She Gave Me You

A poem this time.

[WP] "Show me that old black-and-white wedding picture, Dad. Tell me your story."

Beautiful was an unobtainable idea
Yet she was the embodiment of it.
Perfection has always been unobtainable
Yet it had be obtained that day.
She was like a snowflake,
floating down the aisle wrapped in filmy lace.
It was a dream
That I never wanted to wake up from.
I was supposed to have her forever
since we had beaten so much.
And her life was stolen
by a .15 blood alcohol level.
By a teenager convinced
Of immortality.
But she gave me a gift.
She gave me you.

Swallowed Whole

I was inspired by Ireland this time as opposed to Poland and Russia.

[WP] Settlers named it 'The Maw'. If only they knew how accurate that name was.

They had all heard the rumors as they grew up. To stay away from the forest. When people ventured too far into the woods, they had a tendency to never come back. The villagers of Coolavin called it The Craos or the Maw, a curse brought to the land by the Fomoiri, ancient supernatural beings, who had been forced back underground and behind the veil. Niamh O’Boland knew better than most. Her grandmother had lost her youngest brother to it when she was a young girl, or so she said.

“Stay away from the forest,” Mamó would tell her. “It will swallow you up and Ankou will take you away in his cart to the land of the dead.”

Niamh was not so sure if she believed such nonsense but her mother and grandmother’s warnings were enough to keep her from stepping too far into the silky shade of the trees. It had become a game to the young folk in the village to see who would be brave enough to venture further into the wood. It was said Lugh, legendary hero and High King of Ireland, had some of his troops lead invading enemies to The Craos to be swallowed up. She would soon believe her grandmother’s forewarnings.

Niamh woke early and dressed in a freshly laundered leine, slipping her favorite dark gray wool dress over the other garment. She padded barefoot into the cottage’s small kitchen to snag an apple out of the larder. Her mother was there, carding wool to spin into thread.

“Maidin mhaith,” Niamh said before taking a bite of her apple.

“You’re up early today,” her mother said, not looking up from her task.

The younger woman shrugged her shoulders.

“I’m to meet Máire in the village,” Niamh said, running fingers through her mass of black curls to break up the tangles.

Her mother looked up and rolled her eyes.

“She’ll be wanting to gawk at the blacksmith’s boy, I imagine,” she said with disapproval in her voice. “She should know better than that as she is betrothed to someone else.”

“It matters not to Máire,” Niamh said. “She likes her fantasies.”

“I hope you don’t encourage her.”

“Mam!” she whined, shutting her blue eyes with frustration. “It isn’t my business nor is it yours. Máire can get into trouble by herself. I’m going to be late. Where’s Da?”

Her mother waved her hand toward the windows.


“Out somewhere in the fields with the sheep. I think one of the ewes is giving birth,” she said. “Your brother is helping him.”

“Tell them I said hello,” Niamh called over her shoulder as she raced down the dirt path towards the village.

When she was out of sight of her mother, she paused to kilt her dress up in order to run the rest of the way to the square. She loved the freedom running gave her, even if her mother disapproved. Her bare feet slapped against the worn path as the village loomed ahead. She stopped again to put her dress in order and to dab the sheen of sweat off her forehead. Niamh strolled into the village square, looking past the vendors hawking their wares to find her friend.

“Hello, Niamh,” said one of the vendors.

“Hello, Brigid,” she said. “Have you seen Máire around?”

The weaver looked worried.

“I saw her slip into the forest,” Brigid said. “Dubhán came back from there not but 5 minutes ago. I didn’t get a chance to tell anyone until now. You’d best go after her. When that daft blacksmith is involved, crying or babies are sure to follow.”

Niamh huffed in annoyance and stealthily made her way into the forest. All she needed was to have someone report to her parents she had been in it. She traveled deeper and deeper, becoming more and more uneasy. Every bird call sounded ominous and she jumped as a twig cracked loudly underneath her foot. She needed to find Máire and get out of the cursed forest.

She found her best friend sitting on a boulder, crying loudly.

“What happened?” Niamh asked, going to her and taking her hand.

“I met Dubhán here,” Máire said through hiccupping breaths. “I thought he had finally noticed me. He had left me a note last night to meet him here in the morning. But he was awful. He told me I was an ugly cow and needed to stay away from the smithy because I was scaring away customers.”

Niamh patter Máire’s shoulder as she sobbed.

“I wish I were as pretty as you, Niamh,” she said, green eyed rimmed with red and her cheeks blotchy. “Mam says you’re pretty enough for a faerie prince to steal.”

“Oh what nonsense,” Niamh said, waving her hand. “You’re beautiful. Don’t listen to Dubhán. He’s a dolt. He may be pretty to look at and have muscles from smithing, but there isn’t much going on up there. He’ll disappoint whoever he marries in more way than one.”

She knocked against Máire’s head with her knuckles as her friend gave a gargled chuckle.

“C’mon. Let’s go home.”

As the girls stood, Niamh felt the ground roll beneath her feet. Máire stumbled forward and turned to look behind her. A look of absolute terror crossed her face. Niamh felt the little hairs on the back of her neck stand up and she slowly turned as well. The land was ripping apart, opening a great rift with jagged earthen teeth visible.

“The Craos,” Máire whispered in horror.

“Go!” Niamh yelled, pushing her friend forward. “Run to the village!”

Her red-haired friend was frozen in wide-eyed panic. She wouldn’t budge. If she didn’t move, the both of them would disappear. Niamh pushed Máire as hard as she could before the ground gave beneath her and she was swallowed whole. She fell down in the deep, dark blackness, the echo of Máire screaming her name ringing in her ears. The descent felt like it took years until she had the wind knocked out of her as she landed hard against the ground. Niamh groaned as she pushed herself up, sand digging under her nails. The walls gave off a faint bluish bioluminescence but she could not make anything out in the dim light. She pulled her knees into her chest and did her best to suppress the sob in her throat. She had been eaten by The Craos.


Craos means maw in Gaelic, while Mamó means grandmother. The Formori were terrible creatures that were battled by Ireland's legendary hero and high king, Lugh. Ankou is a Celtic god of the dead, normally seen as an hooded figure in a cart. Maidin mhaith is good morning in Gaelic. Coolavin is a barony in County Sligo in Ireland and I did my best to keep the clothing of Niamh authentic to the historic time period I imagined this story to be in.

Australia

This one is kind of fun and definitely short.

[WP] There was one little problem with the alien invasion. They landed in Australia.

"Slatter, it's too hot."

"Doona, shut up."

Silver and burning vitrol slid down Doona's abdomen. She was totally knackered and Slatter was an idiot.

"Slatter, we're going to shrivel up out here and Tatorel is never going to be able to invade this bloody planet."

Slatter's giant third eye on the back of his head rolled to look at Doona.

"Shut it. Tatorel is the one who picked this place."

This place had sounded so nice when they looked at a human atlas. Doona hadn't expected the heat and the venomous animals they had encountered in their two days in the barren, red expanse. Thankfully for Slatter and Doona, they were more venomous than the animals they faced.

"This place gives me the collywobbles," Doona whined.

"Good Gratish, Doona," Slatter muttered before saying. "Fucking Australia."

Sacrifice of Evil

More writing prompts. These are becoming addicting.

[WP] You're at a funeral. The deceased was an evil and terrible person but his last act was one of pure selflessness and good. You are to give his eulogy.

I shuffled the few sheets of paper I had on the podium and stared out at the crowd gathered at St. Uriel's. They stared at me with a mix of loathing and anticipation. A family member or two was crying but they were the only ones. I cleared my throat and began.

"Everyone knew who Nestor was. And anyone who knew Nestor know most of his actions were not becoming."

I heard a snort from someone in the crowd and, though I couldn't see everyone, I imagined there were plenty of eye rolls. Nestor Callen had been a straight up terrible person. Violent and narcissistic, the man hidden in the casket next to him had committed terrible crimes,

"I guess the best way to describe Nestor was as a terrible human being. As a soldier, we thought he was a hero until we learned about his war crimes when he came home. The destruction and murder of innocents was something he had been proud of. And his cycle of violence followed him home.

"Nestor was volatile, hurting those closest to him in unimaginable. But while he is one of the most hated men in the country, his last act was one of sacrifice and selflessness."

I thought back to earlier in the week. I had been there. I had witnessed how Nestor saved a quarter of a million people who had been trapped in a soccer stadium without realizing it. The government, on the other hand, had known and was desperate for a solution.

"Nestor was one of 1,000 military inmates pulled for a lottery to help prevent terrorists from killing 250,000 people attending a soccer game. He was the only one to volunteer. Rather than let chance pick someone's fate, he stood up and said he would be the one to make that sacrifice. Given a jet to take down a missile, Nestor could have taken it and run away. He could have left those people to die. But he didn't. He took the fighter jet and collided with the missile, sacrificing himself so 250,000 other people could live."

I looked up and my voice broke.

"Call him what you will, but Nestor Callen was always brave. He was hated, but he his last actions were that of a hero. Say what you want of him, but I will thank him for saving my wife and daughter."

Wolf in Hiding

So, I just joined reddit and my boyfriend suggested I look into a writing prompt subreddit or whatever they are called.

This prompt seemed extremely interesting to me so I figured I would finally post something on my writing blog seeing as I've been unbelievably neglectful for a very long time. As I write more stories to go with the prompts, I'll post them here.

[WP] If a prisoner dies, the balance of their sentence must be served by their next of kin. Families of criminals serving particularly long terms will go to almost any length to keep incarcerated relatives alive, but how far is too far?

Kazimir Volkov smiled cruelly at his sister through the scratched and cloudy glass, years of malice lighting his eyes. He had always hated her. The perfect golden child and the delight of the entire family. He had been a black sheep from the moment he was born. Asher heard the whispers of his relatives and the rest of the world. “Not right in the head” was the term they used so casually and so, the family ignored him. But he had made them pay attention in the end. He had made everyone pay attention. He became the wolf and destroyer he was named for. But his dear perfect sister was a sly and sneaking wolf in her own right, hiding secrets in plain sight.

“Hello, little sister,” Kazimir said as she sat down and placed the prison phone up to her ear.

Ekaterina Volkov stared at her brother for several seconds before saying, "Privet."

Kazimir tsked her, looking wounded.

"Reverting to our mother tongue, Ekaterina?" he asked. "And so short. Is this how you greet your only family?

“Last time I checked, you were a big reason for that,” she said lightly.

Yes, Kazimir thought with pleasure. He was indeed the reason his little sister was the only family he had left. He was a wolf and a destroyer of peace. And destroy he did. He had smashed his immigrant parents’ American Dream the same way he smashed their skulls in one moonless night. Then, covered in the blood of those who gave him life, he stalked and killed the rest of his family in the dark of the night.

Ekaterina’s screams waking him up the next morning had been like listening to a symphony of angels. He hadn’t even changed out of his bloody clothing before crawling into bed and he didn’t bother to change when the police dragged him to the station, charging him with several counts of murder.

“Stop playing around, Kazimir,” Ekaterina said roughly. “You are the one who called me to come. Tell me what you wanted to tell me so I can leave.”

“I come bearing you a great gift,” Kazimir said with almost fanatical joy. “You and this blessed world will soon be rid me.”

He watched with sadistic pleasure as his sister registered his words, panic and fear building in her blue eyes.

“Da,” he said with a nod and a smile. “Apparently I have only several weeks to live.  According to the doctors, I have advanced pancreatic cancer. I trust that is enough time to get your affairs in order.”

“You’re lying,” Ekaterina said, breathing heavily as the weight of her future came rushing in.

Several years ago, in a misguided effort to minimize crime and ensure justice was served completely, the United States president signed an unprecedented bill into law. The law required an immediate family member take the place of an inmate in prison if that inmate died before their sentence was up. The controversial law once in effect, drastically reduced crime but ripped the innocent families of the criminals apart.

Kazimir saw Ekaterina wrack her brain for a way out. He has made sure there wasn’t one. It hadn’t mattered that he had slaughtered his family, leaving his sister an orphan. The law did not care that she was a victim. She would now be one of guilty.

“They will not put me in here,” she said uneasily. “I am the victim.”

“Oh, dear sister, you overestimate how much this government cares,” Kazimir said silkily. “They don’t care. You will now be victim and criminal all in one.”

“This is not possible,” his little sister exclaimed.

“I’m afraid it is,” he said. “I checked the law. There is no provision or amendment that prevents you from serving out the rest of my sentence even if you are the victim. And too bad for you. I still have 133 years left. I guess it’s a good thing I don’t have little nieces and nephews running around yet.”

Ekaterina felt numb and cold. As a child, she had always tried to give her brother and his strangeness the benefit of the doubt. She had tried to be a protector even though she had been much younger. His violence and anger had gotten even worse when they immigrated to the United States. If she wanted to save her life and that of her future child, she would have to become the criminal she never wanted to be. And she would have to call upon the darker side of herself to ensure her survival. The side that was her mother’s legacy and biggest secret.

“Baiu baiushki baiu ne lojisya a krayu..." Ekaterina whispered with as much venom as she had, something otherworldly sparking in her eyes.

Or else the wolf will grab you and drag you under a cranberry bush. It was a line from a Russian lullaby their mother used to sing to them and now she was going to use it as a threat. There was no way she would serve a sentence used to put away the killer of her family. Her big brother had another thing coming. Kazimir’s eyes widened as they rested on her upturned palm, noting the blood red aura pooling there. He looked up and saw the same color reflected in her eyes, his own dread taking root. Ekaterina had been busy these last few years.

“Ved’ma,” her brother said with a combination of awe and disgust. Witch.

“Baba Yaga is coming for you tonight,” she hissed, pressing her hand to the glass and sending a ball of red magic through the window.

The ball of light hit Kazimir in the middle of the chest, immediately draining him of all warmth. He placed his right hand on the place the magic had disappeared into, stunned at what his sister had just done to him. He glanced around at the people surrounding him to see if they had noticed the magic. She had somehow cloaked the red aura and he looked up at her in abject horror. She had just doomed him to an eternal life of servitude to a nightmare. Baba Yaga would delight in his suffering for the next thousand years.

“I can’t just disappear,” Kazimir said desperately. “You would still have to replace me in here.”

Ekaterina smiled cruelly.

“Oh, I don’t think so, dear brother. I’ve got this worked out,” she said. "Dasvidaniya."

She stood, hung up the phone and strode out of the room in the prison. She could hear her brother howling her name through the glass, spitting curses at her in Russian. Ekaterina didn't bother to look back. She dialed a number on her cell phone.

"Alexi," she said, starting her car. "I need you to find me a man who looks remarkably similar to my brother. He's going to take his place in prison."

~~~~~

I don't know why I wanted to go with characters that were distinctly Russian. It could be that I was inspired by the new Captain America movie that I saw earlier today, but I had decided they would be Russian way before that. I don't know, there's something that just drew me to it. The magical aspect is what came to me on my way home. Enjoy. Also, I had to look up a lot of Russian words for a minor prompt so I think that makes me crazy.

Children of Monsters

Beginning of a story. I think my mother worries about what she finds in her Google search sometimes. When my laptop was out of commission, I was looking up prisons and all sorts of things a young female typically doesn't look up.

This concept comes from the idea of what would happen when the children of two famous murders meet after one moves into a small town. That's probably the worst description ever but hey. I'll figure it out eventually. Story is entitled "Children of Monsters."

Prologue

                People always ask kids like us how could we not know. It always makes me want to smack the person who asked me that. Why on earth would what my father did in his spare time have anything to do with me? That stupid question can also be reversed. Look at all the kids who became killers. They snap and shoot up a school or the stab their ex-boyfriend or girlfriend.

                How could those kids’ parents not realize how tightly they were wound and that it was only a matter of time before they snapped? And it isn’t like my father would come home covered blood. He conducted his “business” elsewhere and made sure to clean himself up. He was a charmer, a sweet-talking Southern gentleman with an appealing accent and a bright smile. It didn’t hurt that he was good-looking. He wasn’t stupid and he knew how to make everything work for him. A successful businessman with charisma, a tragic past, and good looks. It was like honey attracting ants. It made women flock to him.

                He was a large, tanned man with floppy sandy blonde hair, piercing eyes as blue as the summer sky, straight white teeth, and a crooked smile that brought out his dimples. It was the dimples that got them every time. Women loved my father’s dimples, just like boys couldn’t resist mine. I look a lot like my father, but had my mother’s petite build. My looks were really the only thing that worked in my favor, unlike my father’s brilliant charm.

                I only once ever saw what he did, when I was very little. An unfortunate fact that came out during his trial, making boys seek me out even more so than my reputation. After my mother had died, he had tried to play both mom and dad without much luck. I was never really truly scared of him, but he had a fierce and nasty temper that always kept me on my toes. I tried to never cross that line that made him angry. It was that pent up anger that made his crimes so brutal.

                The media gave my father the name that the whole world knows him by. They called him the Alabama Butcher because of the way he would cut up his victims, as if he had no regard for human life, which he didn’t. It was always bloody and vicious and violent, blood splashed on walls, throats slashed, and severed limbs arranged in gruesome patterns. His hunting grounds and kill zones spanned the country and it was suspected that he had murdered several women abroad when he would travel on business. The police and FBI had shown me crime scene photos when my dad was on the run, trying to get me to talk. Even if I had known where he was, I wouldn’t have told them anyway. Besides my inherent mistrust of the police and the fact that my dad may have been a colossal jerkwad a lot of the time, I still loved him and he was my dad after all.

                My life became a media spectacle after his picture was splashed across every major news network all over the world. All my life I had been just me.  A normal, run of the mill, Southern, sometimes daddy’s girl. Overnight, I became Mitchell “The Alabama Butcher” Anderson’s daughter. The daughter of a serial killer. Being identified as the Butcher’s daughter sucked. I would hear whispers follow me as I would walk down the hall in school, completely ostracized by ninety-nine point nine percent of the school. The other point zero one percent were my two best friends, Kimber and Mac, the weird kid in my forensics class who knew I had seen the crime scene photos, and the school freak who was obsessed with my father’s “artistry” as he called it. Which he harassed me about until he was admitted into rehab for drugs. That officially launched me firmly into my status as the school’s biggest freak. I should have just dropped out.

                I hated being the Butcher’s daughter. It wasn’t exactly flattering. And I hated living with my father’s older, chain-smoking sister who refused to believe that her baby brother was a murderer, let alone the Alabama Butcher. I never even bothered to tell her that her precious baby brother had been the one to break my arm the year before. I later found out that was the night Larissa Miller had gotten away from my dad, leaving him with no one to take his rage out on. I mistakenly had chosen that night to sneak into my house at three in the morning, a common practice that he normally didn’t care about. He was waiting for me with a backhand and a firm shove down my loft bedroom’s spiral staircase. I told everyone else and the overly curious emergency room nurses that I had tripped over my cat and fell down the stairs. It was mostly true, except that I had help falling. And we didn’t own a cat. He felt terrible after, bought me my 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS, and promised to never hurt me again, but our relationship was never the same after that line had been crossed.

                All I wanted was to be anonymous. I just wanted to start over but even if I moved, it would be impossible to hide who I was. My face had been shown all over the news when the FBI shuttled me from the tinted window SUV into the police station to be questioned. It was my blank face they showed constantly for the duration of the trial. Everyone wanted to talk to me. CNN, Fox News, Nancy Grace. My cellphone number had to be changed several times as newspaper reporters called me, wanting to know the sordid details of my life with the Butcher. I eventually got rid of my phone. My only interview had been with Anderson Cooper after the trial and I only said yes to that because I had a crush on him and I thought he was classy. He didn’t even seem to mind that I didn’t have too much to say. My aunt, on the other hand, had been appalled when I said I was happy my dad was found guilty. We never really talked to begin with, but my comments on Anderson Cooper 360 effectively killed all conversation. I also received a lot of threatening mail and phone calls from victims’ family members and a generally angry and outraged public.

I was the new school freak show thanks to good old Dad, followed by rumors about how I had helped my father kill all those women and bets were placed on when I would snap. I became very good at ignoring everyone, which gave me time to think about the other children whose parents were killers. Did they have to deal with the problems I did? Boys wanted to sleep with me because they thought I was dangerous and that turned them on. And I slept with them just so I could have some sort of connection to anyone other than my father and aunt, which also gave me the reputation of a slut. Kimber and Mac had become so wrapped up in each other that I was too much of a third wheel and stopped spending a lot of time with them. I also made sure to give the boys their dose of dangerous. I learned a lot of things about myself that I wasn’t sure I liked too much but it didn’t stop me.

And then it all changed when he moved to our town. He was as infamous as I was and for the same reasons. I recognized the darkness in him because it was the same darkness I saw in myself every time I looked in the mirror. We were the children of monsters. We were kindred spirits, broken and battered by our burdens and our pasts and the crimes of our fathers. I couldn’t believe another monster’s offspring had come here. It comforted me. And that’s what scared me the most.

Mirror, mirror on the wall. Who is the most gruesome zombie of all?

Just a sampling of something I'm working on. I haven't truly gone over and edited it. Just minor error correction. There could be plot points that don't make sense, blah blah writer talk, writer talk. I got the idea from watching "High School of the Dead." There was one part of the opening that really stuck with me and that was the missing person's flyer that you see for all of a half second. I thought about the aftermath and what the people who were left behind and the loved ones they were searching for. I guess this is the start. Enjoy.

 

Prologue

                I think it was all the missing persons flyers posted over every surface that scared me the most. Not the blood, not the screams, not the panic. Blood and gore were something I could deal with and I was fortuitous enough to be born with the ability to keep my head in any situation, courtesy of panic drills given by my father. I had been raised on a healthy diet of zombie and other miscellaneous horror flicks and literature.

                 But the fact that so many people were missed by those who had survived, who were still trying to survive, left me  speechless and shaking. It was the faces of the missing, not the dead, that had me screaming myself awake at night. The sound of endlessly flapping paper echoing inside my head.

                I was one of the lucky ones, I guess. I survived. Most of my family survived, thanks to my overly paranoid father and a well-timed family reunion. Even after everything I had done and seen, I had maintained my humanity, unlike many others. You bear witness to humanity at its worst in times of panic and chaos.

                But I guess it’s understandable that people lose themselves when those that should be dead, don’t stay dead.

Chapter 1

                “Bea? Bea, wake up.”

                I moan angrily and roll over to glare at my older brother.

                “What?” I growl and take pleasure that my brother flinches at my tone.

                “Emergency meeting,” he says, hooking his thumbs in his faded jeans’ belt loops.

                “Seriously?” I ask, sitting up to stare at my wristwatch. “It’s 3:30 in the morning, Tucker!”

                Tuck shrugs.

                “Dad’s orders.”

                “Dammit,” I mutter, moving to haul myself out of bed. “I have watch at five.”

                He grimaces.

                “Me too, but I think it’s important.”

                I studied my brother for a minute. His sandy brown hair, so different from my curly black hair, was messy, dirty, and too long and his hazel-green eyes were bloodshot with bruise colored circles under them. He looked exhausted. But then again, I’m sure we all did.

                “Come on, Bea. Dad’ll be pissed if you don’t move it.”

                “I’m up,” I say, throwing a sweatshirt over the tank top I wore to bed and pulling on a pair of jeans since I had been sleeping in just the tank and my panties. Tucker flushed and looked away.

“Jeez, Beatrice!” he steams. “I’m right here.”

                I give him an exasperated look as I follow him down the hallway.

                “Don’t be so prude,” I snap. “It’s nothing you haven’t seen before.”

                “You’re my sister!” he says heatedly, his neck and ears turning red with embarrassment and annoyance. “It’s not the same! You could at least sleep with some shorts on.”

                “Oh, please,” I scoff. “At least I don’t sleep naked.”

                Tuck turns even redder, much to my amusement.

                “That was once! And you shouldn’t have just walked into my room!”

                “Is that why you lock your door now?” I ask with a smirk, antagonizing him to the fullest extent.

                “At least Mama and Dad didn’t walk in on me half-naked, straddling a boy!” he cries, whirling around to face me, anger sparking in his eyes.

                “Asshole!” I snap, pushing hard him into the wall. “You’re a jerk and I hate you!”

                “What is going on?” comes a thundering voice from down the hall.

                “Uh oh.”

                Tuck and I freeze. Crap. A large, muscular man with a crew cut rounds the corner to glare at us, his eyes bright with annoyance.

                “Uh, hey, Dad,” I manage to squeak, subtly reaching for Tuck’s hand. Our father isn’t mean, just intimidating with his size, military haircut, deep, booming voice, and what seems like one hundred pounds of muscle. My brother squeezes my hand gently, like we hadn’t just fought.

                Our father stares us down with stern green eyes, the only part besides stubbornness that I inherited from him. I am almost a carbon copy of my mother.

                “Disagreement, sir,” Tucker says, hands going sweaty against my palms.

                “Now is not the time for petty arguments, Tucker. Save your anger for Them, not each other. You’re not children anymore. You’re 26 and 22, act like it. Do you understand me, Beatrice? Tucker?”

                “Yes, Dad,” we murmur, chastised and sorry for our actions.

                His gaze softens.

                “I know this is hard, guys, and I know you have watch at five, but just bear with me.”

                My brother and I nod. We follow him into the dining room, where the rest of, or at least most of the family is gathered. My mother’s youngest brother, Luis, smirks at my brother and I. He obviously heard Tuck’s and my argument. I glare at him and quickly flip him the middle finger, which, of course, my mother catches. She frowns and shakes her head at me, her short, curly black hair falling into her face. After much negotiating, I settle myself between Tuck and my younger cousin, Annalise, on our faded loveseat and focus my attention on my father.

                “What do you think is going on?” whispers Annalise in my ear, her red hair tickling my cheek.

                I shrug as my father clears his throat. Whatever conversations that had been going on stop immediately.

                “I’m sure you’re all wondering why I called an emergency meeting this early,” Dad says, glancing around the room at what was left of our family.

“Dios mio, Mac, it’s almost four in the morning,” Luis grumbles. “You bet we want to know why you woke us up.”

                My mother gives her brother a withering look as she moves to stand next to my father. She looks even more petite standing next to his bulk.

                “Callate,” she says sharply in her slightly accented voice. “You know Francis wouldn’t wake you up for no reason.”

                Luis shuts up, especially after my ancient abuelita smacks him on the head. He sinks down in his chair, sulking at the reprimand. I fought the urge to cackle at his well-deserved battery.

                “And here I thought we were the brats,” I mutter to Tucker, making him snort.

                “The sooner I tell you what I need to tell you, the sooner you can get back to sleep,” my father reminds everyone. “Now, there hasn’t been a breach, but one of Them is hanging around the perimeter. It’s beginning to attract others.”

                A collective shudder ran through the room.

                “Normally, I’d say leave it, it’ll wander away on its own, but for some reason, that’s not the case. The barrier is strong, but if too many pile up, they’ll put too much pressure on the fence and it could collapse in some sections.”

                “So what’s the issue?” I ask, wondering what he’s really skirting around.

                My father hesitates. Well that wasn’t a good sign.

                “It’s someone we know,” he says softly, taking my mother’s hand. His gaze finds mine.

                “It’s someone I know,” I whisper, but loudly enough for everyone to hear. I can see it in the way he looks at me.

                Tucker squeezes my knee gently while Annalise gives me a half hug. The rest of the family stares at me with a mixture of pity and sympathy.

                “We think they were on their way here when they got bitten, and for some reason, continued on to a familiar place,” Dad explains. “It’s unusual, but not unheard of.”

                “Who is it?” I ask, shaking off my cousin and brother’s touch, and stand.

                “Miha, let your father take care of–“ my mother begins, but I cut her off.

                “No. If I know them, I’m finishing it,” I say forcefully. “Now, who is it?”

                Instead of answering my question, my father beckons me forward and places a large hand on my shoulder.

                “I’ll show you,” he says softly, and Tuck stands up.

                “I’m going too,” he snaps at our father, and gives me a look that dares me to argue.

                “Fine,” Dad huffs. “The rest of you are dismissed. Keep an eye out along the fence. We can’t have Them pressing against it, weakening it. If they approach, shoot Them, if you have the shot. Head shots only, don’t waste my bullets. Silencers on. We’ll burn Them later today.

When patrolling, make sure the fence doesn’t have any holes cut in it and keep an eye out for squatters and refugees. They may have been bitten and are in the middle of changing. Take no chances. If you aren’t sure, shoot them.”

With our fearless leader’s final words, everyone disperses, Annalise giving me a worried look. I shake my head at her and she bites her lip, but heads back to the bedroom she shares with her little sister.

My father looks down at me with steady green eyes.

“Go get your pistol,” he says and glances at my brother. “You too, Tucker. Might as well go on watch early.”

Tuck and I move up the stairs, swiftly returning to our rooms to grab the guns our father gave us for our tenth birthdays, respectively. I stroke of .45 caliber pistol lovingly before holstering it at my waist and grabbing an extra box of ammunition.

I had been excited when my father handed me the gun when I turned ten. I was so jealous of Tucker when he had gotten his. Mine was nickel plated and hand etched by my father. Even though it wasn’t the most practical gun to use now, it was the one gun I kept on me at all times.

I rejoin my parents downstairs, a determined look on my face, or at least I hope it was. My brother was already down there, his rifle slung across his back and the shotgun he used for emergencies at his side. His Berretta was already in a shoulder holster, and his Colt pistol on his hip.

“That’s all you’re taking?” Tuck asks, an annoyed look on his face.

I placed a hand over the pistol defensively.

“Unlike you, I don’t keep an armory in my bedroom,” I sneer gracelessly. “My rifle and other handgun are in the closet.”

My brother opens his mouth to reply, but my mother gets there first.

“Aye, dios mio! Don’t you two ever stop? You are driving Papa and me crazy!” she cries.

“Lociento, Mama,” I say, a blush pinking my tan complexion.

“Maria, they’ve been like this since this morning,” Dad grumbles. “I thought I told you two to knock it off?”

“Sorry, sir,” Tucker says, looking down at his feet. “We’re just cranky.”

“Well get uncranky, especially you, Beatrice,” my mother snaps while shoving warm buns into our hands. “You have a job to do.”

“Are you ready to go?” Dad asks, shouldering his own sniper rifle.

“Let’s get it over with,” I grouse after retrieving my other guns. I take a big bite out of my mother’s homemade sausage buns to try and settle my stomach.

Tucker and I follow my father out of the house and down our extremely long driveway, Dad carrying a large flashlight to light the way. We have a fairly large farm with at least fifteen acres of land, all of it surrounded by a ten-foot fence topped with razor wire.

My father, a fairly successful journalist and novelist, was extremely paranoid at times and had the fence installed a few weeks after we had moved in. I think becoming a New York Times best-selling author unexpectedly and suddenly gaining overly obsessed fans had freaked him out a little. Tucker and I also believe that much of his paranoia stems from our grandda. He had been heavily involved in the Irish Republican Army in his early twenties and several attempts had been made on his life before he fled to America. As far as I knew, Grandda slept with a gun under his pillow until the day he died, just in case he was attacked again. But he died alone, liver ravaged by years of alcohol abuse.

Tucker and I were used to Dad’s panic drills because he had been schooling us in them since we could walk. He also taught us to hunt using both guns and bows, to survive in the wilderness, garden, and other life-saving skills. For many years, we thought this was normal until our friends at school had informed us otherwise. They all thought my father was crazy. The two of us are grateful now for everything he taught us because it helped us survive when many of the people who mocked him didn’t.

For once, Dad’s paranoia and years of stockpiling weapons, food, and hundreds of other necessities paid off. After all hell had broken loose, Dad had been beyond calm and prepared as he padlocked the front gate and turned on the electricity (which he had added without telling anyone) to prevent any panicked people from climbing or cutting the fence to get in.

But he did let people into our ‘complex,’ as he sometimes called it, until someone tried to sneak in a family member that had been bitten and infected, which resulted in one of my mother’s cousins being bitten. After my father killed both my mother’s cousin and the infected ‘guest,’ he apologetically escorted anyone who wasn’t family off the property, giving each family a gun and a box of ammo. We don’t keep the electricity constantly running, so we routinely find the fence cut in sections and sometimes find refugees hiding in our woods or one of Them lumbering around our fields and pastures.

Sometimes I think that my father would be completely cracked if it weren’t for my mother, a first generation Columbian-American from Florida and fledgling interior designer. She was the one that kept him the most grounded. She always needed to take care of someone, so she and my father were a perfect match. Plus, they were unbelievably crazy about each other. My abuelo was not happy that my mother wanted to marry an occasionally mentally unstable man. What made it worse was that my father was Irish, not Columbian. Abuelita reminded her husband that her father hadn’t liked him either and that he should trust his daughter. But she also warned my mother how difficult life could be with someone who was highly paranoid at times. My mother hadn’t cared and my parents had been married for almost thirty years.

“Hey, Bea,” Tucker whispered as we continue to tromp down the driveway.

“What?” I ask, startled out of my thoughts, keeping my eyes on the bouncing light that was my father’s flashlight, leading the way.

“Who do you think it is?” he asks and I can hear the uncertainty in his voice. He’s not sure if this is a good question to ask me.

I sigh, somewhat annoyed with my brother’s question.

“I don’t know, Tucker,” I say, slowing my pace to walk next to him. “I know a lot of different people that survived.”

“Well, it had to be someone who really wanted to see you if they risked coming out on a bad day,” Tuck pointed out.

“To be honest, I really don’t want to know who it is.”

“Then why did you tell Mama and Dad that you’d take care of it?” he asks incredulously.

“Because I don’t need to be babied my entire life,” I snap, my grip tightening on my rifle. “Everyone seems to forget that I was out there right after everything happened! I watched friends die!”

Tuck is silent for a moment.

“I’m sorry,” he says softly. “I had forgotten. It seems like we’ve been living like this for years.  I can’t believe it’s been almost two years.”

“Yeah,” I echo quietly, before noticing that the flashlight has stopped bobbing up and down in front of us.

I can hear the gates rattling and shaking as the shell of someone I knew walks repeatedly into the gate, I’m sure plucking at it with withered hands. The loud moans send a shiver down my spine, and I instinctively step closer to Tucker.

I can barely make out my father’s face in the slowly approaching dawn light, but I can tell his expression is serious.

“Beatrice, are you absolutely sure you want to do this?” he asks, tone indicating he heard what I said to my brother.

I’m grateful that the darkness covers my blush of embarrassment. I shouldn’t be so weak.

“If you can’t do this, tell me now and Tucker and I will take care of it.”

“No, I want to do it,” I say, mouth dry and voice low, but determined.

“Okay,” my father says, handing me his handgun, silencer already screwed on. “I’m going to turn on the flood light.”

I hear a click and artificial light illuminates everything. I see It standing at the front gate and my heart breaks. I step closer until I’m only a foot away, staring into the familiar broken face.

“Bea,” Tuck warns.

I ignore him.

“Finn,” I whisper to the creature trying to stick its hands through the chain-link fence to grab me.

The fence’s sharp edges slice into Finn’s puckered flesh and thick, blackish blood oozes out. His white leather motorcycle jacket is splashed with gore and I see the bite mark on his shoulder through the torn cloth, festering and pus-filled. His once beautiful blue eyes are clouded over with death and he makes horrible, rasping moans, desperate to get at me.

“Oh my God, it’s Finn,” I hear my brother say. “Bea, let me do it.”

“No!” I say forcefully, causing the former Finn to struggle against the fence harder, moans cutting through the early morning air.

I raise the gun and place the barrel directly against the thing’s bruised and battered forehead.

“No, I’m doing it.”

I swallow hard as my finger tightens on the gun, Finn reaching for me.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, and pull the trigger.

Finn’s head snaps back with the force of the blast and the back of his head explodes in a mess of shattered bone, congealed, brackish blood, and dark gray brain matter. His body falls to the ground in a heap, blood slowly leaking onto the driveway pavement. I exhale shakily, wondering how I was going to make it through watch without this weighing heavily on my mind. I jump when I feel Tucker’s hand rest on my shoulder.

“Hey, Bea, are you okay?” he asks, prying Dad’s gun from my death grip, and touching my cheek. “You’re crying.”

“What?” I ask, voice wavering slightly. I put a trembling hand up to my cheek and feel wetness.

“You’re crying,” he repeats.

“Oh,” I say, surprised. I clear my throat and hitch my shoulders, trying to regain my composure. “I’m fine. Let’s go relieve Patti and Andy from watch duty.”

I turn away from the grisly sight at the foot of the gate and start towards the one of guard towers my father built when the world went insane, which is a few hundred yards away. Tucker grabs my arm.

“Don’t you want to talk about this?” he asks, glancing at my father and giving him an imploring look.

My father stays silent and just watches me. I’m assuming he’s making sure I don’t snap. I stare back at him defiantly and wipe away the remnants of my tears. Yanking my arm from Tuck’s grip, I glare at my brother.

“I said I was fine. I just want to go on watch duty and be done with it.”

“Beatrice,” my father says voice low and concerned.

I turn my gaze back to my father’s reluctantly. He’s giving me a calculating look that informs me he’s considering pulling me from watch.

“Don’t,” I say, knowing that he would get my meaning.

“Are you sure?” he asks.

I nod.

“I’ll talk to Aunt Pamela when I get off of watch,” I promise.

He just grunts, and then turns to trudge the long way back up the driveway. Tucker observes me with suspicion. I sneer at him and he makes a face.

“You shouldn’t go on watch after what just happened,” he says, walking me to the guard tower. “You know you shouldn’t.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I say brusquely. “It’ll keep me from thinking about it.”

“No it won’t,” Tucker argues. “You know this watch is the most uneventful. You’ll just think about it more.”

“Tuck,” I sigh, holding out an arm to slow him. “I understand that you’re concerned, but this isn’t the first time I’ve had to kill a friend.”

“I understand that,” he says softly. “But Finn was more than a friend. I know you didn’t like to let on that you guys were meeting secretly, but I’m not stupid. Mama and Dad may like to pretend it wasn’t happening, but you guys took huge risks to make something work. Those risks got Finn killed.”

I feel a tear slip down my cheek again, guilt flooding my body. I had gotten Finn killed.

“I know that,” I say thickly, pausing at the base of the ladder on the tower. “But we wanted something that was real. Something we could hold on to. Something that we could say, ‘Hey, we have something real in all of this shit.’ Something that mattered at the end of the day.”

“What about the family? That’s something that matters.”

“I wanted someone to call my own,” I snap. “Something other than a room and a gun. Something other than this broken world. I wanted someone who would love me, despite this craphole life we’re stuck with right now.”

I push away from Tuck and start climbing the ladder.

“I’m done talking about this,” I say with finality and disappear before my brother can say anything more.