It has been only 20 minutes that the meteorite reached the ground, taking with it a part of Nicolas's and Lexie's condominium and destroying most of the house behind.
Some courageous people of the neighbourhood started to reach the crash site to provide some help. Nicolas's group was one of them. Lexie reached Nicolas first, she tried to grab Nicolas when she felt week. The other arrived and same thing, without logic reasons, when all the people got closer to the crater, they all fell unconscious within seconds.
A minute later, Nicolas woke up, he felt weird but somehow not bad. Around him, some people were already getting up. His group was lying next to him, unconscious. He took Lexie, trying to wake her up gently. However, at the corner of his eye, he got attracted by a weird behaviour. Two men in their 30s were fighting each other, then a second confrontation started.
"What the … they are killing each other!" shouted Nicolas.
Before him, as more and more people were waking up, some started to fight. For each struggle, you could notice at least one person had their eyes red, and their skin appeared paler with a shade of green. After paying closer attention, it was apparent that the bloodshot eyes people were the one madly attacking the people next to them. The victims were for some fighting back for other screaming for help.
Lexie woke up. "BB what is happening," screams and shouts all around were scaring her to the core.
"I don't know. It seems we all fainted while getting closer to the meteorite and some people got crazy after waking up." He answered.
"Should we run?" Lexie felt helpless, looking at Nicolas facing the crowd with a curious gaze.
He shook his head to help focus his mind and looked at Lexie in the eyes "Let's cover for our friend, they should wake up in a few seconds than we run, ok?"
Lexie nodded while taking the metal gourd in her bag.
Soon after the group woke up. Julien started to behave clumsily and aggressively, and he assaulted Alice. His eyes were red, and his skin was pale with a green shade.
Alice was in panic; she just woke up and her husband was mindlessly attacking her. Lexie rushed to help, hitting Julien in the head with the gourd full of water. But it was not enough to get rid of him.
Foolishly, Alice tried to mediate with Julien, while cursing Lexie for being this violent. Lexie seeing how her help was repaid by stupidity did not bother any more, she went to support Emma and Fred stand up, while Nicolas was running his errand.
Indeed, at the same time as Lexie went to hit Julien's head, Nicolas started to go down the crater, poured water on the meteorite and used the metallic gourd to take the meteorite away.
For a sane and normal person, his behaviour in this kind of crisis was foolish, useless, and especially reckless. People were fighting each other, fainting, losing their mind, but he seemed not to care.
Nicolas could not be considered "normal" in the conventional way. From his point of view, he was way more normal than lots of his friends and family, but not many shared his opinion. For example, Lexie often referred to him as Sheldon a famous character from an American series as he was able to say whatever went through his mind without thinking it could hurt the sensitivity of most, even if it was true and smart. Actually, it hurts more this way.
The reason he did that was because he was observant, intuitive but more importantly a geek with a wild imagination. No need to say that, seeing this impossible situation just after being in the proximity of the meteorite, it meant to him that this meteorite should have some value.
Was it a curse or a blessing? He did not know yet, but he knew he had to take the bet. He was already an average entrepreneur if not mediocre, why not using this opportunity to because something a bit more outstanding. Hopefully, he would not blow up to his face.
With his trophy in his bag, he started to climb back the crater when suddenly Julien jump on him.
"Shit!"
Nicolas used all his strength to grab the crazy body in front of him and make him rotate like a judo catch. The aggressor hit the ground first, and Nicolas landed on him, soften his fall. In a hurry, Nicolas rolled on the ground and ran for his life. Fortunately, the sluggish body on Julian was not very fast and could not catch up.
While reaching his friend, he saw Alice bleeding on her arm. She got severely bitten, and with this amount of blood, anyone could guess that her artery was ripped in the process.
Emma was already taking a piece of clothing to wrap it up around the wound while Fred was picking up two metallic bars about a meter in length that he found among the rubble.
"Nicolas, take one, Lexie and Emma, you help Alice while we leave this place!" he shouted.
Nicolas seized one of the steel sticks and said, "She is bleeding a lot, shouldn't we do a tourniquet?"
"True" Fred took his belt in a hurry and stopped the bleeding with the tourniquet.
As the group moved from the carnage, Alice was crying and shouting, she did not want to leave Julien behind, but at the same time, she was scared to face his insanity again.
"Shit, shit and shit! This is crazy," Nicolas was quietly cursing, while almost smiling. This situation made him feel weird. His mind was in chaos and the fear was gripping his gut. Explosions, flames, and now madness taking over people. But deep down, he could not ignore this thrill he was feeling. All this adrenaline, the impossible things happening, he knew the world was changing. For the worse or the better, he did not care, the change was the thrill, and among the fear, there was also excitement.
He turned around to take a last look at the fights behind them when something got his attention. One of the crazy people running after a young man had an arm ripped off but seemed not to care. "No way … he can't be…" he whispered to himself.
"Hey! I will catch up with you. I need to check something!" shouted Nicolas.
"No, you come with us! What the fuck are you doing! You need to protect us!" Lexie could not stand it anymore; the behaviour of Nicolas was just stupidly reckless.
"Sorry, I just need a few seconds, it is very important! Keep going towards the MRT!" Nicolas did not wait for their answers and came back to the violent scene, stopping at what could be said a safe distance.
Taking out his phone, he started to take a video of a battle while observing around. The scene was chaotic, flames in the background, people fighting, running and… dying.
Suddenly a fleeing woman came in the direction of Nicolas. She did not stop when reaching him, and the monster behind her chose to switch his target to Nicolas. Seeing the crazy guy from the corner of his eye, without thinking, Nicolas swung his steel bar towards his opponent's head.
Bam! Crack! the hit was followed by a crushing sound, blood and brain matter were splitting everywhere. The hands of Nicolas began to shake, he wanted to throw up, but the adrenaline was keeping him up, he knew it was him or the other guy. Brandishing his metal stick, he did not want to take any chance of failure and quickly finished his business, piecing the head and the heart of his target.
"Herg! this is disgusting."
He did not have the time to catch his breath when, 30 metres away, he saw one of the victims that were lying lifelessly on the ground beginning to twitch.
He started recording another video as this is what he came back for, a few seconds later the corpse woke up. It was a woman in her thirties, she had blood-red eyes, or in this case, one bloody red eye and one bloody hole as one was missing. The sight was disgusting. Once the video was taken, Nicolas did not dare to drag any longer, the situation was becoming way too dangerous, and he took off the next second.