(A/N): Mmmm...Zombies. This will hopefully follow the amazingly fantastic video game that you should all play. Seriously. But first, a flashback.
"Oh, I missed!" The teenage girl clicks her tongue in slight frustration, her arrow flying past the target and into the wooded area behind.
"Your accuracy is already pretty good. I guess I'll let this one slide." Her father laughs, teasing his daughter as he sets down his crossbow to fetch the arrow. "You beat my score anyway."
"You let me win." She calls after him, though she can't help but noticing her other arrows sticking out of the center of her target in comparison to her father's. For a man with no sons, he was a hunter who loved his daughters the same and shared in his hobby. She doesn't hear a response from him in moments, and she swears that the arrow couldn't have gone so far.
"Dad?" She asks the odd silence, not daring leave her bow behind as she heads off after him. "Dad?"
Her voice becomes a whisper, her heart racing though she can't fathom why. She had been in these woods before, using the silence as her friend, but now betraying her.
"AARRGGHH!" The raw, inhuman scream of her father cuts into her as she starts running. Sprinting towards the noise and setting an arrow. The sharp scent of rotten meat storms into her nose, almost making her throw-up on contact. She can hear something thrashing in a nearby brush, human and not. "GRAHHH!"
"Dad!" She whips around it, pointing her arrow at the...the...thing. On her father. Eating her dying father.
Decaying flesh hangs loosely around its mouth, blood dripping from its fingers that tear at her father's exposed chest. Dead, glass-colored eyes gaze at her, its attention now on the her.
"'Lex." Her father bubbles, blood and saliva frothing out. "Alexis. Run."
A shriek escapes her lips, the arrow flying off of her bow without her realizing it. The tip burrows itself at the thing's forehead, loose flesh giving way as it falls over. Dead, she doesn't know.
"Daddy." Alexis trembles, vomit spewing out of her control. No noise comes out from her father, eyes fixated at where she had stood. She can't look at the thing that attacked him, but dares to wonder where it came from. Or if there's more.
"Mom. Emily." Alexis rises to her feet, fear gripping at her soul. Home.
She takes one last glance at her father, and scrambles away. Roots grab at her feet, sharp branches scratch at her arms, uneasy quiet squeezing her gut. The familiar logs of her home come into view as she yells for its occupants. She enters through the back door, smelling the burning of the cookies that they had been making. A blood pool lies on the kitchen floor, a trail leading away. No. A small girl's cry and the sounds of a scuffle come from upstairs, just like the trail.
"Emily!" Alexis skips steps, flying up the staircase at breakneck speed. The door of her parents' is partially open, a female body crushed in between, more crimson staining the floor.
"Alexis..." The strangled sob comes from within the room. Alexis steps over the body, accidentally looking at its face. The distorted face of her mother, just as sickening as the thing from earlier. A gory bite mark is on her arm that reaches out into the room. "Big sister..."
The cries emit from the closet as Alexis swallows the lump in her throat. She opens the closet door, her shaking baby sister inside, a curled up ball of tears and blood. Alexis picks up the shivering body, the young girl pushing her big sister away.
"No. No." Emily twists and turns, attempting to escape the grasp. "Stay away."
"I know, Em. I saw them, but I'm here. I'll protect you."
"You can't, Lex. It bit mommy, and mommy bit me." Emily shoves her tiny hand in Alexis's face, the ominous bite caked in red. "Mommy became it. I don't want Lex to."
"I won't let it. Stay here while I find something to patch it up." Alexis reassures the 8 year-old, hopes she is. She squeezes the hand, hating that she can't bring herself to kiss it like all minor cuts and bruises from before.
Emily whimpers a response as Alexis hurries to their parents' bathroom, raiding the cabinets for something. Anything. Emily moans, returning into a ball, unable to look at what she had done. The echo of snarls and the door slamming over and over play in her head. The sight of her mother growling, still reaching to get in as Emily screamed, slamming the door over and over, trying to make it stop. Like mommy did to the first one in the living room.
"Em, swallow these." Alexis returns with a few children's medicine pills and bandages. She notes the clothing soaked in various shades. "Where else are you hurt?"
"Just here." Emily sniffs, letting her big sister gently wrap her bitten hand. "It came from the monster that mommy got."
"Monster? Where?"
"Living room. Mommy got it, but it got her, too. Then she became it." Emily starts to sob, remembering the recent event all too clearly. "Where's daddy?"
"I don't know. We can look for him later, okay? Go get your backpack and empty it. We can't stay here, Em." Alexis lies, wondering why she does and yet not. Emily obeys without a word, taking her big sister's strong hand as they pass over the corpse of their mother. Alexis has Emily gather cans from the kitchen, remembering that her backpack would require going in the living room. Their neighbor from a quarter mile away lies dead on the floor, their condition so disgusting that Alexis isn't surprised that Emily recognized him, just as the monster that bit Mom. Just in case, Alexis aims an arrow at the still body.
"Sorry." She whispers to the person it had once been. Alexis dumps the school books out of her and Emily's bags, returning with the empty sacks to the kitchen. "Em!"
She drops them as she kneels to her fallen sister's side, the girl's face a shade paler, almost grayer, than usual. Her forehead burns as Alexis prods Emily to wake up. To open her eyes. She does, the blue trying to focus in confusion.
"Wanna sleep." Emily coughs as Alexis makes her stand.
"No, you don't. Here, help me fill these up."