Days of Love and Blood

keep transmitting as long as he could. The reporter described medical evidence to support the massive death toll which would continue to rise. The Demon Virus would kill most everyone based on a common genetic trait. Very few people would survive. The people who showed symptoms of the virus but managed to survive an immediate death posed a second threat. These people had changed. All of them.
    “It is believed by several doctors and from several reports we have received that survivors of the Demon Virus have been neurologically altered - uh - permanently. The alterations to these survivors appear to be homicidal tendencies which have been unnaturally awakened or created, if you will. These survivors possess a desire to kill, to murder. The brain chemistry in these survivors has been radically changed with no hopes of reversal. We don’t know why. We’ve termed these time-stamped survivors ‘homicidals’ for the time being, for obvious reasons. And when I use the term ‘time-stamped’ I mean they still carry the disease and are slowly dying as well, as far as we know. Even though they are dying, do not attempt to confront someone you think may be a homicidal.” The newscaster coughed into his hand and wiped the sweat from his brow.
    The next day he was gone. We kept the TV on all night and were awakened by the emergency broadcast system at five in the morning. We turned the volume down, looking back at it every once in a while to see if anything changed. In the early afternoon the power went out. It never came back on.
    No one was on the street in our neighborhood. There was no sound at all when I stepped out onto our back porch. I folded my arms across my chest to shield myself against the bitter sting of winter’s cold breath and strained my ears for any telltale sign of human life. I couldn’t hear one car or one airplane flying overhead or even a voice in the distance. Honks from a late passing flock of Canadian geese heading south for the winter trumpeted through the air. Between that and the wind rustling between the dead winter leaves, there was nothing else to be heard. Nothing man-made.
    The next morning I opened the front door and quickly closed it. A man with an axe stood in the driveway. I called for Ritchie. No sooner had he looked out the window, the man came barreling toward the house with the axe raised above his head. The door shook with the pounding and I screamed. When the metal door refused to relent, the man moved to the bay window and shattered glass flew inward.
    Ritchie grabbed me and tried to push me up the stairs. I shoved him away. I couldn’t leave my husband. I wouldn’t leave him. I had years of training. I was in shape. I could handle this. I had to protect my family.
    I ran to the back porch and grabbed my son’s aluminum bat. Ritchie was shuffling through the kitchen drawers. I ran back into the living room where the axe-man stood; the first homicidal to breach the sanctity of our home. He looked at me with blackened eyes. Blood ran down the white sleeve of his buttoned-up shirt and a piece of glass protruded from his shoulder. He didn’t seem to notice.
    “You,” he said.
    “Who are you?” I held the bat high over my head.
    “Car, move away from him!” Ritchie was right behind me. “He’s infected!”
    “You,” he said once again. “I’m going to kill you. Kill you.”
    He brought the axe upward and I didn’t hesitate. I smashed his skull with Ronan’s bat. The man’s arms fell and he dropped the axe. I hit him again and again until he fell to the ground. I refused to take pity. I hit him with the full force of a mother protecting her family. One blow should have killed him. I hit him seven times. I knew he was dead when he hit the ground.
    Ritchie made plans to move us into the metal shed in our backyard. It was more than a shed. It was a bunker of sorts. We had stores of food in there, a wood stove for heat and gallons of water. We stayed there for days.
    Behind the shed was a large field that emptied directly into the backside of downtown Sweet Home, Oregon. It wasn’t a small town, but not necessarily huge either. After a few days of solitude, we decided to make our way into town through the fields, rather than using the roads.
    Ritchie had been coughing all morning long. I thought it was a poor decision to go into town, but he was insistent. He said it was just allergies. As we stumbled through the rutted ground toward town, his breathing became