28 Days Later Rewrite

Twenty-eight days and the world had gone to hell?

Twenty-eight days.

I felt my mouth open, but I wasn't sure what I even wanted to say. "My parents."

The two men looked at each other. In the dim light, just a dim stripe of light across their faces, all I could really see was the reflection of their eyes. I watched carefully.

"Well." The man named Matt said eventually. His voice was steady and blank. "They're probably gone, kid."

I shrunk back. Don't tell me that. "I wanna see them."

Hans looked at me. "It's best you just forget about them." He told me, but not unkindly.

"I can't forget about my parents." I crossed my arms. My parents' were not something I was just going to forget about.

"Sorry, man." Matt shrugged. "It's not worth the effort."

"Matt." Hans sighed.

"It's not worth the effort to see if my mom is still alive?" My voice raised a little and Hans shot me down with a look.

"Don you want those things to hear us?" His voice was low and harsh. Then he sighed. "Matt, we might as well go check for his parents." He glanced back at me. "Who knows? They could be alive."

He didn't sound convinced.

Matt's gaze was on the ground, but eventually he nodded. "Yeah. Fine." He muttered. There was a bag at his feet and he rummaged through it for a second before taking out a Pepsi and a candy bar.

Hans smiled at me. It was a nice smile. "S'all we got, sorry."

I shook my head, because these people saved my life, they were taking me to my parents. Who was I to complain?

Matt was shrugging the bag back onto his shoulders. "Well, we better go then," he said. "If we're going."

*

"What happened?" I asked eventually.

It had only taken me four hours to ask. That's how long we'd been walking. Most of it was in silence, looking over our shoulders and jumping at every creak or rustle. But we'd made our way to the edge of the city. There was expanded road and rolling fields around us. Whatever was coming our way, we'd see it.

"What do you mean?" Hans glanced at me kind of sideways. "What happened to the world? Or what happened that made Matt such a douche?"

Matt didn't look up from his gaze on the road, but he raised a hand to flick Hans off. "Same thing asshole."

I breathed out a weak laugh, but I couldn't really. "To the world."

"Mm." Hans murmured, but Matt answered me.

"We got a major God complex."

"Who did?"

Matt finally looked up. He looked angry, but not at me or Hans, or anyone specific. Not really. "We did. All of us. Humans, the government. Doesn't matter."

Hans licked his lips and sighed. "So there was this thing in Japan," He said quietly, like it was a secret. Like it mattered out here, in the middle of nowhere when there was no one around to hear it anyway. "Doctors, y'know? They wanted to experiment."

"Fuckers." Matt interjected.

"What were the experiments?" I asked in a matching low voice.

Hans shook his head gently. "Behavior control, mind control, who the fuck knows."

"God complex." Matt restated, nodding.

"It was just something that we were never supposed to fuck around with, but we did." Hans reached into his bag and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He handed on to Matt, got one for himself and offered the pack to me. "Want one?"

My fingers twitched for one, but I shook my head. If my mother was okay, the least I could do was quit. She'd been telling me to for long enough. What? I'd been out for so long without a smoke and I craved like I'd stopped just yesterday. Bullshit.

I waited for Hans to light up and continue. "They started with monkeys." He muttered around the cigarette. "Apes, I dunno. Small creatures."

Matt scowled.

"So whatever the fuck they did, they made these things crazy. Made them so hostile-- fucking violent. And the violence was like a disease."

"It is a disease." Matt growled.

"Violence is a disease?" I asked. "They made it into an infection?"

Hans just nodded. He was quiet for a moment, worrying his cigarette. "It got out." He said faintly. "Someone got bitten and it just passed around."

"This virus makes people crazy." Matt expounded, "When you get it, you're not yourself anymore. You're suddenly furious and hungry and-- just not human anymore."

I blinked. My stomach hurt. My head hurt.

"That's another thing." Matt said. He sucked in deeply on his cigarette and flicked it away. "How you turn."

Hans shook his head insistently. "How you don't turn."

"Don't get bit." Matt pointed at him. "Don't get bit and don't get their fluids on you."

"If their saliva, their blood or anything gets in your mouth, your eyes, a cut, any open vessel, then you're... you're fucked."

Matt leaned around Hans to look at me. His gaze was cold. "And I won't hesitate to shoot you."

Hans gave me that sideways look again. "Neither will I."