--Phase 10 “The Past”--
“Pease...” Benji's voice was harsh and full of anguish as he moaned. The pain that had begun in his arm grew steadily worse and gradually spread throughout the rest of his body, tormenting his thigh, stomach, and back. “I can't—”
“Ben?” Nathan called the name as he checked on Benji. His surgeon friend was pale, unconscious, and racked with fever. His eyes were shut, but they were moving and flapping all about like the eyes of a rag doll. It seemed like a half an hour had passed since Kaien and Dominique had departed, but neither of them had come back. Nathan and Allen could not help but gradually started to lose hope.
“He’s having a nightmare,” Allen said as he took a closer look at Benji. “Don’t wake him up. It’s better to let him unconscious.”
“Why?” Nathan asked and wiped away his dried tears. He had stopped crying and was focusing on making Benji feel better. After exhausting all of his options, the only thing left for him to do was to take Benji's hand and comfort his childhood friend.
“Because he will be in a hallucinating stage soon enough.” Allen responded, drawing on his own personal experience. “At first, his temperature will drop like it did, and then he will have a blazing fever and nightmares. Then, the pain gets greater till he finally wakes up and starts to hallucinate... bad things that would develop aggressive inclinations.” The scene before him brought up the unpleasant, even painful memories from three years ago. “Because of this, we should let him sleep for as long as possible. Believe me when I say that if you wake him up, you will deeply regret it.”
Nathan gulped as he tried his best not to think of the amount of suffering Benji would go through if they were unable to escape in time. He could not help but place more and more blame on himself. They fell silent as Allen kept an eye out in case any zombies spotted them. In his deepest mind and soul, he still knew how inhuman the stage of transforming into a zombie could be.
[FLASHBACK]
“Are you okay?” Allen asked a man white shirt as he was pushed aside till he landed on the floor.
“Of course not! Can’t you see I’m bitten?! I’ll turn into those monsters!” The man screamed his lungs hysterically. It was soon replaced with a sudden scream of pain, causing everyone in the room to move away and hide behind anything they could find.
They were in some kind of VIP’s waiting room in the airport and there were only five survivors there, excluding the bitten man. A zombie outbreak has occurred throughout the airport and turned everyone into monsters.
“We should dispose of him!” Another man, who appeared to be a security guard at the airport, spoke up. “We can’t risk any of us turning into those monsters too!”
“No! Daddy didn’t do anything wrong!” a small girl, aged around ten, cried and crawled to his daddy’s side. Crying out loud and she was scared, but no one cared enough to listen to her.
“We should do the best,” a business woman said as she pulled the girl away from her dad. The security was dragging the man in pain to get outside. Just before he threw the man outside, the man attacked him and bit him on his neck. Blood splashed all over the door. The security man stumbled and fell into the door. The impact from the fall made the door wide open, revealing a horrible view of zombies outside.
Jerking up, Allen got another young boy rushed to the bathroom and hid there. Before they close the door, they could see the business woman’s and the girl’s scream when they were torn apart by those monsters.
Banging and a deafening roar that echoed throughout all over the air and deaf to the ears as Allen pulled his only surviving friend, the boy, to hide behind the wardrobe. They could barely keep their sanity till the sound stopped and the zombies seemed to move away from the door, heading to another direction.
“Are you okay?” Allen asked the boy when he no longer heard any sound from outside the door. Yet, he did not get any answer from the boy nor did the boy make any sound. He tried to look at the boy’s face as he realized how cold the skin was and how pale the boy was. The boy was around fifteen or something and terror hit Allen when he saw a bite mark on the boy’s leg.
“Cold...” the boy murmured incoherently. “Please... the pain... don’t hurt me...”
The boy fell asleep and lost consciousness. Allen was left alone and did not know what to do anymore. It was like his whole hope being torn apart in front of him. He was just a normal oncologist and he felt terror every day because of his practice, yet, nothing compared to the one he felt right now. He stopped, frozen in his tracks, feeling something he had not felt in many, many years - fear.
Soon after, the boy developed a fever and began having nightmares. Allen shook him, trying to wake him up from it. The boy abruptly opened both of his eyes wide and made a startling facial expression before screamed piercingly on top of his lungs. It took less than one second for Allen to recoil away from the boy. The youngster did not stop wailing and continued to scream like a demon. Allen retreated as far as he could and froze in a ball of terror. The poor boy started to get up and smacked anything he could, even bumping his head on the floor a few times as blood splashed.
After some time had passed and the terrifying experience had not abated, Allen was on the verge of losing his mind when all of a sudden, the youngster abruptly collapsed onto the pool of blood. Breathing was hard as Allen could barely breathe from his rapid heartbeat. Allen felt a chill run up and down his spine as the youngster's eyes soullessly fixed on him. A hoarse quiet wail echoed through the room as the boy got up and began to crawl in Allen's direction.
“NO! GET AWAY FROM ME!” Allen screamed as he managed to avoid the boy’s attack and opened the door. He was about to run but his legs were caught. He kicked the boy on the broken head and he ran as fast as he could. Not aware of his surroundings, Allen tripped over a dead body as the boy kept chasing him. He swore his life could have ended that second but suddenly the boy fell on the floor after a gunshot. Allen looked up and saw a man in black suit, completely armed.
The man who saved him was the one he knew only as Kaien.
[END OF FLASHBACK]