Dark Days

First Encounter

©JRF2016

"What a night," Rachel said as she laid her keys on the table, "People are going insane out there!  I heard all these weird stories about people eating each other.  We sold completely out of all our ammo and guns."  She kept looking around as she was talking looking for her mother.  She moved back in with her just until she could get through school.  If she would have been able to make it she would have just stayed out there on her own.  Her mother's boyfriend had moved in with her and he was less than appealing as a man.  He stayed drunk and high.  She acted like he was such a wonderful person. She hated Rachel's father but Johnny was so much worse.  She didn't understand her mother's logic behind that but she loved her, and as long as she is happy that's all that matters.  She barely remembered her father but she kept a picture of him in her pocket all the time.  It was the only one she had of him.  She was sitting on his lap laughing up at him and he had the biggest smile stretched across his lips.  He looked like such a proud papa.   At least looking at that picture she could always pretend he was.

        She walked into the kitchen to see Johnny on his knees devouring something. "Ugh," Rachel grunted at him, "You are such a slob..." she stopped there realizing just what he was eating.  Her mother lay there on the floor with her intestines strung out across her and leading up to Johnny's mouth.  He was just sitting there with her mother's guts hanging out of his mouth like a big string of spaghetti. "Oh my God! What the Hell are you on this time?" She asks disgusted. What kind of drugs has he gotten into to do this? He started to get up when her mother's head turned up and started snapping at Rachel. Rachel backed up against the wall as her mother kept reaching for her.  She rolled over spilling what was left of her guts onto the floor and started crawling toward her.  When she got close enough to grab Rachel's ankle she opened her mouth wide and tried to bite her.  Rachel kicked her mother in the head causing her to stop but she quickly came back at her.  She would kick her mother away and then have to shove Johnny back off of her. Rachel kept alternating her kicks to her mother's head and a shove backward to Johnny's chest until her mother's brains were oozing out onto the floor.  Rachel started sobbing but stopped short of tears as she looked up to see Johnny coming toward her again, blood dripping from his lips.  She pushed him back, he stumbled but started for her again.  She kept pushing, he kept coming at her.  She saw the wooden cutting board laying on the table and reached for it.  Holding Johnny by the collar of his t-shirt and holding him back as she reached.  It fell to the floor and Rachel dropped with it.  She crawled under the table to the other side with Johnny nipping at her heels, literally.  She got to the other side and stood to her feet facing Johnny as she started running to the door.  He grabbed her ankle and she fell hitting her head on the table on her way down. Her vision was blurry from the gash dripping blood into her eyes.  Johnny was crawling over her as she brought her foot up and kicked him backward.  He fell back into the cabinet.  She stumbled up to her feet and kicked him again and again.  She kept kicking until he wasn't moving anymore.

       She crawled over to her mother and lay on top of her sobbing.  After a while, when she got all that emotion out of her system she stood up and looking down at her mother she decided she needed to bury her.  It was the right thing to do, she was her mother after all, the only family she had.  Even though she had tried to eat her.  She dragged her mother's body out to the back yard as she dug a hole, lay her in it, and covered her up with dirt.  She walked back into the house and up to her room to clean herself up. Before she could make it to the bathroom to clean up she started to get dizzy and passed out on the bed.

"Hey," Reid asked, "You okay back there?"  Rachel sat up rubbing her eyes.  "Yeah," she said, "I must have been more tired than I thought."   Reid nods as he looks at Darick and then back at her, "Well, we're here."