Olivia woke with a start and choking on stale air. She felt around in the dark, bumping around and felt the gun that had fallen to the side. As she didn't even know how to work the safety on the weapon, she knew it was off

Great. She could have survived the monster wasp just only to die by sleeping with her gun and bumping the trigger the wrong way.

She gradually cracked open the lid of her hiding place. She sucked in a breath of fresh air and almost immediately smelled the tint of smoke. And so went any hope that last night had been a horrible nightmare.

Olivia gripped the gun with her free hand, trying to get her aching body to sit upright after being cramped in a gun chest overnight. Mid-morning sunlight pierced her adjusting eyes, coloring the usual morning fog to an odd purplish color. The world looked unchanged, but it smelled and felt different. There was an energy, a magnetism that she couldn't place.

A wrongness.

There would be no waiting whatever problem was out there. Olivia's eyes darted toward the sound of branch snapping and the following sounds of footsteps crunching over dead leaves somewhere in the plume of fog. Something was coming.

Eyes wide, she popped right back into the trunk. The lid slammed far too loudly and she mentally swore at herself.

"What was that?" a guttural voice asked.

She paused. Voices? These weren't monsters. These were people. She hesitated, hand on the lid of the gun chest when something stopped her from showing where she was. She just couldn't shake the instinct that she wasn't safe.

"Don't know," responded another. "Come on. This way."

Olivia pressed her lips tight, forcing every breath in and out her nose to be as quiet as possible. Still it echoed in the confined space.

"What is this? A chest of some kind?"

"Loot!" cheered another voice. Olivia frowned. Their voices were also tinged with the slightest accent, lacking the drawl of any Louisianan she'd ever met.

She slowly pulled her hand from the lid, confirmed that she was right not to show herself. Instead she rested her finger on the trigger and mentally berated herself for not knowing how many bullets she had left.

"Go on. Open it up and see what's inside," said the second voice.

Olivia swallowed hard, ready to fire at anyone that dared to check out her hiding spot. She licked her lips, focused on keeping herself as still and silent as possible. For a long moment nothing seemed to happen, she exhaled and blinked in confusion.

"No way. You've got the armor. You open the chest," said the first voice.

"Absolutely not. You know as well as I do that this could be a mimic."

"It might not be. Do you want the loot or not?"

"There are nothing but empty liquor bottles strewn about. Could there really be anything of value in there?"

Olivia's brows rose. Really? They weren't going to open a mysterious chest they ran across? What exactly were they afraid of? A trap? A bomb? Olivia steadied, praying on for whatever miracle might be playing out here.

"Perhaps... I mean, worst case scenario it's only a single mimic. There's two of us. We could take this. Come on. Get ready. Arm yourself."

More hesitation. Olivia waited once and again.

"Ready…. One… Two… Wait, wait. Who's going to initiate this? You or me?"

More silence.

"You know what? We don't have to initiate this at all."

"That's right, and why should we? Best case scenario some drunk left this here. What inside it could possibly be of any value? We have loads of residences and corpses to loot in the town."

"Yes! Some stupid creature will run into this sooner or later. Let one of them get the ambush. We're almost off patrol duty anyway."

Olivia heard the muttering and footsteps fade away before she finally allowed herself to exhale. Her fear had kept her in this thing for far too long already. She was only going to get more questions than answers if she stayed.

She looked in the direction she'd heard the people walk. They were long gone now. Orange daylight streamed over the branches, but it was tinged by the smoke in the air.

What had happened to Franklinton overnight?

She hopped from foot to foot, eager for answers, but Olivia had never had to pee so badly in her life. She turned in a circle, looking for more patrol. She saw nothing in the immediately area. She remembered the deer stand and looked up.

Neither patrol had noticed had been so fixated on the box and the Jack Daniels bottles strewn around.

And the gun chest… had they called it… a mimic? What was that supposed to be? Whatever it was they had expected the trunk to hurt them in some way.

What a weird thing to worry about.

She couldn't think about it. Especially when she was doing the "gotta pee" dance in the middle of a monster infested forest. The nearest place was the Carter house, which was also occupied last she'd checked.

Where should she go? Somewhere behind a bush where god-knew-what could happen upon her doing her business out in the open? Or somewhere she was already going to go to look for any signs of her foster family?

Decided, Olivia ran home as fast as she could. There was no avoiding the foliage on the ground so she crunched noisily with every step, only spurring her faster. Soon she could make out the back of the house through the trees.

She screeched to a halt and gave herself just enough time to catch her breath. Everything was quiet and still from the back of the house, but there was an eeriness to the silence. Biting her lip, she checked her phone and saw that it had put itself in a power save mode, almost dead.

There was nothing left to do, but see what was inside.

Olivia walked through the backyard, past the rusted play set that had once been used for other foster kids. Her gun was hot and slippery with sweat in her hand. She readjusted her grip, stalling at the glass back door where things were already looking bleak.

There was a dead body there. She approached the glass door and recognized the plaid shirt and generic Nikes right away.

It was the half eaten corpse of Mr. Carter. His skin and clothes were torn. His arms were still outstretched, mouth open in the silent scream. She followed the arm, still perfectly intact, to see that he was reaching for a bat the in the corner of the room.

Olivia wanted to wretch, but her feet sent her skirting the room, careful not to avoid the sopping wet patch of blood on the carpet and went straight into the hallway for the one full bathroom in the house to relieve herself. She sat there on the toilet and heaved when the pungent smell reached her far too late.

She reached the small waste basket and pulled it into her lap so she could dry heave over and over.

"What the hell?" she asked no one in the small space. She wretched again, but instead tears streamed down her face, splattering the plastic lining of the waste basket. She rested there as long as she could breathe through her mouth.

Finally she stood up and flushed the toilet. She felt drained, emotionally and physically. She wished that she could stay here and take a shower, but there was for sure one corpse in the house. There could be more. She couldn't bear to find her young foster brother or the Carter's only biological child, a small six year old girl, somewhere torn the bits in their room.

Olivia went to the mirror and soaked a hand towel to wipe her face.

It was clearly time to move on. The question was where? Or more importantly how? There were apparently walking, talking adversaries in the town as well as monsters. They were patrolling. They were strange.

Something was more than wrong and she didn't have a single soul to contact in town for help.

Olivia sucked in a breath, put a hand on the doorknob and looked studiously away from the mess as she made her way to her own room.

She had one small blessing. She didn't have a lot of possessions she would have to leave behind. She removed her schoolwork and binders to make room for her plain black Jansport backpack.

"Where do you think you're going, Olivia?" she asked herself aloud as she rolled up her jeans and t-shirts. She stuffed other essentials in. All the hair ties she'd procured since moving in, toothbrush, toothpaste, a handful of tampons.

"Away from here," Olivia answered herself as she hoisted the backpack straps onto her shoulders and gazed around the room as she remembered that she wasn't sure what she was going to run into out there. She'd just spent the night in a glorified trunk. She was going to need more than what would be brought to stay overnight. She might need water, food, and some other supplies.

She snatched her phone charger before she could forget about it and stuffed it into her pocket where knuckles brushed up against the other item that was there.

The gun.

She held it in the light then, really looking at the pistol. Her panicked choice for a weapon. Possibly the only thing between her and any other monster that she ran across. She didn't really understand what she was holding at all, really.

At the very least it warranted a Google.

Options.

She needed them. And she couldn't think in a house with the rotting corpse of the that had taken her in. She plugged in her phone, content with just getting it up to a fifty percent charge, and saw a few emergency alerts.

Shelter-In-Place: Franklinton residents are encouraged to stay indoors and barricade the doors.

"Thanks for the heads up," she muttered to no one and then looked for the door. One thing was for certain. Something that couldn't be outright killed by a head wound and could tear away exterior walls, was not going to be stopped by a door. Barricaded or not.

Warnings be damned. She needed to get a car.