Everything around them quickly devolved into chaos. While people dove to help the wounded, Sarah was frozen in her spot. The scenery around her shifted from the comforting yellow glow of the bone-fire to the dreary house she'd grown up in. In the background the screams were barely audible, sounding muffled as if coming from a downstairs TV. She stood in front of the cracked door leading to her parent's room, her mother's body sprawled out on the plush carpet staring at nothing with vacant glazed eyes. On the outside someone grabbed her arm to pull her away, but all she could see was the face of her father. With each memory it evolved into a more menacing figure now with sharpened teeth, gray skin, and jaundiced eyes. Sarah screamed and flailed, hitting the person attempting to help her. When they let her go she took off running in the opposite direction, away from the barn. Reality had settled in and she was back outside again, but the screams were still there. She could hear them begging their assailants for mercy. At the top of the hill her feet skidded to a stop, her heel digging into the ground to create a mound of dirt. Coming from the direction of town at a brisk speed were more of them. With no time to stand around and count them she had to double back around, running in an arc towards the direction of the field beside and away from the main house. The growing wheat stalks hit her shins as she ran and Johnny's home grew smaller in the distance. Once she'd created enough distance between herself and the threat she reached a shaky hand into her pocket to take out her phone along with the thin sheet of paper containing Ethan's personal number. Sarah hadn't thought she'd need to use it at all let alone so quickly, but she praised the officer on his forethought. “Ethan!” she cried breathlessly into the receiver once she heard the line click. “The party! People are dead! It's happening again! It's-” Sarah wasn't able to get into much detail before she heard her name and yelled out, “Johnny!” Her body was shaking, but unlike some of the others nearby with scrapes, bruises, and one with a gaping wound where they'd been attacked, she was unharmed. Nodding her agreement, she said a firm, “Okay,” before remembering she had Ethan on the line. Her voice trembled. “The Parson's orchard is nearby. We're gonna go there. Oh, god, Ethan. It was terrible. It-” The words halted once she saw the attacked party goers moving at deceptively slow pace towards the wheat fields. Eyes wide as she stared at them, her eyes lingered on one of them that drifted forward with their intestines hanging out of their stomach. “Run!” she cried out, dropping the phone in her hand. There was no time to retrieve it. The only thing they could do was manage to keep ahead and get to the Parson's. -------------------------------- The sun sank low over the flat horizon, the headlights brought the next road sign into focus: Fairburrow 15 miles “There’s a town out here?” the driver muttered to herself as she brushed stray curls from her face, a dirty hand left a dark smudge against her tan cheek. “The burrow? Sure, I came out here for cute things, knick knacks, that ‘organic crap’ you keep teasing me about…” the unidentifiable lump of blankets in the passenger seat mumbled, shifting a little to look at the dashboard, “We need gas…. They’re cheap.” She and the passenger were covered in a layer of dirt, faces riddled with sweat lines, and a general appearance of dishevelment. Their exit had been a last-second decision, their dirty pickup truck one of the precious few to legally make it past the quarantine barrier before they shut down interstate traffic in or out of the city. Rebecca clearly recalled the soldier’s look of general exhaustion and tense anxiety as his thick gloves fumbled with her ID, the look of his crusty brown eyes as they hollowly inspected her from behind the glass of his gas mask. ‘Off with the mask’ came his muffled order, she could imagine his cracked lips. She moved her own face mask long enough for him to look, a simpler one, the kind for the drugstore; they said it took days for infection, but she did not want to believe it. He shoved her ID back to her, waved her along with those thick gloves again, and they moved along with the sluggish line of minivans, smart cars, and various other vehicles. Her tail lights illuminated another truck before she spied in her rear view the guard wave his arms, the barricade was shut. A general roar of disapproval, shouts, and screams. She felt for them, she did, but they had made it out. They had made it out all because her sister had practically dragged her out of her apartment, bags packed, and nearly duct taped her into the passenger seat. Miranda was always the artsy one, the one who got a wild hair, and for the most part, Rebecca was happy to follow, as long as she could drive to the countryside to hunt or fish for the weekend, she was a happy camper. Her sister certainly did not turn down her small trophy antlers, there were at least six pieces in Miranda’s new collection that were comprised entirely of animal bones from animals Rebecca had caught. It had been about thirty minutes to the main turnoff where larger freeways lead to larger cities, but with the general panic about small spaces and people, the way the virus spread, Rebecca knew that a cabin in the woods, a hunting lodge, literally anything but farther into the snarl of traffic, was a good idea. Wrapped in her cocoon of blankets, Miranda had posed no disagreeing word as she pointed to a lesser used turnoff, just happy to not have to drive anymore. She was a city girl, happy with the conveniences of everyday life, but put her in a forest and there was no girl more at home. Their mother had once called them the Hipster and the Lumberjack. They were not cruel nicknames, but inside jokes. Both girls were gorgeous in their own right, slender frames with muscles built from their everyday life; they both loved to walk and Miranda was currently a Crossfit fanatic. People often guessed incorrectly though who was the hipster and who was the lumberjack. Rebecca with her green eyes and tight blonde curls was called a prima donna until she offered to showcase her gun collection. It was always a comical sight to see Rebecca dressed up in her pink polos and beige capris, hair in a high ponytail, showing off her favorite weapons. Miranda was the dark haired brunette, thick straight locks like their mother chopped in a severe asymmetrical bob that highlighted the pale tones of her skin, her dark hazel eyes nearly hidden by long bangs. Rebecca always thought Miranda should be a model, but she never had time for other people’s art tastes. She liked to build, with her hands, to touch the organic components of her work and make them into something no one had seen before. Paint, sculptor, clay, ink, pen, typewriter, fabric; everything she could touch was a medium, everything new was a piece not yet explored. Among many things, curiosity was what the sisters shared most, but they never adventured alone, always together. While a few years apart with Rebecca at the lead, they had never fought as age conscious siblings might. Raised in a forested suburb, exposed to the madness of an artistic, wilderness loving woman who did her best to encourage each girl to flourish at their own pace, to be responsible, to care about the environment, and above all to be kind to each other at the least. Free-range children, they would be called today, but back then they had just been kids who occasionally got caught near Jeffery’s chickens and shooed off with a cookie and some fresh milk; that was back before people cared about bacteria. Now as they rolled through the empty streets, the town asleep save for a few who wandered stiff-legged store to store. Rebecca pulled up her truck to the gas pump, on auto-pilot she filled the tank, unaware that the unintelligible noise accompanied with the lights in the distance was not a party but a mass murder and resurrection. Miranda rolled down her window, the dark-clothed woman finally emerged from her cocoon, red plaid button-up hanging from her thin shoulders like an oversized jacket, “Looks like they haven’t been touched yet… No doubt those cute soldiers will be rolling into here soon… Think he’ll call me?” “Myra, no one ever calls when they say they will.” Rebecca retorted, returning the hose to its holster, her yellow polo shirt smudged from the ambient ash that had begun to fall from all the fires in the city. Her boots sounded heavy as she walked around the truck, fixing the blanket that protected their belongings from the elements, a compound bow and the muzzle of a hunting rifle barely visible amid the tangle of black duffle bags and patchwork quilts they had brought along. “Oh! OH! Becky you hear that!? It sounds like a party! Please Becky PUH-LEASE! We haven’t been to a partyinsolongandI’mtiredandnastybut Iwannadance-” Rebecca cut her off by raising a hand. “Myra, It’s night time, we just got out of traffic three hours ago, we were in traffic to get to the city almost twelve hours ago. I’m tired, we should move on and find a place to set up. It’ll be a couple days till we can get to the cabin…” She paused as she finally looked at the pitiful look her sister was giving her, “Oh alright, no more than an hour, ok?” “YAS thank you thank you thank you!” Miranda gushed, her dirty hands leaving marks on her pale cheeks. As a punishment for her prodding, Rebecca was going to not let her know. Less than presentable the sisters headed out again, the blonde driver taking haphazard directions from the overly excited brunette. After a brief tangle with a ditch, they were happily bounding along beside a field when the screams began to be clear. “Is that...?” Rebecca muttered, her sister’s shout startling her into reaction more quickly than she was able to grasp the situation “Look out!” Rebecca slammed on the breaks, narrowly missing a person as they staggered into the dirt pathway. Wheels cut hard the heavy truck had no problem gaining traction, but at the speed, they were going she had no control over how the car spun with the weight taking them directly into the field. Rebecca’s knuckles were white as she gripped the steering wheel, shaking a bit as she calmed her breathing, her sister’s voice like a monotone buzz; what was wrong with people? Who just walked out in a road when they heard a vehicle? “Becky Lou! There are other people in the field!” “He… He’s…. NO Myra don’t leave the car!” she shouted as her sister moved to get out, check on the man and hail the people, in her rearview she got a clearer look of the man they had missed in the road; her tail lights illuminated the shine off his intestines.