A few days later, another attack. A few days after that, another.
The only thing that the attacks had in common with each other was the location. They all seemed to be within a few blocks of the zoo. At least, at first they did.
There were still some radicals amongst the city, but the logical thinkers took the reigns and declared that it was, indeed, a virus.
Everyone was encouraged to stay in their homes and venture out only for absolutely necessary tasks. This didn’t bode well, however, considering that, out of the 100,000 or so inhabitants of Vulture, only 4 had been infected, and there was no evidence as to HOW.
Life continued semi-normally after that. Sure, you had a handful of the frightened, who locked themselves in their house and cursed everyone for spreading the "invisible change", but mostly, it was one of those things that "isn’t going to happen to me."
Only a few attacks occurred over the next few months. Just as maniacal.
A woman disemboweled a well-known scholar at the library with her fingernails.
One of the infected was found frantically playing in a pool of the remains of 2, maybe 3 people. There was nothing recognizable left in the puddle, except some hair and bone fragments.
A child went missing for a week. A large group of people scoured the city for her. It was her father who found her. She was standing face first in the far corner of an alleyway, repeatedly walking into the bricks, mindlessly. He got her attention and she turned around. She had walked into the concrete wall so much her face was scraped almost completely off. And she was physically different, just like the others. She was extremely gaunt, and lost all definition in her face. But it was her hair and her outfit that, even though both were covered in blood and flakes of chafed skin, gave her away. She gazed blankly at her father, and though her eyes were bulging with darkness, it seemed as though she was focusing. The men who had joined the father in the search had instructed him to leave at this point, trying to convince him that she was no longer his daughter, that she was sick, and that they would "take care of it". But he wanted to hear none of that. He pushed the men aside and ran toward his daughter, sobbing, replaying the times they shared reading about unicorns and rabbits, and the times they made mommy breakfast: burnt toast, a pancake omelette and a fucked up kitchen. "When we get home," he said aloud as he ran toward her, "we will make mommy another pancake omelette. I promise." His daughter tilted her head slightly as he drew close enough to her to look beyond the blood and the drool, and to look at her eyes and realize that it is, indeed, his daughter. He put his arms out to hug her, disregarding the screaming men who were advising him to get away as they followed just a few strides behind.
He closed his eyes, hoping that when he opened them up, his daughter would be cradled in his arms, one step closer to being cured. Instead, his daughter ripped off both of his legs and opened a hole big enough in the side of his torso that his liver plopped onto the asphalt before she was terminated by the other men…