Origins of the Outbreak by Brian Parker Page B

dead and stood up.  He started to limp towards his car, but turned and picked up the brick to take with him.  Craig thought it was dead, but there was no telling so he didn’t want to be disarmed.
    By the time he’d staggered to his car and opened the door, he was exhausted.  He fell into the driver’s seat and leaned drunkenly over to the interior where his cell phone sat in the center console.  Through bleary eyes, he found his phone and dialed 9-1-1.
    As the phone rang, he tried to assess the damage to his body.  The large muscle in his upper leg had rolled up like a window shade when that thing bit through the ligament that held it stretched tight from his hip to his knee; part of the muscle was missing, eaten by that… thing.  His right arm was in ruin s as well.  There was a mouth-sized hole in his forearm and from what he could tell, it was at least two inches deep and he was bleeding all over everything.
    Craig tried to hold his phone to his ear, but his good hand began to shake uncontrollably, so he pushed the speaker button and set the phone down on his lap.  The emergency line continued to ring with no answer.  After almost a minute of waiting for someone to answer, he laid his head back on the headrest.
    So tired… Just need to rest , he thought as he closed his eyes and waited for an operator to answer.
    Finally, a recording picked up on the 9-1-1 line.  “ All lines are currently busy.  If this is an emergency, please hang up and try again.  Otherwise, please call your local police department at –”
    “Goddammit!” he groaned, knocking his cell phone onto the passenger floorboard when he tried to hang up.  Maybe the house phone will get through if all the cell phone lines are busy.   He practically fell out of the car trying to stand and go inside.  Craig managed to stagger to his porch steps before he collapsed and passed into oblivion.
     

     
    The Construction Worker, 8:22 a.m.
     
    “Fuck you , asswipe!” Mateo shouted at the car full of people who’d just sped by the stop sign he held.  It was a little past eight in the morning and it was already hot and humid and his temper was not going to take too many more of the dickheads that had been through today.
    Into his handheld radio he said, “Hey, Ben.  We got another one speeding your way.  You don’t have anybody coming, do you?”
    “ Hell, I just released about ten cars ,” Ben replied.
    “I hope they’ve got good insurance then, ‘cause there’ s gonn a be an accident.”
    “ I’ll call Freddy’s Towing and let them know that we’ll probably need them .”
    “Good thinking,” Mateo agreed.  “Let me know if a gray four-door loaded down with shitbirds makes it past you.”
    “ Will do .”
    Mateo’s job, for the time being, was to hold the slow/stop sign along the access road to I-35, the major north-south interstate in Texas.  They were switching the two-way side roads to one-way in an effort to alleviate traffic problems and there was currently a ten mile stretch of road closed down to do the work.  The crew was using large acetylene torches to loosen the painted yellow stripes and then painstakingly coming behind with scrapers and scraping the paint from the roadway.  Once they were done with this section a paint sprayer would come along and paint the white lines, indicating that it was now a one-way road; it was very exciting work.
    The crew had been having problems all morning long with people coming from the Belton area and blowing past them in a rush to get to the highway and the police were nowhere to be found.  Usually they were crawling over construction sites, but not today when the crew actually needed them.  Typical.
    Somehow the cars avoided an accident.  There must have been some close calls, but no wreckers would be needed.  That helped Mateo immensely.  He didn't need that kind of hassle to shut down the job site.  He was just about to relax when the screech of metal on metal made