Piper’s eyes rolled up into the back of her head as her head bounced off the pavement with a sickening crack. The man, young, fresh, and covered in blood, was at her throat in seconds, his teeth tearing into her flesh. There was nothing Emma could do as she turned away from the sight of Piper’s body being thoroughly turned inside out. Emma swept up the twins that were screaming and crying into her arms and took off at a dead run.
Smoke swirled in the air, screams riveted off walls, and bodies slumped to the ground. The dead were wasting no time- they went for those alone, scared, and small. Few of the creatures faced resistance. Everyone was too scared to put up a fight.
Emma’s sneakers slid on the blood soaked pavement and her hair, dirty and tangled, kept snapping into her face. There was nothing to do but try and avoid those who looked weak, sick, or dying. They were the ones that attracted those.. things. Somehow, Earth had turned into a writhing pit of hell.
Her family was dead. The twins in her arms were small children she’d found in the alley way, cowering behind a box, about to be preyed upon by the dead. Or at least what Emma assumed was the dead. Emma would’ve kept on running, tugging Piper behind her, if she hadn’t seen the pure terror in the children’s eyes. The crow bar in her hand now was bent and slick with blood- she’d been able to beat down the man crouched in front of the twins. He’d been relatively old, which was the only reason Emma wasn’t dead right now.
The screaming children in Emma’s arms brought her head around. Her eyes focused on the face of her neighbor, Kendra. Her eyes were black, and her skin hung off her bones. Her bones were unusually long, and her teeth were sharpened into points. Her fingers were curled, and her nails were ripped and bloodied. Her skin was smudged with dirt, and her clothes were hanging in strips. Kendra’s lips twitched away from her teeth as she snarled.
Emma carefully set down the children, moving them behind her. They clung to her legs, but Emma just stepped back until they let go. They were crying, sobbing, and screaming. Kendra’s eyes quickly calculated the easier kill- her body tensed and turned away from Emma.
Her throat released a piercing howl as she lunged, her nails hooking into the arms of the boy. “No!” Emma’s heart stopped. She readjusted the crowbar in her hand and took a step towards Kendra. She pulled back, and cracked the metal across Kendra’s head.
“Shouldn’t we be doing something?” Quinn turned off the computer and turned to face the group of men and women standing behind her. “Or would you prefer to let the human race die?” Her eyes swung over the crowd, unable to make contact with anyone.
“Quinn, we only have so many people. They’re growing in numbers. Are we to risk our lives to save them?”
“Yes, Michael. Because they saved us.”
“That was hundreds of years ago, Quinn!” Michael’s face was red with heat, anger. His hands were curled into fists, and veins were popping out of his neck.
Quinn turned away from the group and sat down on her old, cracked leather chair. Stray wisps of her dark hair fell into her eyes as she dropped her head into her hands. Her forehead creased with lines of stress. Michael had a point. They were outnumbered, and the number of people they saved could kill just as many of her people.
And there weren’t many of her people left, either. But if they let whatever was terrorizing the humans up there go without confrontation, it wouldn’t take long before they all moved off to another town. There were already reports of the same monster killing humans around the world.
Quinn stood and turned the computer on again. On the screen, a girl with short, dark red hair was panting heavily. At her feet lay another creature, and in front of the thing were two children. Twins, it looked like. The girl was crouching down, whispering to them, coaxing them into her arms. She stood up and looked around her, surveying the area. It was chaos. She closed her eyes, took a breath, and ran off in the direction of the nearest building that still seemed to be holding up.
Quinn turned to the crowd again. “Are we not as brave as that girl? Will we sit in our homes and ignore this.. Apocalypse? Will we let them die?”
A mixture of no’s rose up from the crowd. “I said, will we let them die?”
“No!” Quinn raised her fist to the ceiling and tipped her head back. The crowd followed suit, and soon they were all chanting softly. Quinn looked down, and saw Michael standing stiffly in the back of the crowd. His eyes were cold, and his body rigid. As Quinn thought about the way Michael was so against helping these people, she knew in her heart that he was going to give her hell.
“Emma?” Emma’s blue-grey eyes flickered down to the little boy in her arm. His name was Jonathon. And his sister, her name was Anna. “Can I go to sleep now?” Emma sighed and gently set Jonathon down on the tile. He wobbled over to lay next to Anna, who was sleeping on Emma’s jacket.
Emma closed her eyes and reached her arms above her head, stretching. Her muscles were sore, throbbing. She hadn’t used them before now. She hadn’t had any need to, really. When she looked out the window, she could see the sun shining dully on the horizon.
The creatures were starting to retreat back into darkness. They didn’t seem to like the light very much. Like every other fairy-tale monster. Emma dropped her head into her hands and sighed. The streets were beyond gory, and there was nothing Emma could do but keep these children and herself safe. If she could even do that. She wished she could just go back to yesterday morning. She’d been fighting with Piper over the rights to the remote.
She’d give anything to go back to that time and watch Barbie with her little sister. But she couldn’t brood over such things- they’d only make her lazy and inattentive. And she needs to pay close attention, to everything, in order to survive. The room she was in was dirty, and smelled of sweat, tears, and rotting meat. The metal doors had dents in them, and there were bloody handprints all over the place. Streaks of blood. The kind of thing you’d see in a horror movie. The only difference is that the handprints weren’t perfectly planted, and the blood wasn’t fake.
Looking out the window wasn’t much of an escape. Bodies littered the roads, and some were still fighting the fact that death was upon them. But they wouldn’t win. They had no hopes. There was no one, not one single person, that cold help them. These things were deadly. There weren’t even human. And they seemed to be able to turn others into what they were. Not through biting, exactly. Emma didn’t know what- she didn’t stick around to find out.
The thought of them turning people turned her head back to Jonathon. The cuts on his arm were healing up, mostly. Emma had thrown some alcohol and a few blue band-aids on them when she got here. It seemed to be like a nursery. Something of the sort. There were.. Small children dead around the building, along with teenagers and nurses and doctors.
It was hard to think about. To think about all the death that’s come to this place. To this town. To the world, probably. Emma bent her head and curled into a tight ball, eyeing the door that was held in place with her crowbar, and cried. Quietly, so she didn’t wake Jonathon and Anna. Because this was all too much for her. Because there was no salvation.
Screeching. It was everywhere. You couldn’t escape from it, not today. Emma had never heard such a heartbreaking, such a horrid sound coming from the lips of any creature. All things considered, these were the decaying lips of something that was certainly not human. It was hard to think that a while ago Emma would have laughed at these sounds coming from a horror movie playing across her large flat screen television, thinking nothing could sound more fake. She would have laughed at the gypsies reading palms and looking into glowing orbs and prophesizing about a future where creatures that were far too unreal to even consider would terrorize and hunt the human population.
Now it was everything Emma relied on. Looking at the sky outside her little enclosure, Emma knew that if she were going to move, now would be the time to do it. There weren’t many people outside, and the few that had made it through the night and had stayed on the streets weren’t walking straight, or were mumbling to themselves and jerking their heads about. Jonathon and Anna were sitting off to the side of a large shelf that held needles and medicines and a lot of gauze.
“Emma? I don’t like it here.” Anna hadn’t turned her eyes away from her lap but she’d spoken directly to Emma. It was scary to think that this little girl was going to grow up in this kind of world, if she grew up at all. Her little grey eyes weren’t full of joy or curiosity. They seemed to be distant. And from what Emma could tell, these children were about four.
“I know honey, but I have to make sure it’s safe before we leave.” Emma moved to kneel down before Anna, and gently moved dark strands from her little oval-shaped face. “We’ll leave soon, I promise.” It was the only thing to do, keep moving. If there was any hope, it was that there was somewhere safe and in reach.
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“Head-shot! Twenty points for Ryan!” A teenage boy, looking to be about seventeen whooped and hollered as one of the creatures in front of the local Publix fell to the ground with a bullet hole in it’s forehead.
“Damn Ryan, you are so sick.” A girl with pale blond hair and chestnut brown eyes shook her head and turned her back to the window she’d been looking out of.
“Aw, don’t be such a priss Kristen. These things aren’t human, and they’re standing in front of the only place that seems close enough to get all them girly things you like from. Shampoo, toothpaste, toilet paper, all that junk.”
Kristen ground her teeth together. Ryan was two years younger than she was, and acted like he was about ten. But he wasn’t afraid to shoot a gun, and therefore was considered useful in this situation, a rare thing for Ryan to be considered. Ignoring his taunts, Kristen went to the coat closet and grabbed a heavy wool coat from a bright pink hanger.
“Get your shit together Ryan, if we’re going to go outside we’re going to go now when it’s bright out and only a few of those things are willing to walk around.” Kristen picked a dull brown jacket and tossed it at Ryan.
“I don’t get it, why are we wearing coats outside? It’s freaking summer.” Ryan was slowly sliding on his jacket while he protested Kristen’s stupidity.
“Because they might offer some sort of protection, smart one.” She buttoned up her coat then went to Ryan to button up his. “You might be a pain in my neck but you are my brother, and mom would be really mad if I let you get hurt.”
“Mom’s in California.” Ryan remarked. He acted as if he didn’t care that she wasn’t there with them but in all reality, it made him shutter inside to think that she might be in a place where those things were, all alone.
Kristen was quiet while Ryan gathered up his gun, extra bullets and a large bag of clothes and canned food. As much as she wanted to stay in her mom’s luxurious apartment she knew that eventually those monsters would end up coming to this building. The doormen were already dead and the other people, as far as she knew, had left the building to try and escape to their cars at the first glimpse of those creatures.
Taking a deep breath, Kristen opened the door and shoved Ryan into the hallway.
“Let’s get this over with.”
