For once in her life, she didn't know who exactly to blame.
Perhaps her uncle, whose sickness had been the reason her family was on the road in the first place. He had come down with some new variant of the flu, and had called his brother, begging for someone to come down and help him while he recovered.
Maybe her father was the culprit, after all, it was his wrong turn that led them to this hell, sorry Knox County. One wrong turn on the interstate, and suddenly the world goes to shit. The worst part of it all was that mom had noticed the mistake, commented on how he had gotten off the highway four exits early, but dad was so sure he was right, he just pointed to the map, and kept driving.
She nodded her head as the solution made itself apparent, whomever taught her dad how to read maps, or more specifically, taught him own to read maps incorrectly, was to blame for her current predicament, and should they ever come face to face, well, they would regret their lackluster teaching skills.
She smiled to herself as she crept along, crouching down in hopes of avoiding detection. If only her classmates could see her now, matted hair, torn clothes, moving carefully as she tried to escape the apocalypse. Pausing for a moment to check her surroundings, she found herself reminiscing, paying more attention to the quiet streets around her than on the old school assignments that her mind was pulling out of whatever drawer they had been stuffed into. Without warning, the regular assignment that one may receive when transferring schools, came to mind. Describe yourself, and your interests. Yet again she smiled, though her descriptions had changed over the years, she herself had stayed mostly the same.
Ruby Chase, fifteen years old, five feet three inches tall. Blue eyed with straight black hair that falls to her shoulders, though she does tend to put it up in a ponytail. Well, she did, but that is a story for later. She was in the 9th grade, and she loved to sing, read, and play video games. She didn't have many friends, but that was her life. She had been diagnosed with Asperger's a form of Autism, and it was quite difficult for her to figure people out.
Finally arriving at her destination, she put all other thoughts out of her mind, the next few minutes were critical, and would decide whether she would live to see the next sunrise. She moved around the small house, careful not to make any unnecessary noise as she moved. Seeing nothing outside of the house, she slowly moved to each of the three windows on the ground floor. Creeping to each window, she took quick peeks into the house, over the past days she had quickly learned how to spot even the smallest things out of place, with a single glance. Once more working her way around the house, and not seeing anything within, or outside, she softly opened the window closest to her, climbing through, she found herself in a small kitchen, pots and pans stacked neatly off to one side of the counter. Carefully stepping onto the counter, she carefully moved the dirty dishes which had been left in the sink which she attempted to climb into. As she finally got through the window, she quickly gave the room a quick look. Seeing nothing, she turned back to the window. Quickly closing both the window, and it's curtains behind her, Ruby silently crept from the kitchen. Carefully walking further, she entered a well-lit living room. Moving somewhat quicker, her panic temporarily overtaking her caution, she began looking for a light switch, and when she found it, one of those damn dials that dimmed the light instead of just turning off, she immediately twisted it.
Standing completely still, Ruby strained her ears, alert for any noise that might indicate if the change in lighting, or her hurried movements had been detected. After a few moments, each of which felt more like minutes, she once more began to move, much slower now, over to a staircase which gave access to the second floor of the house she had entered. Walking upstairs, she carefully checked each of the three rooms. The first held a bed, end table, and a small dresser, opening into a closet on one end of the room. In addition to the sparce furnishings, the whole room was bare, empty. While she scanned the room, Ruby absently decided that this must have been a guest room.
Shaking her head, as if to dislodge the unimportant deduction, she moved to the next room. Opening the door slowly, she stepped back quickly when she saw the bathroom inside. If the past few days had taught her anything, it was that the creepy bastards who populated Knox County absolutely loved to hide out in bathrooms.
Breathing deeply, Ruby looked down at her hand, the metal screwdriver that had saved her multiple times over the past two days was clenched tightly, ready to be used once more. Looking forward again, she moved into the bathroom, opening the door fully, and cleared the room. Breathing a sigh of relief, she once more returned to the hallway outside, before moving to the final room.
Pausing for a moment outside of the final room in the house, Ruby once more listened carefully. Once more not hearing anything, she entered a room which she immediately identified as a nicely furnished bedroom, a good size bed flanked by end tables, with a nice TV sitting atop a dresser. On one of the end tables lay a machine she recognized, a breathing machine, both similar and different than the one her mother used. Finishing her sweep of the room, she moved quickly to close the curtains of each room in the house, before turning off any lights that had still been on. Completing her check of the house, she arrived back in the small living room, adjacent to the kitchen whose window she had used to enter the house.
Moving to a chair conveniently positioned in the corner, Ruby allowed herself to relax for a moment. She was safe. Or as safe as one could be in the middle of hell. Removing her backpack, Ruby placed the worn bag on the floor beside the chair, before finally sitting down herself.
Once more breathing a deep sigh of relief, Ruby began to take stock, mentally compiling a list of what she had on her person, and in her backpack. It was a depressingly small list, only a handful of food items that wouldn't spoil, her trusty screwdriver, and the clothes she wore presently, all covered in blood after the running and fighting she had been doing over the past days.
Finally at peace, Ruby allowed the thoughts and memories that had been attempting to assert themselves all day free reign. Almost immediately her mind returned to the last hour she had with her parents before everything had changed.
They hadn't known that anything out of the ordinary was happening until they had happened upon a roadblock. A pair of army vehicles, one of which had this huge, mounted gun were blocking the road. Seeing them, dad began to slow down. As he did so, one of the soldiers exited the truck on the left. In the light provided by the setting sun, the first thing that struck Ruby was that his face was covered. He wore full body armor, but not the type that you see soldiers wearing in movies. The entire time the soldier was walking to their car, Ruby was uneasy. What did that armor remind her of? It wasn't until the soldier reached the car that she would figure out what was so familiar.
It was the mask. The soldier wasn't just wearing a mask, but rather a modified version of some type of suit. Imagine a skintight diving suit, with a U.S army pattern, attached to a gasmask covering the soldier's face, and a ballistic helmet completing the look.
Stepping up to the car, the soldier began speaking to dad, explaining that the road ahead was blocked due to a quarantine in the next town over, that we had to turn back. Thanking him for the directions, my father shifted the car into reverse, and began backing up. After some maneuvering, he had gotten the car turned around, and began driving back into town.
He didn't know it, but he was driving both himself, and his family, into hell itself.