Prologue Part One: On Holidays

Meet the Holiday family.

Prologue: Denver

 

Denver, Colorado; 10:00 at night December 31

Many hours of laborious pain had passed and just as the New York’s ball dropped on the east coast the first cries of a new born split through the air. And the hard working mother smiled upon her child as she held it, just as she smiled at all of her elder children as they made their first cries.

The doctor made his way up to the tired, but happy woman. He smiled at the sight of the woman and her eighth child. “Well Ms. Holiday, you’ve been blessed with a bouncing baby boy. A good thing too, because of the recent disappearances of baby girls... Well at least you know this addition will be safe.”

“I would have been happy with either or, Vincent.” The woman smiled at her doctor, the same doctor she’s had through all of her pregnancies. Vincent nodded agreeing that any addition to the Holiday family was nice. “But I think that this one’s the last.”

“Well, may I inquire as to the name of your last?” A formal question in a joking tone. All of her children had been named after the holiday they’d been born on.

“Newyear, one word.” Ms. Holiday answered



One Year Later


A young girl, who had yet to even make it to the stage in her life to be called ‘preteen’, was putting four young children down for their nap. Normally this would be a duty that fell to her mother, but recently the young white haired girl had noticed her mother acting quite strange. There were times when the girl’s mother would get this blank look in her eyes; other times she would attack one of her children out of the blue. It scared the young girl, as many of the people of the city have been acting the same way; she knew that she might be losing her mother to the Wave. Her eyes burned at the thought, but for her brothers, she would gladly remove her mother.

The girl ruffled the pitch dark hair of the eldest of her youngest four brothers, Hallowseve. She was putting the boys down for nap. Smiling as his luminescent orange eyes closed for sleep, she patted his head one more time. She moved over to a crib containing two identical pink haired boys, a little sad that they couldn’t afford another crib so each could have their own, she shook her head as she watched what could only be Tines clutch him– no his twins arm as if Valen would disappear if he let go. She thought then, that maybe it was better that the two didn’t have separate cribs. She then made her way over to the smallest of her pack of brothers, the baby was fast asleep with his bottle still tight in his grasp, and she watched the amazing color show Newyear’s hair gave as the different patches of hair shifted from color to color. She smiled, knowing that if the boy had still been awake he would have showed her his amazing eyes as well.

As she ruffled this boy’s hair, a scream was let loose from somewhere on the other side of the apartment. She jumped quickly away from the infant, her heart pounding, her mind racing. Had her mother finally snapped? Was one of her other brothers dead? Had one of them been bleeding out on the ground as she had dawdled over the little ones? When she heard a loud ‘thump’ on her way toward racket the girl became even more frantic. The girl could have lost two of her brothers because she wasn’t fast enough, because she wasn’t vigilant enough, because she had left her younger brothers alone with their mother. As her thoughts flew her head frantically she was ran into by a small object, and suddenly she was looking into the large scared brown eyes of her five year old brother Thanksgiving.

“Dence, Dence!” the little boy had tears pouring out of his terrified eyes. “Mom was... and then Istmas... there’s blood everywhere!”

Dence felt as if her heart had stopped with those words, thinking that her second oldest brother was now bleeding out of the floor. Quickly she entered the room that Thanksgiving was exiting and stopped dead. Thanksgiving had been right, blood was everywhere: On the walls; on the furniture; on the floor pooling around their mother’s body; on her red headed brother standing in the middle of the room. The white haired girl stumbled back a little bit, and then looked at the boy holding the bloody weapon. Seven year old Christmas Holiday didn’t seem fazed by the scene of his dead mother, in fact, to the eyes of his older sister, he seemed somewhat pleased.

 She wanted to cry, and she could still feel her eyes burning with unshed tears. For her mom, for herself, but mostly for her redheaded brother, that wasn’t something that he should have had to do. No, taking out their mindless mother should have fallen to her, the oldest, but she hadnn’t been able to accept that their mother had been gone weeks ago. Dence knew that she should have recognized the symptoms, but she had made excuses that her mother just had a lot on her mind.

“Independence...” A green haired boy huddled in the far corner of the room spoke up, but hesitated. “He was just... Independence, Mom came at me first with the knife.” The evidence for that statement was on the boy’s hand, where something was oozing out of the nine year old’s hand, Independence didn’t know what though. The stuff was a white milky color, kind of like plant sap. She swallowed. Just what was happening to her family?

Independence, the girl with the white hair, stared at what was most defiantly her mother’s corpse. The throat was slashed, a few times, the sight of blood still gushing out of those wounds made the girl gag a bit. Stab wounds littered the body. It was a grotesque sight but somehow Independence couldn’t grieve for the woman on the floor, she could however grieve for the lost innocence of the little boy holding the knife. She looked toward the boy with bright red hair, glowing green eyes and triumphant facial expression.

“Christmas...” the seven year old finally looked at the eldest child. It was seemed to hit the boy just then, what it was he had actually done as he saw the tears in his sister’s eyes. Christmas’ eyes became wide and his body started shaking as tears filled bright green eyes of his own.

“I-I-I... Dence, I didn’t... She hurt Patricks, and she was moving to Anks. I couldn’t let her hurt him—hurt us.” The young boy was panicking. “I won’t do it again; I promise I won’t do it again.”

Independence walked up to her seven year old brother, put her hands on his shoulders, and looked directly into his eyes. And though she could hardly make him our through her tears, she spoke to him with only a slight waver to her voice. “No Christmas, you will do it again,” the boy looked startled. “You’re going to have to do it again, and I’m going to have to do it, and so is Patricks. We won’t let you do it alone, but we’re going to have to. There’s no hiding from it anymore. America has gone to hell and the only way for any of to survive is to do what you did, without regret. They aren’t people anymore.”

Patricks came out from his corner, standing an inch above his sister in height, with a resolved look on his face. He walked over to the little brown haired boy hiding in the doorway and picked him up. The green haired boy looked over at the corpse that was once his mother. “We can’t leave this here. We don’t want the littler ones to see this.”

“Yeah,” was the answer from Dence’s mouth, as she watched Patricks take Thanksgiving down the hall. From there, Independence, Patricks, and Chirstmas knew things were probably going to get a lot worse, but they also knew that they had to protect what was left of their family at all costs. Because family was all they had left.

 

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General note:
All eight of these children were born with in ten years, yes that's a little much, but it has probably happened. here's a list of which years they were born.
 
Independence-> Dence- born 2001
Patricks-> Trick- born 2003
Chrismas-> Istmas- born 2005
Thanksgiving-> Anks- born 2007
Hallowseve-> Seve- born 2008
Valen- born 2010
Tines- born 2010
Newyears-> Newwy (Kind of like Dewwy with an 'N' )- born 2011
 
Dekan: Comments? Questions? Sarcastic Remarks?

 

Author's Note

Could it have been more gory? Is there anything we need to fix.

Reviews

[Aurora Night]

Very intersestin gwrite Li. The story plot behind it. You create characters with ease, and bring them in without having the reader question who they are. You did a great job. Continue to write. Something that could be improved is the voice. While reading I didn't feel emotion for the characters who knew what had happened. I didn't feel shocked. To possibly improve you could maybe put some of the characters thoughts into the writing. It seemed that she didn't care what had happened. Tried not to sound harsh. I hope you'll be able to take my advice and that I wasn't harsh. Great work.