R-right... The looting has gotten worse outside. More and more people are trying to break into the lab now." A dry laugh, both hands knotting at her temples, "Daily, actually. I can only assume it has gotten bad outside. I hope... I hope people aren't suffering through this. When we last went out, before the last power outage, before Hunter was thrown in with James. If I had to guess over half the population in Brazil is infected. We were stupid to assume it wasn't ravaging everything outside like it did in here. If I were to wager, and I'd bet my life right now, by the appearance I'd say that the parasite has successfully evolved to become a sort of combination between what I have and what they had-"

Samantha pulled away from the glow of the computer screen, her eyes darting around nervously. Then she laughed. "I'm becoming rapidly more paranoid. Like something is going to attack me. I am almost constantly in fight mode. I feel like I should be fighting o-or chasing something. Sometimes I can hear the parasite growing inside my head. I've scanned myself and loaded the documents of our findings to this email. I'm sure you never meant for it to get like this." She breathed in deeply, shakily. "I just wonder why you haven't responded. Are you waiting to see if we can create something to fight this? Because we can't. There's nothing we currently have that will fight a parasite like this. It evolves just too quickly. Each new generation brings something to the table that we can't figure out before it's begun to change again. At this point there are so many different strains that... well, like the flu. Even if we had a vaccine or whatever to head it off it would be a guess based on statistics; which means, on average, we would still have people getting infected every year."