The Nidus Initiative: Chapter 3

  Brewster Sutton woke up in a park about a block from where he lived.  He was sitting on a bench and there was the headless body of a man face down in a pool of blood in the dirt at his feet.  He recoiled at the sight and dry heaved a few times before getting control of himself.  He wiped spittle off his mouth, but gagged again when he saw that there was blood all over his hands.  He looked around the park for anyone or anything else.  The man's head was behind the bench.  Brewster recognized him as a homeless man who slept in the park.  He felt bad that he didn't even know his name.
  He pulled out his cell phone and dialed 911.  There was no answer.  He dragged the body, weighing eight pounds lighter, behind a bush and put his jacket over it.  Brewster was still quite disoriented.  He had no recollection of how he came to be at the park.  He didn't know what happened to the homeless guy.  As a matter of fact, the last thing he remembered was putting his son to bed and lying down in his own bed.  Then something clicked into place inside him.  He had left little Oliver at home all alone.
  Brewster began to make his way out of the park.  As he made it to the street, he noticed smoke coming from a house down the road.  There were several cars on the road at odd angles.  Some had shattered windshields.  Some had blood all over them.  Off in the distance, he heard a dog bark.  He also noticed several dead bodies lying on sidewalks and in the street.  There was a growing sense of dread in the pit of his stomach.  He needed to get back home to his baby.
  He broke into a sprint and was about half-way there when he was attacked.  A crazed man ran from between two houses and tackled Brewster painfully on the asphalt.  It was the father of a classmate of Oliver's.  Brewster punched him in the side repeatedly until his grip loosened, then he grabbed his pants and offset his balance, causing him to fall face down.  When the man made to get up, Brewster kicked him in the side and the man stayed down.  Now the coast was clear.  Brewster ran into his front door and into his son's room.  The bloody mattress told him all he needed to know, except where his son's body was.

The Nidus Initiative: Chapter 2

  Schmidtke and Svetlana Dombrowski were watching television in their living room when they started hearing loud noises from outside.  There was the sound of people running.  People were screaming.  Somewhere in the distance there was a siren.  The closest sound was some screeching tires and the next thing they knew, a car came crashing through the living room wall.
  Svetlana was knocked off the couch by the motion of the car smashing into it.  Schmidtke jumped out of his seat and rushed to his wife's aid.  She was momentarily disoriented, but not physically damaged.  The person in the car opened his door and was immediately set upon by a deranged attacker.  Schmidtke shielded his wife's eyes as he witnessed in horror the bloody barrage of biting and clawing.  Within seconds, the unfortunate driver was reduced to a quivering mass of gore and torn flesh.
  Schmidtke grabbed a coffee table book full of photographs of nebulae and used it as a baseball bat to the head of the silent attacker.  This stunned him for a moment and he fell to the floor groggily.  Schmidtke  used this temporary upper hand to find a better weapon in the kitchen.  The carving knife was an excellent choice.  Just then, he heard a scuffle in the living room.
  He went back out there.  The attacker had regained full mobility and was attacking his wife.  Schmidtke went in for the kill, slashing at the attacker's exposed back.  One well-placed thrust sunk the blade between the ribs and into the heart.  Instant kill.  The attacker fell to the floor motionless.  Svetlana had her hands clenching her throat.  Even applying pressure, jettisons of blood were shooting out between her fingers.  Schmidtke grabbed the phone and dialed 911.  He got a busy signal.
  Meanwhile, the bleeding was slowing.  This was not a good thing.  It was not an indication that the wound was clotting, it was a sign that her heart was failing.  The large puddles of darkening liquid stood in silent testimony to his dying wife.  Schmidtke never got through to the police.  Whatever was going on out there was bigger than he knew.  In his den was a glass display containing a shotgun and several cases of shells.  He grabbed those and loaded up.  If the police weren't going to help him, it was time to take matters into his own hands.