EXTINCTION EVENT

chapter eight: lockdown

[ original episode ]

DAY 08

Winter in Vermont was a vicious thing for those that knew it well.

For those that visited on a weekend, or winter holiday, it was a reprieve from their busy schedules.

Marketed, packaged and repackaged, gentrified so that every bit of wildness was scraped from the surface — made palatable, a commodity for the seasonal tourists.

Past the ski lifts and hotels, the famous maple syrup and ice cream shoppes, and picture perfect streets in their historic districts, lay bare the state's true nature.

The landscape itself was alive — a savage, cruel beast that cared nothing for the livelihoods of its inhabitants.

As for the inhabitants — they were the coyotes ripping at carrion by the side of the highway; wildness at the edges of civilization, an unsightly reminder of a more savage time that refused to die.

The tourists would ignore it, of course, their eyes sliding away to the GPS or radio, flipping through to find something, anything to distract from the horrifying sight.

They would not take photos of the roadkill they saw, nor would they tell their friends of the mobile home by the side of the wetlands, half-sunken into the earth, and the child outside, one hand bare as they hauled wood.

They would not discuss it because they wouldn't want to acknowledge it. They would not acknowledge it, because then they could forget it.

It's easy to forget something when you make no mention of its existence.

It was not nearly as easy for the residents to forget the winter.

Winter brought the kind of cold that seeped into your bones and stayed, through the spring thaw and the summer heat, and only grew with each passing year.

Once you learned what cold was, you never truly forgot it.

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"They forgot about us, you know."

Toes curled and uncurled, feeling long since lost as the last embers of the wood stove continued their steady decline, puffing and sputtering their way to a cold grave.

If Katie's next check didn't clear so they could get more wood, they would meet the same fate.

No one was listening. The only other two people in the house were long lost to the throes of sleep, and they wouldn't understand even if awake.

In all honestly, Katie didn't even know who she was talking to.

Maybe God. Maybe the bastard that had gotten them into this mess, then left them high and dry as he drowned his sorrows.

Maybe just herself. Maybe she was losing it — wouldn't that just be the cherry on top of all the bullshit she'd gotten them through? Survive all that only to lose it in the end? What a joke.

The trio was tucked up next to the wood stove, Katie having dragged her mattress beside it to keep the family as warm as possible — shutting off all other areas of the half-remodeled house save the bathroom in order to prevent heat leaks. Even piled high with blankets, and ten-years-too-old space heater blasting away to all its ability, the stone walls of the basement still glistened frostbite white. The ice crystals gleamed in the soft light emitted by the wood stove, as if taunting her.

Two jobs later, you still can't put enough together to keep me out.

Her words came out like a curse as she desperately tried to rub some feeling back into her chapped, blistered hands. "All of them. Your aunts, uncles, your father. They know where we are. They know what's going on. And they forgot."

Her two daughters curled up against her — Heather, who at age three, was too young to understand, and Meghan, who at age seven, already understood too much, having become the woman's confidant in the wake of their move and the loss of any adult support she once had. Too much, she thought bitterly...and at the same time, not nearly enough.

They were weak. Of course they were. They were children, they were supposed to be. But the world didn't care about their circumstances, or the innocence of youth. They had to be strong now, their weakness would get them killed.

In the throes of sleep, it was hard to envision her children as anything other than what they were. Fragile, breakable, in need of protection she wasn't strong enough to provide them with.

Heather's curls puffed out around her face, framing her red, round cheeks as she slept. Cut short like this, she more resembled the image of one of the cherubs in the Sistine Chapel Katie's mother adored.

If only she cared half as much about her grandchild, or her daughter, I wouldn't be in this position, Katie thought bitterly.

The fire was slowly dying, coals sizzling to a slow death as Katie watched. The electric was cranked as high as it could go, and the one space heater they'd managed to snag from their former condo was set to oscillate in attempts to heat the space.

It wasn't enough. It was never enough.

The house wasn't finished — age and neglect had worn it down to the point where it was practically unlivable, despite all her efforts at fixing what he left broken. She wouldn't have the funds to get the insulation redone until spring, and the ancient walls weren't enough to keep out the winters bite.

In the depths of the snowstorm, roads closed, and unable to see a foot ahead in the blaze of white, it wasn't that far a stretch to think, even for a moment, that they were the last people on earth. Whether they were or not didn't much matter. Either way, they'd still be just as alone.

The mother's head tilted back against the basement wall, the outside chill permeating the cement, leaving the back of her head numb from the cold. "One more night," Katie whispered, her nightly prayer since they'd arrived. "Please, just for one more night, let us live til morning."

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The tepid water in the decontamination shower blasted her skin like a hail of bullets the moment she stepped inside.

She'd taken two showers just the night before to rid herself of any contaminants, but this one was harsher, designed to combat diseases and radiation — or whatever it was they were currently facing.

The military had set up a slew of them along the block, forcing everyone to partake. Katie had supervised Meghan and Heather's, to make sure there was no 'funny business' on the soldier's part, and now it was her turn.

The water came down in a torrent, puddling and pooling at her feet before it swirled down the drain. Dirt she hadn't even known existed intermingled with a substance she couldn't immediately identify.

Dark eyes dropped to fair hands as the woman studied the faint traces of a deep rust beneath her nail beds. She stood there for a moment and stared before she roughly scrubbed at it, washing away the last traces of evidence from last night's fiasco down the drain of the emergency shower.

"No one can know what happened."

The female soldier on duty averted her eyes respectfully as she held out a towel, which Katie thanked her for quietly as she wrapped it around herself, changing quickly. Despite the awkwardness of the situation, she could catch the soldier's eyes scanning her for any signs of contamination not washed away by the shower.

Scratches, maybe. Or a bite.

The examination afterwards went quickly. There didn't seem to be any trained medical staff amongst the soldiers, it was strictly question-and-answer format with a final temperature check. Which meant a fever was part of the symptoms they had managed to identify. Good to know.

Katie walked back inside the house, attempting to look as unhurried and casual as she could. After all, she had nothing to hide. Just a normal suburban mother on vacation with her two teen daughters.

In the eyes of the military, she was just another blip on their radar, if that.

The door locked with a definitive click as she scanned up and down the block through a crack in the curtains.

"We can't trust any of these people; not the neighbors, not the soldiers, not anyone."

The curtains slid shut as she tugged them closed, making sure not a crack of light got through. They would stay that way for as long as they were there.

The first few days had passed in a blur.

Their water was boiled. After the third day, electricity ran from 8:00AM to 5:00PM. Their bags remained in the closet of the master bedroom, stacked nicely on top of each other, packed and ready for the day when they'd be needed.

Any excess rations were packed with the rest of their supplies — a slow growing supply that was checked, then double-checked.

The Darcy matriarch spent the bulk of the week in a worried spiral. She swung between focusing her efforts on boarding up the windows in preparation for a siege like the one they'd experienced at the college, and hurriedly packing their supplies in preparation for an escape. The house was a battleground, and no one seemed able to decide whether they wanted it to be the site of their last stand, or temporary shelter.

Nevertheless, they spent the first few nights they were there whiling away the wee hours until the morning by deconstructing various bookcases, chairs, and a basement table, then hammering the boards into place over any and all entrances and exits. Meanwhile, the stock in the closet of the master bedroom only grew larger and larger, swelling in size with the rations supplied.

Preparing for the inevitable.

Katie fashioned a holster out of a thin leather belt the landlords mistakenly left behind as well as an excessive amount of duct tape, and used it to carry around a meat cleaver almost the length of her forearm.

Meghan rolled her eyes behind her mother's back on occasion — she confided to Heather that she didn't see the point of carrying it around the house, considering their excessive fortification — but Heather knew she kept the hunting knife in her jacket pocket when she went out to grab rations, and under her pillow, one hand curled around it when she slept.

Try as they might to blend in to the middle-class suburbia, none of them would be forgetting that night at UCLA anytime soon, and it showed.

Meghan complained about Heather's clinginess in her sleep, and fashioned a spare blanket into a makeshift sleeping bag to avoid her younger sisters unconscious cuddling.

Still, none of them moved from the master bedroom.

They wouldn't be caught off-guard again.

Not that anyone could know. The most important part of their protection was their deniability. The military saw fit to keep whatever was happening outside quiet from the citizens — they'd broadcast the existence of the disease, but any actual operations or specifics were hushed up. They tested each person daily with 'wellness checks' carried out by their soldiers. Checking for signs of the illness. They knew; if it was ever revealed they had come in contact with the infected that first night, they would be in trouble.

And so, the day the military arrived, became the day Katie fashioned their own party line.

"Heather cut her hand on a dish last night. We picked up Meghan from her dorm early yesterday and arrived here mid-morning. After the power went out we played Clue and settled in.

We don't know about the protests or the infected.

We don't know anything.

Do you understand?"

"I understand, Mum," Meghan responded with a sigh as her mother listed off the appropriate route to take to the military outpost. "Take whatever they give me, come straight home. Be polite, don't get friendly. Don't engage with the neighbors without you present. If I have to, keep it limited to small-talk only. Can I go now? I don't want to miss our rations."

"You need to take this seriously," Katie frowned, the meat cleaver swaying in place on her hip as she shifted weight from one side to the other.

"I am," Meghan insisted. "But it'll be suspicious if I show up late. I want to arrive smack-dab in the middle of when everyone else is, so I'll be just another face in the crowd. I stand out enough with Holly at my side, I don't need to give them any more reason to take note of us."

"You're not leaving alone, you have to take Holly with you."

"I know why I have to, I'm just saying it's memorable. One of the soldiers even knows Holly by name now."

"How does he know that?"

"Because I'm pretty much the only person who drags my dog with me wherever I go."

"I've seen other people walking their dogs."

"Yeah, they don't bring their dogs to get rations."

Katie's frown deepened, irritation tracing divots in her face, and Meghan shifted the bag on her arm. "It's not a bad thing," she added quickly. "I'm fine being the dog girl. Just don't want to stand out for anything else, you know?"

Katie studied her for a time, then sighed, turning away back towards the kitchen. "Alright," she conceded. "Just wanted to make sure you knew how important this is. We can't afford any screw-ups."

Any more screw-ups, went unsaid.

The incident of Meghan forgetting the crossbow in her room had weighed heavy on everyone's mind since the night it occurred. They were currently protected from the hordes of dead by the military, but the question remained for how long that would last.

Everyone was on edge, and Katie was only getting more and more stressed as time elapsed since the incident. Five days into their stay in the Safe Zone, Meghan, also, was barely coping with the situation — snappy and irritable one moment and withdrawn the next. Trying to curl herself into as small a ball as she could so no one could get at her vulnerable places.

The blow-up wasn't a matter of if, but when at this point.

Heather listened to the end of her mother and sister's conversation from the living room, pulling up her previously set-aside manga to use as an effective excuse for when Meghan stomped through.

Heather flexed her sore arm, gritting her teeth at the sharp pain that shot up from her sore forearm. By her mother's best guess, she'd sprained it during the fight, and it still ached almost half a week later, a patchwork of black and blue that trailed from her palm to her wrist that had since faded into an ugly, mottled grey-green.

She turned a page of her manga, grateful she'd brought it along to read. There wasn't too much else for her to do. Ever since the night at the dorm, she'd been all but treated as an invalid, locked up in the house like a princess in a tower. To make up for her perceived failure to protect her daughter that night, Katie had coddled her ever since, all but refusing to let her do even the most basic of tasks.

Ironically, Heather was the one coping best with the situation, having slipped into a casual routine after their arrival with ease. Maybe it was like that thing Meghan had mentioned she'd learned about in her Criminal Justice courses awhile back — trauma mastery. The act of re-visiting or recreating a traumatic situation in order to find a different outcome or come to terms with the incident. Her killing of the dead people back at the dorm was necessary at the time, and had contributed to some peace of mind now with the knowledge that when push came to shove, she could handle herself.

Katie and Meghan didn't have that, and were fraying at the seams. Still, it wasn't like she could do much to help, aside from dress up as a dead person and pretend to try and bite them. That could only end badly. She'd probably get shot by the feds if she tried.

No. Better to let them work it out on their own.

"What are you doing?"

Meghan peered over her shoulder, brown eyes scanning along the page curiously. If she knew that Heather had been listening in on her guarded spat with their mother, she didn't acknowledge it.

Heather held it up so her sister could more easily see it. If Meghan wanted to play pretend like everything was fine, she'd go along with it. "Just reading a shonen," she shrugged. On the page, an enormous, fat monster with beady eyes and a slobbering tongue attacked one of the boys on the cover of the edition. Meghan's eyes widened slightly as she came across the panel in question.

"What's that?" she questioned.

"It's like an incarnation of one of the Seven Deadly Sins," Heather explained briefly. "Gluttony. He's basically an immortal cannibal."

Meghan tried to hide a wince, but Heather could see how her lips thinned and her dark eyes darted away. "Isn't that a bit on the nose, considering our current circumstances?" Meghan pointed out, uncomfortable with how the topic had turned.

"It's not like I have much else to do!" the younger girl exclaimed. "Mum's all but put me on bed-rest until my hand heals. We all have our own ways of coping, Meg, just let me live."

"Okay, I was just asking. Is it any good?"

She nodded as affirmation. "You'd like it," Heather added. "One of the brothers, Ed, reminds me a bit of you." She tapped the page featuring the boy with the braid for emphasis.

Meghan examined the comic, tilting her head in curiosity. "Really?"

"Yeah," Heather agreed, forcing a grin as she adopted a more lighthearted tone. "His younger brother is way taller than him while he's super short, and he gets mad when people point it out."

Meghan frowned. "I'm not that short."

It was a bit of a sore subject for Meghan — when it came to genetics in the family, she'd drawn the short straw. Specifically, the 5'3 straw who was outgrown by her eleven year old sister, who'd capped out at 5'7. Even their mother had a couple inches on her.

"Sure," Heather dragged out, then smiled toothily again at Meghan's look of irritation. "Either way, you should give it a read. It's good."

"Maybe I will," Meghan agreed, and shifted on her feet. "I'm headed out. Have to go grab supplies with Holly."

Heather jutted her lower lip out in a visible pout, slamming the book closed. "No fair," she complained. "Mum has me on house arrest and you get to go out to grab rations?"

"You make it sound so exciting," Meghan commented. "I just head down the street to the main military encampment and tell our name, then lug some supplies back while I try to keep Holly from running up to everyone she sees."

"That, what you just said, sounds about a hundred million times more exciting than just sitting here re-reading my old manga," Heather huffed.

"I feel like that number's a little high," Meghan noted. "Maybe only ten times as exciting."

"Fifteen," the younger girl stressed.

"Twelve point five," Meghan compromised.

"I hate fractions," Heather frowned. "Thirteen or bust."

"Fine. It's thirteen times as exciting. Once your hand heals up, you can haggle with GI Joe over a pack of iodine tablets, and I can lounge around at home watching TV. Deal?"

Heather considered the offer. "You know, now that you mention it," she stretched out her long legs, crossing one over the other atop the coffee table, "staying at home sounds pretty good."

Meghan rolled her eyes, leaning forward over the girl as she shook Heather lightly side-to-side. "Lazy," she chastised as Heather snorted with laughter.

The sounds of Meghan's struggle with getting Holly leashed up and out the door faded with the slam of the front door, and their receding footsteps down the drive.

With that, the house was silent.

Except...

Heather glanced towards the kitchen, leaning out over the couch as she listened to the insistent tap-tap of her mother's pen against granite countertop.

With a sigh, she heaved her legs over the side of the sectional and stood, taking a moment to fully stretch out before abandoning her leisure, leaving her manga behind on the coffee table as she entered the kitchen.

As suspected, her mother was stood at her usual post in the kitchen. Elbows propped up on the counter as her ballpoint threatened to drill through the countertop beside her notepad, filled with scribbles she couldn't decipher that the elder woman had built up over the past week.

Beneath the cheaper brand of foundation she'd brought along (owed to her natural distrust of TSA's confiscation policy) dark circles had begun to make themselves known. Heather had unfortunately, been woken up in a cold sweat more nights than she liked to admit to the sound of Katie pacing into the morning hours.

Just because she was dealing with the end of the world as they knew it better than her family was, didn't mean she was just fine and dandy, alright?

Her hair was pinned back into a bun some might consider artistically messy, but she knew better. There was nothing artistic about it, in the same way there was nothing artistic about the used coffee mugs well on their way to forming the tower of Babel in the sink, and the worry lines around her eyes that only seemed to get deeper by the day.

Her mother was on a knife's edge, and this ritual was just the tip of the iceberg.

She'd been trying to figure out the soldier's routine since they'd arrived, with some success. They'd figured out their schedule was staggered, with patrols that varied between the evenings and early mornings, 5—7AM and 7-9PM respectively. They switched up the time enough that it was hard to track, but they'd settled into a steadier routine the longer they were there. That was just by vehicle. Foot patrols were done mid-morning to administer the daily "wellness checks" that were required in order to stay in the Safe Zone.

Katie didn't trust those either — one of her dominant theories was that the virus was actually government made, and these camps were testing grounds for antibodies or new strains of the disease. Meghan had successfully argued that one down by stating that the military units would likely be using PPE when interacting with them if that were the case, or at the very least, there would be a medical presence there beyond one rookie national guard member with a touch-less thermometer.

Still, it was a cold comfort, knowing what exactly laid beyond the Safe Zone. The chain link fence topped by barbed wire seemed flimsy as a defense in comparison to what they were facing.

Heather was of the mind that it didn't actually matter much where the virus came from — it was there, and they had to deal with it. The only reason Katie was so focused on it was because in their new world of chaos, her theories were the only thing she could control. Without that, they were as helpless as everyone else in El Sereno.

At the counter, Katie worried at the skin on her lip, counting out again the vehicles passing on their way to distribute rations.

"One, two — that makes four," she muttered, scribbling the number down in shorthand. "That's three less than last time."

"Hey," Heather broached, entering the kitchen with the same amount of caution as if she were entering a bear's den. "I found some old Hallmark movies in the living room on DVD and thought we could set them up to watch while Meghan's gone. You wanna join me?"

"I can't right now, I'm working," Katie spoke without so much as glancing back, dark eyes scanning up and down the street again.

There was the tone Heather recognized. The one that said without saying; don't bother me unless you want to be on the receiving end of my repressed emotions.

Suddenly, the floor of the kitchen felt less like tile and more like a minefield. It was just a good thing Heather was used to navigating her mother and sisters moods.

Heather continued towards her, speaking at a low volume. "You've been there since we woke up."

When she responded, her voice was terse. "I need to make sure I don't miss anything."

"I'll help," she responded simply. She had considered briefly asking if her help would be wanted, but she didn't want to run the risk of rejection. It was obvious that her mother shouldn't be alone right now.

They stood in silence, watching as her sister's figure turned the corner and disappeared, followed by a loose trail of their neighbors, following the same path. By the time the 21st person disappeared from view, and Katie's death grip on the pen had softened, the girl spoke up. Carefully, Heather placed a hand on her mother's forearm. "Mum?" she asked carefully. "Are you okay?"

Katie's grip on the pen tightened, and Heather's eyes tracked her movements with concern. Her hand slid down to her mothers, giving it what she hoped was a comforting squeeze.

They stood in silence for a minute before the woman spoke again. "No," her voice broke. "But I have to be, and I don't know how I can."

She turned her face away down towards the counter, fingers trembling beneath Heather's as her shoulders shook. Heather leaned against her, nuzzling her face in the crook of her mother's neck.

"It's okay," she mumbled. "We're going to be okay."

Neither one said anything after that, and watched in silence as the rest of the neighborhood trickled down to get their rations.

When Katie continued to count them out under her breath, neither said a word.

"31...32...35..."

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A bit more has been revealed about the Darcys past! It's not going to be a main focus, but more will be shown through the story, so this isn't the last we'll see of their lives in Vermont. Comment any theories you have, I'm curious to hear your ideas on their background.

This is more of a filler chapter, I guess, but it didn't make sense to jump into the next challenge immediately after the night at the dorm. Right now, the Darcys are reeling from what they experienced, and are honestly a bit traumatized, so I wanted to show that.

Vote and comment if you liked! :)