Facing the Nightmare

10

On the second day after Anne moved in, I was leaning against the bay window, reading a book. 

The thick blanket on the windowsill made me drowsy, and I soon started to doze off. 

In my half-asleep state, I heard a woman's scream. 

The sound was very close. 

My drowsiness vanished instantly. 

I rushed to the living room, where Anne was standing on the balcony, her face pale, motioning for me to come over. 

The noise was even clearer outside. It was coming from upstairs, no more than two floors above. 

Furniture dragged across the floor. Dishes clattered as they were overturned, mixed with a woman's panicked pleas and cries for help. 

Anne and I exchanged a glance, neither of us saying a word.

Suddenly, all the noise stopped. 

The next second, a blurry shadow flashed before our eyes. 

Before we could react, it had already crashed heavily onto the concrete ground below. 

I covered my mouth tightly, swallowing any sound. 

Anne quickly peeked out and then pulled me back into the living room, locking the balcony door. 

"How is it?" I managed to whisper through clenched teeth. 

She shook her head, "No way she survived."

"What happened? Was it murder?" 

I couldn't stop shaking. 

"No," Anne's lips were pale, "It was suicide. She hardly had any flesh left on her body. Her thighs and arms were just bones. She... she was eaten." 

Before she finished speaking, we heard the door of 903 slam open. 

A man cursed as he ran towards the fire escape, with footsteps chasing after him. 

Not just from the apartment next door, but from many places—I heard chaos in the fire escape.

In an instant, the entire complex turned into a scene of carnage. 

After days of silence due to the lockdown, the residential area now buzzed with a grotesque energy, like the spasms before death. 

People were fleeing from the lobby in droves. 

But where could they go? 

Standing in the open, with no cover, only made them clearer targets. 

Crying. 

Begging. 

Roaring. 

I saw the crowd scatter. 

I saw a man strangle his deranged wife in their bedroom. 

I saw a child bawling on the roadside while his grandmother gnawed on his limbs... 

And in countless other places out of my sight, people faced a dire choice: 

Kill them... or be killed by them.

I felt my stomach churn violently. 

The horrific scene shattered my mental defences. 

"Why?" I huddled in the chair, trembling, "Weren't we all quarantined? How did everyone get infected?" 

"They weren't just infected; they turned almost simultaneously," Anne frowned deeply. "Could it be they were all infected at the same time?" 

Apart from living in the same complex, these people rarely interacted. How could they have been infected simultaneously?

"Are you suggesting the source of infection is within the complex?" I licked my dry lips, "But since the virus outbreak, everyone was required to quarantine at home. Even if they lived in the same complex, there shouldn't be any transmission route. Unless—" "Unless it's through a common source," Anne sat beside me. 

"But I also ate the supplies distributed by the complex and used the water normally before the government announced the shutdown—why am I fine?" 

"I don't know." This time it was my turn to speak. 

But this also meant that there were likely others in the complex who were not infected, like us. 

How many, we had no way of knowing.

The massacre continued until sunset. 

The heavy stench of blood stained the setting sun and the sky a deep red. 

The infected were scattered throughout the complex. 

Unlike their earlier frenzy, they now stood still, like machines that had lost power. 

In the Bible's "Genesis," it is recorded: 

God created all things in the first six days. 

On the seventh day, having finished his work, God rested. 

November 23rd, the seventh day of the lockdown. 

The virus had fully erupted within the complex.

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