Aven tore through the familiar streets of her Florida hometown. The summer sunshine brought her muscles and bones back to life, fed them just enough to get her where she needed to go before she could eat her first real meal in months. She wanted nothing more than to run straight home into her family's arms, to take a nap in her own bed and eat a home-cooked meal. But she knew the ordeal she'd just been through was going to change her life even more so than it already had. The years ahead would be overtaken by police, and lawyers, and the impending trial of the man who tried to ruin her life and the lives of other young women. She wanted to forget, but she wasn't about to let him get away with it. For Melanie and for Cindy, she'd make sure he paid.
Rounding the corner to the police station, she slowed and stopped, leaning over with her hands on her knees and wheezing shallow breaths after her burst of physical activity after months of imobility. She staggered the rest of the way to the police station, her mind finally catching up to where she was and what she was doing. It was only then that she became aware of the eerie silence throughout town. She hadn't passed one person or a single running car; lawns were overgrown and flowers were dying. In her delirium and exhaustion, she shrugged it off. Her mind wasn't in a place to do anything but get help, but an uneasy feeling settled in her stomach as she came to the double glass doors of the police station.
It was dark inside and she could see no one was at the front desk or in the offices behind it. Still, she tried the door and it was unlocked. She stood frozen for a second, holding open the door and staring down the empty hall inside. She stepped into the lobby, where it became abundantly clear that no one had been there that day. It was hotter than it was outside in the sun, meaning the air conditioner had been off for at least a day, though the smell of rotting food suggested it had been longer.
Scared and confused, Aven backed out of the building and turned in the direction of her home. She was losing what little energy she had, her adrenaline rush having worn off in the non-event following her escape. She wandered mindlessly until she found herself at the front door of her house. She began knocking on the door, banging with both hands, partially in desperation, partially in excitement to see her parents and brother. She knocked and knocked, but no one came to the door. Her father's car was gone from the driveway and all the lights were off inside, but that wasn't unusual for the middle of a sunny day. On a whim, Aven lightly grasped the door handle and pushed down on it with her thumb, the unlocked door immediately opening to her.
Inside, it was just as hot as the police station and a similar smell permeated the air. Aven stood frozen in the door, taking in the cluttered surroundings of her normally spotless house. Furniture had been moved and piled haphazardly near the window, drawers had been ransacked, and a slew of missing persons flyers with her grad school graduation photo were litered across the floor.
"Mom?" Aven called weakly. She waited silently, but there was no response. "Mom? Brandon?" She took shaky, tentative steps through her living room, stepping over items that had been strewn on the carpet. "It's me! I'm back, I'm okay!" She held back tears of relief, though she knew they'd start flowing the moment she saw her family. In the kitchen, the table and chairs were piled by the back door and plates were piled up in the sink. Aven followed the smell in the house to the garbage, where she found rotting food scraps covered in swarming ants.
She drew closer to the stairs leading up to the bedrooms, when a worse, newly familiar stench hit her. When she'd smelled it eminating from Melanie's body she assumed it was the smell of death, but that couldn't be the case now that Melanie was still alive. Aven's heart dropped as it dawned on her that the man wasn't going to let Melanie live. She'd probably died at his hands moments after Cindy.
Suddenly, Aven heard a thud from directly above her. "Mom? Brandon?" she called again, making her way upstairs. All the doors were ajar, except for the one to her parents' room. She heard another thud and knew it was coming from that last room.
"Brandon?" She crept closer to the door, resting her hand on the knob for a moment in hesitation. Her mind was somehow simultaneously racing and blank; thoughts were going through it at light speed but she was too worn out to keep up with them. How long had she been away? Where was everyone? Where were the police? Why wasn't her family answering her?
Finally, Aven turned the knob tentatively and pushed the door open, letting it swing out in front of her. A stench unlike anything she'd experienced hit her, causing her to stumble backwards with a hand clasped over her mouth and nose before doubling over and dry heaving. She'd barely eaten in a week but had to vomit anyway.
With sharp, empty pangs in her stomach from the muscles forcing out nothing, she pushed herself back to the door, finally taking in the scene before her. Her mother lay face down over the bed, as though she'd fallen forward and just stayed there. Aven kept her hand over her face to avoid the stench as she entered the room.
"Mom?" she squeaked, adding another question to her situation. She can't be dead, can she? Why would she be dead? She tried not to assume the worst before talking to even a single person, but the longer she was alone, the more she realized the gravity of whatever was going on. "Mama?" Her voice grew weaker as she drew closer to her mother, the woman's hand coming into view, positioned near her head gripping a gun. There was a bullet wound in the side of her head.
"No! Mama!" Aven fell to the floor next to her mother, wrapping her arms around the woman's waist. As soon as she did, the body slid off the bed and into her lap. Sobbing, she tried to take her mother in her arms and turn her over, but no sooner than Aven saw her mother's face did she shriek. She dropped the body, scrambling backwards like a crab. Her mother's sunken face was rotting, meaning she'd been dead for a while. On the side of her head that wasn't covered in blood from her gunshot wound, was a large gash going down the side of her face, as though something had clawed into her flesh.
Before Aven could begin to process what she'd come home to, she heard the thud again, snapping her head around to the bathroom door. She heard more movement and saw the shuffle of feet under the doorway.
"Brandon?!" she leapt to her feet and rushed to the door, not questioning the chair and night table piled in front of it. She tore the furniture away practically throwing it across the room and opened the door.
"Bran-" was all she got out before her face fell, the decomposing body of her little brother lunging at her. She caught his wrists and struggled to hold him back at arm's length. "Brandon, what the fuck are you doing?!" she screamed as he tried to swipe at her, tears now streaming down her face. She noticed a large wound on his forehead and looking behind him realized his face had been smashed into the mirror, though she couldn't fathom what had happened.
Completely bewildered, Aven rode her second adrenaline rush and shoved her brother back into the bathroom, quickly pulling the door closed as he came stumbling towards it.
"Brandon," she called through the door, "please stop!" Something like this had happened once in a while: Brandon had anxiety attacks, though they were never violent. However, sonetimes they did overtake his consciousness, at which time Aven would pull him towards her and rock him in her arms until he calmed down. In that moment, she'd felt no need to calm him down. All she felt was danger.
Aven stood frozen, staring at the shaking door as Brandon beat on it, growling and gurgling. Before she knew it, the sun had fully set. She'd been standing there at least an hour. Completely numb, she turned and dragged herself downstairs to find food. The first thing she saw was a mostly full box of Cheerios. She grabbed it and started shoving handfuls in her mouth, not caring that they were stale. With a mouthful of dry crumbs, she grabbed a dirty glass from the sink and turned the handle to the faucet, but nothing came out. She groaned, looking around. Olive oil, dish soap, wine. Those were the only liquids she saw. She contemplated taking a series of huge gulps from the full bottle of wine but knew it would only make her feel worse. She opened the refrigerator but was met by exactly what she expected: a dark fridge and the stench of long-rotten food.
Finally, she found an untouched six-pack of apple juice boxes. Too thirsty to fumble with the packaged straw, she grabbed a knife and punctured the top of one before pouring the entire thing into her mouth, squeezing the box to make the juice come out faster. She repeated this with all six of the juice boxes.
Too weak to think, Aven dragged herself to the living room and let herself fall over on the couch. She felt like she'd sleep for days, but then she remembered the unlocked front door. She wasn't sure if there was anyone out there to come and cause her harm, but she wasn't willing to take that chance. She was never going to let her guard down again.
She groaned and rolled off the couch, dropping to the floor and lazily pushing herself to her feet. When she went to lock the front door, she noticed movement outside on the street. She cautiously opened the door a crack and peaked her head out. It was almost pitch black outside, the only light coming from the moon and stars. In a stream of moonlight, she saw a single figure stumbling down the empty street. She grabbed a flashlight from a table near the door and clicked it on, pointing the beam at the figure. What she saw should have surprised her more, but if she hadn't become desensitized in the previous months, she'd been completely desensitized that day.
The figure was a slim, boney man limping down the block. He had patches of long hair that appeared to still be in the process of falling out, and his leg was twisted a full 90 degrees at the knee. His face had been severely scratched up and the wounds had become green and puss-filled instead of scabbing and healing properly.
Slack-jawed at the sight, Aven accidentally knocked over a broom on the porch next to the door. The figure turned clumsily, taking a second to realize her presence before hobbling towards her, reaching out its boney arms and gurgling. In a quick breath, Aven slammed the door shut and locked it before turning and sliding down the length of it with her face in her hands.
"What the fuck, what the FUCK," she gasped to herself. "Th- that was a fucking ZOMBIE!" She began sobbing again and curled up in a ball near the door. She must have truly cried herself to sleep, because when she lifted her head next, the sun shown brightly, even through the dusty, drawn curtains.
Her morning was unlike any other she'd ever had. In the past months, she'd wanted nothing more than to come home to her family. She wanted to help Mom make dinner and eat with everyone. She wanted to lounge with everyone in the living room watching DVDs of Monty Python's Flying Circus and rolling her eyes when Dad tried to imitate the characters. She wanted to scold Brandon when he left his bedroom door open with heavy metal music blasting everyone's eardrums.
Instead, after months in a grimy basement, with pains and bruises all over her body bombarding her senses, she sat alone on the floor in the middle of her disheveled kitchen, mindlessly going at another box of stale cereal. When she was finished, she placed the box next to her, allowing it to fall, spilling the rest of the contents inside. She sat for hours before turning to see the army of ants parading over her leg to get to the food.
"UGH," she kicked her leg and jumped up, quickly brushing the bugs off her torn, bloody leggings.
She'd been avoiding going back upstairs, even though Brandon was safely locked back in the bathroom. She didn't want to be near them. She didn't want to accept that was all that was left of her family. If she pretended hard enough, her family was off somewhere else and the last time she saw them was the day she was kidnapped. If she pretended, she still had a family to go home to.
She reluctantly dragged herself upstairs to her room to change into clean clothes. The room, seemingly like the rest of the house, looked like it had been ransacked. Whatever had been going on while she was away must have afforded plenty of freedom for looters to wreak havoc.
A lot of her clothes were gone, items that had once been favorites, items that she might have felt legitimate disappointment over losing if it were only a year earlier. She found a pair of thin, khaki cargo pants and slipped on the first t-shirt she found, a black shirt with bold emerald letters that read "TEAM SLYTHERIN."
Any practical walking shoes she'd owned were gone: running shoes, hiking boots, combat boots, all taken. She sighed, pulling on a worn pair of ratty black Uggs that were over ten years old, before turning to look at herself in her full length mirror.
She didn't recognize the person she saw. The skin on her face was pulled tightly over her skeleton, accentuating every angle of every bone. Her jaw, neck, arms, and chest were badly bruised, and her once auburn curls were grayish-brown with grime from her captor's basement. She shifted from foot to foot, her mind wandering back to her cage.
She had never let that man know just how much he was terrorizing her. She kept a brave face, even taunting the man until Cindy begged her to stop, unable to watch Aven being beaten for her defiance. Aven had stopped screaming when she realized no one could hear her. She could tell instilling fear gave the man satisfaction and she wasn't about to give him more than he had already taken. As she fixated on the bruises on her neck, she could almost feel his hands there, his thumb pressing down on her windpipe just enough not to crush it. She felt the back of her head being slammed on the concrete floor and her legs being thrown open.
Digging her nails into the side of her head, she squeezed her eyes shut and screamed, anger tearing at her throat. When she opened her eyes, she made eye contact again with herself in the mirror. Before she could lose herself in more contemplation, she heard banging on the door outside. She ran out of her room and down the stairs, almost falling but just catching herself before her feet slipped out from under her. Just as she reached the bottom of the stairs, the front door burst open, splintering.
Aven screamed and quickly assessed her surroundings, grabbing a large, rough-edged geode her mother had picked for decoration. She turned to the intruder across the room, rearing the geode behind her, ready to strike if he came close.
"Whoa, hey, hey, hey," the man said, his hands held up in front of him in surrender, one empty, the other grasping a bloody knife. He looked to be in his late thirties or early forties, a scruffy red beard adorning his ashen face. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you, I-" He paused, looking her up and down. "Oh shit...oh shit, it's you. You're that girl who was missing before-" Aven remained in her defensive stance.
"I, uh, sorry," the man continued. "I moved in down the street in February...a little while after you were reported missing I guess. Aven Hill, right?" She nodded. "Listen, I'm sorry to burst in here. I heard a scream and I thought one of the biters might be on someone."
"What happened?" was all Aven could choke out, unsure what to make of the situation. "Where is everyone?"
"You really don't know?" He observed the look on her face, thoroughly lost like she'd woken up unexpectedly on the other side of the world in someone else's body. Taking in her injuries, he let out a deflating sigh. "You really were kidnapped, weren't you?" Aven nodded almost imperceptibly, eyes dark and empty. "Shit, kid, and this is what you came home to?" She didn't need to answer.
"Then I guess I'll, uh...I'll catch you up on the apocalypse."