Jessica

After she left the campground, Jessica tried her hardest not to pick up her phone and call Daryl. Her resolve lasted about five whole minutes before she had him on the phone calling him every dirty name she could think of. He hung up, so she called him back and left some more insults on his voice mail. She had could not remember the last time she had gotten this mad at a man.

"Mommy," her younger daughter Desiree asked her from the backseat, "what's a stupid bastard." Jessica swore again under her breath. Now she owed like twenty quarters to the swear jar. She had been trying to stop swearing in front of her daughters after the school called her and let her know that her daughter had been using some of her more choice words in class. Cassie was laughing.

"Its just a mean name to call someone," Cassie told her sister.

"Then why were you saying it to Uncle Daryl?," Desiree asked. She loved both her uncles, but Daryl was her favorite. He went with her Aunt Ricky to take them to the zoo. And when she was scared to go in with the petting zoo goats, he had grabbed them by the horns and dragged them over so she could pet them through the fence. Jessica sighed.

"I am just mad at Uncle Daryl because he wasn't being very nice to your Aunt Ricky," Jessica explained, hoping that would end the conversation. Of course with Des answers always just led to more questions.

"Why was he being mean to Aunt Ricky?," Desiree asked. Jessica loved her daughters, but sometimes they made her want to tear her hair out.

"Why don't you ask him next time you see him," Jessica suggested to the girl. This seemed to satisfy the girl for now, although there would probably be more questions later. Jessica watched her in the rearview mirror to make sure she had gone back to playing with her toys. Cassie was playing a video game on her phone. Her father had said he thought she was too young for a phone, so Jessica had made sure to go out and buy her one right away. That dick had never paid a dime of child support and then he wanted to come around with his new wife and new baby and try to act all high and mighty, telling her how to raise the girls he barely knew. Nope. Thanks for playing. Try again next time.

They were off again anyway, she had been sleeping with him again for a while when he first got married to his wife, but after she found out the woman was pregnant she had cut things off again. There were certain things that even she didn't do. And to think that asshole had been telling her he was leaving his wife for her. And then he had been going home and knocking her up. Well next time the only thing he was sticking in her was a fork, 'cause she was done. She had been a little insulted, but since she never invested much emotion in any man, she wasn't really that upset.

The traffic on the highway was really backed up, so she got off to take the back way home. She saw the accident that had caused the backup on her way. It looked like someone was going nuts on the side of the road and other people were trying to hold them down. Meth is bad for you, she thought with a laugh. Just ask Merle's crazy girlfriend. That bitch had looked at least twenty years older than she actually was. And Jessica was fairly sure that's where she had gotten the clap, even though a certain someone had tried telling her she must have got it from someone else and then given it to him. That made her laugh a little. It had not been funny at the time, but it was funny now. After that she had made him wrap it up for a while.

And RickyJo was alone with him, camping. Jessica wasn't sure if it was best to leave them alone together, but she had decided it was moderately better than leaving RickyJo alone. At least she wouldn't get hurt if Merle was with her. And maybe Daryl would be more likely to go if his brother was there. It was just that RickyJo seemed so sad. She had not seen her that sad in a long long time. Probably since Nana had been diagnosed with cancer. And sometimes when people were upset, they did things they normally wouldn't do. Just ask her, Jessica was the queen of bad decision making.

After the long drive back home, Jessica sent her girls to shower up and put their things away or in the laundry. Then she had a million work emails to go through. She had to call her assistant manager about a few of them. Then she got in the shower herself. After bathing in the campground facilities or washing up in the creek, the water felt good and she found herself under the warm spray with her hand between her legs thinking about what happened the night before. RickyJo had gone to bed in the camper with the girls and she had stayed up with Merle, laughing and drinking. Then they had gone down and skinny dipped in the creek and had a fuck in the grass. She was pretty sure thats where she had gotten most of the bug bites she had, but it had been totally worth it.

When she was done, Jessica washed the conditioner out of her hair and turned the water off. She put on her robe and wrapped her hair up in a towel. Heading in to check on her girls she saw they were on the computer. She could hear a lot of screaming coming from whatever they were watching.

"What is that?," she asked. Cassie better not be showing her sister things that she knew would give her nightmares again.

"Its all over YouTube," Cassie said, "it says the video is from South America." Jessica shooed them out of the way and sat down, then started the video over. Both girls hung over her shoulders to watch it again. There were people screaming and running. One man was biting another man until he started bleeding everywhere. You could see the curtians, so the video was obviously being taken by someone who was hiding inside. One man wandered into view looking bloody and terrible. He fell and looked like he was dying. He was bleeding a lot. Then he got back up and ran straight for the window, smashing through it with his face. There was a ton of screaming and then the video turned off.

"Online people are saying its the end of the world, that people are coming back from the dead," Cassie informed her mother.

"Online people are idiots," Jessica told her daughters, "its just a stupid hoax. A bunch of film students probably made it." Then she turned to Desiree. "Its not real," she told her. And then to Cassie she said, "stop showing stuff like that to your sister." Both girls nodded, although the younger one still looked scared, so Jessica pulled her into her lap and held her, kissing her head and stroking her hair.

After she tucked her girls into bed, Jessica lay awake in her own bed. She had told the girls she knew the video was fake, but it had looked plenty real to her. Well, whatever it was, it was far away in another country, so it should be nothing she needed to worry about. Or thats what she told herself so she could sleep that night.