***This is a flashback chapter, before the apocalypse***

I first heard of a contagious sickness on the news. It didn't seem like too much to worry about.

Not at first anyway.

I carried on with my life. Notice how I don't say normal life. I was part wolf. My mom's side of the family had wolf blood in them, so we could transform. My dad's side was human and normal. My mom never told my dad about her secret until after my mom had me. I would accidentally change into a white wolf when I was a baby, so she had to tell him. My mom also taught me how to control the ability before I could go into school.

This morning I was eating the rest of some cereal I had poured for myself. The news was on again, and my dad kept brushing this 'sickness' as he called it 'just another thing people will over react about'.

The news lady spoke about the infected people having 'cannibalistic tendencies'. When I heard about that I brought my gaze up to the T.V. across the couch I was sitting on. I lost my appetite when a video of one of them was brought up and pushed my bowl of cereal on the coffee table away from me.

"What a load of bull," my dad says. He appears from his bedroom and rolls his eyes at the T.V. He scowls in my direction and I choose to ignore it. He doesn't like me; he thinks I'm a freak of nature I am, but it does not help that my father thinks that, too. My mom tells me to ignore it, that it's just something to get over and he needs time. It's been 11 years. He should be over it by now. I don't know why she ever fell in love with him to begin with, but she did.

My dad come into the room and lay on the couch next to me. He yelled at my mom to get him something, which my mom replied with a sigh and did what he asked anyway. She came over to him, crossing my path with an open beer in her hand. I close my eyes and roll them behind their closed eyelids.

My dad is so pathetic.

He grabs the beer from her, almost making my mom fall down to him. He takes a large swig of it.

So pathetic.

I can't stand him half the time. He reeks of beer and cigarettes all the time and doesn't do anything about it. When he isn't drinking, he wants more beers and can be abusive when we don't do what he wants us to do. I wince at the horrific memories he's inflicted on my mom and me.

"Sarah," my dad speaks to my mom, "get me another one."

My mouth gaped; he was done with that already?

"I need to go pick some more up, I'll be back in ten minutes," my mom says, grabbing her purse and keys. She sighs as she walks out the door, and gives me a worried expression as she shuts it.

I know why she had that look, so I stand up from my chair, and hurriedly try to get to my room before he can stop me.

But I never got that far.

As I stood up, my dad did too and took my arm with much force. I winced knowing it'd leave a bruise.

"Little brat," he spat, "making your mother do everything around the house, and then fleeing to your room when she leaves so you don't have to do anything. Ungrateful, you are."

His words began to slightly slur, and I knew the alcohol was beginning to take effect.

I couldn't stand him. He thought I never helped around the house? Has he ever looked in the mirror?

His disgusting breath hovered in my face, and I pushed him away and held my arms in front of me so he couldn't grab them. However, he grabs a part of my shirt and turns me around.

"What do you want, father?" I hiss at him. I wont ever call him 'dad'. Never have. He doesn't deserve that from me.

"Don't you dare use that tone with me," he shoves me backward into a portrait on the wall, and the nails keeping it up scratch my back painfully. I transform into a wolf, and am on the ground and walking to my room. My father screams follows after me. I trot into my room and hide under my bed. When my father comes in, he looks around for a minute and then realizes I'm under the bed. He pushes the bed so it reveals me, and he grabs at me. He picks me up by the neck, and since I'm so light he can toss me around like a rag doll. I land in the corner of my dresser and howl in pain. He smirks and kicks me. I look up at him with a little fear, but mostly anger.

In my long mirror hanging on the wall I could see some red blood stain my coat of fur, but that wasn't anything I was worried about. I few bandages could fix that for me. It's not like I don't do it every night anyway.

"Look at me, you freak!" he roars. I turn my gaze back up at him, and I see his nose hairs.

Leave it to me to notice the stupidest things at the worst time.

I look at him with an expression that asked him, what do you want?

He grunt, kicks me in the side, then, feeling accomplished with himself, leaves. I don't know if I could ever understand what the logic is behind his abusiveness. Sometimes I think he just does it when he's bored. There isn't even a reason behind it, like tonight. It doesn't make sense to me.

I transform back, and lock the door so he can't come in. I look at myself in the mirror, and take a few tissues to wipe off some of the red blood from my back with some difficulty. Seeing all of the scars littered on my back from previous abusings makes me cringe at the terrible memories. More are soon to come, I think sadly.

I tie my shoulder length hair into a tie, but some of it came out of its tie from being too short.

With I smile, I think, I cant wait until my hair grows out! It'll be so pretty!

I look into my own eyes and try to see what others find so 'beautiful' in them. They are a piercing blue that frightens even me. The color that only color contacts can provide. I'm constantly asked if I wear them. Or if I dye my hair.

I'm ten years old! Why would I be dyeing my hair?! That would ruin it!

Walking over to my bed, I nudge it back to the place it was before my father moved it. I lie down on it and stare up at the ceiling for a minute but my back hurts too much so I roll onto my side and stare at the door, wondering if my father will come back in again. I dozed off at one point and wake when I hear the front door of the house open. My mom's finally home.

Yay! I think. Running back out into the living room, I see my mom's blue eyes widen with fear while she clutches her arm. Some blood escapes through her fingers and I immediately want to blame my father.

My mom's words prove otherwise, though, "one of the things bit me! The things told about on the TV. Just attacked me!" he voice sounded weak and hoarse. Did she lose that much blood, or… I heard that after you get bit, you die.

"Mom, how 'bout you lie down," I tell her. I take the six-pack of beer in her one hand and place it on the ground. I help my mom lie down on the couch, and feel her forehead. It's burning up. But how could a bite cause a fever? Maybe the person who bit her was infected with some type of sickness. I ran into the kitchen, taking the beer along the way and shoved it into the fridge. I snatch a hand towel and run it under freezing water. I wring out the unnecessary water and take it back to my mom and lay it on her head. My dad just stands in shock behind me, not knowing what to do.

"Hey, happy birthday" mom says weakly, "I got you something," she reaches in her pocket and hands me her keys to her car. "I forgot to grab it on my way in, do you wanna go grab it?"

I had almost forgot about my birthday. Today's event's made me forget, I guess.

I nod and leave out the door. I see my mom and father talking through the window. My dad looks emotional, which is unlike him. The only person he ever gets like that around is my mom. Somehow, sometimes, he can really care for her and not be a stupid drunk. Something must be seriously wrong for that to happen though.

I open the silver door to my mom's civic and see a box with a bow attached to it. I smile and pick it up. Heading back inside, I hear my father crying and shouting about mom.

"What happened?" I shout when I get back in.

He's kneeling next to her on the couch, and my mom is completely still. I drop the box in surprise and dash to her side. I take her pulse and feel nothing. A horrible gut-wrenching feeling settled in my body and I pinched my arm to see if I were dreaming.

My father started throwing around things like the lamp and a glass on the ground in fury. One of the shards of glass hit my arm, but I didn't even flinch because I was too scared to. I sat there, not sure how to react. I plucked my phone from my pocket, and dialed 911.

"911, what's your emergency?" the receiver answered. At that moment, I saw my mom's arm rise up her arm and open her eyes. When I looked at them, they were white and had faded pupils. I tilted my head in confusion, and my eyebrows furrowed. She stood up and growled, and I jumped back, and dropped my phone.

"Hello?" I heard the receiver say from the phone. My mom walked towards my dad and I with lazy steps, and reached out. At first I was flooded with relief, but that was before I knew what she was doing now.

I had got away just in time but my dad didn't. My mom's teeth sunk themselves into my dad's flesh, and I just stood in the same place.

My father let out deafening screams, ordering me to help him, and about being afraid to die.

I should help him, I think to myself. But the morbid and sick part of my head told me, he deserves this.

"HELP ME, DESTINY!" he screeches. He's on the ground with a blood pool surrounding him. My mom just keeps eating him and his flesh. No tears escape my eyes for my dad's death. But my mom was another story.

To see her in this form was heart-breaking. She was one of them. She was a zombie, just like in the movies. She didn't stop either, she just fed on him, his skin ripped of his body and she ate it like it was an endless buffet of free food.

The thing that looked like my mother seemed to be done feeding on my mother, and it stood up to face me. Her mouth was covered in blood, some of which dripped down from her chin to her white blouse. Instinctively, I grabbed the closest thing by me that happened to be a glass vase. I tried to nudge her away from me with the vase but she kept coming.

"Mom, this isn't you what are you doing?" I said between tears. She pounced on me and I had to hit her over the head with the vase, hoping to knock her out.

Sadly, the only thing it did was making her angrier, and I saw red blood stream down my mom's face and onto the vase. I hit her again, crying about how I was hurting the person I loved. The vase made a dent in her face, and blood now splattered mine. She slumped to the ground like a doll, and finally stopped breathing.

My mother and fathers' blood was on the floor, and my feet stepped in it when I walked back to the box my mom had in the car. I picked it up and opened the box, finding a pair of black combat boots inside.

Taking off my converse, I slid on the boots with ease. I looked back on this morning while looking at my dying father and my now dead twice mom. I take my mom's phone from her purse and my dad's pocket knife from the drawer in the kitchen.

I left, never looking back to the house I once lived again.