Remember when… Remember when you would open your eyes and dream that you could touch the sky? Remember when the ocean blue rose to meet the stars with you? When simpler days stretched far ahead and there was meaning to life instead?

I can barely remember those days anymore; trapped in a horror dream, of nightmares worse than any imagination. A place where children were born knowing that the boogie man never existed and, if he did, he would never compare to what truly lived under their beds. It was now a place where darkness and night were the true blessings in life as, even the crazed, needed to shut their eyes for rest and the excited hope for the morning. I used to love the morning, to watch the sun begin to rise and stretch its arms to the evening sky; brushing against the darkened hues, caressing a blush out of its inky skin. Now we dreaded the morning, of opening our eyes to another day of sunshine. To another day of losing more at the hands of what sat outside our doors…

We still don't know what it is that sat outside our doors, breathing down our necks, hunting, snarling like primitive beasts. That is, the rest of us "civilians" didn't know anything other than to listen to what we were told and move like sheep. Sheep to slaughter, that's what we were, corralled in a misshapen box of dingy metal and scraps of wood. The military kept us "safe" at the front of the gates in our little box of sanctuary, and they patrolled the streets with their guns totted in arms, ready to take down anyone who may just breathe incorrectly. The streets were riddled with dirt, grime, trash, skittering critters, splatters of things we didn't dare stare at for more than a few seconds. The gutters were lined with more trash, rats munching on what we hoped was a fallen bird but was much too large to be one. Huddled in the darker corners were ravenous things that were once beloved neighbors, trying to scrounge up food from whatever lay around the streets, their faces dirty and their teeth stained an odd shade of rust. The stink was the worst of it, a mixture of decay and unwashed bodies; where could anyone find uncontaminated water unless it was given to you at the rations station? Who would use that precious liquid for more than drink, anyway?

Everything was now regulated by the military and the government that we never heard from again since the headlines began to read "Mysterious Ailment Discovered by Doctors" and "Small Town Disease Becomes National Epidemic". Everyone was treated like an enemy and the only "peace" we had was kept by those gun-totting men. Their version of peace though…

"I'll do whatever you want," I would hear women whisper to the soldiers, "Anything for an extra ration."

What those soldiers asked of them… I'd never sink so low. Most of the time, though, the soldiers would do whatever they wanted, tossed those pathetic girls back from where they came with nothing more than what they came with. You only got rations if you paid for them the proper way, not because you did them a "favor."

"Please, help, my child is sick." I remember hearing those words and learned that day to never say to anyone that someone was sick. The soldiers feigned interest and concern, they marched with the woman to her home but no one ever noticed that there wasn't a medic in their ranks, nor was there at least a small first aid kit strapped to someone's hip. The only thing than shone on their person was the glimmer of their handhelds… I remember the next sound was of a woman shrieking for them to not do it, it wasn't the infection. It was simply the common cold, she'd begged. The child screamed and wailed for his mother until the sound stopped with a choked gurgle. Later we would all know that the child's throat was slit and his body disposed of by fire to make sure the "sickness" was purged. The screaming mother was soon killed to assure that "the infection had not taken her too and that the rest of the town was safe." The house was put to the torch and now only remained a scorched scar upon the earth where not even plants would dare to grow.

I remember holding my own sons that night for a minute longer before they were put to bed. I watched them in the dark, the moonlight kissing lighter shades of blonde from their hair, whitening their skins to almost deathly pallor. I shivered, thinking of them dead, not breathing.

"Fletcher," I'd called for my husband when I entered our room and didn't find him on the lumpy mattress. I stared for a moment at the disheveled sheets and pretended I didn't see the small traces of blood on them.

I'd walked as quietly as I could through the dirty hallway of our home, listening for any creaking on the wood. It was complete silence, except of course for some crunching, cracking, slapping sounds. I didn't know what I was expecting. I didn't know why I expected anything else. I pushed up the slightly cracked door to my sons' room and stood there watching. It was like seeing a dog tearing a piece of steak. Those weren't my sons and that, crouched above them, was not my husband. "Fletcher…" I breathed, calmly. I don't know why I sounded so calm. He'd whirled on me, his face a mess of red and eyes bloodshot and wide.

"I… I didn't mean to." He garbled, his once beautiful green eyes whirling and darting around in his head. Why hadn't I seen it before? He'd run the fever, the chills, he'd become reclusive, but I didn't want him to be infected.

"I'm so sorry," I whispered to him just as he lunged at me next. At first, I didn't want to put up a fight, I wanted to die with my babies and my husband. But there was some sort of surge in my veins. I threw up my hands to guard my vital areas as we smashed to the ground, knocking the warped door of the boys' room off its hinges. He howled and grabbed at me with cracked and bloodied hands but I kicked and pushed right back at him. How was I to survive this? How could I kill my own husband?

Around my neck was a chain. It was a thin, dainty thing given to me by my husband when we first started dating. It was a tulip with a long stem made of the purest gold. I yanked as hard as I could and stabbed the little object into his perfect green eye. He reared back and scratched gouges into his face, trying to pull the metal flower from his eye. I scuttled backwards like some awkward crab until I smacked into the wall. I pushed myself to my feet, ready to run when I was blasted by his body. I screamed while we surged to the floor again, taking down a wobbly wooden table with us. Again he started pounding at my body and scratching at my skin as if he wanted to make ribbons of me.

I felt my fingers suddenly curl around something and knew that was the only thing I had to keep me alive. I pulled the object towards me and managed to wedge it between us before he dove down on me again. The surging of his movement, coupled with my own upward thrusting momentum drove the object into his body, but not before he was about to sink his teeth into the curve of my shoulder. I screamed and pushed my weapon further into his body until he let go of me and screeched his own death. His body only twitched once before there was nothing; silence again. I lay there with his dead carcass over me, breathing sharply, staving off the pain and the need to faint. The moonlight coming through the window outlined the piece of wood jutting from Fletcher's back.

I don't know how long I lay there, but when I was finally able to push out from beneath my dead husband I saw and would always remember the look in his eyes: true peace.

I left my broken home that same night but didn't even make it past the porch before I'd fallen. Dizziness had hit me and I wasn't able to focus my eyes on anything. The world began to spin and my body had fallen like bricks to the concrete floor. I was sweating and breathing heavily and I was so shocked. The infection? My husband had passed it to me, I was sure, but it never took people over so quickly. I felt my stomach heave and my body spasm before I was choking up the nothing I had in my stomach before darkness slammed into me and I thought I was already becoming one of them.

"So peculiar…"

Beep… beep… beep…

"Impossible…"

Beep… beep… beep…

"The answer to our prayers…"

White light stung at my eyes when I was able to finally open them. I blinked away the tears that stung at them and tried to move my arms but found that I couldn't. I turned my head to the side and regretted it immediately, I surged up from the bed and puked my guts out all over the crisp white sheets covering my body and realized I still could barely move. When I sunk back into the hard bed I saw that my arms were bound and tubes were connected from them.

"Oh, you poor thing, still not able to keep a thing down." Someone tisked. I watched them come and change my sheets, wipe my face clean, and pat my shoulder like we were old friends.

"Wh…"

"Hush now, you've been through quite a bit," a straw with freezing water was thrust into my face and I sucked it down like I had never had any in my life. Well, it had been a long time since I'd had any clean water.

"How long?" I croaked in a voice rough with disuse.

"Now, now, there will be time for those things later. Right now you need to rest."

I blinked and took in my surroundings. I would've called it a hospital but… A chilling feeling came over me. There was a glass on one wall that could have been a window, only, I could see myself in it like a mirror. A one-way glass. The bed that I lay on mysteriously felt harder than it should and those straps around my wrists and ankles… Obviously not a reassuring thing.

"What happened?" I asked louder, still sounding oddly like a frog.

The nurse-like woman's face turned into a glare, no longer kindly. "I said, there will be time for that later." And she left.

Everything was silence except for the beeping monitor of my heart which had begun to spike a little with fear. I tried to pull at my bonds to see how much give they had. None. The beeping of the monitor spiked faster again. What hospital bound their patients? Why wasn't I dead? Or running around like those people who'd become infected?

"Good day, Mrs. McPhearson." I stopped my perusal of the room and stared at the broad shouldered man dressed in military wear who'd come from a door beside the one-way window. A door that had a number pad on it and a camera pointed straight at me perched above it.

"My husband is dead…" I said flatly.

"True… Would you prefer we address you by your maiden name?"

"What happened?" I asked. Ignoring his questions and pleasantries. The monitor continued to beep and betray my calm.

"What happened indeed…" He walked around my bed, his rubber-soled boots thumping and creaking on the tiled floor. He put his arms behind his back, lacing his fingers together, eyes staring straight up at the fluorescent lights in thought. "What indeed…" He pondered again. "You, ma'am, were attacked by an infected. And yet… here you are." He stopped beside me, legs spread, his handheld shining at his side. My eyes stayed on his weapon for a moment before I looked back up to him; no words would come to me. He moved his arms from his back and unearthed a clean sheet of paper from his back pocket. "It would seem, miss, that you are a rare commodity. Something that would be of great value to our nation," I couldn't even blink, could barely breathe. "It would seem that you are immune to the infection."

The beeping monitor ratcheted up and I thought I was going to pass out again. No, this was no hospital…