Moments | Sweet Home

Chapter 1: The Moment it began

She was falling.

Moments ago she had been in the hospital, fending off the patients and nurses and doctors turned monsters, and moments ago she had watched her friend become something unrecognizable and bite off a man's head and then moments after that another person had set her friend on fire.

The image still replayed in her head everytime she blinked, still brought bile bubbling up from her stomach into her throat. She had grown up with that girl, they had both even been born in the same hospital on the same day just 2 hours and 36 minutes apart. The same very hospital her friend had ended up dying in.

She still shook from the horror of it, as she breathed heavily and swallowed.

It had been chaos as people fought and clawed and cried to make it out alive, to reach the helipad of the hospital and into the air ambulances for safety.

Right now there was herself, six others and the paramedic driving the heli, strapped in, hovering in the sky and searching for safety.

Soon they would be safe, soon. The four men and two women with her had already started to relax, the worst was over, there were no more monsters, they had all gotten away safely.

Yeonha could not settle, something deep in her bones-' the skeptic ingrained in her personality told her that the others were wrong, that they had gotten away too easily, it was too soon to count their blessings and let their guard down.

And she was right, because in a matter of moments everything started to go terribly terribly wrong.

Panic hits her immediately as soon as the heli starts to uncontrollably sway.

The paramedic flying the helicopter had become infected, nose and mouth gushing with blood and in an attempt to stop the bloody red fountain he had taken his hands off the controls, causing the helicopter to turn on one side. Then he had passed out, unable to regain control of the flying contraption.

She shrieked, and the others yelled and screamed, there were far too many of them inside the helicopter to be seat belted and strapped in properly, so a few of them, including Yeonha, were tossed about, flailing as they tried to seek purchase and stabilise themselves.

As Yeonha hits a hard metal structure she groans, an ache echoing through her nerves down to her bones. Tears prick her eyes and her heart thumps in her chest. She grips a flailing strap from a built in harness with all the will and ferocity she can muster, not caring it was cutting into her palm. She had to hold on. She had to survive.

"What's going on!"

Another yelled, but their words were swallowed by the sound of winds and propellers.

"The Pilot, he must be infected."

"Does anyone else know how to fly?"

"If I get to the pilot's seat I think I can stabilise us." A woman with a boyish haircut tells the others, a man barks a hurry up then, and just as she unclips her seatbelt to move, the helicopter flips on it's opposite side.

Yeonha's stomach jumps into her mouth as the woman is brutally thrown into the glass window and it cracks and smashes and gravity pulls the lady through with it.

What now what now what now. What happens now?

She hears it echoing in her head, in her ears, repeated over and over leaving the mouths of the others.

What happens now? They're all going to die that's what.

Silent sobs wrack her shoulders, as she still clutches on for dear life as if the seatbelt was her saviour even thought she knew it wasn't- there was no saviour, this was going to be her end- the helicopter spirals again and she sobs louder.

It was beeping, an alarm that was blaring loudly signalling it's emergency state, it was heading straight for an apartment building, where it would crash and burn and explode and kill not just them but any inhabitants of the complex too. She wouldn't be able to save herself, she wouldn't be able to save anyone. They were going to die and it was going to hurt.

Blood rushes to her head, and then, then it gushes out of her nose, her mouth and drips down her chin and onto her hands. She coughs and splutters, spitting out red.

"Monster! She's infected too!" The others scream as her symptoms heighten their already panicked states; they're still descending, spiralling out of control and the man nearest to her, the man she had saved from a monster and helped onto the heli moments ago is kicking her, and he keeps kicking her and keeps shouting and yelling so that the others kick her too and she loses her grip on the one thing keeping her inside the helicopter.

In the face of imminent death they didn't care about anyone else, it was every man for himself now. And now to them she was no longer human so she meant less than nothing. She has no choice but to forcefully surrender to the sky.

She was falling.

The deathly grip of gravity causes her stomach to lurch, and she can hear herself screaming, burning her throat raw. She hears a voice that sounds familiar in her head, "Now it's your turn to fly."

Yeonha hits the hard concrete of an apartment rooftop with a squeal and a smack. Pain explodes through her entire being, agonizing and nauseating and like nothing she had felt before. A soundless scream leaves her mouth, the oxygen in her lungs is crushed out of her and black spots taint her vision. She closes her eyes. Her ribs are bruised, cracked and maybe even broken, her shoulder had been pullred from it's socket and two of her fingers had bent so far backward the wrong way they had become broken. She coughs, and cries and vomits up the taste of metal on her tongue. Yeonha tries to move, but moving hurts, everything hurts-death hurts.

No.

She's not dead. Not yet anyways. Her eyes open slowly to see the world on fire. Well, not the world but the helicopter- it had collided with the neighbouring apartment building, exploding in a horrific mess of fire and screams and debri. She can feel the heat from the flames, hear the rattling and ringing in her ears from the explosion that she hopes isn't permanent damage. She sees a body on fire falling through the sky.

No survivors.

Only her.

With renewed vigor she shakily drags herself onto her knees. It takes time because every movement makes her head pound, makes her side feel like it's being stabbed and her stomach nauseous. Yeonha tries to keep focus on her primary goal- she needed to fix her fingers and her arm. She was no stranger to things like broken bones and sprains and dislocations, it came with the territory as a gymnast, if you weren't careful, if you miscalculated your force or height or angle and you fell, then you would get yourself hurt. But it was her father who had taught her how to reset a dislocation, during one hiking adventure where she had slipped and fell when she was 14.

She could never forget that moment, she had cried and wailed so much asking her dad to help her, and he had simply said sometimes you must learn to help yourself. Then he had told her to listen carefully and talked her through how to pop her shoulder back into place.

Her breath leaves her lips in short shallow pants.

"Okay. Yeonha, this is going to hurt." She hears him say and she sniffles trying to stop her tears."Hold your wrist." She wraps her shaky unbroken fingers around her wrist."Now, pull and straighten your arm." She braces herself and bites her lip, hot tears leaking down her face as she screeches through gritted teeth. The ball of her arm bone slips back into place. 14 year old Yeonha had hated her father after that day and refused to talk to him for almost a whole month, but now 18 year old Yeonha was rather thankful. "Thanks dad." She breathes out as she braces once again to bend her two broken fingers straighter.

Another spell of dizziness and pain hits her and she cries out once again, as she sways and collapses to one side. Just a moment, she tells herself, she just needs another moment to compose herself then she'd be okay enough to head inside and find people. She needs more than a moment though, but she doesn't allow herself any more time than the time it takes her to tear off some fabric from the hem of her shirt to wrap up her injured fingers, because if she stopped for more than a moment then she would have to face the fact that she was infected, that the Yeonha she was trying so hard to save would soon become a monster.