Dans eyes stung as pain swelled inside of his brain cavity. Opening them, disoriented, confused and afraid he put both his hands against the slick surface and pushed his front off the ground. He felt like he'd been hit with a concrete block, and his thoughts were muffled and blurry. Dan felt as if he were at home and had fallen out of the bed. Fear was replaced by comfort and obscurity by false placement. "Honey?" He asked, expecting to hear the sweet voice of his wife enter his ears a few seconds after his call. There was no reply.

He brought himself to his feet and stumbled to the wall to his left. Running one of his hands through his hair and placing another against the structure, leaning on it as his thoughts began to return to him. He realized he wasn't in his safe home with his wife and kids. There wasn't going to be Jennie's smile to greet and comfort him. There wasn't going to be Ginger's loving voice calling out to him. There wasn't going to be a sleep deprived but caring Jason to meet him either. What was there with him now was despair and silence.

The room was neat now, like your average downtown drug store. Everything was tidy, like nothing had been disturbed in a long while. "There's got to be someone else here." He spoke to himself, trying to calm his nerves as he gently rubbed his wounded leg a moment. He grit his teeth as the sharp, stinging pain ran up throughout his entire calf muscle. Closing his eyes he tried to contemplate what he was going to do, where he was going to go, and how he was going to get there now that he was injured.

Then, it hit him. He was in a drug store, with everything still on the shelves. "Well, duh Dan." He limped to his left and searched the shelves for some anti-biotic fluids. He found some after a few minutes of searching and grabbed a bandage that was lying on the shelf below the bottles of antibiotics.

He backed up and sat down against the wall behind him. Taking two fingers on each hand he slowly lifted his left bloody pants leg up, exposing the long laceration. Staring at his cut a few moments and then at the antibiotics, he continued this process for several minutes, dreading what had to come. "Here goes nothing.." He popped the cap off and poured the clear substance into the wound screaming at the top of his lungs as it did.

Jennie sat on her bed, worried about her gone away husband. The sheer confidence in her sons voice, like he knew something was wrong just bothered her. Dan had gone out on trips like this before and Jason never acted like this is. The only time her son ever had gotten upset was when he was about three and he didn't wanted his father to go away. That was just a child's love for their parent and not wanting them to leave in fear they may never come back. Jason was a lot older now and knew better. Yet, his demeanor was far greater and it was very unsettling.

She raised up a recently taken family photo that sat next to a lamp on her side of the bed. Dan and Jennie were standing behind Ginger and Jason and Dan had his hand on Jason's left shoulder and Jennie on Gingers. The background was that of a field of wildflowers with the sky as blue as the oceans water above them. "Please comeback soon sweetheart." She sat the picture down and turned her view to Dan's side of the bed. His reading glasses sat there and how she longed for him to be sitting there with a book in his hand about about now. "Please.."

Jason sat in his room as well, lying on his bed and looking toward the ceiling. "Dad, where are you?" He turned to his side and gripped his pillow. Looking out the window, the sky was not as bright as before, dark clouds covered it and the wind began to pick up. The tree which stood next to his window swayed with the gusts and its limbs scrapped against the glass. Rain was coming, that was for sure. "Where ever you are dad." He rotated back over and looked at the ceiling again. "Just be careful."

Dan panted as he pressed the large bandage across and onto his now clean cut. "Finally.." He pushed out a few sighs of relief and got back to his feet. "Feels a hundred percent better." He spoke to himself as he picked up his weapon from the ground and gripped it tight in hand. "Gotta move on." He twisted back around to the door and gripped the handle.

Outside it was as it used to be, ash falling and silence bliss. He was comfortable with that now after what he'd just encountered. Light and silent were better than dark and loud he guessed.

He had no clue of his whereabouts nor his vehicles. When it was pitch black he only wandered aimlessly in the dark and was in such a deep state of panic he hadn't payed any attention to his direction. "Guess Ill go strait."

Dan ventured forward into the mysterious town. To his left there were empty and abandoned shops and homes. He could see through the windows of one which seemed to have been an old furniture store at one time. The sign above it was so faded he hadn't the slightest idea of its name. To his right were all dull and seemingly empty brick homes. "What the hell happened to this town?"

He knelt his head down at his feet, debating on whether or not to investigate the shop to his left. "I've got no where else to go right now." He rotated his uniform motion toward the furniture shop. "I guess I'll go check in there. It's not like I've got a choice."

He began to notice as he walked in the direction of the shop how much he was talking to himself. It wasn't healthy to talk to yourself a lot and he knew that, but in this situation it kept him from going mad from sheer fright. Dan did it just to hear his own voice, something to break the tormenting reticence that plagued this hazy town.

Finally, he reached the entrance of the place and proceeded into it. There were many different lounge chairs at the left of the store in colors of red, brown, and black. There were different beds and such to his right, about one of each size for display. In front of him there were couches, nothing really special all together though.

"Why are so many things left here?" He went forward and brushed his hand against one of the couches backs. "Where did everyone go?" Dan continued to the back and walked past the counter, and came to a brown and red door. He turned the golden handle of it and peered into the dark room. "Damn." Unable to see anything, he reached for his front pocket and pulled out his flashlight. "Old friend? Who the hell.." He commented to himself again, still curious of who he could have known that could be in this place.

Shining his light around the dark area, he saw there were many other sets of living room furniture. The sets still wrapped in plastic even.

He heard rustling of it somewhere in the farthest corner of the room. He ran inside and closed the door behind him, not wanting whoever or whatever it was to escape his site. "Hello!?" There was nothing. "Hello!?" He shouted again as he flew his hands in all directions of the room to try and find the cause of the rustling. Again, there was the sound of plastic being ruffled and a new sound emerged, the sound of shoes.

This sound came from behind him and he flung himself around as the figure seemed to trip, falling to the earth with a loud thud. "Hey!" Dan turned his flashlight to the ground at the shadow.

"Please!" The woman covered her face from the bright light. "Don't hurt me!"

He knew that voice, that sad and pitiful voice. It was Mona. "You." He lowered his weapon and gazed down at her."What are you doing? Why did you take off like that and leave me to die!?"

She sat down on her front legs and cupped her face in her hands in a begging sort of position. "Please don't hurt me!" She lowered her back and began to cry, tears began to trickle past her hands and down her chin.

"Look." His anger dissipated and became replaced by compassion. Dan placed his hand on her shoulder and smiled. "You were afraid and you did something dumb." She took her hands away from her face and looked up at him. "We all make mistakes when were afraid."

"You're not mad at me after what I did?"

"In a place like this neither of us need anymore enemies." He reached out his hand for her to grab it, and she did and he pulled her up to her feet. "Just promise me you won't do something like that again."

"Promise." She said, brushing tears off of her face.

Mona was a pretty young woman, her eyes were green and she wore a casual short sleeved orange t-shirt with a yellow star in the middle and plain blue pants like Dan. Her tears began to dry up and for the first time since he had laid his eyes on her he could see a half smile on her face. Granted it wasn't full, but it was something.

"Let's get out of this room." He turned his light directly to their right at the door to the front room. "I don't feel comfortable being in the dark. Especially in this place." Mona nodded her head in approval and the two entered the front.

"So why are you here again?" Mona asked under her breath. They stood in the middle of the room near the couches.

"I was told that if I drove through this town it would cut my travel time in half." Dan laughed out loud, trying to make the best of a bad situation. "Wanted to get back to my family for the holidays a lot sooner than usual." He crossed his arms. "Guess I learned my lesson, some things are too good to be true!" He laughed for a moment but Mona kept the same sullen expression on her face. Dan stopped laughing and watched as she seemed to be off venturing in her own mind. "So you said you were looking for your sister?"

Her trance broken, she shook her head and glanced back up at him. "Yeah, that's why I'm here."

"What's her name?"

The seemingly innocent young woman glared down at her feet and frowned. "I don't know.."

He turned his head to the side, trying not to show sadness. "You don't know your own sisters name?"

Mona's heart filled with a mixture of anger, but was drowned with a heavy dose of woe. "We were young when we were separated."

Curious, he eyed back up at her to see she was still looking at her feet. "How young?"

"We were twins and both newborns."

"How do you remember her if you taken away at such a young age?"

"I..I don't know." Moan clutched her hands together and caressed them at a fast pace, expressing her discomfort. "She's trapped here somewhere."

"Trapped? Why?"

"They came, the townspeople." Mona closed her eyes. "They said she was a monster, a twisted fiend of darkness.. They locked her away.. Somewhere here." Putting her hands over her face again she spoke through them. "I've had dreams.. She calls out to me.. Screaming my name.. Mona! Mona! Help me! It hurts! Mona!" She started crying again, this time even worse than before.

Dan grabbed her by both shoulders and pulled her close, holding her tight in his arms. "It'll be alright!" His eyes began to well up with tears of pure grief for the young woman's misfortune. "We'll find her!" Mona reached across his back and buried her face in his chest and wept. "Don't you worry!"

After a few minutes she calmed down and let go of him. "Thanks...Dan."

"There we go." He patted her on the shoulder with the back of his hand and smiled. "Now come on, we've gotta-"

A deafening sound of glass shattering and then a shrilling scream of something behind them forcefully invaded the peacefulness of the room. Dan turned around to see a large, winged monster had broken in through the right display window. It had huge jagged like teeth and large dark wings. The thing didn't have much of a bottom half except for little nubs. "Get behind me Mona!" He turned back to where she was standing but nothing was there. "Mona!?" He looked back up at the flying monstrosity to see she that she was running out the door. "Hey! Wait!" In a matter of seconds, again, Mona had vanished from sight.

As he watched her run away, the monster flew down upon Dan and knocked him on his back. "Son of a-" He jumped back to his feet and fired at it. Missing, it turned back at him and at full speed came at back to grab him. He fired off another round and it fell at his feet. It tried to bite at his legs in its wounded state but Dan backed away from it quickly as it did. Nudging his arm on a chair to his right a large grin emerged on his face. Clasping both ends of it, he brought the chair up over his head and down onto the sick creatures. It wailed and hollered in its dying state before finally going silent.

He slammed his hand on the front of the chair in anger of her running off in such a dangerous place alone. He ran out of the empty store back into the streets and turned in multiple circles, searching for any signs of life. "Mona!" He shouted for a few minutes but she never once returned any of his calls with one of her own, she was long gone.

"Guess it's back to searching alone." Dan sighed and took deep breaths trying to get himself back together. When he finally did, he reluctantly pushed on and with all of his heart he hoped this way was the right way, the way to true light, the way to freedom, the way to his family.