Apocalypse

5

Liz

My morning started off pretty normal. I woke up, had my breakfast, and read some of my book. It was relatively boring for anyone else. But I enjoyed the quiet. I mean there are worse ways to start off the day, right? There could be a crazy virus going about making people kill and eat each other.

Oh right.

That was actually happening. I wiped away my tears as I walked away. I was cold, wet, and every inch of my body ached.

It started when I heard noises coming from down in my living room. I didn't usually go out, even though it was a perfectly nice day. I preferred to stay tucked away in my room. Away from the judgmental world outside my front door, and inside a written one.

I'd moved to this city in Canada a couple years ago. We'd come here from England and that's all I really want to say on the matter except people liked to mock my accent a lot.

I was halfway through one of my favourites and tucked into our living room couch when my dad came stumbling through the front door looking like he'd been hit by a car. Mum stumbled in after him, looking just as bad. I frowned and set my book down, getting up quickly to go and meet them.

"Mum? Dad? What happened?" I asked, coming down the stairs to get a better look and to help.

I hesitated when my mom looked up at me with a wild, feverish look in her eyes. Her chest was heaving like she was having a hard time breathing. She had scrapes and cuts all up an down her left side, like she'd been forced to the ground and dragged. Her blonde hair, usually in a neat ponytail, was messy and it looked like she was missing a clump of it just above her right ear.

Dad didn't look any better, his black hair shimmered with red glints. Blood. The skin on his jaw was torn on one side, making it look like he was grinning with a droopy lip. They'd both left earlier that morning to go to the hospital because they were both pretty sick. Some kind of fever, and dad had started to hallucinate. So I'd called the neighbor to take them to the hospital because I was afraid of anyplace that was medical. There was always so much death in those places, and the people freaked me out, and the smell made me sick. Plus it was always so bland. So I couldn't take them.

I wasn't sure why they were home again if they looked the way they did. Concern replaced my hesitation and I stepped towards them to guide them both up the stairs.

They didn't say anything to me, just groaned. But it sounded suspiciously like a growl. I didn't think anything of it as I sat them both down at the kitchen counter and went to find the phone to dial for an ambulance. I had to dig through the clutter on the counter to find it. As I dialed, dad started to convulse in his chair and then he fell to the floor. I yelled and dropped the phone, running to his side. I could hear someone talking from the speaker, I'd dropped the phone just as someone had picked up. The noise was fuzzy and distant to my ears though because my dad had stopped convulsing by the time I'd gotten his head off the ground, and now lay completely still. His skin was hot from the fever, but it was slowly losing it's colour. Going from pale to grey so quickly.

"Dad? Dad!" I repeated frantically and shook him a little.

I tried to check his pulse but I'd never done it before and I wasn't sure I was doing it right. I still felt nothing though. I swallowed and shook him a little more. Words died in my throat and the rest of the world became obsolete. I forgot that my mum was in the room too, and I didn't notice that she had begun to convulse as well until she hit the floor. Foam was welling up in her mouth and her eyes were wide with panic as she stared at me, like she was begging for my to make it stop but all I could do was stare in horror. I wished I could go back to yesterday when everything was fine.