Chapter 1
I walk home in the gentle sheets of rain. The sky is an overcast grey. I watch as the minuscule puddles below my feet swell and wrinkle and then fade out into a rippled wave, and I hug my raincoat tighter in an attempt to keep the icy drops from biting at my skin. Next to me stands a large concrete wall which separates myself from what I suppose is a large garden; leading up to a grand mansion-like home. I turn left onto a dirt path which is surrounded by various Scottish foliage, this path leads me home. A small opening develops from the tree-line and there lies my little cottage. My sister and I live alone in this small old-fashioned cottage, cut off from the nearby town called Selftro. It’s nice and quieter here. Less light pollution too, so me and my sister normally go upstairs and watch the stars glisten and shine at nightfall through the skylight. Not many people live around here, but there’s enough people to socialize and blather about to in town.
I take out my ring of keys and let myself in using the key which I had decorated to look like a rainbow; so I can easily tell which key is usable for each door or cabinet. The door unlocks and I swiftly close and lock the door behind me. I’m not paranoid or anything, I just don’t want the carpets too drenched from the usual frigid Scottish rain. I unbutton my coat and sling it on the back of the kitchen chairs. I turn and enter the living room and dive for the warm couch, with my usual fleecy blanket placed on it. I wrap myself in my blanket; cocooning myself until I’m concealed from neck-to-toe. I look towards the old cuckoo clock; which is hanging above the television set and notice that it’s nearly six o’clock. I grab the remote and press the power button and the dated television set flickers to life and I tune in to my favourite programme; the news. People say to me that the news is mind-numbingly boring, and that there’s much more to be watched. But I like the news. It’s not distracting; like most other channels are. My younger sister always complains about how her friends told her about this ‘amazing new show on channel 201’ and how unfair it is of me to not let her watch it. Life’s tough like that. You don’t always get what you want. I don’t realize the television has blinked on. I focus my attention to the out-dated television set; a jazzy tune starts playing and a thin woman with a radiant glow and flowing blonde hair appears on the screen, she begins to apply some sort of cream to her face and then the usual advertising male voice starts to narrate; “Mr Nukes new fabulous facial cream has doctors and scientists awake at night trying to figure out how he does it. With his new formula women no longer need to worry about visible wrinkles and dead skin cells. It helps moisturize and radiate your skin to have a natural glow and it literally brings the dead skin cells back to life.” The advert ends. A deep man’s voice starts to crackle out of the speakers. The news begins, and it’s not good.
“There has been a breakout of infection. Scholars say it came from a lab which was testing on air borne viruses. Experts say that everyone is to make sure they have a stock of food which would be a similar size to one of a long snowstorm. Especially store preserved produce and lots of fresh water bottles, as the running taps will be shut off to make sure the infection doesn't come into contact with the tap water. Please stay indoors at all costs. Do not, under any circumstances go outdoors. THIS IS A CODE RED WARNING. THIS IS A CODE RED WARNING. THIS IS A---“The signal has shorted out and shades of grey fizz statically on the screen. I hear my sisters footsteps creak and lightly thump above me. She must have listened to the broadcast on the radio upstairs. Must have interrupted her usual modern music. She bursts into the room and looks straight at me, some-what relieved.
“Thank god you’re back!” She exclaims, walking towards me. She notices the television’s screen and swiftly switches it off at the wall socket. “I’ve made sure all the windows are closed and I’ve shut all the vents. Is the front door locked?”
“Yeah it’s locked.” I say. Even so, she walks towards it and makes sure.
It’s locked.
“Right,” She starts “The doors and windows are locked. We are inside. All we need to do now is collect our favourite things and head down into the cellar!! I love the cellar! This is going to be so awesome!”
“Awesome? Didn’t you hear the dudes’ panic in his voice as he repeated ‘THIS IS A CODE RED WARNING’?” I exclaim.
“Well yeah. But it’ll probably pass…” She trails off.
“But we can’t be too sure.” I say. We walk together to the centre of the living room. A thick rams’ skin rug covers a trapdoor; I shove it to the side and the trapdoor is revealed and I open it. An old timber ladder descends into the dusty cellar.
“Right you go upstairs and collect your unique belongings whilst I get started on the food” I order.
“Okay, I’ll be down in a minute.” She replies.
I watch her sprint upstairs and into our room. She initially had her own room; as did I. But when our parents left us unaided in the woodlands at the age of 6 (me) and 3 (sister), I’ve enjoyed to keep her nearby and safe. When our parents left us, she was screaming and crying and I had to carry her 15 miles to stumble upon our cottage; it was abandoned, the journey took about 2 months. When we arrived, as if by miracle if you have faith in in them, I found our cottage in the interior of the woods. And to our astonishment it was abandoned and well stocked with nourishment and water. Not much else. But it kept us going. By the age of 7 I found some threads and cloth and I made a make-do leash-and-harness for my sister. So we started to explore our surroundings. We found berry greeneries and fresh water springs, and we essentially lived on that until I was 10. My sister and I went a little further into the woods and found the town, there was some money left in the cottage and we went back there to fetch it. We tottered off into town and visited numerous shops. I didn’t know how currency functioned, but I got the hang of it. Eventually. Currently I’m 16 and she’s 13 and I work at the newsagents 4 days-a-week.
I saunter into the kitchen and open the doors to the walk-in pantry. The walls have faded to a water-dish blue and the paint has bubbled up into cracked elliptical blisters filled with air in odd little patches. The make-do shelves are bare and a few cobwebs are clinging to the supports. To my displeasure there’s only 5 cans of preserved peaches and 3 cans of preserved tuna, and opposite them lies 10 water bottles.
This is bad I think to myself.
Very bad
Chapter 2
I hear a crash coming from upstairs and rush to see what it is. My sister has dropped the box of her belongings at the top of the stairs; at the bottom of the stairs lies a huge pile of stuffed animals, hats, CD’s, her MP3, her all-in-one charger and her radio. “Why do you need your radio?” I ask “You do know that the cellar is underground yeah? So, that means that there will most likely be no signal for the radio to latch onto right? Also, the cellar hasn’t got any plug sockets… So the MP3 will approximately last about...hmm...About three hours at most. ” A look of disappointment shrouds her face.
“Oh, yeah. I’ll take it back up then…” And with that she reluctantly trots down to me and picks up all her belongings and carries them to her box upstairs, she places them into the box and saunters back into our room. I return to the walk-in-pantry and with a sigh of disappointment I make several short trips from the pantry to the cellar, each time placing the little amount of food into the dusty cellar. I walk into the kitchen and sit on one of the faded dining room chairs. After a while of contemplating in my thoughts of whether or not to make a quick run into town and attempt to bargain with the shopkeepers for some more food and water with the minimal currency I have, I hear yet another bang and crash from upstairs. I stand up and run upstairs to see if she needs any help. Once I’m at the top of the stairs I vaguely see her picking more stuff up from the floor and back into her box. “Are you okay?” I ask.
“Yeah I’m fine, god I’m so clumsy!” I walk towards her and kneel to help her put her belongings back into her box again. This time her chosen belongings in the box are as follows; candles, a torch, a thin yet large fleecy blanket and a spare change of clothes for both of us.
“That’s more like it, right I’ll go take this down. You could always get some extra things if you want,” I say.
“Okay, will do.” And with that I stand and walk back to the cellar, making my way carefully down the old and creaky wooden stairs. Once in the cellar I place the box onto the hard concrete floor and lay out the continents. After a couple of minutes I’m joined by my sister.
“Hey guess what?” She says.
“What?”
“I’ve found some sort of chisel thing, we can engrave our names into the floor! What do you think?” She says with a beaming smile.
“Sounds like an awesome idea.”
So that’s what we do. After a while of working the blunt tool into the ground, we stand and look at the finished result.
Molly + Pineapple.
I know what you’re thinking… Why is she called Pineapple? Well she was originally called Megan, but whenever I called her that she threw a tantrum when she was younger. So one day when we were exploring the town, we entered the local market and there was a brilliant store filled with a rainbow selection of fruits, and there was one in particular which she took a liking to; a pineapple. As soon as she saw it she was skipping around with excitement and kept asking for me to buy it for her. So instead of buying something we actually needed to keep us sustained on our low currency at the time, I bought it. When we made our way back home I asked her ‘When do you want to eat this?’ … Let’s just say she wasn’t all that impressed. She screamed and said you can’t kill Mike! It turned out that she named the darned fruit and wanted to keep it as a pet or something, so when the inevitable happened; when it started to rot, she cried for weeks; months even. We ended up burying it and had a mini funeral. So, along the line I noticed whenever the word ‘pineapple’ was mentioned she’d bright up like a candle in a darkened room. So I asked her; ‘Do you want me to call you Pineapple from now on?’ and evidently she did. So that’s the story of her name.
Suddenly I hear a knock at the door. Pineapple looks over to me apprehensively. I look back at her anxiously. Nobody ever comes out here… “Stay here” I mutter. She nods uneasily. I make my way gingerly towards the door. Luckily there’s an eye hole to see who it is. I peer through it. There’s a boy there. He looks around Pineapple’s age. He has dark hair and is drenched and shaking like a leaf. Before I decide to let him in, I call to Pineapple; “Come here a sec” Her feet lightly thud over to me and gives me a confused look.
“What?” She mouths, I wave her to come over here and take a look through the eye hole. She stands on her tiptoes and looks through the small circular, slightly magnified window. A wave of recognition sweeps over her face.
“You know him?” I ask.
“Yeah, he’s a friend from school.” She trails off. “A good friend.” Her cheeks slightly redden.
“Are you sure he’s just a friend?” I tease. She shoots me a look through her green/hazel blue flecked eyes. “Okay, okay.” I raise my hands in surrender. “Better let him in before he freezes to death. I’ll get some blankets. From the shed out back.”
“Okay.” She replies.
As I start to walk towards the backdoor I hear the front door unlock and the boy rush in from the cold and quickly slam the door behind him. Pineapple locks it and they start to talk but I’m too far away to hear their conversation. No need to be so harsh on the door, I think to myself. As I approach the back door I consider going back to get my coat but the shed is only a little way away from the cottage. So I decide not to. I grab the spare set of keys from under the boot-cleaning mat and unlock the door. I lock the door behind me and make my way to the shed. Suddenly I feel as though I’m being watched and try to hug jumper closer to my torso in an attempt to feel safer and stop the frigid blizzard from soaking me to the bone. It doesn’t help. I feel even more uncomfortable. Then it happens. A large weight sends me plummeting to the ground and I watch as a silhouetted mad-man towers over me, I can’t see his face so I can’t say that I’ve seen him before, and like I said earlier; nobody EVER comes up here.
“Hey! Watch it pal!” I yell through the hair whipping gale. He growls a horrid throaty sound in reply and pounces on me, I try my hardest to push his dead weight off of me but my feeble arms simply shake an give way. The man sinks his teeth into my neck, and the world as I know it whirls into a blur and with each beat of my frantic heart my vision hazes into white, then to red and I feel as smooth crimson liquid surges from my throat. I scream and scream for help until the pain becomes too unbearable and all I manage is a horrific wheeze. My vision blurs into darkness and hazes into an empty black void.
Chapter 3
*Five minutes earlier.*
“You know him?” Molly asks. Yeah I know him. He’s my friend. His name is Ross. We have been friends for ages. But I have never spoke of him to Molly because she’s probably just poke fun at me because of his gender. ‘So, is that your boyfriend? OOOH Pineapple has a boyfriend! La-Dee-dah!’ Ugh, I can picture her saying that in such a taunting tone so vividly.
““Yeah, he’s a friend from school.” I shrug. “A good friend.” I say subconsciously, realizing what I’ve just said my cheeks start to burn into what I can only imagine a spectacular shade of red.
“Are you sure he’s just a friend?” She teases. Oh great. It starts. I shoot her a look into her aqua eyes. “Okay, okay.” She replies, raising her hands and quietly chuckling to herself, satisfied. “Better let him in before he freezes to death. I’ll get some blankets. From the shed out back.”
“Okay.” I reply reaching for the manual hinge lock on the door. My fingertips clasp over the smooth lock. They twist, and the door has been unlocked. The door flies open with Ross rushing in and slamming the door behind him, locking it and sliding down against it, bringing his knees to his chest and his palms to his face. He’s really out of breath. “Are you okay?”
His eyes widen and his face flushes as I caught him off guard. I sit next to him and ask him again. “Are you okay?”
“They’re… They’re… I don’t know… Megan… They… Killed… No… ATE… Everyone.” He stammers out. Normally my skin would crawl at the sound of my real name, but I don’t mind when it comes to Ross. He’s practically my only friend, and I don’t want to scare him away by freaking out over a nickname.
“What?”
His eyes widen even more so. “Where’s your sister?”
“She’s just getting some blankets from outside-” I am cut off by Ross.
“WHAT?!” He stands up and suddenly I’m being dragged towards the backdoor. Ross looks out of the window on the door. His face turns a ghastly white and his face falls. “I…I’m so sorry…”
“What? Why are you sorry?” I say. Ross just points towards the window.
“Look.”
I do. I see Molly. She’s walking towards the shed. But she’s not alone. What appears to be a bedraggled man with a bad limp is near her. He reaches out for her. My breath catches on the window and blurs my view. I reach to clear it again, but before I can Ross grabs my arm. “I’m so sorry Megan…”
The next thing I know is Molly has been attacked by the man as a horrific ear-piercing scream fills the atmosphere. Seemingly reverberating around every corner of my mind. I wrench my arm from Ross’ grasp and clear the window. Molly is on the floor. Blood. So much blood. Everywhere. That is no man. That is a cannibalistic monster. And it just killed my sister.
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