An eerie silence, the most deafeningly quiet one so far, filled the room. Mark felt as if his heart jumped into his throat as he, Don, and Vera stared in terror at the red drops peppered across Gerald’s hand. They all had the same thing in mind without needing to say it out loud.
After the information they just heard on the news, Gerald must’ve realized what the other three made of this too, because he nervously turned his head in their direction and stammered, “This… this is nothing, I just-“ but Mark, Don, and Vera had already stood up and were backing away from him even as he spoke.
Desperately Gerald tried to explain himself, “I chipped a tooth from falling down as I was running earlier, that’s why-“ however Vera, now in the most fear Mark had seen from her so far, cut him off and shouted, “Don’t give us that, you’re infected! You’re showing the symptoms!”
“I’m not, will you let me finish?!” Gerald pleaded. “I’m being completely honest, I really lost a tooth before I ran into you, and that’s where the blood in my mouth came from!”
But Gerald’s words didn’t sound the most convincing at that moment, especially when right after he finished his sentence, he let out a couple more coughs accompanied with more drops of blood.
“And the coughing?” Vera asked in an aggressive panic, “I suppose that too came from your chipped tooth, huh?!”
“I’ve had a sore throat for the past few days!” Gerald retorted. He limped a few steps forward, making the other three back away an equal amount of steps, and added, “Look, you can come closer and see for yourself inside my mouth-“
“Don’t come any closer!” Vera screamed, before grabbing a book from the nearest shelf and flinging it at Gerald as if it would make him back away from them.
This did indeed do nothing to stop Gerald from approaching the three, instead making him let out a raspy shout of frustration, “Will you stop-“ but this time he couldn’t even finish his sentence before his bloody coughing came back once more.
“He can’t be here with us!” Vera shouted, looking at Mark and Don with eyes open so wide with fear, they looked like they were in danger of falling out of her face. “You saw the news! We got to get him out of here quick! Out of the goddamn house!”
Don could only stare at Gerald, to Vera, to Mark, and back to Gerald again as if he had no idea what to do with how quickly things had escalated in a matter of seconds. And honestly, neither did Mark, but he still tried his best to be reasonable as he told Vera, “Listen to what you’re saying, Vera! None of us are getting out of here anytime soon with all those people still surrounding the house! They’ll be all over us the moment we so much as open a door, have you forgotten?”
Mark had been in a few standoffs before where he and his fellow cops had to talk raving lunatics into submission before they could do anything crazy. Based on the job instincts he gained from such experiences, Mark knew that if Vera’s panic wasn’t diffused, the situation would definitely escalate further into something utterly out of control. And that was the last thing any of them needed while trapped indoors by infectious crazies.
For a moment, Mark’s words seemed to snap Vera out of it. She paused on the spot, panting a little, and looked around at her surroundings. At first Mark thought of this as Vera remembering what kind of peril they were already in and realizing she wasn’t going anywhere by panicking. But then to his shock, he saw her walking over to the furnace to grab one of the fire pokers, before turning towards a horrified Gerald and speaking with more terror in her voice than before, “Then I guess we’ll have to get rid of him the hard way…”
As if on cue, both Mark and Don leapt at Vera to wrestle the fire poker out of her hands, all while both the layout of the living room and where he currently stood gave Gerald nowhere to run from the scuffle but into a corner, where he was forced to cower and watch the scene unfold.
Eventually with Don’s help, Mark flung the fire poker back where it belonged, pulled a disarmed and madly shaking Vera behind him and told her, “Calm down, please! We know what this looks like, but we can’t lose our heads because of that!”
By now it was more than obvious that Vera was not thinking properly from her immense panic, between what she’d just tried to do and forgetting that they weren’t in a position to be able to simply throw a person out of the house due to suspicions of infection. And as much as Mark knew very well how dangerous the idea of someone amongst them being infected was, reckless actions driven by judgement clouded with fear could be just as deadly to them right now. What if Vera really had lunged at Gerald with the fire poker? Swinging that thing around in an enclosed space like a house was bound to break something by accident… something like one of the only things keeping them safe from the danger outside, which were the mere curtain-covered glass windows.
Vera stared wide-eyed at Mark with disbelief. “What this looks like?! It’s exactly what it looks like! Can’t you see he’s obviously lying about his infection because he knows we have no choice but to kill him?! We need to get rid of him immediately before he does all of us in once he turns-“
“ENOUGH!” Mark bellowed, and Vera was so taken aback that she stopped mid-sentence, averting her scared eyes from him. Even Don completely froze where he stood as he stared at his friend with a look on his face that Mark couldn’t make out.
In the calmest tone he could muster up, Mark told Don and Vera, “Look, we’re already in enough danger as it is, getting scared silly as much as you are right now isn’t gonna make things better! Do you think panicking will make those crazies out there magically disappear or something?! Now I’m not gonna act like I’m any less scared than all of you currently are, but at the very least can you allow me to deal with this the best I can before we end up doing something we can’t be responsible for?”
Don finally found his voice and quietly asked, “What do you mean by that…?” to which Mark replied like he was at the precinct doing his job, “I’m taking over this interrogation.”
With that, he turned to face Gerald again. By now he was shivering and panting intensely where he stood, no doubt out of fear of what they might do to him if he so much as tried anything to save his neck, after hearing what Vera had said.
Admittedly, Mark had been just as wary of Gerald as Vera and Don at the sight of the man coughing blood. But during the few seconds in which Vera had begun accusing Gerald of being infected and Gerald showed immense desperation to prove himself otherwise, a part of Mark’s mind had also strangely begun to see a familiar sight in this man. A sight he’d seen beg and plead in the form of a tearful, emotional wreck who repeatedly said over and over that they didn’t commit the murder which his department had been trying to solve these past few days. The murder that Mark himself believed was indeed not committed by the prime suspect, despite what the rest of his department thought based on the presented evidence.
Part of the words he’d told Don the other night when describing this very murder case over dinner came back into Mark’s mind as he carefully approached Gerald; “Innocent until proven guilty”. And like with the murder case, Mark intended to stick to those words with this problem as well. For if he managed to prove here that Gerald was in fact not infected, similar to the wrongly accused suspect, he’d be saving an innocent person from a terrible fate – namely death – especially after seeing Vera really meant it when she said they had to get rid of Gerald before it was too late. Also, as far as Mark could see based on the situation so far, it was essential that as many of them as possible stuck together to get through this outbreak alive somehow. Last but not least, if Gerald was indeed infected, then Mark couldn’t see any bad coming from making sure of it before taking action. If anything, it was because their situation was so dire and perilous that they had to be sure of anything before taking action. Or else, like he’d previously said (and like they’ve seen through Vera’s outburst), they could possibly end up doing something they couldn’t be responsible for.
Slowly and carefully, Mark walked towards Gerald with his hands held up in front of him just in case, saying reassuringly, “Don’t panic, I’m only trying to help. Trust me.”
Another bloody cough from Gerald and a flinch from Vera, Mark continued with more caution, “Now I need you to be completely honest with us if you want my help. This is for all four of us here, not just you. Do you understand?”
Gerald nodded with a trembling head, prompting Mark to ask in the same tone as he did with suspects under interrogation, “Are you really not bitten by any of those infected ones out there?”
Shaking his head with more desperation than before, Gerald insisted, “I really do have a sore throat and a chipped tooth, I can show you if you don’t believe me!”
He then tried to walk closer to Mark, but no sooner had he limped only two steps forward did Vera shriek all of a sudden, “Don’t let him get closer, he might turn any second and try to bite you!”
“Vera, please!” Mark hissed without his gaze leaving Gerald, before adding, “Don, can you please help her calm her nerves while I do my thing?”
Mark didn’t hear a response to that, what with Don having fallen still and silent again as Vera stuck close to him for support, but no matter. He instead told Gerald to stay put while he walked over to him to examine the inside of his mouth.
Once he was close enough, Mark said, “Open wide.” And Gerald did so, even stretching his cheeks apart to give Mark a better view. And in that moment, Mark felt a weird emotion of not being sure whether to be surprised or relieved at what he saw inside Gerald’s mouth. One thing was for sure, however – Gerald was indeed telling the truth about his broken tooth. A closer inspection did show his mouth was slightly pooled with blood seeping out of a tooth-sized dark red hole in his gums where his lower-left canine tooth should have been. Not only that, now that Mark thought about it, if Gerald was also telling the truth about his sore throat, then it would explain his raspy voice too.
Mark turned to Don and Vera to say, “He’s telling the truth.” But Vera didn’t look reassured in the slightest, and Don remained silently frozen where he stood with a look on his face that Mark still couldn’t read. Visibly exasperated upon noticing this, Gerald asked, “What more do you need from me to be convinced?!”
“What about your limp?” Vera asked, considerably quieter but with no change in her fearful tone.
“What?” Both Mark and Gerald asked in initial confusion, before Vera repeated, “You were limping on one leg, why is that?”
Gerald sighed deeply, grabbing at his furrowed brow, “It’s only a mild injury, what’s that got to do with anything?”
“What kind of injury?!” Vera demanded.
Gerald blinked a couple of times like someone who couldn’t find the right words to say, then said, “Again, why are you asking? It’s not like it’s anything serious-“
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
But Vera stood firm, almost stubbornly cutting Gerald off to say, “If it’s nothing serious, then I guess you’ve got nothing to hide, isn’t that right? Show us.”
Now wearing the face of someone caught with his hand in the cookie jar, Gerald slowly lifted his pants up a few inches on the side of his limping leg. Now Mark, Don, and Vera could all see why he’d been limping this whole time – his ankle had a set of slightly bloodstained bandages wrapped around it. Not only that, but the bloodstain oddly had an almost U-shape to it as well, as if…
“That’s a bite mark, isn’t it…?” Mark heard Vera’s trembling voice ask from behind him as he stared at the bandages. “Don’t try to lie your way out of this, we know it’s a bite mark!”
Despite Vera’s disbelief, Gerald argued back, “My neighbor’s dog bit me last night, it wasn’t any of those crazies out there! Believe me, that dog has always been a real nasty piece of work-“
But this was the last straw for Vera, and Gerald coughing up more specks of blood again didn’t tip the scales in his favor either. Looking like she wasn’t going to take any further words from Gerald for an answer, Vera made her way towards the fire poker again.
“No wait, stop!” Just as he’d done before, Mark grabbed Vera by the wrists and tried to pull her away from the sharp-ended iron rod on the floor. Except this time he wasn’t very successful, as Vera was giving it her all to break free from his grasp in a mad determination. The sight of Gerald’s bandages had now convinced her more than ever that the man was a danger to all of them. On top of that, Don seemed to be frozen on the spot without a word for the umpteenth time after seeing the bite mark on Gerald’s ankle. Mark understood he must be just as confused or freaked out as anyone else in the room, but now was an extremely bad time to become a sitting duck to one’s own terrified mind – not when there was a dire need to stop a mentally unstable lady brandishing a fire poker from doing something that could possibly endanger them all.
Wrestling with the fire poker now held in both his and Vera’s hands, Mark shouted at his friend, “Don! Don, don’t just stand around and give me a hand!”
Being way too preoccupied with apprehending Vera, Mark couldn’t look around to see whether or not Don would come to his aid. All he could do was keep every bit of both his strength and focus on pushing Vera up against the wall. As soon as he did that though, he suddenly heard a pair of rapidly moving footsteps somewhere behind him. The next thing Mark knew, the second he thought to himself how the footsteps sounded like those of someone running, he felt a quick, hard yank on his belt, before a voice was heard shouting, “Don’t freaking move!”
Immediately there was silence. The only sounds heard in the air at that moment were the heavy breathing noises coming from everyone’s mouths… and a metallic clicking that Mark was all too familiar with, much to the detective’s dread.
Realizing what the yank on his belt probably meant, Mark turned his head around to look over his shoulder while the rest of his body continued to keep Vera pinned to the wall. Even Vera had stopped struggling to stare in the direction he was looking towards.
Don had snatched Mark’s gun from his belt and was pointing it directly at Gerald, who was away from the corner he’d been cowering in. Instead, he now stood in the middle of the living room’s threshold, hands in the air and eyes full of both tears and horror - eyes looking at the dark metal barrel threatening to open fire if even a single muscle in his body twitched.
Perhaps it was either the shock of how abruptly things had taken such an intense turn, or the prospect of not having to fight for a weapon now that Gerald was held at gunpoint, but Vera loosened her grip on the fire poker and showed no further signs of movement. This gave Mark the opportunity to let go of Vera and cautiously approach Don, doing his best to speak in a calm, unalarming tone, “Don, please don’t do this…”
“He was about to run away out of sight.” Don replied, his gaze on Gerald unmoving. “I couldn’t let that happen. Who knows when the infection will fully get to him while none of us are keeping an eye on him?”
Mark opened his mouth in an attempt to reason with Don into making him put down the gun, but Don spoke first before Mark could do so, “I know what you’re trying to say mate, but I’m sorry to say that for just this once, I can’t bring myself to hear you out. He’s too untrustworthy for that. For all we know, Vera could be right – what if that bite mark really did come from one of the infected and he’s lying because he knows we have no choice but to kill him?”
“Don, listen…” Mark protested, albeit weakly, “You’re letting the fear get to your head like with Vera, don’t allow it to make you do something you’ll regret…” but even as he said this, he had a dreadful feeling it wouldn’t do anything to ease the standoff. Not just because Don had been coerced into thinking the same thing as Vera, but also because at this point Mark himself had hit a wall trying to prove anything from Gerald; a wall built out of a whole bunch of conflicting doubts that threw his mind into utter disarray, starting with the bloodstained bandages.
How could he know for sure whether the bite mark on Gerald’s ankle really had come from his neighbor’s pet dog of questionable existence, or from one of the infected? Unlike with the blood coming from Gerald’s mouth, there was no solid proof as to where the bite mark had come from other than Gerald’s own words, which obviously weren’t enough to convince the others. Neither was there any way to find out for himself, unlike when he’d investigated the evidence framing the wrongly accused murder suspect.
This led to other doubts Mark wouldn’t have had before if Gerald was never forced to reveal his bite mark. What if Gerald’s chipped tooth didn’t mean anything other than a coincidence? Assuming Gerald was really bitten, then were his bloody coughs from earlier actual infection symptoms, with the blood from his chipped tooth completely unrelated to it? And speaking of unrelated, could the same possibly be said for Gerald’s raspy voice as well? Could his words about his sore throat also be a mere lie to cover up the real reason for the coughing, and the raspiness was just a natural part of his voice?
Sure, Mark could make the argument that an infected individual well aware of what the infection would do to him probably wouldn’t try so hard to avoid death when it was inevitable for him either way. But the keyword there was ‘probably’. No one else could speak for what was on Gerald’s mind but Gerald himself. On top of that, now that Mark thought about it, even if he was the one in Gerald’s position, he’d also find it near impossible to simply come clean about his infection due to the fear of what the others would do to him for it, as seen through Vera and Don’s actions here.
“People always look at zombie movies and complain about some characters putting the others in danger by hiding the fact that they’re infected,” Mark thought to himself, “but now I know that’s only because they’ve never had to experience anything like that in real life… nobody knows the half of what that dread is like unless they’ve felt it for themselves…”
Even Gerald appeared to be out of words to defend himself. With his hands still in the air, he just stared through scared, tearful eyes looking like they were screaming at Mark to please save him – very not unlike the accused murder suspect.
At that moment, however, Mark felt just as helpless as Gerald, even without anyone pointing a gun at him. There didn’t seem to be anything he could do anymore. After everything he had tried to help the others in the face of this disaster, ultimately that mindset of his might’ve become the very thing to put them all in possible danger. What was he thinking when he said he’d be taking over this interrogation as if this was a normal day at his job? He should’ve known this was not at all like investigating a crime, but his goddamn job instincts just had to kick in.
These thoughts even led to Mark doubting the very reason he’d prevented Vera from lunging at Gerald with the fire poker in the first place. Was it really because his reason made him think she’d break a window in the process, or was it his job instincts again, making him grasp at straws over a lost cause?
“The only thing I regret doing is letting ourselves allow him to come inside with us.” Don replied to Mark’s previous words. Words which seemed so far away to him after the devastatingly doubt-filled train of thought in his mind, even though in reality it had only been a few seconds.
The moment Don said this, Mark then heard the words he uttered in response coming out of his mouth on what felt like autopilot. Because with his mind in absolute shambles, he couldn’t tell which part of it – the part still grasping at straws or the part of reason-driven concern – drove him to say, “You might accidentally shoot and break a window, give me the gun.”
Don only gripped the gun tighter in his hands and slowly stepped closer to Gerald as he said, “I’m not gonna miss, I got this…”
That autopilot driven by the unknown part of Mark’s shambled mind kicked in once more, this time making him grab Don’s arm holding the gun and say, “I said give me the gun.”
Little did anyone know during the split second it took for Mark to grab Don’s arm, though, how this one action would lead to a disastrous series of others in a chain reaction of madness. The extremely sudden nature of Mark grabbing him made Don turn his head ever so slightly to look at his friend. Gerald saw this as a chance to charge towards Don at top speed even with his limping ankle. Before any of the other three had time to react to this, Gerald ducked low and swung a mighty punch at Don’s hand, resulting in the gun getting knocked out of his grasp and clattering onto the floor… just over three feet away from where Vera stood.
What happened next ensued as quickly and determinedly as if it was scripted. Both Vera and Gerald dived for the gun before either Mark or Don could take even a split second to comprehend what was going on. The next thing they knew, Vera and Gerald were entangled together and thrashing this way and that all over the living room floor in an unhinged struggle to get ahold of the weapon.
Mark and Don wanted more than anything to intervene and stop the chaos unfolding before them, but neither of their legs could find a shred of strength to move forward and do it. Between what kind of weapon the two people on the floor were fighting over and the intensity of the fight itself, both of them were too afraid of the gun accidentally going off as the two pairs of hands desperately tried grasping for it. There was no way of knowing whether or when an unsuspecting finger would find itself wrapping around the gun’s trigger and pull it before anyone could realize it was happening amidst the various struggling body parts.
And to the utmost horror of everyone in the room, an ear-splitting bang coming from somewhere between Vera and Gerald signaled the worst-case scenario’s realization.
There was no movement inside the room. No sound except for the muffled growls of the infected horde surrounding the house, a bit louder than before due to the gunshot alerting them of a noise they couldn’t visually locate.
Then Mark became the first to break the stillness, as his legs collapsed beneath him and his whole body crashed to the floor in a sickening thump. Don fell to his knees and grabbed at Mark to see what was the matter, only to be greeted with the harrowing sight of his shirt’s front dampening and darkening with blood from a deep crimson hole in his chest.
“Mark?! MARK!” Don screamed, holding Mark’s head in his hands and turning it to make eye contact. “Stay with me, listen, don’t pass out! Stay with me!”
But Mark said nothing in response, and all that stared back at Don were a pair of eyes with the life behind them already gone.
Knowing now Mark was long past being able to hear him, Don also knew there was nothing else he could do. Nothing except grab Mark’s limp, still bleeding corpse in his arms and scream his throat out in grief and despair.
Vera could do equally nothing in her shock at what had happened, unable to even get up from the floor she was on, or look away from the bloodshed before them.
Gerald, on the other hand, was doing much worse, if that was possible. Kneeling before Vera after coming up on top of their scuffle, he stared in guilt, disbelief, and shock indescribable by words at the gun in his hand, then at Don screaming over Mark’s body, then back at the gun. He refused to believe what he’d just done with his own hands, regardless of his intent. Yet here was the truth, laid out before him in all its ghastly, horrible glory. He was the one holding the gun, and the one bullet it had fired moments ago was in Mark’s chest. There was no excuse. Mark’s blood was on his hands.
All of this was too much for Gerald to handle. He was on the edge of literally crumbling from the pressure of his actions having brought upon the death of an innocent man – a man whose only crime had been just trying to do the right thing. The pressure was so suffocating, Gerald wished it would physically strangle his airway and put him out of this irreversible misery of his doing.
Then he remembered he still had the gun held in his trembling hand.
Another single gunshot filled the house, followed by a scream from Vera. There was the clatter of the gun falling to the floor again. Then it was followed by the thump of Gerald’s body joining Mark’s, forming beneath it a small red puddle of blood trickling from a gunshot in his temple.
Provoked again from the second crack of gunfire, the infected horde outside the windows growled and snarled even louder. But still being unable to locate the source, their animalistic instincts prompted them to instead turn their attention in the direction the noises seemed to have come from, which was right in front of them. What followed as a result was the threatening sounds of countless hands repeatedly slapping against glass, as if the infected were blindly trying to get through and make their way towards whatever had caught their attention. And what with these sounds coming from all directions, it was enough to make any individual hearing them inside the house feel more trapped and surrounded than ever.
However, the two still living people couldn’t be less concerned about any of that, much less whether the glass panes would be able to hold the constant slapping. Rendered completely unmoving where they lay, their minds were just as frozen as their bodies, left to repeatedly question one thing in light of everything that had transpired so far; had their fear and paranoia driven them into an insanity just as horrible and deadly as that of the infected… if not more?