The re-ignition of the infection began next door. My elderly neighbors, Wallace and Edna lived there with their arthritic dog Clancy. I was eating breakfast when I noticed a peculiar movement of the curtains in their bedroom window. It was not a breeze as the window was closed. I paid it no mind, and continued with my day.
That night Clancy howled a hollow and mournful sound. The noise only died down with the sun peeking over the horizon. Their cars were still parked on their gravel driveway when I left to take my daughter to mommy and me. They were still there when we returned home that afternoon, an uncharacteristic event for the pair.
I phoned their house, it rang endlessly. My next call was to the police department to voice my concerns. They assured me an officer would be by soon to check on them.
I cooked dinner while I waited. That peculiar movement in the gauzy fabric hanging in the window caught my eye again. The room was dark, and the window still shut. I did not see anyone inside.
As we were sitting down to eat, the officers arrived. I went out to speak to them, and mentioned the curtain. Their knocks received no response, so the door was kicked in. One of the officers called into the darkness. A clatter somewhere deep inside the house sent them charging into the building.
Gunshots and shouts, followed by the officers retreating from the house, screaming for me to go back inside my own home. I do as they ask, but watch from the front bay window. What transpired was gruesome to say the least. I send my husband to the living room with our daughter.
My elderly neighbors stagger from the front door of their home; the officers open fire upon them. Despite bullets hitting them in their chests several times each, they continue to advance.
A close range shot to the forehead drops Wallace where he was, the back of his skull opened by the bullet’s exit. His body falls facedown onto the grass. Edna drops right beside him, her face turned towards me. Her right eye was missing, replaced by an oozing red pit left in the wake of the bullet.
One of the officers is bleeding profusely from the stumps of his middle three fingers. The glass muffles his screams, and the wail of the approaching ambulance finally drowns them out entirely.
This moment is one that every living human on Earth has dreaded would happen for the last fifty years. The infection has returned, and my family and I are dead center inside ground zero.
