Chapter 2

            “See you later Lotta!” my childhood best friend Ana waved goodbye to me as she drove away with her parents. It was Friday afternoon, us students had just been released, and I was feeling extremely light, as in happy. I was thirteen and I felt almost invincible.

          Walking home I noticed a curious pile of liquid, almost the color of army gear. I poked it with the tip of my shoe and I heard a slight hissing sound. I glanced down at my shoe and gasped. The part that had touched the liquid had touched my converse had completely dissolved, as if the liquid was an acid. As soon as I had made that discovery, I hightailed it home to tell mom and dad. I threw open the door and screamed like I’d never done before.

          On the floor lay my mother, neck torn open and one of her legs missing. She was still breathing but it was slow and shallow, a sure sign of death. I saw a long scattered trail of blood leading from her to the kitchen, but I was too stunned to investigate. Tears welled up in my eyes but I couldn’t cry, screams banged at my larynx to let them out but I couldn’t make a sound, I just stood there, shaking violently. The walls, furniture, and floor were covered in broken glass, torn fabric, and blood; lots and lots of blood.

I had no idea what had happened, but I was sure of one thing. My mother wasn’t going to make it out alive. Finally my knees gave in and I collapsed to the floor. Desperately I groped for my mother, rivers of salty tears spewing out of my eyes.  “Please mom, please! Don’t go… Don’t leave me… Please! Oh god why? Why did this happen?” I choked on my spit and then continued my wailing. “MOM! You can’t die! You just can’t! Oh please survive… please…”

She stirred ever so slightly, and my hopes immediately sky rocketed. She turned her head so slowly that it almost looked as if it were the head of a statue. I winced at the sight of the blood oozing out of her neck due to the movement, but ignored my intense gag-reflex. Hey eyes were glossy and vacant, and her voice hollow, but I still hoped.

“Lotta…? Lotta dear is that you?” my mother threw up some blood on herself, and a little bit on me. “Listen to me Lotta, and listen good.” I leaned in closer and nodded. “D… don’t stay here… It’s dangerous.” She coughed some more. “Go to the kitchen and grab the map. The map your f… father and I made this m… morning.” I began to bawl again but listened attentively. “Then run. Run as f… far away from here as you can. Follow the map to the safe zone and stay there… Remember….” She closed her beautiful green eyes and I shook her arm gently.

“Mom, remember what? Mom!” I began to cry even harder, but she took a deep breath, coughed once, and finished her sentence.

“Remember this… Your father a… a… and I always… loved… you…” With this her eyes rolled back in one slow motion and her arm, which I had been gripping, went limp. Her head lolled to the side and I knew she was gone. My brain was shifting gears non-stop, trying to grasp the fact that my loving, warm hearted, mother was now gone, forever.

The pain tore at my chest like a rabid tiger. The pain was excruciating. It was like my very soul was being ripped out of me, or like I was being stabbed with a million needles over, and over, and over again. I had to practically tear myself off of her so that I could go to the kitchen and get the map. I slipped and fell in the blood, choking on my own sweat and tears, and gripping on the walls for support.

I crashed into the wall next to the kitchen and knocked an old picture frame to the ground. The glass shattered and I looked down at what it had been holding captive. It was a picture of my mother, my father, and I, standing in front of our house last Christmas. We all looked so happy, like any loving family should. I took picture out of its glassy ‘cage’ and continued with my trek, gripping it against my heart.

The map was where my mother and father had left it- on the coffee table. I grabbed that as well and turned for the door, completely unprepared for what happened next. Out of the shadows in my kitchen, a tall, lean figure lunged at me full force. It slammed me into the wall once more, brining down several other pictures with us.

My screams of aid went unheard, and I was sure my life was over. I finally got a chance to look at my captor between my howling screams and it’s snapping jaws. To my horror, it was the one person I had wished it wasn’t… My father.

His eyes were black with silver pupils; his skin was a murky gray and damp, and his hands were beginning to loose their flesh.

“Dad, please!” I begged him, praying that somehow he would snap out of it and recognize his own daughter. By now I was coherent enough to know that he had caught the virus somehow. I also connected the dots as to how my mother had been slain. What I didn’t know though, was how he had gotten infected.

He then slid me across the ground and I ran into my mother. I yelped loudly and attempted to crawl away but was no match for his newfound agility. He leapt all the way from the kitchen to the other side of the living room, which wasn’t that far but a long enough distance to give a 45-year-old man with arthritis back and leg pains.

Dad snarled at me and ran towards me at full speed, biting at me viciously. I jumped out of the way and he also ran into mom. I winced once more when her head snapped off, but kept my head in the game. What I had to do now was survive. I looked around the room for anything I could use as protection, but all I could find was a lamp, which I threw at him, missing by a couple inches. He sprung at me again and I grabbed a nearby broom to hold him off.

I fended him off for about an hour, holding out the kitchen broom against his neck and pushing him back with my feet. Finally tall, dark Red Shield members came crashing through my windows and pulled him off of me, and then slamming a cage on top of him like he was some sort of beast. My screams of agony only aroused him more and made him attempt to chew through the bars, so the officer holding me had to cover my mouth with his hand. It took almost all of my energy not to bite his hand. From that point on, I knew that my life as I knew it, was over.