Tara woke to a terrible nagging pain in her right forearm. As she slowly opened her eyes, vision still blurred, she could see five-year-old Carly, with her brunette Shirley Temple ringlets kneeling on the bed beside her like a little Gremlin. Her hair was matted to the side of her head with something dark and wet. Was she outside playing in the mud this early? Tara had been her step-mother for three years, but still couldn’t tame the little wild-child. There was the nagging pain again, only sharper and more intense as her mind was beginning to fully wake up. She let out a small groan and noticed Carly was biting her arm.

“What the hell, kid?! That hurts!” Didn’t her damn father teach her any manners? She already knew the child acted like she was raised by wolves, but this was too much! Now, she liked the kid, she really did. She even tried to love her like a daughter, but she wasn’t Carly’s mother, thank fucking Christ. Carly stopped at the sound of Tara’s voice and looked up at her, but not the way a five-year-old would, not even a wild one like Carly. She had a questioning, ravenous look to her. A hungry look. Carly’s face was smeared red. Her eyes looked dead and wild at the same time, they were coated in a white cloudy film, searching and impatient in such an intentional way that it made Tara nervous. It made her nervous deep down in the place where your body made decisions before your mind had a chance to catch up. Tara looked down and her arm was a mangled

mess that resembled bloodied ground beef fresh off the meat grinder. She barely had time to process what the hell was going on before the baby began to cry from his room down the hall. Carly’s head snapped in the direction of the crying baby like a feral animal about to pounce. Carly sprang from the bed and landed in a crouch on the floor inches away from the door. Tara always thought this kid acted like an animal, but now she had the agility of a damn Puma. What in the hell was happening? But the question was rhetorical, Tara already knew the answer.

The girl sprinted down the hall towards the harsh cries of a hungry, wet newborn. Tara had no time to think. She scrambled out of bed and tackled Carly, who was now thrashing wildly beneath her, tearing at the carpet with her fingernails. The baby cried harder. He wasn’t used to his cries going unanswered. He’d slept in today and desperately needed to be fed. But not by this tiny monster that would tear him limb from limb, because she also had a hunger and it wasn’t anywhere near as innocent as the three-week-old lying in his crib crying for his mommy. He needed his mother to hold him and protect him. But could she protect him from this? Tara groped at the small hall table trying to find anything to stop the raging monster beneath her. Her hand landed on the heavy stone decorative piece her mother-in-law had given her during her New Age phase. It was a large agate egg shaped stone that sat in a gold-plated metal base. It was supposed to be a healing stone or some meditative horseshit, Tara wasn’t sure. She grasped the egg tightly in her right hand with her left still holding Carly’s small head firmly against the floor the best she could. The egg was solid and heavy, about the size of a baseball. She slid her left hand off the girl’s soft curly hair to her back, still trying her best not to let the little demon get the slip on her. Then, she took a swift, hard swing against Carly’s tiny head and heard a sickening crack, but the little beast kept thrashing, so she hit her three more times increasingly harder until she stopped moving and slumped to the floor. It was actually a bit easier then she thought to bash a child’s head in like that. Blood started to pool around Carly’s brown ringlets which fell loosely over her face to the floor, now floating in the red puddle that was forming on the carpet. My God, she thought, how will they ever forgive me? Her husband, her mother-in-law. How could she ever explain what happened here? The baby cried out again and Tara realized that none of that mattered right now. Her son was still alive. She ran to his room, scooped him up and held him tight, shushing him softly and rubbing his back out of instinct. After she got him fed and packed a bag, she loaded up the minivan. No time for songs and cuddles today, little guy. She already tried the house phone and cell. No service.

Had it really happened? Had The Community finally been breached? Were they naïve to think they’d be kept safe inside their walled off, gated mountain resort neighborhood? Most of the houses were cliff side, with a 100 foot rocky drop off to the forrest floor. Her bedroom window overlooks the bottom. In the beginning, she would stay up late at night and watch them roaming aimlessly, like cattle. They looked almost benign from that angle until they caught sight or scent of something alive. Then they sprang into a wild sprint and attacked without mercy. The infected. She pitied them at first. She knows it was dumb luck they were vacationing up here in the mountains when the outbreak started. She could have easily become just another mindless beast otherwise. Then she had her baby boy here in captivity. And she began to fear them. Fear what they could do to him. Now they’ve breached the walls of her family’s only sanctuary. Now she hated them. Now it was time to fight. She loaded the baby in his car seat and closed the door softly. She was nervous about who or what might be outside. She looked out the small dirty, square windows in the middle of the garage door. She didn’t see anything. It seemed still and eerily quiet, but it was only seven a.m. And quiet was good. She pressed the garage door button on the wall and shimmied quickly to the driver’s side door and locked herself and Miles securely inside. She hoped to God it would start. The van hadn’t been driven in months. No need. The resort had a main lodge with a kitchen and huge pantry and two restaurants. They weren’t anywhere near running out of food. Especially since so many residents took up gardening and there was a well on the grounds, too. She hated to leave. This place had been her shelter this last year. This was probably one of the few safe havens left on this God forsaken planet.

She wondered where the hell Steve was. Her husband liked to go fishing early, before sun up if possible. Says they bite better when it’s still a little dark and cool. She thought it was dangerous. He did, too, in the beginning, but the last few months

had made him braver. Maybe dumber, maybe just desperate to do anything that felt normal. She wondered if he knew about the breach, if he was trying to reach her? Maybe he’d already fallen victim to the breach, or hell, even started it. He’d seemed so forlorn the past month or two. Did he finally get reckless enough to try to go outside the gates? Why would he even dare do that now when they had a newborn to look after? Was he really that selfish? That was rhetorical, too.

Maybe he was just fishing. He would be making his way back soon. She might pass him by the road. As Tara drove around the bend to the downward slope that would take her down mountain towards the lodge, she hit something slippery. Of course, you idiot! Why did she forget they put slick oil down all over the hill that lead to their houses? Steve and their neighbors, The Millers and Sanders thought it would be a good idea so no rogue vehicles could drive up unannounced in the night. The van fishtailed wildly just as it hit the downgrade. She thought it might flip and wailed at the thought of her newborn be tossed head over dangly chubby little legs in his car seat. But the van swung swiftly to the side and the tail end came to a crash against a large oak. The crunch of the metal against the solid trunk of the tree was deafening as was her scream. She was barely cognizant of the fact that she had her arms against the steering wheel and the horn was blaring. She leaned herself back and threw off her seatbelt and immediately started clawing her way to the back seat. Miles, her little cherub cried softly in his car seat. He was most likely only scared and not hurt. She sat beside his seat and began to release his harness when she noticed them coming out from the trees in a hoard of at least twenty, walking swiftly and intently towards the sounds of tiny baby cries.

She “woke” somewhere in the dark. At first, she thought the lights were off, but then heard the muffled sound of talking. No matter how close and loud they got, she still couldn’t make out what they were saying. She tried really hard to open her eyes but couldn’t seem to manage even a flutter. More muffled voices, one male and one female. The tone was somewhat official, like a police officer or lawyer. Was she in jail? She most likely murdered Carly, so that kind of made sense. Either that, or she was in hell. Tara moved against something solid and confining, like straps - restraints? But no, she didn’t move. She didn’t give the command to move her body, something else did. Is that why she couldn’t see and could barely hear anything? Was she not in control of her own body? Slight panic set it and then she rationalized that she must be dreaming. This had to be a nightmare. It made sense, her sleeping body pressed against the hard jail cell cot making her think she was in restraints, the police officers’ murmurs from their desks fifty feet away, barely intelligible. She tried what she always did to wake from a bad dream; she concentrated on jerking her body to one side to roll over and wake up. No use. She couldn’t even twitch a finger. This was maddening. Tara had never been so lucid and unable to wake up at the same time. She waited like this for what seemed like an eternity, floating in a dark abyss. But finally someone came close and she could hear them more clearly. The male, who seemed like a doctor, was talking about her “condition” like she was a Leper. The female seemed to reiterate what he said and took orders. A nurse? No, they were both white coats, she could make that much out in blurry blobs of their humanoid forms moving about around her like it was a circus. The circus of the infected-almost-dead. And she was the main event!

White coat means doctor and lab tech? Tara knew enough about hospitals and doctors from her former psychiatric admissions. But that was in the past, wasn’t it? What if the trauma of bashing poor little Carly’s head in had done Tara’s head in? What if this was the big break? The “mother of them all” to end all mind fucks? One thing she knew, she was infected. She wasn’t sure how long she was out, but she wasn’t in control of her body anymore. She’d be one of the monsters soon.