Red Eyes

Prologue

Five years ago, Emma travelled to Fort Hope. Before the outbreak, this was a little-known rural town near the border of Queensland and New South Wales, located in the bush. Often, a young, scared and sad Emma would look over the walls of the great fortification to watch the animals mingle in the dying, dense shrubbery. She would watch the almost dried up, muddy river snaked its way across the land before it reached the underground basin that Fort Hope used to supply water. She would close her eyes and listen to the chirping of the crickets, reminiscing life before the outbreak that took her mother.

Inside the walls of Fort Hope, a small community of about three hundred forged ahead, lead by a man named Samael. He started the small sanctuary with about a dozen people he had rescued during the outbreak, welcoming anybody into the community. He made the rules, and people followed them because the alternative, trying to survive on your own in a world where the living dead roam the once busy roads, was far too foreboding.

When Emma arrived at the young age of nine years old, she had already grown accustomed to living of the land, having grown up on her family farm. During her time at the fort, she had grown close to a few of the three dozen children who lived there. They went to school together, where the two teachers that had made it to Fort Hope taught students all the information that Samael had allowed.

To distract herself from the nightmares of her mother's gruesome death, Emma became very studious and invested much of her time into learning where she soon became the top student in all areas that were taught. She knew all about the outbreak and strived to find out as much as she could about the causes. She hoped to one day research it to try and find a vaccination or a cure for it, just like her father did.

The disappearances started when she was twelve years old. She had been at Fort Hope for three years, although it felt like a lifetime. She remembered sitting in class one day when Samael's right-hand man, Seth came in and led a student away. An hour later the student was led back into the classroom with tears in her eyes. The girl, Brylee was one of the so-called orphans of the outbreak and had been living with a woman who had lost a child during the outbreak.

Rumours started to spread. Abigail – Brylee's carer - had disappeared. Some people say she was discovered with a weak strand of the virus and had left the base, others say that she was driven mad after seeing the corpse of her six-year-old daughter over and over again at night time and escaped the base. Either way, it was agreed that we would never see Abigail again, which left Brylee without a carer, however she was deemed old enough to care for herself at that stage.

The rumours died down after the next disappearance. This time it was Seth. Nobody knows why he suddenly disappeared, but it was speculated that he had tried to find the missing lady. Slowly, more and more people went missing. Always adults, never children. Eventually it became a normal and accepted part of society. However, as Emma watched the people around her disappear, she had suspicions.

Nobody would listen to her pleads of trust when she told them something was wrong. Emma knew that it had nothing to do with a virus found in the body system, like many people speculated. Emma knew, because if that was true she would have been taken a long time ago. She knew, because when she looked in the mirror, the reflection of the faint crimson sheen that could been seen glazed over her dark brown eyes stared back at her.