Dash Dash Dot Dot

Virus, Zombies, England

It had been three weeks since the car accident, all the 'well wishers' had dwindled and Willow could now look at her phone without being interrupted by phone calls or a plethora of messages. She scrolled through Katie's social media, seeing many messages saying that she would be missed. Tears dripped silently off her chin as she read the messages. Then she came across one, from one of Katie's fans.

"At least you won’t have to deal with this:" and there was a link to a video underneath the text.

Willow was angered by the message but clicked on the video link to see what was meant by the message. She was watching what looked like the scene in a movie. A group of five wandered around what looked like a large park area, they were walking straight towards a cluster of children who were playing, laughing and screaming at each other. It zooms in on the group, showing the blood smeared across their clothes and faces, one has what looks to be bone protruding through their arm and another seems to be dragging intestines. The children run screaming to their parents when they notice the group of five coming towards them.

An older man stomps angrily towards the group yelling at them that what they are doing is wrong and that they need to stop and go away because they are scaring the children in the park. The group turns towards the new noise of the man yelling. One of them lunges in his direction and he stumbles backwards away from them, barely staying on his feet. Then a second on lunges and catches his arm, the man screams in terror and rips his arm free, not realizing that the other three were now behind him. The nine hands reach toward him and he screams again. Then one of the group behind him bites into the man’s neck and pulls away. Blood sprays over the five people surrounding the man and then the video ends.

"What the hell?" Willow mumbles to herself as she begins reading through the comments. Many people say its fake, but then there are a few that claim it to be true, sharing their own videos of the event. Different angles but the same thing. All of the posters claiming truth are all in England. She scrolls back up and looks at the title of the original video. 'The Zombie Apocalypse is Upon Us!' it declares. Willow shakes her head. A very convincing publicity stunt played on an unsuspecting audience so the reactions are of real fear and disgust. Willow sighs heavily and puts the phone down. What kind of sick person would post that?

***

"And this one comment made me pretty angry."

"Why do you think it made you angry?" Her psychiatrist asked. Willow sat across from the older woman in an overstuffed armchair. The doctor from the hospital had referred Willow to this psychiatrist, Doctor Helen Whiting. She was nice enough, and seemed to have had plenty of training in the area of survivor’s guilt.

"I guess because Katie isn't here to be able to defend herself to the comment. It said, 'at least you don't have to deal with this' and then had a link to a video. I don't know if you've seen it or not but there's a video going around claiming to be the start of the apocalypse."

Doctor Whiting nodded, "I have seen that video, yes. I think someone has a very warped and creative imagination and some excellent makeup and special effects skills. But I don't think it's anything we have to worry about. If it was really that bad it wouldn't just be on our social media, main stream media would have started showing stories on the news channels. It sounds like the person that posted the comment buys into the story and they are worrying about the situation. I don't believe any malice was meant by the comment, they are probably a doomsday prepper or something along those lines, so I really would not take the comment too seriously."

Willow nodded. What the doctor said made sense, but she couldn't help but wonder if the story was actually real. It hadn't seemed staged, but some people were wonderful actors. And theatrics and special effects were getting better and better, to the point that it looked so real when watching. In a couple weeks it would probably be revealed as a publicity stunt for a new zombie movie from a new up and coming director, and that was how he was going to pull in his audience. If it looked that real recorded on phones, imagine how good it would look filmed on proper cameras for the cinema.

"I guess you're right, we'll probably see the dude that got bit on the headline for a new zombie movie." She looked around the brightly lit room. "I think I need to take a step back and take a breath before reading the stupid comments on my sister’s social media pages. It was just a stupid random comment in amongst the 'sorry for your loss' comments." The doctor nodded and smiled.

"Exactly. No matter how good or bad a person is, there will always be people that will like or dislike that exact person. Not everyone likes the same actors or politicians. Just like there are those that follow or worship people who have done bad things. It all comes down to personal perspective and belief." Willow thought about what Doctor Whiting had just told her. It did make sense. "Now I want you to go home and think about what we've talked about. It's ok to get angry sometimes but you just need to be able to sit back and think about it from another angle. Not everyone gets scared or angry or happy about the same things."

***

Willow sat on her lounge and flicked through her own social media. People she followed were sharing the videos of the zombies; still there were those that doubted and other who believed that it was actually happening. The doctor was right, if it really was for real then the news channels would be reporting on it too. She clicked on her local news media page and scrolled for a bit but she didn't see anything. Then she clicked on the media page for England, where the videos had originated. It was a different story. The government had started issuing statements about staying inside and away from public areas until they could sort out the situation at hand.

Willow frowned at what she read. If the government was starting to put out statements like that then it was only a matter of time before the rest of the world followed suit. They hypothesized that what we were seeing was more than likely some new, unknown virus that was attacking the nervous system of those affected, causing them to lose control of their decision making and higher functions. They advised people to stay inside because they didn't know how the virus was spreading. The government also recommended boiling any drinking water from your tap and keeping your windows and doors closed in case the infection was airborne.

The group of five that had been recorded attacking other people were currently being held in a quarantine cell. Then there were the three people that had been bitten by the group, they were in a separate quarantine cell, all sedated and strapped to their beds. Disease ecologists were reported to be working nonstop, trying to figure out what the virus was and the way it was transmitted. For now, it seemed that everything was under control. The update had happened less than an hour ago, so maybe the local news station hadn't had time to report on it yet. What if this was what people were saying it was? The world could be in trouble especially if they couldn't contain it or figure out how to stop it.

It looked as though it was only in England, for now. An epidemic waiting to happen, which if not handled correctly could become a pandemic. Willow shuddered at the thought. She wondered how the first people got infected with the virus and where it happened. She watched the footage again, watching the other angles. The group didn't look related. The man with the bone protruding had dark skin and looked super healthy and athletic. The woman who was dragging her intestines was short and chubby with a bad bottle tan. The third, a man, was tall and lanky with pale skin, and the last two were female both very thin and wore almost identical clothes, daisy dukes and crop tops, one with olive skin and the other with the darkest skin of the group. Friend’s maybe? But how did the chubby lady lose her intestines, and how did the athletic guy get such a broken arm?

Willow put her phone down. Way too many questions were swimming through her mind. She picked up her phone again and set the alerts to pick up anything with the key words virus, zombies and England.