"They didn't come until I was ten.
The monsters.
My mother called them "Haunts".
To my father, they were "Death".
The military increased in size every day to fight the Death. They pulled my father into it, the war. I never saw him again. My mother, me, and my older brother fled to safety in the deep south.
But safety never lasts long out here. Not with the monsters. Safe is one thing that this world is not.
And it never will be.
OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo
"Toby!! Get the gun!!" My mother yelled from the kitchen. "Quickly!!"
With haste, I got up from my resting position on the couch and ran down to the cellar, grabbed a fully loaded machine gun and ran back up to my mother, handing the weapon to her.
She quickly snatched the gun from my hands and broke the kitchen window with its tip, warning, "Cover your ears!"
My hands quickly met with the sides of my face as she let the gun rip. I closed my eyes and heard the harsh explosion.
"Toby, you can uncover your ears and open your eyes." My mother smiled as I did what I was told. "It's dead now."
I looked out of the broken window. Purple slime was everywhere around the creature. This happened every time one died. It would explode. It was their blood that was the worst. If you were too close when it exploded, and the blood touched your skin… you would become one of them.
One of the Death.
I looked at mother. "Do you ever think about him?"
Her eyes met mine. "Yes. Often." She frowned. "I miss him too Toby."
I frowned. "It isn't about missing him." I looked out of the window again. "We had to kill him mom. Our own. We killed our own."
She screamed at me. "He wasn't one of us anymore!!" She ran outside, the machine gun swinging on her shoulder.
His name was Caleb, my older brother. He got infected by the Death Blood. We had to kill him when he came after us. Mother made me close my eyes so tightly I thought I might pass out. When I opened them, mother was on her knees crying, the gun still tightly held in her grasp.
I had gotten used to it now. The sound of guns, and the explosions that came soon after. Used to the smell of rotting flesh days after the monsters had perished around our home. The sound of mother crying at night because she missed dad or Caleb, and the way it used to be.
Used to the nightmares. Used to the Death and the way they looked.
They were terrifying at first. With their many legs and eyeless faces. They were dark purple, and hairy. I cried when I first saw one. But that was when I was younger. I was 18 now and knew full well how to shoot a gun. I had shot many of the Death, and helped my mother burn them lots of times. But the panic inside of me when one first comes into view… It's unlike any other. My mother tells me that it is normal to feel this way when seeing them. When killing them. She says she feels it too. The blood rushing to her face, and the sickness afterwards.
My mother tells me that it is normal.