Zoe hated talking about dead people.
It didn't matter if it was listening to her parents talk about the drunken misadventures of her long dead great uncle or sitting in history class, learning all about rulers from thousands of years ago. How could they possibly still be important? Did people like Alexander the Great and Atilla the Hun ever think they'd still be talked about so many years later? Probably not. And if they could hear all the history teachers blabber on about them, they'd probably find it just as annoying as Zoe did.
It had felt like a blessing when her history professor offered an extra credit assignment to anyone who was interested. And by interested, he meant flunking the class and having no other choice. Like Zoe.
It wasn't that she was a bad student. In fact, she was doing quite well in all of the other classes she was taking. History had just never appealed to her. For her, all studying history involved was memorizing dates and most importantly, just talking about dead people.
She was happy that the extra credit assignment sounded at least somewhat interesting. It required visiting a location and taking pictures of what you could see there. Zoe had been lucky enough to be given a place to go to that she actually thought could be interesting.
There was a small town tucked in a mountain valley about a four hour drive from Zoe's home. At least, there used to be.
Graywell.
It had been a small town but a little over two years ago it had made big headlines all over the globe. On a day like any other, a couple of hikers had discovered that every single person living in Graywell was dead.
It had been hailed by the media as the modern day Roanoke Colony, a community of settlers that had all just vanished a few hundred years ago. It was one of the only history lessons Zoe had ever found even remotely interesting.
The biggest difference between Roanoke and Graywell, though, was that the citizens of Graywell hadn't just disappeared. Their bodies had all been found in the most ordinary of places; in their homes, in their yards, in restaurants, on the streets. There were no wounds or internal injuries found and no evidence of any contagions. It was as if their hearts had just shut down and the people had all dropped dead at once.
No one could explain why. That was what had caught Zoe's attention.
Usually, people seemed to have explanations for everything that happened in the world. There was always a reason on the planet where logic reigned supreme. All kids, including herself, learned that from growing up. The day everyone experienced where they were suddenly told to stop believing in the unbelievable.
Zoe hated that about society and it was one of her main reasons for hating history. For something with the word "story" in it, it sure lacked any imagination.
What happened at Graywell had stuck out to her since it had happened a few years ago. She liked that no one could really explain it. It was refreshing.
Her thoughts drifted with the countless pine trees that passed out the window.
"Are we there yet?"
Zoe had almost forgotten that her two best friends were in the car. They made the trip a little less boring.
At the steering wheel was Shunji Kimura, though Zoe had known him most of her life as Theodore, the name he'd gone by ever since coming from Japan when he was seven. Zoe had always thought that name didn't really fit him so stuck to just "Theo", which still didn't seem quite right. He never seemed to notice or care what people called him. In fact, he was the most laid back person Zoe had ever met, with not a single care in the world. Sometimes it seemed like Theo lived under a rock; a rock full of video games and cars, the only two things that ever seemed to really catch his interest.
