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Prologue/Foreword

This story’s origins lie in a somewhat political standpoint, having to do with the BP situation in the gulf. The pollution that devastated that eco system ended up causing some.. Unforeseen problems. An unknown company has dumped another type of unknown pollution into the gulf and the mixture of the two caused an atmospheric phenomenon to occur; A black colored rain fell from the sky in the general areas of the gulf. It caused many people to be sick and later to turn grisly and violent. What the rest of the world saw through the filtered eye of the censored newscast, was that random outbreaks of violence had begun to spread throughout the gulf region, and in the days that followed, it began to spread its bloody fingers up northward through the southern United States. By the time the violence reaches Georgia it is well known that the violence was the product of an outbreak of a new strain of rabies spread by a wild animal to someone living on the Bayous of Louisiana, who then spread it onward by unknown means.

It is when the violence reaches the heart of South Carolina that our story begins. In a world where violence has become so common place we have desensitized ourselves to it, we will see the error of our ways. I hope you enjoy it.

Chapter 1: A Night On The Town

Standing outside my house and looking up the road for signs of headlights, I waited on my friends, Rusty and Haley to pick me up. I took a drag off of my cigarette and tossed the spent butt into the gravel driveway. Becoming anxious because of the wait I checked my phone for missed calls, and when that was to no avail, I began playing Tetris. It was around 3 or 4 minutes later when headlights came hauling ass around the turn before my driveway. I began walking down it to meet them at the end. Once they pulled in I jumped into the car, I said my greetings and they said their’s back as we drove off down the road towards Concord, or better yet, our destination in Concord, a karaoke place we referred to as the Diner. Living out in bumfuck Egypt as we did, there wasn’t much else to do. "Hey Rusty, you mind stopping at Walgreens so I can pick up some cigarettes man?", "Nah, that’s cool man." Rusty replied. "So have either of you guys heard anything else about this Rabies shit or whatever it is?" Haley spoke up and said "No, not really… nothing more than whats been said the last few days… they keep saying its getting closer to us but I think its overblown bullshit." I nodded and said "Yeah… I feel you… if it isn’t the war in Iraq killing all our mother’s sons… it’s a spill in the gulf… or something just as fucking fear invoking. I honestly stopped giving a fuck." We kind of chuckled at that and went silent for a while. The silence becoming too boring, I put my headphones in and turned on my Zune. I just watched the road pass by under the treads of the tires and letting song after song just drift through my ears. About 20 minutes later I saw the big, ugly, dirty ass sign that read "Concord Family Restaurant" and we passed it by as we sped into the parking lot.

As we got out of the car and resituated our clothes to make sure we at least looked as decent as we did upon entering the car in the first place. We lit our cigarettes and began our march up to those ever nostalgic doors. Being that since the NC Talking Heads Society, (a.k.a the basic rule Nazi government of NC) had outlawed smoking indoors, we stood out front and made idol chitchat with whatever other smokers had ventured their own ways into the parking lot. They all talked amongst themselves and I even through in a "Hey man, whats up?" every now and again. But ever since I had seen the more recent details in the news broadcasts, I just couldn’t let my mind wander away from it, no matter how my opinion itself differed on the fact that it could simply be another fuckin’ gigantic media disaster made from the parts of a small town influenza outbreak story… or making mountains out of mole hills as anyone else would say it. We finally flicked the useless stub of our cigarette butts out into the parking lot and we all headed inside to sit down. We noticed upon arrival that a lot of the patrons were gathered around the TVs and watching with utter awe. It did appear that since this morning the broadcasts seemed to have gotten increasingly worse. Last I had seen the outbreak had reached the heart of Alabama and on up into Georgia. But now the TV brought forth imagery from South Carolina. It was getting closer.

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