Bittersweet Coffee

Chapter 1: The outbreak

You could feel the tension in the almost empty classroom, especially among the older kids, the ones who had been in your extra-curricular art activity since the first year that you started working there, six years ago, including your nephew, Sam Dixon.

Sam was still a kid, but not the little six-year-old that you had in your class since day one when you first moved to that small town to work in a school where almost every other teacher seemed to dislike you, where you had no friends, and where people didn't want to have anything to do with you.

Those first moments had been hard, but you'd go over everything again a thousand times if it meant that you'd get to meet Daryl.

At first, he'd only been the uncle of little Dixon, and the kid's guardian during Merle's absence, but despite the rumors about him and his family, Daryl had seemed decent enough, he'd never been actively against you like almost everyone else had seemed to be, he'd been good to you, in his own way, and he'd become your friend...and over time, through good and bad, despite both your insecurities and every difficulty that was thrown your way, Daryl and you had become more than friends.

Since then, your relationship had just grown stronger, and by now, you and Daryl had been married for over three years, making you a Dixon, for the good and the bad, and making you Sam's aunt officially...most times, though, after all these years, it almost felt like he was your own kid.

You couldn't be happier about the family that you had gotten, and lately Daryl and you had been giving thought to the idea of maybe making the family bigger...it was not something to take lightly, especially for Daryl, and so you both had thought and talked about it long and through.

You knew you wanted to have a kid with Daryl, besides Sam, even if you felt a bit nervous about it and how it'd change things, but you hadn't wanted to impose the idea on Daryl. On his side, you knew he liked kids, and he'd fought his insecurities, fears, and memories, in order to come to terms with the fact that he too wanted to have a kid with you.

You supposed you both couldn't have agreed on that at a worse moment... now all your plans, dreams, and ideas of future had come to a halt due to the current state of the country...or the whole world, you weren't sure.

It all started almost as just an anecdote on the news, some report about a new virus or sickness, or you didn't even know what, with some isolated cases popping here and there. Just the next day, the number of cases had grown while nobody seemed to know what sickness was that, and on the next couple of days, the cases seemed to grow exponentially, while there was still no answer to what that sickness was, just some theories here and there.

People were worried, even in the small town where you lived, although some said that the sickness would stay in the cities and won't spread there. People in the cities seemed to think the same, and some had moved to that small town as if fleeing from whatever virus was that.

Whether they had brought the sickness with them or if it had arrived by itself, you didn't know, but the truth was that the day before, some cases of the new illness had started popping out on the town, growing at a pace that was more than worrisome.

The mother of Tulip, one of the students that you had since your first year, who was one of your very few friends, was a nurse, and even though she couldn't speak much about it, she'd told you hushedly how it was nothing like she'd ever seen before, something like out of a horror movie, before she had to rush to the hospital, unable to tell you any advice other than to try to find a place where that virus, of whatever it was, couldn't reach you.

She had been pale, looking haunted and exhausted, dark rings under her eyes, and her look had worried you as much as her words, or even more.

You'd been talking about it with Daryl, and you both had decided you'd leave for the woods the next day, a Friday, and stay there the weekend, away from the town and the people, and hopefully, the sickness. The garage owed Daryl free days from when he took long shifts, and so he'd be asking to take them this weekend.