Take The Gun

"I looked at it for a moment and picked it up by its black grip.

I remember that I wondered what would have happened happened if my dad had taken it with him that night.

I saw a small pocket torch in the same draw and, idly putting the gun in my suede jacket pocket I picked up the torch and opened the door.

A woman was running down the hallway screaming incomprehensibly, bumping into the walls as she went and banging on doors.

Some other people were in the hallway but soon closed their doors when the woman got close to them.

She ran toward me and for a moment I considered closing the door too. Before I could decide, I still don't know what I would have done If she had been a few doors away, she toppled down just before she reached me, her hands grasping into the air for something only she could see. her hair was grey and, as she lay on the floor she looked up at me.

It was awful! Blood trickled from her eyes, nose and mouth and her skin was a dusty off-white with bloody scratch marks all over.

I reached for her, I don't know what I was trying to do, I had basic first aid skills but that situation was well beyond me.

As I put my hand on her shoulder, to try to calm her, her arms flailed out and her nails scratched at my face.

It wasn't deliberate... at least I don't think it was. Then she was quite, her limbs numb.

Right infront of my eyes I watched as her hair became white and her skin shrivled and flaked.

She looked like a mummy.

I stumbled back into the apartment terrified, and closed the door on the corpse.

I was still thinking about the look on her face just before she had died when I noticed the blood running down my face from where she had scratched me.

I ran into the kitchen quickly and searched the cupboards for the first-aid box and found it after a few long moments.

I opened it and quickly removed the small bottle of rubbing ****.

I splashed it on my face like a man possessed and tried to clean the wound as quickly as I could.

Once I had done everything I could I ran over to the phone to call for an ambulence. Of course it wasn't working.

I held it to my ear for about half a minute before... something happened to me. I could feel something inside me like the worst flu imaginable which then spread to my skin making me want to scratch so badly I would have torn the muscles from my bones to stop it.

I began to rub my hands over my arms, not using my fingernails but instead moving my fists up and down. My mother had been very strict about not scratching when I had chicken pox as a kid and it had always stayed with me.

Then their was another loud bang that sounded like it was right above me and, an instant later, the ceiling collapsed...

I dont know how long I was ****, it must have been days. The feeling that had been inside my body was gone, replaced with the excruciating pain of the wooden beam pinning my left leg to the floor.

The open space above me suggested it was early evening but, something was wrong. With the pain I almost didn't notice.

The city was completely silent. I think that was the most disturbing thing of all.

It took about half an hour to get the beam off my leg and, although I couldn't see any blood when I rolled my trouser up, I could feel that the bone had snapped and the slight bump under my skin was the painfull proof.

I dragged myself across the floor, each move agony, and, when I had reached the door I called out for help.

Their was no reply.

I called for about ten or twenty minutes before I gave up on rescue and started to look around the room to see what I could use.

Their were splinters of timber all over the floor, some the size of baseball bats, some as small as grains of salt or sand.

I made my way over to a piece that looked smoother than the rest and placed it against my lower right leg, the coldness of the wood was strange, as if it had been in a freezer.

I took my jacket off, it was already shreaded in places where rubble and other debris had fallen on my. I tore off three pieces of about arms length and tied the makeshift splint to my leg.

The pain when I pulled them tight and tied them almost made me passout again but I got through it after a few minutes of uncontrollable heavy breathing.

I managed to stand up too once the pain had subsided, and looked around the room, or what remained of it.

I still wasn't sure what had happened but the apartment was destroyed.

I put my coat back on and wondered for a moment if I should look around for something to help me stand up straight.