Zoey huddles in the farthest corner of the attic away from the door, hugging her knees close to her chest.
Watching the door and listening.
Only silence.
As it has been for the last three hours.
Still, her instinct tells her to not to trust it knowing full well that if the others are in the house, they are waiting for a sound. Any sound from her, and she is doomed.
So, she waits.
She feels her eyelids droop and shakes her head sending the long strands of dark brown hair across her skinny shoulders.
She must stay awake.
Letting her mind drift, her thoughts turn to her own family. How long has it been since she lost them?
Her father was the first to go.
His masculine face flashes through her mind. His blue eyes wild with fear. His voice barely above a whisper as his words slurred in between wheezes and coughing fits as he spoke to them one last time through the tiny screen of Mom's cell.
"Darla, you must take the kids and head over to the Whitakers," he implored, "they have an underground bunker."
Mom slowly nodded as her hand that held the phone shook, "Y-yes."
It was only two days prior when life was normal, and good. Zoey had just gotten home from school and was greeted by her two younger siblings, Jon her annoying brother who recently celebrated his third birthday, and Taylor, her sister who discovered how to walk one week earlier. They gathered excitedly around her as she hugged each one.
"Hi ya you two!" she beamed down on them. Annoying and all, she still loved them.
It was then she heard stern voices emanating from the kitchen.
"I have to go," her Dad was saying.
Something slammed down on a counter.
"Why does it have to be you, Rog? Why can't they send someone else?" Her mother's voice quivered noticeably.
"There is no one else." Came a somber reply.
Since the previous night, it was all over the news on how a large meteorite which had gone undetected slammed into the earth's atmosphere and fell to the Pacific Ocean. Dad was an astrobiologist and a professor at the local college, and she knew he'd published several studies and articles in various scientific journals.
In her eye, he was her hero whom she desired to follow by one day studying Astrobiology in college. Yes, she may only be thirteen, and many considered her too young to really know what to do when she grew up including her mom, but she did know. And she intended to show them all on how serious she really was.
"But they have other scientists on the team," Mom continued to protest, "why can't the CDC rely on their input?"
There was a long pause before Dad spoke, "It doesn't quite work that way and you know it," his voice laced with frustration, "the Chinese government would not be asking for help if this wasn't a dire situation."
A few moments later, Dad walked out into the entry way where Zoey still stood. He grabbed the two giggling youngsters and squeezed, "You two be good for your mother, ok?"
They nodded and dashed away.
He turned to her. His eyes, dark.
"Mom will need your help."
She remembers nodding, "Yes, Daddy."
He hugged her briefly, and then was gone.
That night, the news recounted the story about the meteorite, and added how a Chinese naval fleet was sent to investigate and a short time later, all contact with them was lost. They reported that the CDC was sending in a team to evaluate what had transpired.
Zoey wanted to stay up and continue watching the ongoing reports, but Mom sent her to bed. Her personal cell was confiscated the day before as punishment for bringing it to a class, so she wasn't able to follow what was going on. She reluctantly fell asleep.
As she entered the kitchen the next morning, Mom was no where to be seen. She peered around the corner and saw her sitting on the couch in front of the flat screen television.
"Mom?"
No response.
"Where's Jon? Taylor?"
"I sent them over to the Connors," she sniffed.
She now stood behind the sofa and listened in on what the journalist was saying. A string of words moved across the bottom of the screen:
Breaking News: CDC lost contact with their team of scientists.
"To recap. Approximately two hours ago, the CDC lost contact with a team of scientists sent to investigate why the Chinese naval fleet had gone quiet. Just prior, the scientists reported finding scores of bodies. Their deaths undetermined."
She remembers the terrible sinking feeling as she wondered if something had happened to Daddy.
An hour later, he called on Mom's cell telling her to take them over to the Whitakers, a family on the other side of the subdivision.
The rest of that day was a blur as Mom had her scrambling to pack only necessities for Jon and Taylor, and they then ran over to grab her siblings before heading to the Whitakers. The old man took them through the small house down to the basement where there was a secret door behind the shelving unit against the cemented wall. In the hidden area the size of tiny utility room, there was another door which revealed a hole in the flooring. Down a long rung of the metallic ladder, they entered the bunker.
In this bunker no larger than her living room she lived with seven other people for what seemed like an eternity. Since she was just a kid, they confined her to the bunk room which she shared with her siblings and two other kids. All under the age of five.
She tried to ignore their bantering and idiotic playfulness by delving deep in her VR unit. A Christmas gift from her grandparents. She only had time to grab a few games, but it was better than nothing.
Occasionally, she come back to reality and would hear the adult conversation in the next room. They spoke of scary stuff that were happening on the surface.
"Everything's covered in this purplish haze which they say is what sickening people."
"Hospitals are overrun with the sick. People are bleeding from all of their orifices."
"They're calling this the lithoconidia virus."
"Death rate is 100 percent."
"It's killing all the adults, but the kids are being affected differently."
"They are calling the infected kids the acrimonics."
Acrimonics? To her it almost sounded like kids were being turned into some kind of cyborgs.
That was far, far from the truth as she'd later learned.
After remaining over ninety days in the bunker, the elder Whitaker went to the surface for a quick survey and came back to say that the purple stuff was completely gone.
"What did the last transmission say? That it all dissipated within three weeks after it fell?" one of the older women said.
'I don't trust it," Mom replied.
"Since I just breathed the air up there, let's wait for a few days to see if I get sick," Mr. Whitaker said, "if I don't, then we all go up."
He never became ill, so true to his word, the adults went up first before coming back for the rest.
Zoey was the last to reach the surface and was stunned. The streets were a mess littered with abandoned cars many which had been burned out. Most of the homes had shattered windows.
As she followed her mother and siblings, she noticed the spray-painted marks on each house's door. Several doors were marked with a large X symbol. There were a few that were marked with an X that had a box surrounding it. A house here and there had X with numbers 2/2 or 3/3 on them.
When they finally reached home, their door had a large red X on it.
"Stay close to me," Mom muttered before opening it.
She followed a moment later.
The house looked like someone had came in and ransacked it. Items strewn everywhere with furniture overturned, and the kitchen emptied of food and essential items.
That night, they slept together in the guest room. Since there was no power, Mom lit several candles which casted eerie shadows on the walls. Jon and Taylor were laid in the bed while Mom created a makeshift bedding on the floor for the two of them.
She was sleeping until a shrilling scream tore through the silence, startling them all. Taylor began to cry but quieted as soon as Jon embraced her.
"Wait here," Mom told her and walked out of the bedroom.
Several moments passed, she continued to wait. Then hours passed, but Mom never returned.
The three of them waited until dawn before stirring.
She remembers tiptoeing down the stairs and into the living room with Jon and Taylor in tow. Mom was nowhere to be found.
"Where's Mommy?" Jon whispered.
She shrugged, "I'm not sure. Stay here with your sister. I'm going to look outside."
Her brother's blue eyes were wide as he nodded silently.
The front door was unlocked as she slowly opened it and nearly shrieked.
On the ground was the bloodied body of Mom. She was faced down, but it appeared as if something tried to tear her apart as pieces of clothing and flesh spread around her.
Suddenly, a woman appeared. It was Mrs. Connors, their next door neighbor. Her clothes were disheveled, her face had streaks of dirt.
"Wh-" Zoey started to speak when the woman rushed up and covered her mouth with a hand, shaking her head.
"No sound," Mrs. Connors mouthed.
Zoey nodded once. The woman followed her in to the house and quietly closed the door.
"You all must come over to our house," Mrs. Connors whispered, "it'd be safer."
She wanted to know what exactly happened to Mom, "what did this to my mom?"
"It was the Acrimonics," the woman replied.
Kids?
"Come, we'll go out the back door," Mrs. Connors gathered up Taylor in to her arms, and then took Jon's hand.
She hesitated for a second before she followed them.
Mrs. Connors peered out the screen door off the kitchen.
"Looks clear," and turned the knob.
What happened next, she has been trying to forget.
The Acrimonics were not cyborgs but flesh and blood kids. But they were no longer kids, but something else. Blinded by the virus, they moved in packs, hunting down the uninfected, killing, maiming, tearing like predators in a frenzy.
Mrs. Connors fought them off Jon and Taylor for as long as she could before she disappeared in the sea of writhing bodies.
Her brother and sister never had a chance. Their screams and the awful sound of flesh being torn from their little bodies still haunt her whenever she closed her eyes.
Tears streaming down her face as she stares at the door across the attic. With an arm, she wipes them away, sniffling.
She's been running and hiding since.
What's the point, really? They will eventually get her.
She feels so tired. Tired of surviving.
Why bother?