Now I stand by our hidden lake squinting into the sunset, trying to see what will happen in the years to come. Those couple of weeks were as close to Hell on Earth as I can possibly imagine, and even now that it seems to be over, I have little idea what it was that really happened.
This lake was part of some gated community for the rich; vacation homes, retirement homes, that sort of thing. It is where we will ultimately bury the old world and make a new one, but it's a little hard to do that now, and probably will be for a while longer.
We were the first ones here, but more have come. I guess we should have taken down the signs on the highway when we found the place if we wanted it to remain just our secret.
There's maybe thirty of us here now, but with the exception of Cyrus, the soldier who has taken over the place a few houses down from us, I haven't talked to any of them. I don't really want to either. Whether someone got Red Eye or not, we all did horrible things during the affliction. We did what we had to, the Red Eyes did what they were compelled too, and I'm not sure which of us has the worse baggage to deal with.
No matter how hard I try, I can't stop thinking about those first couple days, especially that first night. I was sitting in my apartment, dreading going back to pushing papers for the state again in the morning, when I heard screaming and yelling in the hall.
I opened the door and saw two of my neighbors going at it. They were not having a fist fight, they were clawing, kicking, biting; it was like watching something from National Geographic special about lions.
“Bill, Mitch, calm down!” I yelled at them, but they didn't stop; didn't even seem to hear me.
Bill got the upper hand, knocking Mitch to the floor. He then proceeded to get on top of him and start pounding the man's head into the floor over and over again until Mitch stopped moving.
“Bill!” I yelled, “Jesus Christ, what are you doing?”
Then Bill looked at me, and I saw his eyes. Bloodshot is not a word that does what I saw justice; they were almost completely blood red, and the skin around them was black like someone had given him a pair of shiners.
Bill snarled, rose to his feet, and charged me. I tried to back into my apartment and close the door, but he shoved it open with strength I never knew he had.
“Calm down, man!” I yelled as I backed away into my kitchen. I grabbed for a knife, and ended up pulling the whole block off the counter; it landed on the floor, spraying out cutlery. He didn't stop, and I panicked; I stabbed him in the stomach with the knife I had managed to not drop.
It was as if he didn't even notice the wound. He grabbed me, wrapping his hands around my throat. I grabbed for anything I could reach. Lucky for me I am lazy, because there was still a frying pan in the sink from dinner.
It took hitting Bill in the head three times before he let go of me. I didn't stop hitting him though, not when he let me go, not when he collapsed to the floor, not even when he stopped moving; I didn't stop until I was sure he was dead. I left him in my kitchen, and went to check on Mitch.
Mitch was also dead, and his eyes were the same blood red with blackened skin around them. It was then that I realized that all of the noise I was hearing was not just the hammering of my heart. There were screams, and snarls, and pounding coming from all around me now. Upstairs, downstairs, everywhere. I went back in my apartment and closed the door, locking it and barring it behind me.
I looked out the window, and saw more people fighting in the street. I saw people killing each other by street light. I saw a woman pulling a man out of a car he had crashed into a traffic light. I saw an old man beating a child with his cane. I saw people reduced to vicious, wild animals.
I called 911, but got a busy signal. I turned to my TV to see if there was anything on the news, but it looked normal. I wondered if this was only happening here; if it was some sort of chemical terrorist attack on my neighborhood or something.
I flipped through the channels, “Regular Show”, “Wife Swap”, wrestling. I thought for sure that the fact wrestling was still on meant that this must be localized, but then I remembered that everything is shown on tape delay out here on the west coast; this was from three hours earlier.
When I got to the news stations I saw that it was not local. CNN just showed an empty set, same with MSNBC, but on Fox I saw a host famous for his bad temper gouging the eyes out of his co-host while they both roared like animals. I changed the channel.
If I were the hero in a movie I would have gone to save my family, or friends, or girlfriend, but I'm not the heroic type, and this wasn't a movie. I knew that if I went down there I would not see the sun rise again. I did the logical thing. I closed my curtains, turned off my lights, and prayed that no one would kick down my door and kill me.
I spent that first night in my apartment clutching a machete I owned as part of a Halloween costume, and listening to the world tear itself apart outside. I heard a loud explosion at one point that I think was an airplane, but I never went looking to be sure.
By the next morning the noises outside had died down. I think most people died in that first night. I still didn't dare go outside. I barely dared go into my kitchen for food, what with Bill's dead body, now covered with a sheet, in there.
The power went out as night fell on that second day. It didn't make too much of a difference though, as many of the television stations had either gone to static or were just broadcasting black screens or test patterns. The radio was equally barren save for a couple of stations that were still running whatever automated programming they already had set up.
I had tried to go online, but my modem was not able to connect. I guess my net provider went down in the initial violence. I doubt I would have found anything I really wanted to see on there anyway.
After a couple more days I finally did leave my apartment. Bill's body was starting to smell, and I was out of food anyway. My whole building smelled like my apartment, and while I could imagine what had happened in all of the apartments, I didn't need too.
Many of the doors to other apartments sat open, their occupants lying dead in the hallways. The streets outside were the same story. There were bodies everywhere, and all of them were rotting. It was like walking through Hell. I didn't think to check at the time, but now I wonder just how many of them had Red Eye, and how many had been like me, but were not fortunate enough to be alone when it struck.
I wondered if I was the last person in the city, or the county, or the state. I wondered if I was the last person left in America, or possibly even the world.
The next couple of days were lonely and terrifying. I had to kill two more Red Eyes, that's what I have been calling them, with a gun I took off of a dead cop. This at least proved I was not the last person alive, although I thought I might be the only person who was not infected. Then I met Sasha.
I almost shot Sasha when I first saw her. She had been inside the same Sportsman's Depot that I had gone into to look for bullets for the cop's gun. I made my way to the gun section at the back of the store by the pale light shining through the skylights, and I saw movement behind the counter. She hadn't heard me approach, but spotted me as I was taking aim, planning to take her out before she charged me. She screamed for me to stop, and then dropped down to the floor.
I was overjoyed to meet another person who didn't try to tear my head off, and I spent the next hour apologizing to her. She was beautiful, and not just because she was the first uninfected person I had seen in a week. She had not had an easy time of it out there either, as the fresh cut on her cheek demonstrated.
Sasha told me that she was equally surprised to see me, but she knew I wasn't a Red Eye by the fact that I was trying to shoot her instead of rip her face off. She pointed out to me that Red Eyes didn't use guns, and I realized she was right. I had seen one using a knife, but during that whole first night, I don't think I heard a single gunshot, and the gun I was carrying had still be holstered when I salvaged it.
We have been together since then. We found food together, killed a few Red Eyes together, and found the lake together. She doesn't talk a lot, but that's okay; I'm sure she will in time.
About two weeks after it all began, the Red Eye cleared. We have run into people who were clearly Red Eyes, the blackened skin remains even once the redness clears, but we have not been attacked by any since then.
It's hard to trust the Red Eyes. I know that they are normal now; that whatever it was that turned them into murderers has passed, but has it passed for good? Will the Red Eye come back, and set the rest of them against the rest of us?
Sasha thinks it will happen again. She doesn't want to associate with any of the Red Eyes; doesn't like the fact that there are some here at the lake. She thinks they should be forced out, and keeps loaded guns in every room of the house to be ready for the day that the Red Eye returns.
We could have stayed in the city, but I cannot imagine even going back there now. I say leave the cities to the dead, and Sasha agrees with me. The city was our old life, and that life is over. We don't talk about before; I don't even know what Sasha did in that life, but in this life she is my partner, maybe even my wife someday.
The lake is beautiful, and we have made a good friend in Cyrus. He has big plans; he must be one of those born leader types. He wants to organize everyone and clear the roads back into the city so we can scavenge supplies for the winter. He also wants to start planting gardens in the spring so that we will have food once the food from before runs out.
I know he's right, and I know that the others, Red Eyes or not, are just normal people like us who didn't have any choice in whatever they did anymore than I did. I know that if we are to survive we will need to start rebuilding society, even if it's just a society of twenty or thirty people. I know we will need to find out just how far reaching the Red Eye was. I know that the world we lived in is dead, and it is up to us to make a new one. I know all of these things, but I don't want to think about them right now.
I spent my whole life working towards a future that will never happen. A new future lies ahead of us, but I have spent enough time thinking about the years that lie ahead of us for one day.
Right now I just want to spend a peaceful evening with Sasha watching the moon rise over the lake.
Right now I am just going to live in right now.